I am in a bit of limbo, waiting for my fellowship to actually start. But perhaps I am thinking too narrowly about what the fellowship is. When say I am waiting I mean my actual teaching hasn't begun. The institutions that I am assigned to, The Regional Teacher Training Institute (which trains future secondary teachers) and the Provincial Teacher Training Center (which trains future elementary school teachers) in Kampong Cham, Cambodia are on vacation until November. No students, no classes, and no other trainers to really talk to about plans/schedule, or actually anything. I have moments of serious confusion, followed by the elation of not having to go to work, and just trying to figure out life in Cambodia. But maybe that's as it is supposed to be, because I know that for this fellowship to work I have to know Cambodia. It would be impossible to teach Cambodian students about how to be a teacher without knowing something about their country and the culture they are from. It is not an easy place to know. I am in a small provincial town on the Mekong River about 125 km from the capital Phnom Penh. But it could be 1,000 miles as to how different it seems to me. Phnom Penh feels somehow familiar, something like New York City, my hometown, in the 70s. I half expected to see a young Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle driving a tuk tuk through the mean streets, garbage and poverty ridden, wet with Monsoon rains, looking for trouble. Not so Kampong Cham province. Not that it is not garbage ridden or poor. For that it most certainly is. But it is different in deeper ways. The streets are safe, even late at night when almost no one is about, and one isn't told to hold onto your iPhone for dear life, or watch your cash. And there is almost an American Graffiti type moment every friday night as teenagers, often three to a motorbike, cruise along the road right by the river, back and forth, talking on their cell phones and flirting. Also English is very seldom used here, unlike Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and the tourist areas of the Cambodian coast. So I wander the markets, trying to use my rudimentary Khmer and exaggerated gestures (thank goodness for theatre training) to make simple purchases. I rented a motor bike and cruise the town and the countryside, watching kids walking their cows, yelling "Hello, Hello" as we go by and seeing wooden houses raised high on stilts to stay out of harms way of the rising river, with hammocks and fires underneath.
So while waiting Laura and I took a bus across the country to Siem Reap to see the temples of the ancient Angkor civilization. And that town, despite being surrounded by this magnificent ancient history, was a mash-up of different cultures, including western. There is even a street called "pub street" where young western and Asian tourists gather to drink. Didn't like it too much in that neighborhood but the ruins got me thinking. About a lot of things, but mostly stories.
The ruins themselves were fascinating, and I expected that from having seen great photos of Angkor Wat and Bayon in National Geographic and other venues. But what really struck me were the bas reliefs--intricate carvings of elaborate scenes from epic stories. At Angkor Wat the scenes were mostly of the Mahabarata, the epic Hindu tale, and included a scene from the Ancient legend of the Churning of the Sea of Milk, the Hindu creation myth. You could spend hours gazing at this relief as it expanded an entire hallway 49 meters, and each centimeter worthy of an hour of close inspection. Then there was the temple of Banteay Srei, which they say means "Citadel of Women" and the reliefs there were richer still, taken from the other Hindu epic tale of renown: the Ramayana--one relief of the battle of the Monkey Kings was nothing short of a narrative throw down. It was so richly realized that despite all the tourists snapping photos and chatting away I could hear monkeys and drums and chants rising from the pink sandstone walls. And I could hear the storyteller's voice ringing--"Once there was..."
The stories that were built into the life of these temples, and thus the life of the culture, were some of the most complex narratives ever created by humans.
This is part of the fabric of Khmer culture and one that I am searching to find in it's contemporary manifestation. It isn't at the surface of modern Khmer culture the way Irish legends are bubbling from the mouths of every Irish person I have ever met. And maybe I am searching too hard for a narrative thread, but I can't help but wonder what I would've thought of Khmer society before the Khmer Rouge gouged out its eyes and soul. Where is the music, the art, the dance? It's not apparent to me other than in tourist meccas. It saddens me to know that a generation of the daily practitioners of that part of culture were all killed or left the country, or submerged their art in order to survive.
I think of these connections because by day I wander the streets and markets and villages and by night I read. I came across this last night in a magnificent book given to me by a local peace corps volunteer, a book about how modern Cambodia came to be.--Hun Sen's Cambodia by Sebastian Strangio. In the chapter about the Khmer Rogue years appears this:
Of the 72 men then imprisoned at Kach Roteh, he was the only one who
survived. After his arrival, he slowly won over the young guards by telling
them stories—Aesop’s fables and Asian folktales he had learned by heart
from the old tapes he once played over the radio. One morning, when the
prisoners were assembled in the yard, one of Kassie’s teenage guards
walked up and pulled him out of the line and shackled another man in his
place. Shortly afterward the prisoners were marched off and killed. “I was
needed to tell the stories,” Kassie said. “But somebody had to die in my
place, which is not a good feeling.”
So while waiting Laura and I took a bus across the country to Siem Reap to see the temples of the ancient Angkor civilization. And that town, despite being surrounded by this magnificent ancient history, was a mash-up of different cultures, including western. There is even a street called "pub street" where young western and Asian tourists gather to drink. Didn't like it too much in that neighborhood but the ruins got me thinking. About a lot of things, but mostly stories.
The ruins themselves were fascinating, and I expected that from having seen great photos of Angkor Wat and Bayon in National Geographic and other venues. But what really struck me were the bas reliefs--intricate carvings of elaborate scenes from epic stories. At Angkor Wat the scenes were mostly of the Mahabarata, the epic Hindu tale, and included a scene from the Ancient legend of the Churning of the Sea of Milk, the Hindu creation myth. You could spend hours gazing at this relief as it expanded an entire hallway 49 meters, and each centimeter worthy of an hour of close inspection. Then there was the temple of Banteay Srei, which they say means "Citadel of Women" and the reliefs there were richer still, taken from the other Hindu epic tale of renown: the Ramayana--one relief of the battle of the Monkey Kings was nothing short of a narrative throw down. It was so richly realized that despite all the tourists snapping photos and chatting away I could hear monkeys and drums and chants rising from the pink sandstone walls. And I could hear the storyteller's voice ringing--"Once there was..."
The stories that were built into the life of these temples, and thus the life of the culture, were some of the most complex narratives ever created by humans.
This is part of the fabric of Khmer culture and one that I am searching to find in it's contemporary manifestation. It isn't at the surface of modern Khmer culture the way Irish legends are bubbling from the mouths of every Irish person I have ever met. And maybe I am searching too hard for a narrative thread, but I can't help but wonder what I would've thought of Khmer society before the Khmer Rouge gouged out its eyes and soul. Where is the music, the art, the dance? It's not apparent to me other than in tourist meccas. It saddens me to know that a generation of the daily practitioners of that part of culture were all killed or left the country, or submerged their art in order to survive.
I think of these connections because by day I wander the streets and markets and villages and by night I read. I came across this last night in a magnificent book given to me by a local peace corps volunteer, a book about how modern Cambodia came to be.--Hun Sen's Cambodia by Sebastian Strangio. In the chapter about the Khmer Rogue years appears this:
Of the 72 men then imprisoned at Kach Roteh, he was the only one who
survived. After his arrival, he slowly won over the young guards by telling
them stories—Aesop’s fables and Asian folktales he had learned by heart
from the old tapes he once played over the radio. One morning, when the
prisoners were assembled in the yard, one of Kassie’s teenage guards
walked up and pulled him out of the line and shackled another man in his
place. Shortly afterward the prisoners were marched off and killed. “I was
needed to tell the stories,” Kassie said. “But somebody had to die in my
place, which is not a good feeling.”
A modern and even more ghastly version of the Scheherazade story from 1001 nights. And this made me think of the power of stories and why the ancient temples are so enduring, because they have good stories to tell. And it made me think of how a human being survived because he had a story to tell. So I listen for stories and I am wondering, if I ever learn enough Khmer to actually listen to people in the hammocks underneath their simple homes; listen to the women in the markets selling chickens and food I have no clue as to what it is, will I understand the story of Cambodia a little more? For without stories it is, as Hamlet said, only "Words, words, words".
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