Playtime

My ears perked up when I heard “barang” – white person.  My 8-year-old neighbor with curly locks was talking about me to my landlord’s niece.  “I want her to play too!” 

I shot a look at my landlord’s niece, then asked the little girl, “Play what?”  Not that I expected to understand the answer.  Even if I recognized the title – and I didn’t – I’d already been  watching my landlord’s niece scream and run around while little neighbor kids threw baby powder at her.  Was this a real game or just their own invention?  Was there a way to win and stop being chased?  How long would it continue?  Why tonight of all nights, when I was exhausted and the humidity was near 100%?  All I wanted was to go inside, shower off, and unwind with a book.

Then suddenly, I took off running.

Every evening lately, as I’ve turned onto my street coming home from school, I’ve asked myself, “Do I feel like talking?”  Srey Pos has been living with us for over a year now, in my landlord’s house that adjoins ours.  She’s their 17-year-old niece and the one who opens the gate each evening for me, eager to talk after sitting with the guard dog in front of our house all day.  Her job is to keep people from breaking in, and presumably to clean and cook a bit for the landlord’s family.  But since the landlord and his wife have been staying out till 8:30 or 9 PM for an English course, Srey Pos has all kinds of time between my return (5:30 or 6) and theirs.  Sometimes I come home with a lot to do, or just can’t think of anything to say to her.  And some nights, to be perfectly honest, I’m just not willing to spend energy making conversation.  But I try to reserve a few minutes to linger and chat more often than not.

In a sense, having her around is perfect for me.  I love practicing Khmer but don’t get to use it that much at school, and she’s eager to decipher all my mangled sentences.  The trouble is, while she’s good at understanding me, I often don’t understand her responses.  I’ve heard that her province has a pretty thick accent, but some of the variations in her speech almost sound like speech impediments to me: ex. changing “r” to “h.”  When her grandma visited, I noticed that the grandmother was easier to understand.  Given my limited Khmer proficiency and the great number of Khmer vowels that only vary slightly, I need some context to figure out that “chwa” means “swy” (mango) or “bhua” means “braw” (boy).  Plus, she doesn’t really rephrase, slow down, or use gestures: if I tell her I’m confused, she just repeats the same thing at the same speed.  My comprehension has improved as I’ve figured out a couple of sound shift patterns and key words, but it’s still tough going.

Regardless of how much I understand, I’m glad to get to know her more.  It’s great for me to build a relationship with someone who’s not fluent in English or comfortable in Western culture, like my other Khmer friends.  And I feel for her – it has to be so lonely living here by herself.  She’s not close with the landlords, and worries about getting in trouble with them for various reasons.  They may be relatives, but it’s not a warm, fuzzy relationship.  For those reasons, my Filipina roommate Ethel and I have been reaching out to her – Ethel probably a lot more often than me, even though Ethel is new this year and knows about 4 words in Khmer.  Ethel uses a hilarious combination of gestures, dramatically intoned English phrases, and those four Khmer words to communicate better than I’d expect, with questions as complex as “Are your aunt and uncle sleeping here tonight?” 

Srey Pos keeps saying she wants to learn English, which I’ve never tried to teach her, but Ethel’s taken her up on it.  I hear them outside sometimes: “Girl…boy…ABC…”  Personally I think she needs to start back at the basics.  She still can’t remember “What’s your name,” which nearly every kid in Phnom Penh has down pat by age 6.  Besides "hello" and "OK," I think “bowl” is the only word she’s really mastered.  (I found out tonight that she now calls Ethel "Bong Bowl" - "Bong" shows respect and means "older sister.")

She's always eager to spend time with us.  She once asked if she could come over and help me finish my Christmas cookies.  Though she didn’t care for the taste of peanut butter and chocolate, she was a huge help at mixing and forming the cookies.  She always comes over to ask for help with her broken phone charger or her cell phone stuck on a weird setting from pushing one too many buttons.  She also asks us often to borrow our phones so she can call her village, since she’s always running out of credit.  (Like many Cambodians, she probably buys it $1 at a time, which expires after a week.)  For a while, Srey Pos was often jumping rope with her 9-year-old cousin, and had a blast whenever we jumped in for a while. 

Ethel and I occasionally go for evening walks, and that’s Srey Pos’s new favorite.  She goes on Ethel’s bike up and down the street, circling around us while we walk.  Once when I went with just her, she actually walked alongside me, headphones blasting Khmer love songs from her cell phone.  Friday night when I got home from dinner with a friend, she asked if we could go on another walk.  I reluctantly agreed, knowing how tired I was and how sweat had drenched my shirt at least 3 times that day, once during each brief bike ride.  I figured a walk could be peaceful and I knew she'd appreciate it.

But the minute we got outside, little neighbor kids were swarming us, trying to throw baby powder at her.  She told me she’d already changed outfits three times from all the baby powder thrown earlier in the day.  They zipped around us on bicycles, with the kid in front driving and the one on the back tossing clouds of fragrant white dust toward her.  Srey Pos alternately shrieked, ran away, and grabbed me as her human shield.  They were afraid to get it on me, but she got pretty well-covered.

After we progressed about a block during 10 minutes of these shenanigans, she turned around and took me back to the house, and the little kids desisted.  But when we got back to the gate, she started talking with the one little girl, who asked if I could play.  Play what?  I am so not in the mood for this.  I had already felt relieved to be done with our “walk” – it had been a long week and a long day.  I was about to say no and head to the front door, when a voice inside me said, Oh well, why not?

The little girl with one of the biker boys.  I wish I knew their names, but I can never remember - their building has a lot of kids.

I turned and sprinted toward the bike with two boys on it, making them giggle and shriek.  What was I supposed to do?  Run away, but let them catch me every now and then?  I supposed I could handle that for a few minutes.  So I ran and shrieked till the baby powder ran out and the kids went home.

Running hard and laughing hard felt really good.  It reminded me of other exuberant nights with friends in youth group, my campers, my younger siblings.  Yeah, my shirt got soaked through yet again.  No, I didn’t have time to read once I’d showered – I just collapsed into bed.  No, I didn’t mind getting home too late to join in their antics the next night. 

But I almost missed out on a magic moment, and I’m so glad I didn’t.