Vonn & Socheat | a Modern family.

So we were having dinner with the host family the other night. It was the usual rice with stir fried vegetables, nyoom salad (one of my favorites) followed by some mango and then some candy. Always good stuff.

We sort of got on the topic of how busy our host mother Socheat, is. Which she truly is. I’ve mentioned she is a mid-wife/nurse at the hospital. And she also sees patients occasionally here at the house. She works odd hours and shifts. She seems pretty exhausted a lot of the time really, and I know she works very hard.

One day, I was curious of what the setup was at the hospital, so I went into go visit her while she was working. Not that I expected it to be a really great hospital or anything; but we are the district town and there are quite a few people living in this area. Although – if anyone needs serious help, we are really close to Siem Reap which has much better hospitals (for those who can afford them).

Anyhow, she truly is about the only person there running the show. There isn’t much for additional staff or people working to help. She explained to me that there is a doctor, who is young….but he mostly only writes things and signs prescriptions, and he is not there everyday. She is the one who does the dirty work. She explained when it comes to the actual situation of having to take care of someone, deliver a baby or tend to a patient in any which way; SHE is the one who does it. She has 20 years experience, and the doctor has been out of school for maybe 4 years. She is the go-to woman.

The facilities, are … well … not that great to say the least. They do what they can. She took me into the delivery room where she delivers babies. That seemed to have a few high tech items in it. Not knowing much about the medical field, I didn’t know what most of the contraptions where, but that room didn’t seem too bad.

They have three main buildings on the grounds. They are divided up by gender. We walked over to the men’s building and there were four patients in there, lying on beds, looking rather ill, thin and miserable. A couple of them were hooked up to an I.V. Then we walked over to the women’s building. She took me into the room with three brand new mothers. They were all in there, resting as they had just had their babies that week, and one just the night before. She had delivered all three of them. She took me through a few of the other checkup rooms, and I guess if I had to describe the entire campus, it was almost like stepping back in time. Maybe 70 years. Maybe 100 years.

Nonetheless, she does what she can. She helps a LOT of people, and works very, very hard at it. In the meantime she sacrifices a lot of her time because she literally is the only staff there that has her level of experience. She has not attended many of the festivals that we’ve gone to only w/ our host dad. She works odd hours, a lot of night shifts. She misses out on a lot of family time.

She explained to me how when she first started she was making $10 a month. Their family used to be very poor. She told us they used to live in a house like the one kiddy-corner to ours and they had hardly any money. As time has gone, and the government gotten more stable, her salary has increased. They were able to build the house they are in now and slowly make improvements to it. They just only got electricity here in 2000.

She is the sole breadwinner of the family, and now makes a comfortable salary to support the family.

Our host father Vonn, is a very kind gentleman. He is very easy to approach and I’ve never heard him raise his voice or ever talk too fast. (Maybe that’s because we are here, but I kind of doubt it). As the title suggests, this is a very modern family. You could pretty much call Vonn a stay-at-home dad. Before the family moved to Puok, they lived in Battambang. He was a rice farmer at that time. But since they moved here he took care of the family while the mother was busy at work.

He does a lot of things around the house, and has many projects….from working in the garden, fixing anything that is broken, trying to make improvements here and there and so forth. But he also is the one to go to the market, do the cooking and he’s the one who does all the laundry. This is definitely not a typical Cambodian family. But he knows he has to do it in order to support the family and support his wife, who has a very important job in the community.

Anyhow…. at dinner the other night, it was kind of funny, because our host mom brought up the fact that she doesn’t know how to cook, she only knows how to eat. (This isn’t true, as she has cooked for us before, and it was very delicious.) Then I jokingly said the reason I married Will was because he was a good cook. They laughed. Then Socheat said that she doesn’t do the laundry; she hasn’t done the dishes in 20 years or so, she rarely does any cooking and mostly when she is home, she is resting. While she was saying all this I was trying to read Vonn’s thoughts….as I couldn’t quite tell if he felt less manly or something as he does nearly all of the housework, but I mentioned that she married a good husband and she agreed. I also said that she has a very difficult job that is exhausting, and it is really good that he helps out with the family and the house. And they both agreed. Then Socheat said how when they used to ask the kids if they loved mom, or dad better…they’d say that they loved their dad. But apparently Dara says he loves his mom better, because she has money. We all laughed.

. . .

Socheat is definitely a woman who knows what she wants. It’s funny to observe their interactions as a married couple (especially being fairly newly married). I guess you could say their marriage is like most marriages. Socheat says that she wants something to happen, and Vonn (in his best interest) makes it happen. Socheat is a little more of the outgoing one, she’s not afraid to give orders and tell people what to do. I guess that’s a good thing in her field.

I first noticed it the night that they took us to Siem Reap to go visit some of their family and stop at a few shops. After we were done looking at one of these shops, she asked me if I wanted to go to the main market in Siem Reap. I said sure…and looked back at Will to see if he and Vonn would be joining us. But at that moment she deliberately grabbed my arm and started walking/escorting me to Psaa Leu (the main market) and told Vonn (and Will) to stay there and wait with the car. I remember thinking to myself, “this woman knows what she’s doing. I mean, what level-headed female brings her husband with to go shopping with her?? Rule number 1: if you want to come home with anything from the market; leave your husband at home first.” Anyway, off we went. She walked as if she was on a mission and never looked back. I could tell that night that I liked this woman.

Another instance was the day that she came over to tell me something along the lines of a table and our patio. I thought at first she was saying that she’d need to borrow our metal folding table that we had been using as our dining table. I said of course! Then after another conversation with her, she made it clearer that she was buying us a NEW table for our patio. (side note: it’s a given that there are MANY misunderstandings and miscommunications on a daily basis here. It’s something we’ve sort of gotten used to. You never really know what information you’re getting and once you get it whether or not to believe if it’s correct or not. We do a lot of triple checking.) Anyway…. she said that we’d be getting a new table for the patio on Monday. I tried to tell her that this table was just fine (as it truly was….our patio isn’t that big and the spot where we had the table was in the main shady part of the patio which was of importance to both Will and me, especially during high-noon lunchtime when the sun was shining bright.) Anyhow. She said, no, no……you are getting a new table. The new table will be prettier. Then she showed me that it would be like a stone/cement table that they have in the front of the house. At that moment I was a bit concerned as our patio isn’t that big, and anything bigger than we’ve got, we’d have to for sure put the table in the sunniest part of the patio. But she ensured me that we needed a new, nicer table, so we could have a place to spend time in the afternoons and mornings.

Later on in the day, (when the sun was hot and shining down) I saw Vonn kind of moping around near our patio with his hands on his hips, sort of shaking his head, looking at the space, looking a little concerned. I asked him how he was doing. You could tell he was thinking something. Then he asked, “New table, okay?” (In very basic Khmer so I could understand.) I said, “sure, yes! (I wasn’t going to disagree with anything Socheat had to say)” You could tell he was concerned of the heat and mentioned maybe that it would be too hot, as there was only one spot on the patio where the new, big, stone/cement table would fit. Then he told me that his wife really wanted to get the new table because she thought it would be prettier, and nicer, but that he didn’t think it was a good idea, because it would be too big and would be too hot, but that his wife had already ordered the table and that it would be here the next day. Then I told him, don’t worry, it’s okay – we can get a curtain made to make some shade during the day. He seemed okay with the idea and went on with his day.

Then the next day, at 7:00am the delivery guy came rolling into the yard with our new table. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very beautiful table, and it’s very sturdy and everything, but it’s definitely big and heavy, and more than necessary. They put it into place. The delivery guy took off and there stood Vonn looking at it, and he said, “Not good”. I told him it is no problem, and don’t worry about it as we could get a curtain made.

Then I was telling Socheat that we needed to get a curtain made, and she made sure to mention that I get a darker color because she was worried about the curtain brushing the dirt on the ground near the patio. I kind of wanted to get a lighter color, to try and deflect some of the heat from the sun; but she strongly urged to get a darker color so that the curtain wouldn’t get dirty.

Then after the curtain had been made, a few days later, I saw that Vonn was putting down about a 2 foot wide layer of cement right next to the patio on the side where we had the new curtain made. He then told me, that Socheat wanted it so that the new curtain wouldn’t get dirty.

So now, we have a new table, with a new curtain for shade – with a new layer of cement to protect the new curtain from getting dirty; none of which we asked for as we were perfectly fine w/ our folding metal table……but as long as Socheat is happy, right?

– Well in all actuality the new table is quite nice; it’s much sturdier and easier to prepare food and cut vegetables on; AND we can easily sit 4 people, and six if we bring in chairs, whereas our other table we could only fit the two of us. And it’s a great place to play cards with the kids, do a little painting or a little afternoon lesson-planning when the sun has gone over the trees.

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… . Speaking of Socheat being a hard worker….we just returned from a dinner celebration, and we met Socheat in the driveway. She looked exhausted and tired. She said she hasn’t slept in two days,… she’s been busy at the hospital and when she’s busy – it’s hard for her to sleep. But she has tomorrow off; so I hope she can rest.

Anyhow – that is a small taste of the observations about our host-parents thus far. We really like the family that we are with. They are good people, and we couldn’t have asked for more. They’ve made us feel very at home, but also let us have our space – which is important when being immersed into a new culture, and it’s nice to just have some genuinely caring people around.