My summer was filled with quality time with family and friends who are very dear to my heart. I hadn’t planned on going back to the United States for the summer, but many of my friends in Cambodia were leaving for the summer. Some were coming back to Cambodia. Some weren’t. The thought of being away from the people I love here and without school to keep me busy combined with the thought of also being away from my family in the States was too much for me. So I bought a ticket and went. Home.
My days were filled with so many moments of refreshment and familiarity. Sharing dinner with my parents. Talking with my sister. Seeing what my brother and his fiancée do in the place they’ve chosen to call home. Relaxing with a friend and her husband as we both had time off. Just watching HGTV with my grandparents. Hearing what other people had to say during our “Sunday School” study of Ecclesiastes. Listening to the wisdom of age from family friends as I gathered at their table for meals. These were special moments. These are my people, and these moments don’t happen when I’m thousands of miles from them. In Cambodia.
Some other moments were also special. One of my hobbies is cooking and baking. While home, I was reminded of that. It brought me joy to cook dinner for my family- to be creative in the kitchen and to try new meals. My heart basked in the freedoms of a fully-stocked, air-conditioned kitchen and no wandering down aisles in the grocery store looking for familiar pictures. If I needed something particular, I could just look at the aisle markers and know exactly where to find something. The ease! The familiarity of brands and items! The fact that I could understand the writing on the packages!
In Cambodia, my kitchen creativity is of a much different kind. It usually involves trying to find substitutes for things that are unavailable or are at the only store I didn’t go to over the weekend. Just this week, I made Mexican style salsa. Only here, there are no fresh jalapenos, so my Mexican salsa gets a Thai Pepper twist. That’s a relatively simple substitute that I’ve become deft as using and really don’t mind. Sometimes though, this substituting or finding the necessary ingredients is such a daunting task that I just don’t try.
Some of my baking this summer for a small get-together (I only take credit for the baked goodies!)
I also found my moments outside to be special. Phnom Penh is not particularly quiet or green. I often get exhausted by the hustle and bustle of motos and cars blaring horns at each other. Buildings, streets, and the creations of men are panoramic views every day. My hometown is a city, and yes, there are noisy cars and buildings aplenty but there is also quite a bit of green. Morning runs were always filled with chirping birds and the sound of the wind rustling through fields of green cornstalks and amber wheat. There weren’t cars blaring at me to be concerned with, so I could see other things. It refreshed me to take in the scent of the evergreen trees as I ran past and the quiet stillness of dawn.
Green even exists from the front porch.
Cambodia and my hometown are vastly different worlds. Leaving my hometown, leaving so many people I love, leaving the comforts of easy cooking and baking and quiet, green spaces to come back to Cambodia was hard. As I sat in the Seattle airport, the reality of that leaving hit me hard. Why am I leaving again? I love so much here. I enjoy so much here.
Yet Cambodia holds much of my heart, too. I know that, deep down. So I will write some of them. I will choose to remind myself of why this is home too.
Cooking and baking here are quite different. It is hard to find some ingredients here. But Cambodia offers a wide variety of other possible ingredients. There is a market right across the street, and so it’s easy to know what’s in season by looking at the different vendors’s stalls. Currently available for under a dollar a kilo are rambutan and dragonfruit, two of my favorites. Also under a dollar is pineapple. The smoothie options are almost endless! It’s also easy to find the vegetables, herbs, and spices for Asian stir-fries and curries. I couldn’t conceal the giant grin on my face when my eyes alighted on an Asian style lunch: chicken with rice and stir-fried bok choy and pineapple with chilli salt to boot!
One of my favorite dishes here is a Vietnamese/ Cambodian “pancake” called Banh Chao. It has a base of egg and rice that create a crepe of sorts and is typically filled with pork, white bean sprouts and is eaten with fresh herbs and lettuce and a sweet, spicy peanut sauce. When a friend offered me some a few days after I returned, I was more than happy to accept. So, while cooking American is sometimes challenging, Cambodia offers plenty of different recipes to try.
The Cambodian people also hold a place in my heart. They are almost always eager to help. In preparing for school, I have needed to buy multiple supplies. In the true nature of being in Cambodia, this means trips to multiple different stores. While on my supply-finding excursion, I stopped for coffee at my favorite chain. I tried to use Khmer to order and when they heard Khmer, they assumed I knew much more than I do and rattled off… something… in Khmer. The two baristas at the register and the Khmer man next to me giggled when they realized I didn’t understand and switched to English, even as I tried to continue in Khmer. They were gracious and willing to use a language they aren’t as comfortable in just to help me. Continuing my excursion, I walked out, coffee-happy and renewed. To get everything I needed for school, I needed more than my trusty bike, which would have been too small to carry everything. That meant taking a tuk-tuk. Rarely does a tuk-tuk driver know the exact name or location of a place, so when I found a driver, I talked to him in Khmer about where I wanted to go. He had to consult a few friends, but eventually said, “oh, oh, yes, I know!” and off we went. We soon arrived, and he even waited for my while I bought items at the store and took me back to the school. He didn’t understand my Khmer at first, so we took the long way back to school, but he just laughed the mistake off when he realized we weren’t going where I thought we were going. The excursion did involve multiple stores and was tiring, but reminded me of how kind and willing to help Cambodians are, even to a foreigner like me.
These people have also shown me a different interpretation of “be joyful always” that Americans, myself included, often lack. Many of my co-workers come from homes where family members have died. The effects of the Khmer Rouge still linger here, whether directly, through death during the time of the regime or indirectly, through diseases that remain prevalent in a country that has not yet fully recovered from the war’s destruction. Yet when asked about their life, my Cambodian co-workers always point out their blessings: their family that is alive, their time to sleep and to visit with friends, their love of cities outside of Phnom Penh, the good food they like to eat. Their joy comes from dwelling on these things.
There are also my students. I have seen some of my students as they help around the school, and their appearance reminds me of the joys of interacting with them. Whether it’s having conversations about favorite foods or upcoming school work over lunch or if it’s an off-the-wall joke about running or some other hobby, they are bring me joy. They also share with me about their faith journey, about what it’s like to trust God when we can’t see everything. These are some of the interactions that bring the most joy.
Cambodia really is home, too. I don’t know for how long, but I do know that, as I look to the joys of life here, I can truly call it home.
traveling toward home 