The Ballad of Amy Uecker

A collaborative song written by housemates Meagan Stolk, Annalisa Benner, and Chelsea Cooper. Meagan also wrote a great post on the symbolic importance of our household repairs.

Amy and her Khmer friend Mr. Ra spent four hours last Saturday translating, problem-solving, buying parts, and repairing things all over our house. Mr. Ra and an assistant returned the next day for another four hours. Can you say "dedication"? 

We thought it was impossible

To solve our household woes.

Our landlords couldn’t find the time,

So we just let it go.

The toilets were all broken,

The sinks, they were a mess.

The lights, they just refused to shine,

Increasing all our stress.

But suddenly hope sprung again.

A rumor grew and grew

That fixing our house could be done -

Someone knew what to do.

‘Twas the fearless Amy Uecker,

With her trusty *jieng named Ra.

She climbed upon the ladder

And shouted out, “Ta-da!

"I’ve made the lights all work again!

They shine as bright as day.

And don’t you worry, my dear friends,

The sinks now drain away.”

Dear Mr. Ra worked tirelessly

On each and every task.

A simple flush now did the job

Better than we had asked.

And so we three were filled with joy

From our head down to our toes,

For Amy and her fix-it friend

Had solved our household woes.

*jieng = "handyman" in Khmer

Cambodian education, part 2: 1980 through 1998

In part 1 of this post, I described what I've been learning about education before the Khmer Rouge regime knocked Cambodia back to Year Zero. From monks teaching the village kids a few prayers and a bit of math, to French officials trying to duplicate French elementary schools, to Prince Sihanouk exponentially increasing school buildings without funding them or establishing standards for them or training more teachers, Cambodian education was already pretty messy before the genocide and Mao-style cultural revolution. But how have things progressed in the 35 years since the horrors of the Khmer Rouge? The title of David Ayres' book, Anatomy of a Crisis, warns us there haven't been any miracles.

When the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, they also assumed temporary control of Cambodia. They saw education as a key method of legitimizing their socialist regime in Cambodians' eyes, and so they hurried to expand school enrollment, even while many children in war-ravaged communities still lacked basics like clothing, food and shelter. One school even had children attending naked. The Vietnamese administration had lofty goals of promoting socialism, Khmer-language instruction, ruralization, and adult literacy. But the curriculum continued to be largely classical, based on the original French schools. The Cambodian education officials, most of whom had served pre-Khmer Rouge under Lon Nol, didn't know how to implement most of the new goals, and simply ignored them. Likewise, schools were overwhelmed by enrollment numbers and a lack of resources. In 1981, the nation's former top high school didn't even have textbooks or instructional materials, let alone a well-trained teaching staff. Adult literacy classes were largely unfruitful for similar reasons; one report describes an evening class crammed into a musty building by candlelight.

The Vietnamese were somewhat successful in one regard: promoting socialism. Students learned to cram their essays with praises of Marx and Lenin and allusions to solidarity between Vietnam and Cambodia. However, many who reached secondary school couldn't care less about socialism. They increasingly viewed education as irrelevant and filled with propaganda. Despite the new emphasis on studying Vietnamese, Russian, and German, they still sought opportunities to study "capitalist" languages like English and French. In 1989, Cambodia officially abandoned socialism, changing its regime name, flag, and economic policies. Yet schools continued to advocate for Marxism and Leninism, reflecting the inertia in educational policy and the government's negligence of curriculum.

From 1991 to 1993, the United Nations assumed control of Cambodia in an unprecedented effort to restore peace and rebuild the nation. (Pockets of Khmer Rouge resistance troops maintained control over some areas of Cambodia, and power struggles between other leaders likewise placed Cambodia in jeopardy.) The UN helped create a fragile coalition between two major parties, implement a constitution mandating the separation of powers, and educate Cambodians about elections and the democratic process. However, it had little influence on the Ministry of Education, and the same issues continued regarding the lack of funding, resources, and quality. Impatient for an educational overhaul, many NGO's worked with local schools and districts to create curriculum and improve quality in the early and mid-1990s. However, in Ayres' view, their short-term progress in various directions actually complicated long-term development of a unified national education policy.

Meanwhile, after the UN bowed out in 1993, it became apparent that their reforms had been rather superficial. While influencing the constitution's mandates and the citizens' expectations of their leaders, the UN had not changed the culture among national leaders. Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh were joint prime ministers under the coalition, but their unity was in name only. In practice, their power struggle led to parallel, competing party states in every realm of government as they tried to establish client networks and exert power in each ministry. Their view of power dates back to legends of Cambodian greatness in the era of Angkor Wat; every Khmer leader in the past 100+ years has alluded to that grandeur and aspired to it. Hun Sen's coup in 1997 forced Prince Ranariddh to flee the country and destroyed any illusions of cooperation and compromise - values that are absent from Cambodian culture.

Without acknowledging the rule of law, Cambodia's government could not implement the UN's goals for national development. Separation of powers existed in name only.  Regardless of the beautiful plans designed by education ministers, the World Bank, and international donors, schools remained at the mercy of the capricious Big Cheese. "There is ample evidence demonstrating that the goals, objectives, and policies of the Ministry of Education were often abandoned in the name of the immediate political priorities of those with higher authority than the policy-makers. The result was an obvious failure to improve the quality and relevance of education. A final theme was the government's lack of commitment to its agreements with the international donor community." (152) It's not as if these authorities pretended to know anything about education. Hun Sen, prime minister since 1985, never even completed elementary school. The point was, the top leaders had the final say, and they exercised his authority however he pleased.

Ayres' book is filled with cringe-worthy examples of leaders' thoughtless promises.  In one common example, a leader would visit a village just before an election.  "We're going to build you a school!" he'd enthusiastically proclaim.  The leader would order a businessman to finance a new school building in exchange for special privileges like lucrative farmland near the village or permission to illegally log Cambodian forests.  No money would be provided for educational resources or teacher salaries; perhaps someone from the village would be crazy enough to accept the tiny salary, whether or not that someone had completed much schooling themselves.  Or perhaps the building would soon fall into a state of disrepair, since no money was provided for maintenance.  Either way, the village children had a small chance of receiving slightly more education than before.

In another example, Cambodia had traditionally guaranteed civil service posts to university graduates. This policy reflected two truths in pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia:
1. French colonists created Cambodia's first secondary schools in the mid-20th century specifically to meet their need for civil service assistants.
2. Not many Cambodians made it through elementary school, let alone university.

However, by the early 1990s, enrollment increases had made this policy an enormous drain on the budget. To decrease the bloated payroll, the government ordered in 1994 that graduates would no longer be guaranteed government posts. The need for new teachers could be easily met for a few years by transferring the civil servants who were qualified teachers but were currently working in superfluous administrative roles. Makes sense, right? Well, students didn't agree. At graduation the following spring, the student speaker pleaded that the government renew its policy of job guarantees. The two prime ministers instantly agreed in order to look like the nice guys, promising to send all the graduates to the School of Pedagogy for a year to train them as secondary teachers. Despite the Minister of Education's failed attempts to compromise (Cambodians don't do that, remember?), all 1460 graduates were sent off to this school that lacked the space, faculty, or resources to train them for jobs that did not exist. The job guarantee was renewed again the next year.

Essentially, Cambodian education has reflected leaders' complete apathy toward the needs of their people. The government used to spend only 8% of its budget on education, and committed in 1994 to increase it to 15% (a very necessary and reasonable amount) by 2000. But it never exceeded 12%, and by 1997 it had fallen back to 8%. Moreover, much of that sum never reached schools; it fattened the pockets of the few most powerful people in the ministry. Teacher salaries were often late and reduced. As a result, corruption was endemic. Teachers wasted students' time during the school day and charged fees for "extracurricular" classes where they taught the content that would appear on the exams. Students could bribe exam administrators and proctors to turn a blind eye to cheating, or even to sell them the answer sheets. Most teachers held another job because they couldn't possibly support a family on their meager wages; many sometimes missed school for their other job. Guess who suffered most? The students, who learned little except how to cheat to get ahead.

To be continued in Part 3...

Prayers I never used to pray

There's this myth that missionaries are super-Christians, the cream of the spiritual crop.  They pray all the time.  Their faith never falters, their patience never runs out, their joy never dims.  They love and give and serve like there's no tomorrow.   They haven't sinned since that time they pinched their little brother, back in first grade.

Ordinary people never become missionaries, right?  Wrong.  Super-Christians don't even exist.  Instead, it's a simple equation:

ordinary person + extraordinary situation = "fight or flight" 

When you hit trouble, either you fight to grow closer to God, or you book the next flight home.

As a Christian of the decidedly non-super variety, I was quickly bowled over by the diverse challenges of life here, some of which didn't sound like a big deal but threatened to drive me insane.  A stapler with no staples that fit.  Cheap pens that didn't write well.  Ants.  

I had to work on "praying without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:16), even about this little stuff, to make it through the day.  (Eventually I got practical help with some things - I now have a functioning stapler and know which brands of pens to look for - but some sources of frustration are ever-present.)  On the other hand, I've also learned to value things that I'd previously underestimated. 

Here are other prayers that I don't remember praying before Cambodia, but that I repeat quite frequently nowadays:

1. Guide my key.  The padlock to our front gate is rusty (this happens every rainy season) to the extent that my key got bent trying to wrestle the padlock open.  My housemate taught me this prayer, à la Princess Bride, when Inigo Montoya prays to his father to "guide my sword."  

2. Thank You for bananas.  I don't think it's an accident that bananas are plentiful and cheap in the same tropical climates where bacteria and stomach critters flourish.  They and the rest of the BRAT diet - rice and toast (maybe not the applesauce) are so readily available here.  Often on days with stomach trouble, I've arrived in the cafeteria for school lunch, wondering what it is and whether I can eat it just now, and found to my relief that bananas and rice were featured prominently.

3. Heal my laptop.   I promise I never used to pray so much for inanimate objects.  However, the inconsistent power supply does a number on batteries - I'm on my fifth new one in 5.5 years.  Besides, my laptop is extra-creative in breaking with flair - it's constantly finding new ways to confound my school's awesome IT staff.  And sure, there are computer repair shops here, but who has time for that when you use your computer daily in lessons?  Especially when the last (well-respected) shop broke your DVD drive in a fruitless attempt to fix your keyboard, and the one before that (also highly recommended) left porn on your desktop.  So when the blue screen appears, or when programs crash, or when the webcam only stays fixed for 5 minutes, or when the "x" key keeps inserting itself into everything I'm typing, I've taken to praying that God will put His healing hands on my laptop.  And when issues resolve themselves, as they sometimes do, I definitely give Him the credit!

4. Thank You for rooftops.  In America, I thought of a rooftop as something that collected leaves in the fall and snow in the winter, and as Santa's landing pad.  Here, where many homes have a flat rooftop that people can walk on, I think of it as a place for stargazing, praying, and reflecting.  It has the best breezes, the best views of the sunset, the best people-watching opportunities, and the best peace and quiet. 

5. Shut the dogs’ mouths.  This prayer has two contexts.  The first relates to my landlords' dogs, which like to bark incessantly between about 9 PM and the wee hours.  Thankfully my room is mostly out of earshot, so I can sleep through it, but that's not the case for several of my housemates.  I've often prayed for the dogs to be silenced so people can get a good night's sleep.  The other context is when I'm out jogging in my neighborhood, where people's dogs roam free and sometimes chase people.  I've never needed a rabies shot, and I'd like to keep it that way.  

Don't you give me that innocent face, Khla.  You know you and Liep were howling at 3 AM as if your cage were on fire.

6. Help me slay this beast.  I get unduly excited about my improving ability to squash mosquitoes when they least expect it.  When they elude my grasp, though, I need this prayer... just as I do to take on the cockroaches lurking at the back of my sink, and the shrews that occasionally infiltrate our kitchen and living room.  I prayed it quite often as my friend and I battled against a rat in my bedroom late one evening, chasing it around and whacking at it with a broom.  Eventually, with help from my housemate's incredible Rodent Zapper machine, God granted us victory.  

At that moment, we couldn't have imagined a more beautiful sight.

7. Thank You for cold showers.  I used to think people were silly if they showered more than once a day.  Now I realize the beautiful power of showers, not only to wash the dust and mud from the roads, nor just to eliminate odors and wash away that Permasweat sheen, but also to restore sanity and a comfortable body temperature.  And the bonus of not having a water heater is that you don't waste time waiting for the water to heat up... which would, after all, defeat the purpose of cooling you down.

8. Strengthen my wifi. This one often coincides with a Skype call to my sister or a YouTube video I'm trying to show in a lesson.  (If I were more organized I'd download them in advance, but I'm usually not.)  But hey, at least I *have* wifi! At school it's gotten much faster over the years, and at home, where my laptop despises our wireless router (see prayer #3), an Ethernet cable has done wonders for my sanity.

9. Protect my engine.  This prayer occurs when I'm driving through floodwaters.  Several streets in my neighborhood flood regularly during rainy season, and the dark stormwaters make it impossible to spot potholes.  (My housemate prays "Guide my moto" on this one, echoing #1.)  The trick I found out the hard way: you're probably OK as long as you can keep accelerating, but the minute you stop applying gas, water will flood your engine unless you turn it off and start walking your moto.  The other trick: Bikes never need special caution in floodwaters, except to miss potholes.  If I know I need to drive on a flooded street, I often prefer to ride a bike.

Learning the hard way... we walked our moto about a mile that day.  But I still drive that moto today!

10. Thank You for mangoes.  I pray this multiple times a day in April, when "mango season" is a euphemism for "hot season."  I think if these seasons didn't coincide, Cambodia would have lost about half its foreigners by now.  The thing I never knew about mangoes, before coming here, is how diverse they are.  You can eat sour green ones with dried chilis and salt.  You can pickle them and eat them with a main dish.  You can make mango crisp.  You can eat them frozen like popsicles, out of a bag on road trips, dried like a Fruit Roll-Up, or with sticky rice.  You can get "fragrant" ones, tiny ones, ginormous ones, and yellow-orange ones practically falling apart with sweet ripeness.  And for months, most of them cost less than 50 cents a pound... plus half your friends are giving them away from their own mango trees.  It's fantastic.

Even lizards appreciate a good sticky rice and mango combo.

My landlords' niece/helper Srey Pos loves giving me mangoes, fresh picked from trees in our yard (and our neighbors' yards)

It's always the little things, right?  It's the little things that get to you, but it's also the little things that make it all worth it.  Giving the little things to God - both the irritations and the pleasures - helps me invite Him into my day so we can tackle the bigger things as a team.  I'm no super-Christian, but praying more about even the small details has brought me a steady lifeline of supernatural aid, whether in the form of tropical fruit, a Rodent Zapper, or a peaceful heart that can withstand more than I'd ever imagined.

Cambodian education, part 1: beginnings through 1979

I’ve been reading up this semester on Cambodian education, trying to get a handle on what it’s like and how it got this way.  Often the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970's is blamed for the downfall and current disrepair of all kinds of Cambodian institutions.  My conclusion so far: the Khmer Rouge were terrible, all right.  But education in Cambodia has been a mess for ages, and a remarkably stagnant mess at that.  

*I'll try to summarize what's stood out to me - I can't promise it's 100% accurate.*

The first book I read on the subject, David Ayres' Anatomy of a Crisis, details the history of education in Cambodia.  You know the system is in less-than-stellar shape when “crisis” in the title refers not to gender inequality, or to the dropout rate, or to corruption, or to graduates’ academic abilities, but to EVERYTHING.  In fact, Ayres doesn't even bother to argue that Cambodian education is in crisis, but focuses on arguing why.  In a nutshell, the answer is that Cambodia's leaders have never once had their citizens' best interests at heart.  Their capricious, ill-thought-through policies have reflected their true goals: to make themselves look good, to protect their status, and to divert the budget for themselves and their cronies.

Ayres begins with education prior to French colonization.  Cambodian kings never saw fit to educate their citizens.  For hundreds of years, Buddhist pagodas hosted the only education available: informal oral instruction in proverbs, folk tales, and didactic poems for young boys in training to become monks.  A lot of the activities weren't focused on learning, and monks could come and go whenever they wanted, making the schools inefficient.  Many boys spent a couple years learning from the monks, and then most were encouraged to return to the rice fields, while remained monks for years to come.  A few monks learned to read older languages like Pali in order to read Buddhist texts.  The pagodas encouraged children to accept their lot in life and not to question their status or their way of living; this fatalism is consistent with a Buddhist worldview.  For centuries during and after the Khmer Empire period, which began in 802 AD, there were almost no changes in rural Cambodian customs, work habits, or society.

A pagoda in Siem Reap - I spent a week near here on a Logos high school service trip

In 1863 Cambodia became a French protectorate (similar to a colony), but the French did little with its education.  They established a few schools to train administrative personnel, mostly from among the Cambodian elite and those of Chinese or Vietnamese heritage.  The schools were conducted in French after primary school, and their content was similar to curricula in France: very academic, and unrelated to Cambodia.  The French were not impressed by the monks' temple schools, and often reformed them - using the temple facilities with different teachers and their new curriculum for students.  By 1938 almost 60,000 students (mostly boys) were enrolled in primary school, but few stayed longer than three years, and fewer than 300 had completed primary school.  The first secondary school was accredited in 1935.  Ayres argues that while the French had little effect on the life of the average Cambodian peasant, their overtaking the temple schools served to undermine the traditional form of education without offering a solid alternative to replace it.  When they pulled out, the monks' schooling never regained its former ubiquity.

French leaders with King Norodom Sihanouk, whom they enthroned in 1941 and who remained influential until his death in 2012

After Cambodia attained independence in 1953, "Cambodianization" was supposed to happen as Cambodian leaders assumed control of the educational system.  However, no one ever implemented a thoughtful policy addressing Cambodia's needs and resources.  Ayres writes, "Particularly culpable was Norodom Sihanouk, who had slavishly pursued the expansion of educational provision to promote and ensure his uncontested legitimacy" (32).  Sihanouk, a shrewd politician who bounced between prince, king, and Socialist to maximize his political gains, saw education as a ticket to national popularity and international recognition.  

The problem is that Sihanouk tried to "modernize" education while protecting the traditional hierarchy (and thus his power) and he implemented policies haphazardly.  Schools were built too quickly, without bothering to train teachers or fund resources, and their quality rapidly declined.  He ignored his ministers' five-year plan to slow expansion and improve quality, instead deciding to allow many new universities to open without establishing standards to which they must adhere.  He never reformed the French curriculum, based on the assumption that students would attend secondary school and beyond.  While enrollment skyrocketed, most students still dropped out after a few years, having learned no vocational skills and little that was relevant to daily life.  Schools certainly didn't prepare students for the Cambodian economy, where subsistence rice farming remained the main industry and where innovation was badly needed.  Students who completed secondary school still had the old goal in mind: to become civil servants with a lifetime of high status, powerful connections, and lucrative bribes.  Trying to curry favors, for years Sihanouk guaranteed government positions to all university graduates in certain majors...even when the supply of graduates far outpaced the demand.   

His successor, Lon Nol, pooh-poohed Sihanouk's policies without substantially changing them.  During Lon Nol's regime, insurgents were gaining control of more and more regions in Cambodia, and schools were often interrupted by military conflicts and bombings.  Many teachers, influenced by the Communist ideas popular in France at the time, invited students to secret meetings and urged students to rally and protest both Sihanouk and Lon Nol.  A few teachers went on to become leaders of the Khmer Rouge from '75 to '79.  Seeking an agrarian revolution, Khmer Rouge leaders targeted the educated (themselves excluded, of course) among others doomed to violent deaths.  Their "schooling" involved separating children from their families to indoctrinate them with propaganda and occupy them in grueling farm labor.  By 1979, Cambodian education's tentative and uneven progress had indeed regressed to Year Zero.

To be continued in Part 2 and Part 3...

Gecko-flavored coffee

ching chok house gecko

tokay gecko

Cambodia has many a gecko lizard.  They range from about two to four inches long (unless they're the scary huge tokay geckos that bite), and they're generally quite harmless.  They tend to scurry on the walls and floors of buildings, helping us out by eating mosquitoes and mostly staying out of people's way.  But about a month ago, my friend and colleague Neil was drinking coffee and found a dead one at the bottom of his coffee mug!  This of course led to all kinds of questions: Did it crawl into the mug or into the coffee pot?  How long had it been dead?  What does gecko-flavored coffee taste like?  Apparently not very different, because Neil managed to drink the whole cup before discovering the poor little guy!

The next day, I had a more serious question.  Neil became very sick and was in the hospital with confusing symptoms.  Could it be gecko poisoning?  

It turns out that the gecko was innocent in the matter - Neil's condition was unrelated.  But it *was* serious, and Neil's been at a hospital in Bangkok ever since, along with his girlfriend, my housemate Michaela.  Though he's recovering well, it will take time.

Last week, a bunch of Logos people went to the same hospital with various other health concerns, and we sent a care package with some of them.  My housemate Meagan had the brilliant idea to cut out gecko silhouettes that Logos staff could write notes on, and she even sent along a teapot to put them in.  

Continuing the gecko theme, our other housemate Annalisa wrote a limerick about Neil's gecko experience:

There once was a gecko who thought,

"That coffee looks so nice and hot!"

So he climbed inside,

And we laughed 'til we cried.

That gecko did not die for naught.

I was inspired to write my own.  Though I never came up with one as witty as hers, here's my first one.  It builds on Neil and Michaela's Scottish nationality and their love of ceilidh dancing (similar to US square dancing).

A gecko once traveled to Thailand,

Finding Neil and Michaela inside-land.

Celtic music was played

In their room every day:

Preparation for ceilidhs in the Highlands.

My next attempt references a podcast by comedian David Sedaris that I recently listened to with them both.  He describes crazy American state laws involving hunting: namely: in Texas and Michigan, blind people are eligible for a hunting license, and in Michigan they don't even have to be accompanied by a sighted person.  "If they shoot something, how will they FIND it?" he asks.

A scarred gecko who fled up to Michigan

Often feared being hunted or fished again.

Till a deer kindly said,

“You’ll not likely be dead –

Mainly blind people hunt here in Michigan.”

The hardest part

"God doesn't promise us better life circumstances.  
He promises us a better life."

-Tim Keller, "A Christian's Happiness"

Reflecting on the past five years in Cambodia, I realize how much better things have been than I might have expected. I am so aware of people's prayers for me, and I know that I have been very well protected here in the face of many risks.

• I have been bitten by thousands of mosquitoes, including probably hundreds that had striped legs (the type that carries dengue), and I have never contracted malaria or dengue fever.
• Twice on the road, guys on a moto have tried to snatch my purse, and neither attempt was successful.
• I have approached burnout many times over the years, and yet today my life has perhaps more balance than any other year in Cambodia. I teach far fewer hours per week than I did my first few years.
• After thousands of bike and moto trips through Phnom Penh's crazy traffic, including some near-death experiences, the worst injury I have ever sustained is a broken thumb.
• While many (or most?) non-religious foreigners here turn to cynicism and heavy drinking to deal with their sense of helplessness against corruption and injustice, my faith has given me hope for Cambodia to change.
• Although I arrived with no experience or training in teaching English, and although I've had few mentors here among the English staff, I've been able to learn quite a bit, gain confidence, and very much enjoy teaching it.
• Despite high turnover, I have enjoyed strong community and have always had friends who support, encourage, and listen to me.  Several of them have been here since I arrived.

I need to remember these facts and recognize their significance. They are great reasons to be incredibly grateful.

Yet, in a way, I've been through much more than these facts would suggest. I'm part of a small, tight-knit community whose members are all far from our home networks of support. When one person suffers, we all suffer. That's particularly true at Logos, but it's even true beyond that, to people I've only casually met or never even knew. By far the heaviest burdens I've carried here are those of other people's struggles. Sometimes it's been in the form of fear that it will happen to me; sometimes it's been simply compassion and concern for them; always their burdens have weighted my heart.

Though I only broke my thumb on a moto, I feel the burden of my friend whose foot was run over by a car, leading to months of terrible flashbacks. I feel for my students whose best friend Yo Han died on a moto, and for the young Logos family who left Cambodia because they couldn't handle the painful memories of their three-year-old daughter who died in a moto crash. I have mourned alongside them, prayed for them, and struggled with fear because of them.

Though I've never had dengue, I remember the two weeks that my housemate missed school, lying in agony and delirium, and the months of exhaustion that followed for her. I watch her continue to feel its effects on her brain even three years later. I try not to panic whenever I squash a blood-engorged mosquito on my skin and see its striped legs.

Though I can honestly say I'm doing fine emotionally, I can't forget the downward spiral and eventual departure of friends who have crashed and burned, some of whom arrived later to Cambodia than I did. In some cases, I had no idea just how bad things were until they left. In other cases, I've known of people who know they need to get out but can't. Cambodia has been home to many a shipwreck of people's marriages, families, integrity, and sanity.  

Though I've never felt isolated here, I listen to my students who have been through so many transitions.  Some have attended school in three languages on two or three continents.  Several have at times felt alone and misunderstood to the point of suicidal tendencies.  Some of them find it hard to trust people, hard to reach out, hard to believe that new friends won't soon abandon them like everyone else they've cared about.

I mourned with my colleague who fractured her hip when purse-snatching thieves knocked her off her moto, just months after her husband passed away suddenly. I visited her during her six bed-ridden weeks and struggled for words to say to her. I was here with her foster daughters after she moved back to the US to recover and they had to say goodbye to Mom, shortly after saying goodbye to Dad, for their third set of “parents” and umpteenth set of guardians.

I've watched a friend process the trauma of being dragged behind a moto when thieves couldn't quickly sever her purse's strap. Now I drive next to her to her house every week after church, and then continue on to my house on the same streets where the purse-snatchers targeted her and me. I pray for protection for us both.

I wrestle with the needless, heartbreaking deaths of Cambodians. One man told me how his son (probably chronically hungry) ate food left outside meant to poison stray dogs. Since his family didn't have cash, the hospital refused to admit him, so he died. A student's older sister was electrocuted and died when she opened her metal front door during a flood and a severed live wire was touching the floodwaters. Street kids often go missing and nobody ever finds them or pursues justice for them. Just because I never met any of them doesn't mean I can forget their stories.

Compared to any of them, my life is so peaceful and safe. Yet because of their suffering, I too have suffered – to a lesser extent than they, but still more than I ever did in the US. Being up close and personal with others' problems has been probably the hardest aspect of my life here. In America people often sweep their problems under a rug, but in Cambodia the rugs seem smaller and fewer. People's problems have a way of spilling out to those around them.

These burdens make me tired, but they also make me grow. I'm thankful for my community's honesty about difficulties. Being confronted with problems far too big for me has made me rely on God. Trying to be supportive and encouraging to these friends has left me with no words but the Word of God. Feeling discouraged and heavy-laden has led me back to the One whose yoke is easy.  Interceding on their behalf is a privilege, and so is witnessing the healing and joy He's given so many of them.

Today is one of those times, yet again. Turning to God is not natural for me. I feel heavy-laden by the struggles I have heard about recently, and by my own, much smaller struggles. I don't want to need more faith; haven't I increased my faith enough already? When will I even find time to pray through this daunting list of needs?  

But God knows I need Him. He's urging me to come back once again and find new strength to believe that He is good and that His promises endure. Though I'm tired and grumpy, I'm deciding right now to leave these difficulties in His hands.  I know that for my hurting friends, and for all who choose to come around them, tough life circumstances are essential to God's process of improving our lives by drawing us near to Himself.

Lies mothers tell

My beloved Khmer language school, LEC, is now offering Saturday morning tutoring in addition to Mondays through Fridays.  I’ve studied there for three months during summer breaks, but this is my first time studying there weekly during the school year.  I asked my new tutor, Neakru Roth, to help me with reading and speaking related to Bible stories and Khmer culture.  Recently my reading lesson was titled:

Lies mothers often tell their children

I wasn’t sure what direction this was going.  What lies do American moms often tell their kids?  But here’s the list:

1. When there’s not enough food, the mom always tells her kids that she’s not hungry.
2. When there’s really delicious food, the mom always tells her kids that she doesn’t like it.
3. When the household is short on money, the mom always tells her kids that she doesn’t like new clothes.
4. When the work lasts from dawn until midnight, the mom always tells her kids that she’s not sleepy.
5. When the work is exhausting, the mom always tells her kids that she’s not worn out.
6. When the family goes out and can’t buy enough drinks, the mom always tells her kids that she’s not thirsty.
7. When she has a chronic illness, the mom always tells her kids that she’s fine.

The repetition of words made it pretty easy to read, but that didn’t mean it was easy to think about.  My tutor told me, “This is Khmer culture.  Is American culture the same?  Do you agree with this?”  We started discussing and debating, and I struggled to form my thoughts, let alone my Khmer sentences. 

Two things were clear to me.  Firstly, the circumstances that give way to these lies are ubiquitous across Cambodia.  When the majority of employed adults are subsistence rice farmers, and their only safety net is the generosity of their (also poor) relatives, financial crises are basically inevitable.  It’s heavy realizing how many people I see daily on my way to school, let alone all who live in the poorer countryside, face these and other struggles regularly. 

Secondly, these lies aren’t motivated by malice but by love.  My tutor said she knows her mom used to lie about not being hungry or sleepy or sick, wanting to protect her children from worries.  The US and many Western cultures value truth and honesty, but Cambodia and many Asian cultures value harmony more.  In their view, if a lie can preserve other people’s happiness and relationships with you, not only are you allowed to say it, but you probably SHOULD say it.  A corollary is that the audience may suspect the unpleasant truth, but by lying – even if the lie is unconvincing - you’re not forcing them to confront it. 

I’ve seen my students – specifically Koreans – get hurt when their parents lie to them about big things.  Lies like “Grandma’s still in the hospital” (when actually she passed away last Saturday) and “We’re going to visit Dad in Cambodia for a week” (but you’re moving in with him for two years) only damaged my students’ trust and increased their pain when the truth came out.  One of my students even wondered for months if her mom was dying of cancer back in Korea, because her mom clearly had health problems but wouldn’t tell her about them.  So my first knee-jerk reaction to the article was, “You should ALWAYS tell the truth!”  But I soon realized that even in my oh-so-forthright American culture, it’s more complicated than that.  Don’t you sometimes have to shield kids from certain knowledge, even if not through a downright lie? 

Questions flooded into my mind faster than I could spit out the words.  How old are these children?  How serious is the illness?  How much pressure do Khmer moms feel to lie even when they desperately need to admit the burdens they’re carrying?  Are they allowed to be honest with some other adult?   And what about the dads…why are they absent from this whole discussion? 

Neakru Roth said as she got older, her mom told her about more struggles, and no longer hides things from her now that Neakru Roth is a college student.  She also said that most dads don’t talk much with their kids, so they have no need to lie.  In her family, her parents both fought hard to provide for their eight children.  However, like the men in several of my other Khmer friends’ families, her dad had a drinking problem.  I wonder how many times her mom went hungry or didn’t buy new clothes because he was overspending on alcohol.  A former tutor told me she's frequently guilt tripped into giving her sister money that's too often wasted on her brother-in-law's gambling addiction instead of essentials like rent and groceries.

If I were to add an eighth lie, it would be, “When the dad beats up the mom, she always tells her kids that she fell down the stairs.”  In my mind, it’s touching if the mom is lying to protect her kids from an impersonal force like a failed rice crop, but galling if she’s lying to enable her husband’s addictions or misconduct.  It’s my impression that Khmer women are expected to do both as needed.   I’m sure some women leave abusive spouses, but it seems to be a small minority, whether due to shame, family pressure, or financial need.  Men have impunity to act in many heartless and selfish ways that women could never get away with.  I do know some Khmer men who are great husbands and fathers, but overall they have a terrible reputation because they are held to such low standards.  I have Khmer friends who say they would be afraid to marry a Khmer man.

My tutor asked me if US culture matched this list, but all I knew for sure is that many US moms never face circumstances as drastic as those that inspire Khmer moms to lie.  I’m sure more do than I suspect, and I know that even well-off, healthy parents (like my own) sacrifice more than I realize for their children.  Still, this lesson left me aching for Khmer women.  I want to pray more for them and be more aware of the load they often carry.  May they know the One who is able to make their yoke easy and their burden light!