Language study

I’ve devoted the month of July to studying Khmer, and while I haven’t been fully immersed, it’s still been immensely helpful. My listening skills have skyrocketed, I’ve never learned vocab so quickly in my life, and I’m gaining a sense of how to phrase things. Sadly, a month is really quite short, and soon I’ll be back to working 60+ hours a week, exclusively in English. Still, I’m hoping to maintain this level and continue slowly adding to it this coming year.

I have several strategies for working on Khmer. One is formal lessons. Every weekday morning, I go downtown to a language school for one-on-one tutoring. I love this school because they’re great at making me practice what I’ve learned. My tutor brings in baskets of plastic fruit for me to describe, makes me pretend to be buying or selling clothing, and asks me to tell stories about someone brushing their teeth or rowing a boat. It’s all in Khmer, except an occasional English definition. Even when I leave the tutoring session, the cleaners and receptionists seem genuinely interested in chatting. They ask why I brought my backpack today, what I miss about America, how I scraped my knees. It’s a very warm environment, and they’ve helped me so much. If only I could continue there once school starts!

After that, I often practice with Khmer speakers at Logos school or with people in my neighborhood. Since I’m new to this neighborhood, it still takes a lot of energy and courage for me to start a conversation. But if I’m buying vegetables or a phone card, they usually ask me how long I’ve been in Cambodia, and I ask them about their family or which province they’re from. It’s exciting when I can turn it into a longer conversation, even if that’s not always the case.

I love the elementary teaching assistants (TAs) at my school, but I never see them during school because they have a different schedule. During summer school, though, the kids leave by lunchtime and I can sit and eat with the TAs as long as we want. They love teasing me in Khmer, and I can get bits and pieces of their conversations with one another. The office staff has also been super-helpful in practicing with me...they’re all so sweet.

When I get home, sometimes I sit in on Chrismoon and Elizabeth’s writing lesson. They’re ahead of me, but not by too much, since they’re only 7 and 8 and attending school mostly in English. Lessons involve Sovannary chanting the equivalent of “C-A-T spells cat!” and us repeating it. Later, to review, they have to read it on their own or spell words she dictates, but I can’t quite keep up with that part yet since I don’t know the whole alphabet. My lessons with her this spring focused mainly on the alphabet, but this summer I’ve abandoned that to focus on speaking and listening. I figure the more vocab I know, the more I’ll be able to understand what I’m reading. Writing helps with pronunciation, but beyond that, it’s not terribly useful here – only for some store signs, newspapers, karaoke lyrics, and hymnals. There are few books printed in Khmer, and even most food labels are printed in other languages.

Dinner is the main time Sovannary’s family is together and speaking Khmer, though there are snatches of conversation at other times. Traditionally, Cambodians don’t talk while eating. (This is true of Koreans and probably other Asian cultures too.) However, Sovannary’s family is pretty lax about this, and with 2 little girls, there’s lots of, “Hurry up and eat your rice!” or negotiating about the quantity of vegetables to be eaten and whether they can add extra fish/hot dog to make it taste better. (Elizabeth is obsessed with hot dogs! She put on a 10-minute puppet show that was essentially an ode to hot dogs, although Cambodian hot dogs are far sketchier than their US counterparts.)

After dinner, Sovannary often takes time to help me practice speaking, or we just have conversations in English. She’s a deep thinker: her questions for me include, “How does the US deal with population control?” and “Which country do you think has the worst pollution worldwide?” That makes her an anomaly in Cambodia. Though our conversations aren’t always in Khmer, I’ve still learned a lot about Khmer culture from them, and I really appreciate our chats.

Caution: flying rocks

Last night, several former Logos students came over for dinner. One, Chenda, recently returned from a 6-month Discipleship Training Program in Europe. While there, her oldest sister passed away, and Chenda’s been struggling to process her sister’s death since returning to Cambodia. (It was an electrical accident that killed her sister: some live wires were left touching her metal front door. What a terrible, needless tragedy.) Her sister’s oldest daughter is about to take the national exam to graduate high school, which carries a lot of prestige. So Chenda’s offered to accompany her niece to the exam and wait there until she’s finished.

“It’s a lot of pressure,” Chenda told us.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they all want so much to pass, even though you can go on to college if you fail it. So it’s expected that whoever accompanies the student will help them with the answers.”

“How? Are you sitting next to them in the room?”

“No, but people write down the answers, tie them to rocks, and throw them through the windows.”

“How do you know if the answers are for you? And isn’t that kind of dangerous?”

“Yeah, sometimes people don’t aim well, and students are hit in the head. And I guess students just share the answers.”

“And the teachers don’t care?”

“Well, there are so many students that each teacher has to walk around patrolling several classrooms. So you throw the rocks when they’re not in your relative’s classroom.”

Chenda’s trying to figure out how to tell her niece that she can’t help her cheat. The other two Cambodian students concurred: one is in a Cambodian university now, where students in her class always suck up to her to get help with homework, if not exams. The other has received phone calls from her friends who are in the middle of university exams, asking for help with an English translation. They’ve heard stories of students sneaking into school the night before to remove the glass from the few classrooms that have glass windows. (Most just have a metal lattice pattern.)

It reminds me of a story I heard from an Australian professor working here to mentor postgraduate students in education. She said one of them, the dean of education at his university, came to her one day looking upset.

“I need your help! Last week, I saw a student in tears. She had her exam for my class the next day, and she’d failed it once already. She was so anxious about failing again, and I felt really bad for her.”

“So why do you need my help?”

“Well, I ultimately gave her the answer sheet, but told her to write some down wrong on purpose so that her cheating wouldn’t be too obvious.”

“What!? And now you’re coming to me because you feel guilty or something?”

“No, because my boss noticed the vast improvement in her score and several others’ scores. She told me to meet with her about what happened, and the meeting is this afternoon! What should I do? I could lose my job over this!”

“Well, you might need to be honest and admit your mistake. I hope things work out for you!”

A few days later, she saw him again and asked how the meeting had gone.

He beamed. “She brought the dean of each college to the meeting, and asked us very sternly, ‘Do you know anything about students cheating?’ We all shook our heads solemnly, and she said, ‘Good!’ and told us we could go.”

Shortly after I arrived in Cambodia, there were articles in the paper about the crackdown on cheating in national high school exams. Previously, for maybe a dollar or two, students could buy answer sheets just outside the school. The crackdown didn’t forbid those vendors, but it meant that teachers were expected to confiscate any answer sheets they found. The rate of students who passed dropped that year from the overwhelming majority to a small minority.

I don’t know if the rock-throwing has started since then, or if it’s older. But one thing is clear: Logos’ commitment to academic integrity is pretty exceptional in Cambodia. Corruption extends far beyond the government.

Joining the family

This month I’m doing a homestay to learn more about Khmer language and culture. It makes me sad that I've lived here for 2 years and yet so rarely left a “foreigner bubble." So I'm excited to be venturing a bit deeper this month.

In past homestays, I knew nothing of the city, less of the culture, and MUCH more of the language, so I never needed English. This one is a study in contrasts to those: I’m living with a close friend, Sovannary, and her family, while still paying rent a couple miles away where I usually live.

This doesn't exactly qualify as language immersion. My Khmer is still limited enough that it’s nice to switch into English some of the time, which they’re well able to do, since she and her daughters are fluent. This is the "chicken" way of doing it: if I were serious about maximizing learning, I'd have moved in with strangers in the province who spoke no English and weren't at all westernized. However, this was much easier to arrange on my own, and it's comfortable enough that I can still enjoy my summer and hopefully not start school exhausted. Still, I’m learning a lot about Khmer vocab, alphabet, and culture. More soon on my progress, but first, let me introduce you:


Sovannary: Formerly the owner of a restaurant where I frequently ate last year, she’s the first Khmer person I became close to. If you remember my trip to an orphanage in the province, she’s also the one who took me to visit there. She’s quite the go-getter. A teaching assistant at another international school, she first learned English by cooking for the Americans who started Logos and the orphanage associated with it. She’s very curious about the world and seizes every opportunity to learn, despite having little formal education. She told me, “I get in trouble because I speak my mind too much,” and I can see what she means. She exhausts herself on behalf of her girls, fighting to get them good nutrition and a solid education...not easy, even with great scholarships for them at the school where she works. She’s been an invaluable help in my adjustment to Khmer culture the last two years, and now, a great Khmer language teacher for me.

Her husband, Nara: I'm comfortable around him but always a bit nervous about talking to him. I forgot his name while in the US, and was too embarrassed to ask! They told me to call him by his first name (not normal in Khmer) but I just called him “Uncle” when I have to, since “older brother” is reserved for your husband. Anyhow, he’s very reticent: he probably says 10 words a day to me. However, he’s very laid back, and can always make Sovannary and the girls laugh. He’s a softy who spent weeks weaving a giant jump rope out of hundreds of rubber bands for the girls to play with. He caters food for the school’s lunches and loves playing Solitaire in his free time. He’s the only one who never speaks English to me, although he knows a bit.

L to R: Elizabeth, Chrismoon

Their girls: Chrismoon, age 8, and Elizabeth, age 7. (She’s named after an American friend who did a lot for Sovannary.) They almost act like twins: they’re inseparable, love dressing alike, and amazingly never get on each other’s nerves. They spend probably an hour a day in fits of giggles, mostly at potty humor or at tricks they’ve played on me. Chrismoon is quieter and more obedient; Elizabeth is very bright, but is a total ham who’d rather goof around or charm her way out of finishing her rice or doing her math pages. Sadly for me, they don’t like speaking Khmer with me (too impatient and too good at English), but lucky for me, I learn a lot when they talk with their parents. I spend lots of time with the girls helping them read books in English, or playing games like chess or badminton in the living room, or being victimized by their mimicking and pranking.

L to R: Chrismoon, Elizabeth

Translation of a sample quote from Elizabeth the comedian:
Elizabeth: I'm from Colorado, just like [1st grade teacher] Miss Tanya!
Sovannary: No, I'm Cambodian and you're my daughter, so you're Cambodian too.
Elizabeth: No, I'm not! Mommy had me in Colorado and she brought me back to Cambodia in a tuk-tuk!

The Girls

There are thousands of them. They pack the streets, propelling other passersby in their direction, irritating moto drivers who need to squeeze between them. Their hair is pulled back; they wear no make-up; their plaid shirts or neon T-shirts (or both) create unity across a cacophony of colors. Sometimes a whole block is filled with girls wearing the same headscarf in vibrant turquoise, purple, yellow, pink. Other times everyone is gone, and the deserted streets are hushed.

When I walk among them, every one of them looks at me.

Some give a quick glance, others do a double take, and still others a prolonged gaze of bewilderment. A few smile shyly, which I shyly return. One girl next to me poked her friend and pointed. That friend poked another girl, who poked another, about six total. Never in my life have I felt so completely conspicuous.

I was expecting this, actually. I’m staying with my Cambodian friend Sovannary this summer to study the Khmer language, and I knew she lived near several factories: I’d seen the crowds while driving there for Khmer lessons every Saturday. I figured I’d attract much more attention on foot than I had on my moto, and I wanted to get it over with. So the first few days, just before my flight to the US, I went walking (or jogging, when space permitted) every morning. I didn’t have a chance of blending in, and not just due to my fair skin and light hair. It’s my way of walking (especially during aerobic workouts), my loose exercise T-shirt and knee-length shorts, the fact that I have a good 4 inches on most of them, and more.

The factory girls make up a clear majority in this neighborhood, if not 90% of the population. So if I go out while they’re working (mostly around 7 to 5, minus a lunch break and plus overtime for some), the streets are empty and more conducive to jogging/driving/not being trampled. But since my Khmer tutoring is downtown at 7:30 AM every weekday, I’ll likely continue exercising earlier, when they’re out and about. I’m hoping once they get used to the white girl in the neighborhood, the fuss will die down a bit.

To be honest, I’m as fascinated by them as they are by me. I quizzed Sovannary to make sure my ideas on them were accurate. She confirmed the following: It’s mostly garment factories in this area, as are most factories in Cambodia, producing clothing for Gap, Abercrombie, Hollister, and other prominent brands. Owners are typically foreign – including several Logos students’ parents – and pay substantial bribes to import materials and export the finished products. Besides those lucky government officials, and maybe taxes, Cambodia profits little from one of its main industries.

The rules are simple: males need not apply, nor anyone under 18 or over 30. Housing is available nearby, packing workers in with six or more per smallish room. The girls are nearly all from the province, since the pay is low: about $50 per month. At 40 hours a week, that works out to about $0.28 per hour. (As a comparison, my house helper earns over double that for working half the hours.) Overtime until as late as 11 PM is a way to earn more...if you never want to see daylight. They spend little, sending most back to their families.

“What about all the poor people from Phnom Penh?” I asked Sovannary. “Don’t any of them want factory jobs?” “A few, but most aren’t that desperate,” Sovannary replied, visibly indignant about factory workers' plight and the government’s apathy. Everyone knows most Cambodian provinces face extreme poverty.

Go to the province, she told me. You’ll see hardly any young women left there because there are no jobs. It’s tearing apart families and hurting the culture of the villages. Some girls, lonely and joyless, fall for the young guys who hang around the factories, buying them gifts until the girls are convinced it’s true love. They’re dumped as soon as they get pregnant, and face extreme rejection if they return to the province as a single mom. Some die in botched abortions or commit suicide.

And these are the lucky ones, who aren’t promised a job and then sold into brothels! There are a lot of Cambodian girls that would be much better off in a factory than in their current line of work.

I remember in high school, reading about companies like Nike defending their low wages. They make a valid point that they’re not forcing people to take these jobs, and that workers flock to the factories because pay is superior to other opportunities workers would have. But what if the workers see no alternatives? Does that make it acceptable to pay below a living wage, and to break up millions of families countrywide by insisting on “young women only”? (Unemployment is a huge problem among Cambodian males.)

It just seems like a lousy excuse from huge corporations that could feasibly pay better and consider employees’ needs. They’re exploiting how corrupt Cambodia’s government is and how little economic opportunity is available here. In my mind, it’s kind of like taking a child into foster care and saying, “Well, at least I abuse her less than her birth parents.” That’s not exactly taking the high ground.

These aren’t new observations. Elizabeth Gaskell’s “North and South”...Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables”...Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country”...many acclaimed pieces of literature have decried poor conditions for factory workers and the resulting harm to society. Haven’t we learned anything? Is offshoring just a way to hush Westerners’ protests: “out of sight, out of mind”?

The Industrial Revolution is long over, but a bleak tenement lifestyle is far from history for my new neighbors.