The People you meet along the way – Part 2

Like I said before everyone seems to know or recognise me around here now. Maybe a sign that I’ve been here too long?  

Down at the corner shop I’ve met two sisters who are around my age and have great English. As I see them almost everyday we’ve built up a relationship and decided to take them out for a few drinks after work with Leo, another volunteer.

We were quietly, as quiet as 4 girls can be, sitting down having a few drinks and Leo comes out with a rude word in Khmer that we’d been taught (my Khmer is coming along a little better than just the rude words) the night before. The two Khmer girls shut up very quickly and just stared at us and asked how we knew that word.

This then prompted a conversation I was not expecting at all. The girls both in their early 20s started asking me and Leo questions about sex. Leo is Dutch, need I say more, and me, well I’m too open and honest for my own good sometimes but this was a difficult situation to be in as the questions they asked were very simple so we said “Don’t you girls discuss these things at home between yourselves?” “Oh no.” “What about when you get married surely you’re been told what will happened and what to expect?” “No”. They knew absolutely nothing about anything. 

As shocked as I was I found it the whole thing was quite sad. In a country with the highest HIV problem in South East Asia why were they not discussing simple sex education at home? If it’s a taboo subject between friends, especially the more advanced city girls, how on earth are they meant to deal with this increasing issue?

So they seem to have this problem, as I’ve mentioned before, of the men frequenting brothels and now the women not discussing, let alone being aware of, simple sex education and what is expected of them and their partner.

It was really hard to find a line between answering their questions truthfully and not giving them so much information that we scared them. As much as I thought it was important they had some element of sex education and they were asking us direct questions and looked at us with big wide eyes. It was clear they were very sheltered and we would be starting from scratch.

Leo and I were very tactful and managed to share as much information as we felt was necessary for a first conversation.  How much information can you give someone that has the sex education of a 5 year old?

I’m sometimes a wee bit too much of a YES person. Sometimes it can really pay off and sometimes you just wonder what on earth you’ve gotten yourself in to!

I met this young Khmer girl on a project I went to visit last week. She was so sweet and just wanted to talk to me for hours. When I left she asked me to go and visit her family to which I agreed.

She lives about 400m from Angkor Wat Temple behind some trees that line the main road to Bayon Temple (for those that have been, right behind the elephant stand before the bridge to Bayon). She told me she was close but I never realised how close. 1000s of people travel past her house every day and the tourists have no idea they are there. I’ve been here for 3months and never knew. What I later learnt was that they receive no financial benefit from the tourists unless they want to become sellers like everyone else. 

Her parents were lucky enough to have jobs that were not reliant on the tourists. The father is a local medicine man who makes medicine from plants. Their kitchen floor was covered in different barks which they brews up to makes teas and pastes.

The mother does something to do with Buddhism. I haven’t quite figured it out yet but from what I gather she makes and sell things for people to leave as offerings at the Pagoda and prays for people too for which she cannot ask for money but if people offer money she can take it. They live a very simple life so their daughter helps support the family.

As I sat there her mother, father and neighbours all come to meet me and ask me questions. I must have spent 3 hours answering questions about myself.

They were so funny. The mother would only speak about my body shape for about 30mins. She told me that when I got married it would go and how I had a good “virgin body” to which I just smiled.

They were all very sweet and asked if I would join them at the Pagoda this week for the start of one of the Buddhist festivals and if I would go away with them at the end of October. Me being me I agreed, it’s all experience, but little did I know what I was agreeing to.

So the following day I got up at 5:30am rode my bike to the Khmer market (I say that as I was the only white person there and everyone kept asking my friend who I was and where I was from) to buy my Sunday Best for the Pagoda. I thought we’d be shopping for a while but I was ushered into one small, 2m by 4m, shop with traditional dresses from floor to ceiling. Then it all started. “You love this one? You love that one?” All I could think was “None of these are me.” So they pick me out a few as I have no idea what is appropriate for me to wear and a curtain is pulled around me. Next thing I have this meringue like thing on and they are all going “Ohhhhh beautiful.”  The only thing I can compare this experience to is how I imagine it would be shopping for your wedding dress with a really overbearing mother and mother-in-law.

After trying on loads of different outfits I managed to get something kind of normal and the response they all gave me was “Oh that’s quite simple.” They have still to learn the less is more rule here.

As my dress was getting altered the girl goes to me “Oh you’re not so big. You just look big.”

We’re now on day 5 and the waters around Siem Reap have not gone down and I live 12km from the lake that has overflown. I’m wondering when they will go down as there is still 2 months of the rainy season to go.  The Cambodians seem to be taking it all in their stride. Businesses are still operating as usual just with a few sandbags out the front for those that can afford it. I now understand why all the houses are on stilts.

The kids seem to be loving the water. They are playing in it all over the city and don’t seem to care what is in it. The big problem is that almost every Cambodian I’ve spoken to cannot swim.

One of the girls, Sudgear, who works were I live tried to make her way home, which is closer to the lake, last night but had to stop and turn back when she got to water up to the middle of her thighs. She thinks the water around her house will be up to her waist considering what she has seen so far.

As she made her way back to work she noticed 2 young kids playing in the water. What the kids and no one else knew was that they were playing very close to the banks of the river and as the wee boy, of about 10, stepped to one side he dropped down and was swept away by the river. The boy screamed out for help but no one including Sudgear could help as they didn’t know how to swim. So this boy was dragged under and is now presumed dead. They have yet to find a body.

I suppose teaching someone to swim doesn’t really come that high up on the agenda here. So Sudgear and I have spoken and this week we start swimming lessons for her and anyone else that wants to come. Years of being a swimming teacher and lifeguard are now paying off.