A week of Khmer feasts

I've eaten more Cambodian food this week than I averaged in Cambodia. Granted, I ate a lot of "Asian fusion" and some Western food there, but still, it's been pretty wild. I spent the week organizing for the Cambodian Culture Dinner, an event that I headed up yesterday on campus, so perhaps gorging myself was just another way to prepare for it. But the good news is, I wasn't just huddled in a corner scarfing down stir-fry... I got to hang out with people who love Cambodia, which was good for my heart.

On Sunday, I traveled to the Cambodian embassy in Washington, DC for a belated Khmer New Year party. Several of us from Lehigh were invited by Narin Jameson, who was about to visit Lehigh as the guest speaker and chef extraordinaire for last night's Cambodian dinner, but I ended up being the lone Lehigh rep in DC. Narin was my only connection and I'd never met her in person... good thing Cambodians have a reputation for being friendly. Highlights included the dance performances, the guava with chili salt, the fried bananas, the sour soup... OK, maybe all the food... and the women sitting in front of me, who adopted me for the afternoon and were eager to help me practice Khmer.

Dance performances included traditional Cham dancing, which I'd never seen.

After the performances, it was time for traditional New Year's games, and I bravely went up with my newfound companions, who promised to explain the rules and help me out. (Ha!) All the women faced the men, and the two lines took turns throwing kind of a fox-tail made of a krama scarf with a ball tied inside it. As one of the only non-Cambodians, I became (deservedly) the butt of several jokes as I kept messing up in front of all the participants. I guess I just don't have much experience at knocking two jackfruit seeds together against the knees of a line of guys, so I took longer, kept dropping the seeds, and didn't exactly inflict any pain. (I think it was punishment for them losing a round, because later the tables were turned.) And I missed the part where the giant game of catch turned into a flirtatious game of keep-away... thankfully a woman near me grabbed the ball from me at that point, knowing I was lost. The uncertainty about all the rules was a bit terrifying.

I had to chuckle, though, when the announcer made some remark in Khmer about me being an foreigner. I knew all the laughter was good-natured, and the whole thing was so reminiscent of how people joke around in Cambodia. I felt as if I were on Cambodian soil in the embassy, and in a legal sense perhaps I was. I know well the feeling of being the hapless foreigner, and I'm fine with playing that role at times. It's nice to have a built-in excuse, kind of a "get out of jail free" card. Narin also made me feel better when she told me that since she's from Phnom Penh, she didn't know these games either, which are mostly played in the provinces.

On Tuesday, I used up my last two packets of Cambodian curry paste/powder to make a chicken curry for some visitors: Pastor Bob Schuman, who's been teaching a weekly Bible class on Jesus and salvation that I'm in this semester, and my classmates, Tom and Alicia Vosters. (Yup, this class has only three of us, down from about 15 on average.) Also joining us were Bob's wife and the Vosters' two sons, ages 7 and 9. We enjoyed the curry with some decidedly non-Cambodian sides like oatmeal bread, spinach salad with pecans and goat cheese, and peanut butter brownies. Call it fusion? More like plain old laziness, since they were all repurposed from other occasions.

After dinner, the Vosters and I presented our final group project, on Cambodian beliefs - hence why the curry seemed fitting. Interestingly, while I'd never met the Vosters before our fall-semester Bible class, they're hoping to move to Cambodia in 2017 to serve with World Team, which makes me really happy. That also worked out well because for our final project, comparing Christian views of salvation with another religion's views, we agreed to study Cambodian religious views together. Chendamony Sokun, a former Logos student whose parents are devout Buddhists, told me that Theravada Buddhism is the icing on the cake to most Cambodians - animism is at the heart of their beliefs. She, Laksmie Bunnarith, Megan Roberts, Amy Uecker, and Vuthy Keo were all a huge help on this project! We also drew heavily on this article by the late Jeff Evanson, a former colleague and long-time missionary to Cambodia, whom I deeply respected. The project made for a good conversation with my parents and the Schumans, who have all visited Cambodia before.

Bob (in black) set the bar high for our presentation, so we tried our darndest!

On Wednesday I had leftover curry for lunch, and it was still delicious, but not really noteworthy.

On Thursday, I stopped by the graduate house kitchen for a bit to help three other students peel and slice mangoes on Thursday morning as they made massive quantities of spicy green mango salad and amok curry with tofu. I transporting the curry to the kitchen and helped our guest speaker, Narin Jameson, unload the gigantic pots of banana tapioca pudding and kapit phao/natang (a dipping sauce made with pork and shrimp) that Narin had made back in DC. She told me she spent days preparing everything!

That evening, Sothy Eng, my professor, adviser, and boss (I'm one of his graduate assistants) invited the volunteers for the dinner to his house to welcome Narin to Bethlehem. Sothy made baw baw for us, a rice porridge with chicken, mushrooms, and shrimp, garnished with lime and cilantro. It's such a comforting food, and this rendition seemed especially delicious! Narin used to work for the Cambodian embassy in the US (back in the '70s, pre-Khmer Rouge) and later for the World Bank. Her husband Don, an American, has worked at US embassies in a number of countries, including Cambodia, where they met (also pre-Khmer Rouge). They were both fascinating conversationalists, and Narin is such a sweetheart.

On Friday, dinner was quite the undertaking, despite all the prep that had been done by Thursday. Narin was scheduled to teach two smaller cooking classes, with a large-group dinner in between, where she'd do a cooking demonstration and talk about Cambodian culture. I'd written a grant to get us the funding from three different groups on campus, and we'd been hard at work all month to work out the logistics since there were no ovens or burners for us to use in that building, only two electric hot plates. We heated up our curry in Crock Pots and used rice cookers for the rice. The problem was, the hot plates needed special pans that we didn't have, and so our plan for heating Narin's massive pots of food and having her demonstrate how to cook spring rolls and dipping sauce had to be reworked on the go. Somehow the banana and tapioca pudding got a bit burnt on the bottom before we realized the hot plate issues, but the smoky flavor actually made it even better.

Rice cookers and Crock Pots in the building's former greenhouse, now a cafe area, to free up space in the kitchen for the cooking class

Event organizers and participants at the first of two cooking classes

It got really crowded in the tiny kitchen, as unscheduled drop-ins nearly doubled the number of participants, while most of us organizers ran in and out trying to make appliances work. Not until the middle of the main demonstration did we receive a pan for the hot plate, and the microphone also had a few glitches. Despite all the technical difficulties, Narin bravely forged on, and everyone who attended had plenty of opportunities to eat and learn. After running around from 9 AM to 7 PM (including the whole main event), it was wonderful to finally stop for a minute and eat all the delicious food. Even if the event wasn't quite as smooth as I'd hoped, it was pretty cool to see my grant proposal turn into reality with the help of some awesome classmates.

So thankful for all their help!

Today, Saturday, leftovers from yesterday made a great lunch. So there we have it: I ate Khmer food six days this week, including four different dinners. And while I didn't see any Cambodians today, I talked with Sothy on the phone about my final project for his statistics class (tracking Cambodian high school alumni), which is due on Monday and nowhere near ready. After this festive week, it's good to have some "down time" to finish all my spring coursework. Still, I'm so glad Cambodian culture is still a part of my life while I'm in the US.