Some Observations

2-4-09

My family has five dogs. For people back home, this might seem excessive. The reason that they have so many, however, is not because they like dogs, but because they are terrified of being robbed. Most families here are. In fact, I don’t know a single family out here in the country that doesn’t have at least one dog running around. Most dogs are mangy and underfed and will chase you sometimes if you are on your bike. I’m lucky enough to live with a family that can afford to take care of their animals. The dogs, all five of them, get a big bowl of all the leftover rice and other food at the end of the day. Since there is no refrigeration here, the food would spoil anyway, but you can’t see the ribs on my families’ dogs, which means they actually get enough to eat.

Speaking of the animals and my family being able to take care of them, I’ve never seen animals that were better taken care of than here at my house. At current count, the family has five dogs, one cat, four cows, and countless ducks and chickens. There was just a major hatch of chicken eggs too. It’s really hard to count them all, but I’ve estimated that there are at least 30 baby chickens running around. This is not counting the five that my host sister raised after the mother abandoned the eggs. Those are still running around, hopping up on tables and on to people’s laps when they are sitting at the table or laying in the hammock. Now my family is trying to get them to sleep out in the chicken coop in the backyard instead of in the storage room where we kept them when they were little. They are having none of that, however, and will hop out of the coop and come running back across the yard, then congregate around the door to the storage room. They usually get their way.

I may have mentioned that one of our cows gave birth a few weeks ago. Because the calf was born on a Saturday, my host brother named it “sau,” which means “Saturday” in Khmer. But there was a problem, since one of the other cows had been born on a Saturday as well and was already named Sau. So my host brother named the new calf “Sau 2.” The “2” is pronounced in English, of course, just to make things really ridiculous.

As long as this is an animal-heavy blog, I have noticed that the chickens will sometimes get into fights. What could chickens possibly have to fight about? I mean, their brains are the size of peach pits, and all they do is wander around, eat, sleep, and shit. What in this existence could there possibly be to fight over?

Getting back to the dogs for a second, their primary purpose is a deterrent for thieves, and to serve as a doorbell. They bark a lot when strangers show up. They don’t like strangers coming around the house, which is cool because I’m not necessarily fond of it either. When people come around the house they tend to stare at me for a few minutes and then turn to my family and say something along the lines of “did you know there’s a foreigner here?”

The other day a guy came around trying to sell my family a gas stove. They took great pleasure in informing this chump that they not only had a gas stove, but that the Peace Corps had given it to them (which is sort of true, I guess). Then they guy tried to sell it to me. I pretended not to understand. My host brother told me after the guy left that it was probably stolen and/or busted anyway.

February is already here, and after that comes March. March is, for all intents and purposes, one of the last “regular” teaching months that we will have. April is not only the hottest part of the year, but it is also Khmer New Year. There is a weeks worth of official national holidays, but from what I’ve heard from the K1’s, school for all intents and purposes shuts down during that entire month. In May school starts up again in theory, but who knows how many students will actually show up. If parents are going to pull their kids out of school to work on the farm, this is going to be the time they do it. I’m not exactly sure when the rice planting begins, but I do know that attendance is going to drop quite a lot during that time.

Changing topics a bit, I’m currently laying here in the hammock writing while my family goes around doing chores. They like to keep the radio on while they do this. I had thought that Japanese television was one of the worst forms of mass media, but Khmer radio is starting to edge it out. In the morning they play Radio Free Asia, which is great. They are getting local and world news. But after that, the radio station will play Khmer pop music (I’ve got some things to write on that subject, believe me), or the program that I am currently listening to. From what I can determine, this program is devoted exclusively to people in the studio calling up random people on their cell phones and asking them what they are up to. Since the network isn’t the most reliable on Earth, there are a lot of disconnects and dropped calls, so there is a lot of dead air. The people being called almost always have their radios on in the background to, so there’s lots of echo and interference. This program goes on for hours.

However, every few days the radio station that my family listens to will broadcast a program that consists of questions being posed to lawyers, foreign and Khmer, about the Khmer Rouge. Since the trials have finally started, there is a lot of public interest in the legal system. The questions mostly address issues like, “how can I find out where my family member was killed,” or getting access to prison records.

I may have mentioned this before, but my family puts up a student during the week that lives very far away from the school. I think he’s related to the family. They also serve lunch to two or three students who I think are in a similar situation. One thing I’ve noticed about these students and teenagers in general around here; they are very, very, very bored. When they aren’t in class or their private lessons, or doing chores, they simply have nothing to do. Right now the two students are wandering around aimlessly with their hands in the pockets, staring at the wall. Sometimes they will open up the top of the water filter and stare inside. They do this once or twice an hour. They also like to stand and watch me use my laptop. They get this look of hungry envy on their faces whenever they see me using something electronic to amuse myself. We really do have it much easier than they do.

Well, that’s enough writing for now. Lunch will be served soon, and I’ll probably bike into Svay Rieng town again today, since I don’t teach. I feel a bit bad for leaving town whenever I have a free day, but quite frankly there’s nothing for me to do in town, and biking to the internet place in Svay Rieng is a perfect way to get exercise and kill an afternoon. Costs only a little over a dollar, too. I try to limit myself to twice a week. During the summer though, who knows?