Small Things Continued...

So there are a group of kids who come over every weeknight to take English lessons with our host brother. After their lessons they usually come around the corner and we hang out with them a bit. We’ve played games with them such as Simon says, or simple grammar games on the white board, sometimes we just talk with them, and not too long ago we taught them the card game UNO (UNO cards compliments of two of Will’s sisters Lisa & Laura). UNO’s their new favorite game, so we’ll often find them wanting to play a game before they take off for the night.

Well one night a few weeks ago, the older girl of the group (who is outgoing, really quite bright and speaks English very well for being a 7th grader) was bold enough to sort of invite herself inside of our part of the house in the back.

It sort of upset me a tiny bit, as Khmer people usually know that they should be invited into a room first before entering. I mean, …since our host mom handed over the keys, SHE hasn’t even asked to come into our side of the house. I guess it’s a respect thing. Anyway- I guess it kind of caught me off guard, and I’m glad I was dressed appropriately as she waltzed right into our bedroom while I was working on our computer. Luckily I was able to close the laptop and hide it before she had a chance to figure out what it was…as it’s something that I don’t want the whole town to know that we have. Mostly because, they all know it’s an expensive thing and there’s no need for boasting expensive things to poor people, it’s just not good taste, and secondly as a security thing – if no one knows we have a computer, no one will be tempted to steal it. Not that these kids would ever dream of stealing it, but if they tell their friends, who tell their friends, who tell their parents, who tell somebody else; all of a sudden the whole town knows and it’s just another item that makes us look like we have a lot of money; therefore a target for trying to steal something.

Anyway – that all aside I politely asked her to go inside of our living room area and we could spend some time in there. The other 3 boys followed and we all sat down.

After observing the kids in awe of every small possession we have in our room for a bit, I felt a little more at ease as I could just tell that these children were simply curious. Just very curious about everything that we had, what our room was like, the pictures we had of our friends and family, they simply wanted to know what we Americans were all about and what it was like inside of our house.

They really liked it and I guess I do have the room decorated a little more American style than most Khmer houses, so that was new to them. Then they got into our magazines. We had a few National Geographic’s lying around, one Northern Woodlands, a few Environmental resources. The kids just poured into them. They were paging through the National Geographic’s with wide eyes and doing their best to read some of the captions and were AMAZED at the pictures. There were a few walruses fighting in one picture, beautiful snow covered mountains in another, a large city lit up at night in another. It was all stuff they had never seen before. Northern Woodlands magazine had a gorgeous fall photo of a quiet road lined with many trees whose colors had already changed. Dara, our host brother thought that the trees were beautiful as he had never seen anything like it.

It kind of made me take a step back and realize that even though these kids are going to school – both public and private everyday….they still don’t have access to the educational resources that we all took for granted and so easily became interested in during our school days. I mean, we had televisions where the teacher would show movies or nat-geo episodes. Or we had encyclopedias where we could look up and read about any place in the world. Our textbooks at school were in full color which illustrated exactly what it was that we were reading about. I remember starting to take computer classes in the third grade and learning how to type in fourth, and playing geography games on it which took us around the world.

It’s still a completely different place here. The kids were absolutely in awe looking at all the photos.

While the family we live with is a little better off than most, we get the idea that these three other kids are probably quite poor. Even for the small moment that the older girl was in our bedroom, she said, “wow, you have a lot of clothes”. Which also made me step back and think--- well I do suppose this looks like a lot of clothes….(we’ve got one rack that Will and I share for hanging our teacher clothes, and then one bamboo shelf for a few pants and t-shirts) and then I was quietly and somewhat guiltily thinking to myself how this is maybe only one sixth of the clothes I have when I think of everything I own back in the states. What I have here is merely what we could fit in suitcases that could go on the airplane.

Nonetheless they are the cutest kids and are always soooo eager to talk and hangout with us. Then later on, while we were in the living room area, Sounapet (the smallest of the three- he’s 12 yrs old but I’d say has the body of a 7 year old in the states) was looking at all the pictures that I have on our, refrigerator. Yes. we might own a dorm-room sized refrigerator. (Yet another reason we’ve been avoiding inviting the children inside our space; they don’t need to know that we own one of these.)

Will and I made the decision to buy a very small (dorm-room sized) refrigerator to make our cooking life easier.

Like, I get why people here need to have one person staying at home to do the cooking. It’s kind of a big job. You both can’t work full time jobs and have time to go to the market everyday and cook meals – without at least some modern day appliances. It’s hard work. It takes a lot of time. It’s a full time job. Like I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, it’s very hard to guess the correct amount of food and not be wasteful- when you don’t have a refrigerator to put leftovers in. Plus, you MUST go to the market everyday- early in the morning to get the best pick of all the veggies and meat. Oh yea – and then there’s meat. They don’t have that on ice or refrigerate that in the market. They slaughter whatever cut you want right in front of you; flies and all. Well – needless to say, for health reasons it’s a good idea to have the meat remain in cool temps prior to cooking it.

We weighed out our options and after looking at the price of electricity to run the refrigerator per hour compared to the cost of ice and taking time to go and buy it and keep it cool in a cooler EVERYday….it almost balanced out. Having the refrigerator is truly quite helpful since WE are doing the nearly all the cooking for ourselves. We eat maybe one or two meals with the family in a week (most volunteers eat with their host families for every meal but breakfast) – anyway the fridge sure helps to have someplace to put leftovers. While this doesn’t seem very ‘peace corps’/hard-core like…….I admit, it is probably the best purchase we’ve made yet.  Besides, I’ve heard that the PCVs in China all have their own apartments, with cable TV, internet, AC and fridges. So I don’t feel so bad.

Anyway – now that I feel I’ve justified the fridge, back to Sounapet. He is the youngest of the three. I don’t know that any of these kids (besides Dara) has ever seen a fridge (at least not a small dorm sized one like this). Sounapet was sitting on the floor looking at all the pics of friends and family on the fridge that I had. Then….all of a sudden the fridge turned on. You know --- that sound it makes occasionally when it needs to run. It’s really quiet – but has a slight humming sound. I was sitting on one of the chairs across the room and saw that he had heard it and that he was quite puzzled. He sort of perked up like a little puppy dog in complete curiosity as to what in the world was this noise that this white box was making. He got on his hands and knees, and put his ear up to the fridge, and then looked at me and pointed to the fridge as if he wanted an answer as to what was going on. I sort of shrugged it off…because honestly I didn’t want to go through with telling him what it was, how much it cost and so on and so forth.

But it was so fun to see the curiosity and look on his face as soon as it turned on. He really did look like a cute little puppy dog wondering what in the earth that sound was. I was able to change the subject in time and his curiosity faded.

And THEN I went over to tell him who some of the people in the photos were. I had a magnet on the fridge that was sort of partly covering one of the photos so I took it off so he could see it. After I showed him, I put the magnet back on. Yet again – another surprise for him. He grabbed the magnet, and put it up to his face, but realized that it wasn’t sticking to his face; but somehow it was able to stick to the refrigerator as soon as he put it back. I could tell it was just blowing his mind.

I’m sure our room was almost like going to the circus or something. It was sort of entertaining to watch, in an enlightening, re-mindful way.

I guess it’s the small things that catch you off guard and make you think and remember how different the average lifestyle is for the people in this country (and probably many countries in the world) is. Just another small, simple realization as to how good a lot of people have it back home in comparison to the majority of people here. It’s the small things.