Back to the daily grind

So finally after being away a few weeks on and off due to Khmer New Year, PC meetings and a personal vacation to Ratanakiri (a slightly cooler temperature-wise province) we are back at site for a while. Some days are more disheartening than others. We had yet to get any rain once we arrived back from Ratanakiri and it was still hotter than the devil when we got back. The thing about this time of year is that the temperature hardly seems to drop at night. We spent a few nights hoping the neighbor kids wanted to play a game of monopoly, simply because it too hot to go to sleep. It was better to be up doing something, rather than tossing and turning on a mattress that was still radiating heat at 9pm. Then when it was time for bed, we prepare a bowl of water, ready to wet down some cloth to blot our bodies down to help cool us off, because without it, the fan pushing the air felt more like a furnace blowing on us than anything else. Most of the time I’d wake up mid-night completely full of sweat, ready to take a mid-night shower to cool down. Then in the morning, I’d wake up – the sun would be beating down already at 6:30am, and you’d have to do it all over again.
Wednesday was my first full day of my normal teaching schedule again. I went there on time, only to find that my co-teacher (and many other teachers) were continuing to skip the 1st hour of the day (despite the fact that the Khmer New Year holiday is finished). Then, my co-teacher arrived for the 2nd hour (late) – and we went to walk into our classroom to teach, and the students were still working on a math test from the previous hour. The best part of it all was that the math teacher was actually no longer in the room…… and as per usual, the test was more of a ‘group effort’ than anything. Finally at the ½ hour mark (that had cut into our teaching time) – we told them they had to stop, get the class monitor to collect the tests and that we needed to start OUR class. I guess the remaining of the afternoon at school went reasonably well, until the last hour of the day when all the classrooms surrounding us, started to let their students out early (which is a common theme no matter what time of year). (I assume they are let out early mostly because (a) It’s hot and it’s the last hour of the day, people are tired, so why not get out early? (b) Many students need to hurry to get to their private classes that they are actually paying for, (and yes money is an issue in this country) (c) Some of the teachers who teach those private classes need to be to their class on time to collect their money). Anyway, at that last hour of the day, I was in the middle of a listening-comprehension story; and when other classes leave early, the ruckus they make truly distracts my class who (1) are trying to listen to a foreigner speak in their 2nd language…and… (2) begin to gaze out the window to watch all the other kids leaving for the day, rather than listening to me read the story. Sigh. We finish reading the lesson – and answer the first activity of questions and then my teacher calls it quits ten minutes early.
I reflected at one point, just how after being here nearly two years……the public school system is truly appalling by our standards, and it’s hard to just watch and see it exist and go on like that, knowing little can be done. It’s very frustrating to watch, and exhausting to know that you can’t do much about it.
Anyway…
After that, I went across the street to the little copy shop to make copies. Just as I was pointing out what I wanted to copy, I heard that awful sound of plastic and metal hitting the pavement, and once I looked up, I already saw the group of people huddled around the moto-accident that happened on the main road out in front of the school. It was one of the teachers and another moto-driver; luckily they weren’t going fast and they were both okay and able to walk away. (Traffic is dangerous in Cambodia, especially on the main national highways; a funeral of a neighbor lady that was killed in a moto-accident just finished yesterday and apparently last week a bus ran into a truck, killing the driver and injuring 32 people. Needless to say, traffic keeps me on edge and it’s the number one thing that terrifies me here). After that I took the long way home on a dirt road, to avoid riding on the main road and I got home and we ate some dinner. After washing dishes, I settled down as I wanted to finish color-coding the map that I want to paint at the school, and then the electricity went out, so I didn’t have any light to see (I know, I know, I could’ve lit a candle but at that point, I decided to check out and be done for the day). So instead of being productive as I had hoped, I sat on the hammock for a while and just rested. Finally, I decided to shower and then crawl into bed and call it a day.
Then at about 2:00am, I woke up to the heat, and was unable to fall back asleep until about 5am. I woke up around 7am to an already hot bedroom and a bit of a headache. I went to take a quick rinse, and as soon as I turned on the faucet, I smelled an awful smell. I didn’t know what it was, but I got out immediately. Perhaps it was from the really low well water we had? Or maybe a frog got in the tank and died? Will tended to it, and it turned out to be a dead wasp stuck in the faucet. One never would have thought that a wasp would have emitted such an awful stench, but it sure did. I suppose it doesn’t take much for anything to rot in a hurry in this type of heat. I didn’t do much that morning, due to my bad headache, lack of sleep and the heat. Then around 11am, I decide that maybe the right thing to do was to make some comfort food. I decided making some onion rings might make me feel better. So we gathered the ingredients and just as I was preparing the batter, I found that our wheat flour had all sorts of tiny bugs and worms in it. I stopped. Sweat rolling down my face and neck, I gently set the spoon down that I was stirring with, went to our laundry tank and splashed some fresh water on my face, gave up, walked to my room and laid down in my hammock with the fan blasting on high.

I guess I wrote about this series of events mostly to describe how on some days…and days and a halves…, I feel like I’m an aluminum can that is being stomped down and crushed flat, several times over. There just always seems to be hurdle over what would be a very simple and easy task back home. Okay, I know I’m exaggerating. But really, on some days it just gets really frustrating and ya have to give up and succumb to the hammock – and let it ever so gently rock your worries away.

. . .

And Then FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLy – yesterday--- the rains came. It’s as though I have an entirely new outlook on life.