« August 2008 | Main | October 2008 »
September 24, 2008
Thoughts from "Teacher"
So, I've been teaching for a week and a half now, and it's still kind of a strange experience. As in, it's still strange to be addressed as "Teacher." I'm planning on sprinkling anecdotes from class here and there from now own, but I'll just start with a few basic observations.
Firstly, every once in a while, especially when I'm working with my low-intermediate class, or reading some of my students' essays in Essay Writing, I feel like I'm teaching at Yuma High School, the fine institution I attended, gold medal class of aught-four ("Home of the Criminals"). But these are university students, working on important things like chemistry or Angkorean engravings, at one of the best universities in the country. Why does it feel like high school? Well, probably there's a small cultural difference, in terms of what it means to act adult, and how students are expected to act. Further, I'm not sure if most American students acted the way my rather strange peers did. My students do like to watch a lot of TV, after all. Apparently "Desperate Housewives" is a hit over here, too. So maybe it's just because I'm dealing with "normal" students again.
Probably, though, it's because I'm dealing with students who aren't english majors. They're trying to express thoughts with a limited vocabulary, and aren't necessarily used to english forms of experssion. I know that during my three required semesters of spanish study in college, I would occaisionally break out into Borgesian speculations (as my poor vocabulary let me), but I'm pretty sure I was in the minority. I'm seeing these people in a very limited social context, anyway, so I'm sure they act differently around their friends than they do around me, their teacher.
They're not bad students. Most of my "young scholars" (a term I have come to like using for some strange reason) in Essay Writing are familiar with the formulaic moves of an essay, to be sure. Apparently that's a lot better than what my roommate chris had last year in Hong Kong--very skilled english speakers with no idea how to put an essay together. But they seem used to deploying the quasi-official arguments fed to them by past teachers. Happily, some of them mentioned their hopes to get beyond this thanks to the class, so I suspect that I will probably end up focusing on critical thinking, and creative argumentation, with some grammar and clarity thrown in for good measure. Cambodians sometimes have trouble with tense and subject/verb agreements, mostly because they don't really have anything comparable in Khmer.
I've discovered I'm very good at the performative aspect of teaching. I have a pretty good associative memory for connecting current material with past lessons, and can turn practically anything into a teaching moment. My lessons often arrive steeped in the western tradition (as forged by a "Great Books" sequence I took in college, and by random quotations I've read on loading screens for computer games like Rome: Total War), using concepts like Socrates' "a mob of men is not an army any more than a pile of building materials is a house" to explain why an essay needs structure. I'm thinking of discussing creativity in terms of the metaphor of the bee taking from many flowers, but creating something new. If you have any idea for exercises that unlock critical thinking, get people speaking in their own words, or encourage creativity in a way that non-english majors would enjoy, let me know.
I do, however, have two problems currently: I lapse into english that can be too fast or complicated for the young scholars of RUPP, and I haven't been planning my lessons over a long term. I arrive in the morning, think about what's in the book, and then draw up a brief lesson plan for today based on where I think we need to go. If I want to have handouts or worksheets of my own devising, I need to think about it earlier than the morning beforehand. Also, I lack the energy to sustain high-octane performative teaching for the entire 160 minutes a day, but that's probably for the best; I need to make sure to put them into pair and group work more often anyway. With that said, it's not too bad, at least until I have to start grading.
Posted by flynn at 5:37 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 10, 2008
A decade later...
In a recent article about Burma for the Atlantic Monthly, Robert Kaplan states that Burma is one of the few places in the world where a fifty-year old travelogue (Norman Lewis' Golden Earth) can be retraced with fairly similar results. "By contrast," Kaplan observes, "think of all the places where globalization has made even a 10-year-old travel guide out of date."
Cambodia is one of those places.
Most of the current touchstones of Cambodiana were written in the late 1990s, when the situation was spectacularly screwed up, partly due to the mixed legacy of the UN mission, and mostly owing to the challenges of completely rebuilding a society after years of genocide, civil war, and isolation.
If contemporary accounts are to be believed Phnom Penh was without a doubt one of the most chaotic, unrestrained hearts of darkness on earth at the time. Stray gunfire was a regularity, barely worth noting--in fact, it was an acceptable method of calling for a fire truck. Drug use and prostitution were not only acknowledged, but openly solicited on the streets and critiqued in the cafes. (It still goes on) Spectacular decadence and unparalleled suffering went hand in hand on the unpaved streets of the city. And from the perspective of authors on the ground at the time, there didn't seem to be any end in sight. Henry Kamm's Cambodia:Report from a Stricken Land, for instance, contains a rather damning forward that details the state of affairs at the time of writing, before launching into the book's main purpose, telling the story of how they got there over the past 30 years. Amit Gilboa's Off the Rails in Phnom Penh is a semi-journalistic, nonfiction collection of the most sensational, unbelievable, and probably true stories about a group of people who, thanks to the vagaries of international finance and local poverty, led more or less sustainable sex-and-drug-fueled lives that most people do not and should not attempt, whether for reasons of economics, morality, or health.
What a difference ten years makes. Almost all of the sensational things Gilboa wrote about Phnom Penh of the mid 1990s are on their way out. The seas of brothels have been cut to a quarter of what they were a year ago, due to the government's emphatic enforcement of a new anti-trafficking law...which, as it turns out, has all the anti-AIDS and sex workers' support groups angry, because it's left their highly successful brothel-focused education and heath projects in shambles. Most of the brothels weren't even involved in trafficking, and the police aren't well trained enough not to conduct the crackdown in a safe or healthy manner. It's a pretty ugly situation, but this is after all Phnom Penh, and there are few happy endings.
In terms of the rampant gunfire, I haven't heard anything in the week and a half I've been here. And just yesterday, I saw a notice that two soldiers were arrested for "Anarchistic gunfire" (firing in the air). Ten years ago, arresting someone for firing in the air would be like, in the words of Martin Sheen's character from Apocalypse Now, "giving out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500."
And that seems to be pretty representative. People still do these things, but they do with the possibility they might get caught; there's maybe a sense of consequences about it now. If I wanted marijuana pizza nowadays, I would have to do some serious digging and sub rosa questioning. It's possible that I've just been hanging out with the wrong/right sort of people, but I don't think you can underestimate the combination of (relative) stability and growth, especially tourism growth, in changing how a society operates.
Of course, some things still haven't changed. It costs quite a bit more now, but if I want to I can go out to the shooting range outside of town. Like many of its equivalents in the states, you can pay money to fire off ridiculously powerful automatic weapons. Except here, you can pay to have live poultry as targets, or throw hand grenades (once the preferred tool of political violence here) at clay pots. If you really want to break the bank, you can actually fire a B-40 rocket launcher, the same kind as the NVA used in the Vietnam War. Some people may protest at this half-insane version of a tourist attraction, but there are a lot worse ways those weapons could be being used right now. Chalk one up for small comforts.
Posted by flynn at 4:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 7, 2008
Good Citizen Award
Today I was walking back from browsing secondhand bicycles (average price $40-45, which includes lock, basket, and sweet bell) near the Orussey Market when the craziest traffic event I've seen so far happened. A wheel just fell off a passing tuk-tuk (motorcycle w/ 4 passenger trailer). Like, not like a flat tire or anything. The entire wheel came off, and the trailer pitched forward onto the ground with a terrific crash.
The driver and his passengers hopped out to inspect the damage, not really caring that the trailer was stuck in the middle of the road. Everyone on foot stared at the sudden curiosity while the traffic just flowed around on either side at near normal speeds.
To me, looked like a small accident waiting for a big accident to happen. Sure, the motos and bikes could just weave around it, but sooner or later one of those insane black SUVs with tinted windows and RCAF plates was going to barrel through here, and someone was going to get killed.
So I did what seemed like the right thing at the time: I set down my water bottle, and jogged over to help. If we could lift the wheel-less side of the trailer off the ground, then we could push it over to the side of the road, where it would be safer to inspect and repair. It was really heavy at first, but once I moved to help, so did everyone else, and we managed to move it pretty easily. It was really heartwarming to find that all it takes is one person doing the right thing to jolt people out of spectator mode. I got alternately appreciative and awed looks from khmer and westerners alike, for whom it is apparently not a regular sight to see some giant guy run over and lift up a tuk-tuk.
I was practically floating on the good feelings from this act, until I went to the ATM and the security guy called me fat. I was kind of offended, until I found out it was just a mistranslation. Apparently his bad chinglish (he wasn't cambodian) meant he didn't realize the difference between "big" and "fat." So much for karma.
Posted by flynn at 6:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A short one for the road.
I seem to be living a charmed existence here in Phnom Penh. I've been here a week, and I've managed to get a phone, find an apartment, and turn down an opportunity to be involved in shady business at the big casino here in town. In addition, I've managed to find a couple of friends in the local expat community.
A few days ago I managed to run into Brendan Brady, last year's PIA fellow at the Phnom Penh Post, who's staying on independently. His command of khmer is pretty impressive, and he imparted some advice on settling in. Chris Shays, this year's PPP fellow, is coming in a week. I hope to greet him with a fully furnished apartment and tickets to go see some Khmer boxing (also known as Kun Khmer or Pradal Serey; basically Muay Thai's neglected cousin). Things are shaping up to be a great year.
Yesterday, for instance, I hung out with Miwa and her friends on their roof until a sudden downpour, and ended up going to see a drag show, cambodian style. The performers did the classic lip-syching routines, except they were singing torch songs and emulating sirens I was completely unfamiliar with. They tended to be well enough put together to be alternately amusing and threatening to the female spectators I had come there with, though their hair needed work. All in all, a surreal experience. After that we went to the semi-obligatory First Friday party at Elsewhere's, where my highlight was meeting someone taller than I, though I probably had about 40 lbs on him. He's british, but went to high school in Singapore for some reason, and was looking to play college basketball somewhere in the states until he found out he had a heart condition. Apparently he's teaching in Kep for a year or so until he goes to college. Seemed like a standup guy; he might come up for the water festival. Most of our conversation revolved around sports and how low doorways are in this country.
Anyways, travel sickness plus consumption of Angkor Beer (and its competitor, Anchor Beer) equals a poor morning. But I persevered, and ended up going out to meet with my rental agent guy for the second day in a row. After a number of nice but too-expensive places, we just happened to wander by a place that fit both my price range and my sense of style. I move in on tuesday..pictures to come.
Anyway, tomorrow I plan to work out at the old school gym, see about buying a bike, and settle my rental contract. If I have time I will reward myself by blogging about the five best things I've had to eat here so far, which should be really enjoyable.
Posted by flynn at 1:10 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 4, 2008
The Basics
Someone asked me about the basic facts of living here, and I thought I'd share some of my excerpted thoughts. One of the biggest aspects of travel is the basic phenomenological disruption when it comes to aspects of one's surroundings that are normally taken in in a disinterested mode. That is, there are a lot of things about the city or town you live in that you take for granted. And as I get used to the city, I'm sure I'll notice it less, so it's good to record it now...
Colors: There's a lot of color, mostly in muted tones with vivid accents. Lots of muted greens, blues, and reds on buildings. Most buildings vary between yellow and off-white, with enough hard white buildings to create a good sense of contrast. Strong red pops up a lot as it's the color of most tuk-tuks and the dominant national color (blue is the other color on the flag, but it tends to appear more to bring out the red.) Also, since it's the national color, it's also on all the signs for the country's leading beer, Angkor (motto: "My Country, My Beer."). Even when the streets are paved, they still have a dusty color. It's a dusty country (most people's reason for not wearing contact lenses), so it makes sense that there's a lot of off-white. But by far, the strongest color I notice is the buddhist gold and orange, or more accurately, saffron and deep saffron. The monks all seem to have saffron umbrellas, which look amazing when they catch the light. But it's not only the color of monks; plenty of companies have adopted that particular shade of orange, in particular telecom company Cellcard, whose umbrellas are nearly ubiquitous on the streets.
Smells: Lots of stuff I can't quite pin down all the time. Smoke is ever-present, but the tone of it changes during the day. In the early morning, everyone burns incense near their door, so when I come in early to email, it's a pleasant smoky smell. There are also a lot of open cooking fires for street food in the early afternoon, so smoke is more harsh, but also has meat-smells attached to it. This is also the time of year they make their fermented fish paste, so that smell pops up from time to time. And then in high-traffic areas there's a lot of engine smoke. There's a lot of spice smell that I can't identify. Some areas of the city also stink like shit, often because they are basically open garbage dumps or sewers. As for the reputedly-stinky durian fruit, I can't say as I've noticed it yet as I've passed them at the market. Apparently some people think it stinks, and some people like it. Smell is very individualistic--sort of how if you really like someone, their sweat smells good.
Where I work: The Royal University is situated a bit on the outskirts of town, near the airport road. Like most of the impressive institutional buildings here, they were designed and built during the early 60s, a sort of golden era for King Sihanouk and the country at large: peaceful, neutral, with no idea about what hell they were in for. The A building, where I'm going to work at, is 7 stories high. The older expat teacher who showed me around ruminated on how for students coming here from the provinces, this might be the highest up they've ever been, maybe the highest they're ever going to get. The buildings are also the off-white of most architecture here old and new, but were done in the "New Khmer" style, which reminds me of a lot of those modernist post-colonial government buildings of the late 50s-early 60s, carrying in their designs all the hopes of that strange and electric time (If you watch Last King of Scotland and pay attention to both the architecture and the rhetoric, you'll see what I mean.) This giant building is seated on a number of massive pylons, which allow you to walk underneath the mass of the building when you're on the ground. It's got a U-shape, and there are 'inside' and 'outside' walkways. It's all open-air, and though you can close the windows (maybe if a monsoon comes or something) the cross-ventilation is key to keeping cool.
The library's entry system seems much nicer than firestone's: An old woman who speaks no english hands you two matching numbered metal tags for your bag. You tie one on your bag, and keep the other one with you. Then you put a bead into a bin as an attendence counter (with different colored beads for each gender), and walk in. Low-tech, and effective.
There's an olympic pool that's never been restored, so it collects rainwater in a murky mess. It's a breeding pool for mosquitos, and it looks like it could be dangerous if you left a child near it, but the head of the university (one of the two professors out of several hundred to return after the mass exodus and extermination during the KR years) keeps it because "one day" it's going to be restored to its former glory.
It needs a paint job, but it has a lot of character and potential. You want to believe in it.
Some People I've Met:
Phillipe, a cameroonian soccer player by way of france, recovering from injuries by playing for the Phnom Penh Empire soccer team. Met him at the king kong club. He gave me his cell number so that we can go work out.
Miwa, an American friend of a friend, who worked a long stint last year at an AIDS orphanage in the hinterlands, and is now working on a fellowship in some sort of Arts and Culture thing here. She was glad to find my attitude seemed very compatible with cambodia, especially the part about embracing the random and absurd.
Steven, the older expat teacher who tends to show newbies how things work around here. He has a Khmer wife, and his advice for learning the language is to "learn the painless way: get a girlfriend who speaks Khmer." Just the other day his wife brought in a buddhist monk to perform some ceremony to remove what she perceives as the bad mojo on the house (earlier this summer he got into a moto accident just before his flight to America, along with a number of other misfortunes). He's going to take me to look at apartments today.
Angel, a chinese (?) fellow who has worked in Cambodia for about six years or so, and is a regular at the fate-blessing buddha vegetarian restaurant. He's mostly worked in the import-export business, specializing in fruit. He told me a bit about the fruit scene here, and told me I should try the small, flavorful bananas.
Sovannthea, who handles administrative stuff at the RUPP. he picked me up at the airport, and installed microsoft office on my computer. He's really upbeat and cheerful, and has studied in America. He also needs a crutch to walk.
Larry (Harry?) and Ellen (Evelyn?) A very nice couple at the embassy waiting to have extra pages sewn into their passports. They retired 6 or 7 years ago, and have been sailing the world ever since. They started in the great lakes, and have been moving east to leisurely circumnavigate the globe over the past 6 years. They had a lot of great stories about their visit to Madagascar and the Comoros.
Posted by flynn at 11:51 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 1, 2008
Meeting all the Usual Suspects, Part 1
So I've been in-country for 3 days now, and my sleep schedule is slowly stabilizing toward the Cambodian norm. Which, as it happens, begins by waking up at or before 5AM. So I've slowly been shifting towards that. I am quite tired at the end of the day, though perhaps naps are the solution.
My mom joked that the first khmer phrase I would learn would be "Hey, look at that big white guy." And while I haven't learned that particular set of words yet, I have definitely gotten some funny looks and smiles. I've had to re-acquaint myself with the metric system as most people I meet ask me how tall I am and how much I weigh. The shorthand answer of 2 meters (or m'er, as it seems to be pronounced here) and 120 kilograms seems to suffice.
I boarded the plane shortly after midnight thursday, and got off the plane on saturday morning, courtesy of the international date line. I'm not sure if I would recommend China Airlines as a means of getting to cambodia, but they did move me to a roomier seat when they noticed my obvious discomfort, and they do have this really adorable cartoon about what to do if you think you're exposed to SARS. I managed to make it through customs & immigration with my scanned, emailed, and printed-out letter of attestation, and was picked up at the airport by Sovannthea, a really great guy who handles some of the logistics at the little division I'm going to be working at. I was dropped off and checked in at a guesthouse in a part of town popular with NGO types (This particular street was filled with guesthouses and hotels that begin with "Golden:" Golden Gate, Golden Bridge, Golden Star, etc.) I got all my stuff inside, and then promptly slept for the rest of the day.
My sunday defintely deserves a full retelling, mostly for how rich and bizarre it was. I'm a big believer in the "aimless wandering" school of getting to feel out a city you've just arrived in, and Phnom Penh seemed to prove especially fruitful for this.
I got up and about probably around 8 or 9, and decided to wander in a westerly direction on one of the main boulevards, aiming roughly for the Olympic Stadium. No one's able to tell me why exactly it's "Olympic Stadium." Perhaps it's because they hold their olympic trials there? Anyway, it's actually a quite impressive complex, with a classic bowl that holds up to 50,000. It's got a lot of potential, all things considered. When I arrived, though, there were mostly homeless people huddling under the shade of the light posts, themselves were marked up with chalk inscriptions in both Khmer and english.
Drawn by the sound of whistles and clapping inside (as well as the booming of storm clouds to the north) I ducked into the indoor space, to find a gem of Cambodian sport. Initially I thought i was seeing some sort of regional amateur volleyball tournement, until I noticed something unusual about the players. They were all missing a limb. I was watching the Cambodian National Volleyball League (Disabled). And they were really good. Some of those guys had 30 inch verticals or better, and the action had me at the edge of my seat. Apparently Cambodia has the #3 team in the world in disabled volleyball (looking to be number one when the championships take place this year in Slovakia), and it makes sense. It's a tragic fact that they have a rather large talent pool, thanks to the thousands of landmines and unexploded ordinance that litters the country. The league seems to be sponsored by a number of telecoms along with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and it's really a brilliant idea, especially the way it raises awareness and pride without instilling pity.
I watched the games for a few hours until the rains passed, then walked further in the now clear (and hot, and humid) afternoon. After a bubble-tea-and-taro-ice cream float at a Chinese-run vegetarian restaurant (Fate-Blessing Buddha's, I think it was called), I noticed a sign that said "Fitness" and had a drawing of a muscled figure on it. Intrigued, I investigated, to find an awesomely old-school gym called "The King Kong Club." It was basically open-air, under an tin/aluminum roof, with a bunch of old weight machines and free weights. Admission was 700 Riels (about twenty cents). I figured that this looked like a great place to get a workout in, and besides, there was nothing wrong with a little grime; machines might be chancey, but how is a dumbell going to go wrong? It had a lot of character. I remember my high school weight room was pretty similar--if we wanted chalk, we had to wipe our hands on a slice of exposed wall.
I'll continue my tale of sunday later when I have time, but first a few further observations after the jump...
I feel somewhat well conditioned to the hassle of moto drivers and other solicitors thanks to my experiences in mexican border towns when I lived in Arizona, and my more recent weeks spent this summer in New York. Also, being as tall as I am, it's easier to avoid eye contact, turning people away with a shake of the head and a wave of the hand. Of course, when I actually needed a ride I didn't haggle as hard as I could, mostly because I knew that they usually don't make very much, and I was worried that my weight (probably that of two average cambodians) might affect their gas mileage. I'm going to try and get in touch with the guy who drove Andrew (my predecessor), since it makes sense to have a standing arrangement with one guy, who is satisfied enough with the guarantee of repeat business to offer a consistent and basically fair price.
Phnom Penh's traffic seems at times frightening, but on a basic level it made sense to me, probably because here it ceases to be a system of rigid order and instead is a system of fluid agents. As long as you're watching everyone around you, and actually paying attention to the road, it's less dangerous than it seems. That's not to say that it's *not* dangerous--I made room in my suitcase for a big white helmet for a reason--but it's dangerous the same way a river can be. If you don't respect the flow, you're going to get hurt.
Posted by flynn at 9:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack