The fish are still swimming...

...but they have migrated upstream to mouthful.tumblr.com.

This is my final post here. I do not plan to delete this blog, but all new content will be posted to mouthful. I hope you will find me there...

All old content and a collection of my writing can be found @ mrwoodard.wordpress.com

East>West

I've been neglecting my blog these past couple of weeks--not sure if I was too lazy or had nothing to say, maybe both. My time in Cambodia is now flying by and unbelievably, I have just under a month left before starting my next adventure. My return to PEPY has been what I expected (same great people) and hasn't been (lots of office work rather than trip leading). Nonetheless, I am extremely happy with my decision to come back for four months, as its been rewarding to again be a part of an inspiring organization, and I have certainly learned a little more about Cambodia and Khmer culture.

On March 14, I'll fly to Honolulu to visit Aki, a good friend from Japan whom I haven't seen since I left. It will be my first time to Hawaii, and we have plenty of plans for sun and beach and biking and hiking volcanoes and maybe kite-surfing and eating too much and rehashing good times from Japan. 本当なつかしい！

Ten days later I will fly to Panama, my first return since I finished my Peace Corps service in December 2004. I'll have about a week to see old host families and friends and check out a friend's (and former PC vollie) Planting Empowerment project before busing up to Quepos in Costa Rica to meet my dad and his Rotary Club for a week-long project there. Afterward, I will return to Panama for a few more weeks to visit my site El Satro in the Veraguas mountains and enjoy everything Panamanian I have missed these past four years (patacones, tipico music, salomas, campo Spanish, conversations with strangers, etc.).

I will return to NC in late April for at least a month to spend some time with the family and enjoy Appalachian Spring. In June, I will return to Backroads for another summer of tripleading and campcheffing, though I don't know yet what region I will work.

Feels good to have a plan...

Vignette #7: The FCC Angkor

The Foreign Correspondents Club is full of foreigners and empty of correspondents, as always. No hobnobbing journalists expounding on the days events, no reporters revising their stories, no photographers discussing recent shots. In fact, the only person doing any correspondence at all is a young woman writing in a spiral notebook at a candlelit table on the veranda, and even she seems more interested in her glass of white wine than her journal. It’s 5:30, Happy Hour a quarter-finished, and the wait staff have just turned on the soft-yellow wall lamps. The wooden-louver doors of the second-floor lounge are open on both sides, allowing the gentle evening breeze to filter in, joining the ceiling fans in swirling the lively conversation and cigarette smoke about the room. From the veranda, one can see the river and the tangle of Christmas lights in the riverside trees, hung rather haphazardly and left over from the water festival several months ago. They are tacky and beautiful at the same time, fitting perhaps in this town, struggling to modernize and exhibit its rich, ancient history simultaneously.

Vignette #6: The Widow Waitress

Lina likes to sit with me at lunch, and tell me fragments of her life. She’s one of the waitresses at the café, but it’s difficult to think of her as such. She’s too forward, too amiable, too chummy. When I arrive, she without fail plops down in the opposite chair to chat and teach me Khmer. Like most Cambodians, she looks younger than her years, and yet, like all those who survived Khmer Rouge, has a melancholy in her eyes that makes her age seem irrelevant. Her bright face does a courageous job of camouflaging the somberness, but it’s always there, lurking in the back of her dark pupils, like black diamonds set in a gold engagement ring.

The first time I shared a table with Lina, or rather, Lina shared a table with me, she told me about her lesbian Japanese friend, whose sexual orientation she neither agreed with nor understood. But, as Lina reassured me, “Ot panyiha”—it wasn’t really an issue. She spoke fondly of the woman, and was clearly sad her foreign friend had returned to Japan. It occurred to me that Lina too might be gay, and this was her way of telling me without really telling me. My dinner arrives.

The second time I met Lina, she told me about her dead husband and one of her dead brothers, mentioning them casually, like two perished houseplants. Her spouse died in a motorbike accident, struck by a hit-and-run SUV, the driver of which she claimed to be a government minister who offered no apology and suffered no consequences. The brother died at the hands of his own wife’s jealous lover, who drowned him in a basin of boiling water after a merciless drunken beating. He too, escaped punishment. Another waitress brings out my lunch, and Lina disappears to the back.

On the third occasion, Lina tells me about her 11-year old son, who likes school and learns English at the Christian church they attend on Sundays. She pronounces Jesus “Jay-soo” and finds it peculiar I claim not to be Christian, or Buddhist, or Jewish, but does not press for an explanation. I want to ask the name of her church, but do not know the word for church in Khmer. I resort to calling it “p’tea Jay-soo, pagoda robhas Jay-soo”. The house of Jesus, Jesus’ pagoda. She understands, but cannot remember the name of the church. This time she watches me eat, and smiles when I look up from the plate.

The fourth time we meet, she recounts her experience as a refugee in Thailand. She was six when the Vietnamese overthrew Pol Pot. With her father dead, her mother dead, a sibling and cousins dead, she was taken to a camp just across the border to live with her mother’s sister. Four years later, Lina and her remaining siblings returned to Cambodia, where they grew up with another uncle. The aunt moved to Long Beach, married another refugee, and had two daughters who are now both medical students. Lina mentions the daughters suggestively, as if I might be a suitor, and then just as quickly, dismisses the idea silently, refilling my glass of iced jasmine tea, and asking me about work.

And so I come to know Lina, glimpses of her life like shards of glass on the sidewalk, inviting me to peer inside the broken window. Our limited skills with each other’s language force us to speak simply and directly. The blend of Khmer and English entertains us both, as we find indirect paths to communicating when we cannot find the words, and the inevitable misunderstandings bother us not in the slightest. Mostly she talks, and I listen, failing to understand the source of the sudden bond we’ve formed, and not caring to understand.

Vignette #5: 数学の先生 (The Math Teacher)

On an early spring day in a rural town in northern Japan, before the cherry blossom excitement had started, a young man stared out the window at the passing cars. Or at least, pretended to stare at them. His blue eyes, the only pair in the room, could not help but fall repeatedly on the young math teacher sitting directly opposite his desk. The young woman went about her work, stamping and writing and erasing and shuffling, oblivious to the young man’s gazes. He let his stares fall longer, until he was no longer even glimpsing out the window. Her pale face was delicate without being doll-like, and glowed with warmth. She had a rather weak chin, which he did not care for, but it wasn't noticeable when she was talking or smiling. She seemed self-conscious of the feature, and oft held her mouth pursed just slightly, as if about to speak. Shoulder length strands of hair fell over her face, in the way that Japanese hair does, and she continued to work without brushing it aside. Yet it was the math teacher’s eyes that drew the man’s attention. He quietly hoped she would look up suddenly to catch him, and at the same time, he did not want to interrupt her work. A sudden bustle in the office caused him to look away. A group of students entered the faculty room and went about their daily, obligatory janitor duty. Briefly the young man felt guilty, first for his lazy lapse, and then for staring, before remembering he had little to do. Peering out the window again, he noticed the snow was blowing by faster than the cars, and the cold rays of sunlight piercing the blustery storm.

Vignette #4: The Nudist

Just after crossing the river on Hawthorne, on his way to Powell’s to look for a present, Jack is suddenly drawn to the grassy expanse adjacent to the river’s boardwalk. Awash with noon sunlight, the river’s edge is busy with joggers, bikers, and dog walkers, enjoying what is surely one of the last days of summer. He finds a spot on the grass with a good view of the river and sits down to read Nick Adams while he people watches. Exactly two pages into Summer People, Jack looks up to see a naked woman on roller-skates cruising gracefully down the boardwalk. Save her bright white skates with red wheels, she has not a stitch of clothing. She seems oblivious to the hundreds of eyes fixed on her lovely figure. Yet, as she passes a pair of young men on a park bench, the coffee-skinned young woman bends forward, stretching her arms in front, lifting her right leg behind, and twisting slightly so as to reveal her naked pelvis to the seated, dumbfounded men. Jack, transfixed as the rest, watches as she coasts past and then finds her pace again, powerfully pushing past those in her path. Jack ponders the peculiarity of the moment briefly, before returning to his story.

Vignette #3: The Uncle

Nearing the restaurant, Puu recognizes me from fifty meters, waving gently and beaming. I wave back. I see him tell his employees, all nieces and nephews, to ready a table for me. He greets me on the patio, a concrete slab with half a dozen metal tables and red plastic chairs.

“Puu sok sabai tei?” I ask him. Are you well, uncle?
“Ba, sok sabai,” he replies, grinning. He likes it when I call him uncle.
“Sok sabai sai sabok,” says a nearby nephew. The three of us laugh at this joke as we did the day before, and the day before that.

Puu compliments me today on my sport shirt. This has become routine too. Often he tells me he likes my haircut, or simply that I am handsome, but today he has focused on the shirt, admiring the cut and even feeling the texture as he directs me to my usual table. It is lunchtime, and like most days, I am the only customer. Occasionally two men set in the back drinking iced tea and playing chess, but today the only other occupants of the red plastic chairs are the nieces and nephews, who are lazily watching Khmer pop videos and karaoke ballads on the small TV mounted on the wall.

As always, Puu is dressed well but simply--in pressed, pleated trousers, a long-sleeve button down that is slightly too large, and black leather sandals. As I sit, he says something in Khmer I don’t quite catch.

“Som toh, m’dong tiyit.” Once again, I ask.
“I missed you,” he repeats, this time more slowly. I chuckle, considering the fact that its been just 24 hours since I saw him last.
“K’nyom dai,” I say. I missed you too. Again, he beams, and laughs proudly. The nieces and nephews have shifted their attentions from the TV. One of them scurries to the back to retrieve a menu, despite the fact they all know what I will order. This too, is part of the routine.

“What will it be today?” Uncle asks. Again, laughter.
“Fried vegetables with rice and an ice coffee with condensed milk,” I order confidently in Khmer, without opening the menu.
“Mian ph’sut k’mao?”
“Ba, mian ch’ran,” he smiles, knowing the black mushrooms to be my favorite.
“Aukun ch’ran Puu,” I thank him, and then he is off to the kitchen, leaving me with his nieces and nephews who are too shy to talk much, but all smile like their uncle.