rya'n'daphne

the long forest

Cambodia is a place of so much beauty and so much pain, side by side. 

I can think of a thousand examples.  The lovely smile and grace of an old woman, who lost her husband and children during the Khmer Rouge.  The crystel clear ocean waters, edging sandy beaches trashed with plastic bags and old syringes.  The hope of one new baby born with better medical care, and the despair of a mother who has no money for a doctor when her baby is sick.  If the doctor is even at his office at all.  This period of peace and economic growth after so much conflict, yet marked by land-grabbing and sex-traffiking and continued abuse of those most poor and vulnerable.  The unfathomably lush and endless forests, and the massive (and often illegal) deforestation of huge swathes of Cambodia's land.

Prey Veng actually means "long forest"...a name that evokes images of endless trees and natural resources.  But in case you haven't noticed from our pics of Prey Veng, such is not the case.  Most of it has been chopped down for rice paddies.  Which isn't necessarily wrong, since folks need space to farm, but it has resulted in more droughts, more floods, more dry wells due to dried-up groundwater.

During a recent trip up noth to Cambodia's Mondulkiri province, we were reminded of what a long forest might be like.  Mondulkiri is ridiculously lush and beautiful, with its "ocean of trees" vista, and a seemingly endless supply of passion fruit, avocadoes, strawberries, mangosteens, mangoes, cashews...

Yet even in Mondulkiri the signs of "development" are painfully evident.  Enormous stretches of once forested land, all chopped down for lumber.  Or to plant foreign investors' rubber plantations.  Tiny new wooden homes errected along the sides of the highway, a reminder of the thousands of Cambodians who have been evicted from their homelands in the past few years.

And just last week, a prominant anti-logging Cambodian activist was shot and killed by military police.  My desperate hope is that this would be investigaed.   That the government wouldn't excuse and ignore such cases as they so often do. 

Sometimes it's very hard to have hope here.  The pain overshadows the beauty, even while they co-exist.  And yet as I look back over our photos of Mondulkiri, and as I see the smiling faces of the ladies back in our Prey Veng market, it's hard to not retain some hope that the beauty of this place can win. 

{ a few photos of our Khmer New Year vacation to Mondulkiri }

our prey veng office

Check out the MCC Cambodia Blog for a recent post on our Prey Veng office, complete with a photo tour!  Basically, the bottom of the house is where we work, and the top is where Ryan and I live.

Contrary to popular belief, as might be misconstrued on this blog, we DO actually spend the majority of our time here in Cambodia in this office...sitting at those computers...

...although we did just get back from a staff retreat at the beach : )

baby carriers: cast your vote!

Poor American babies.  They get crammed and buckled (and buckled again) into restraining car seats, all in the name of safety.  Not so in Cambodia.  Babies are liberated from these confines!  There are so many alternative options for carrying your baby in Cambodia. In preparation for our own, we spent the afternoon testing out some of the most common options.

And now ladies and gentlemen: cast your vote!  Which option should we use to carry our baby girl around Prey Veng?

 
Option 1 (left): Baby in bike basket.

Option 2 (right): Baby in moto basket.

 
Option 3 (left): Baby on bike seat with adult peddling from rear rack.

Option 4 (right): Adult on moto props baby behind him and holds with one hand.

Option 5: Baby on adult's lap.  Adult operates moto and cell phone.

Option 6: Baby swings in a krama hammock tied between bike handlebars.

Please comment below with your vote!

odov

One of the main partner organizations I (Daphne) work with in Prey Veng is ODOV.  With the help of another MCC volunteer, we were able to launch their website several months ago!  Check it out to see some of the projects this organization is doing, and read about the impact they're having in rural farming communities...

she's a she!!

...or an alien??

 

prey veng preggo

I would like to say I'm the kind of person who can go through pregnancy with grace and patience. The reality is: it's the hottest time of the year, in one of the hottest countries in the world. It's 95 degrees as I write this. And still, our neighbors continue to burn fires outside (seemingly) all day long. While the smoke no longer makes me throw up as it did during the first trimester, I am far from accepting it with grace.

I suppose the hot season (April & May in particular) always feels this way. Not our favorite time to be here. Even last year I felt "pregnant" for a month or two: fatigue, swollen feet, general apathy. I'm inspired by several friends here who are attempting to get through this year's hot season by focusing on grattitude. And I am indeed grateful for things like mango season, and ice cubes, and the occassional trip to an air-conditioned locale.

Despite all that. Being pregnant in Prey Veng is kind of fun, too. If we didn't get stares before, we certainly do now! There are words of wisdom from Cambodian moms: take it easy, drink coconut water, no lifting, no eating fish with red tails, be careful riding the moto on bumpy roads, eat green mangoes to curb the morning sickness, don't wear tight clothes or they'll strangle the baby.  (You may guess that I'm adhearing to some of these more than others.)

And then of course there are the lovely ladies who just straight up tell me I'm eating too much rice, or have a fat stomach : )

It's a learning experience for sure! My hope is that even in these next few months of hot season oh-so-inconveniently coinciding with the upcoming 3rd trimester, God would be gracious in allowing us to savor this time of anticipation. But for now I honestly can't wait to get to our air-conditioned apartment rental in Bangkok come June...and greet our little one!

      
                        {like}                                                                  {dislike}

urban (?) homestead

I've been on this total kick recently after reading a book on Urban Homesteading. It's one of those books that talks about growing your own food, making your own cleaning products out of vinegar and baking soda, baking your own sourdough bread, energy efficiency, and the list goes on.

i LOVE it.

Part of it makes me so eager to return to the States where this sort of stuff is, well, pretty uncommon. Revolutionary, as some say. The ironic thing is that so much of it is just the way life is here in Prey Veng. If we want bread (or pickles or salsa or hummus and the list goes on) we have to make it from scratch. Yes, we could always lug home more things from Phnom Penh's grocery stories. But there is something so enjoyable about rooting through the Prey Veng market to come up with an entire Mexican meal.  Or enjoying homemade bagels with homemade cream-cheese (just hang out some yogurt to drip) on a Saturday morning. Plus, this kind of stuff actually fits in our budget.

So while a piece of me wishes to have our own little "homestead" back who-knows-where in the States, I am quickly reminded that what has become a bit of a trend at home is just...the way life is...here in Cambodia.  There is so much to learn from this stage of our life!

And freshly baked sourdough bread made from wild Prey Veng yeast is SO unbelievably delicious!

{ sour dough bread experimenting }

clean water

Our co-worker Michael recently put together this video about some of the flood relief supplies that one of our partners distributed through our MCC relief funds.  Check it out for a glimpse of Prey Veng, MCC's work, and an old Khmer man with Ryan's voice!

 

getaway

Cambodia really really spoils us sometimes. Which is a good thing to remember when we're irritated by the heat, or the constant garbage-burning smoke (my arch-nemesis during pregnancy). But we also get to enjoy being outside year-round, eat fresh mangoes for every breakfast, bike wherever we want, bring home loads of cheap vegetables from the market...

...and take sweet weekend trips to the beach. Where staying in a little water-front bungalow is the price of 2 beers at home. Not that we do this often, but since it had been quite a while (2 years in fact) since we'd payed a visit to Cambodia's largest beach town of Sihaounkville, we figured it was time for a trip.

And so the list of benefits of living in Cambodia continues: warm ocean water in mid-February, the best shrimp and squid with fresh green Kampot peppercorns, cheap buses and moto rentals to get you where you need to go, and friendly folks all along the way.

poon hill * nepal

One of my favorite parts of traveling - especially when it involves any sort of hiking or treking - is the people you meet along the path. I love that you can talk about culture and travel and development and politics with a practical stranger.

In our case in Nepal, the people we met were super generous in taking some photos of us. So many of them had actually had cameras lost/stolen before and were absolutely willing to help us out. So, here at last are a few of our pics from a generous mate (seriously, he's from Australia) atop Poon Hill, the highlight of our trek in the Annapurna region.

So much beauty!!

how to be cool overseas

So you know how missionaries have that reputation as being so un-cool?  I'm talking plaid jumpers and stuff.  I don't really know where I picked up the stereotype, since my own cousins who grew up overseas always had WAY cooler clothes than I ever did.

Anyway, times have changed. Thanks to the internet (and to bootleg movies that show up in our markets before they're even out on DVD) you can now easily keep up with all the latest trends, even when you're living in a rural part of Cambodia. And this we know for sure: the latest trend is ANGRY BIRDS. How do we know this? Every market in Cambodia is filled to over-flowing with every type of angry birds clothing and paraphanalia imaginable.  Seriously, everything: flip-flops, pillows, underwear, jeans, and of course fake iphones on which to play the game.

So our trendy friends Steve and Amie decided to host an Angry Birds party, because what else do you do with all this paraphanalia.  Ryan and I scored some matching angry birds matchy-matchies (pj's) from the Prey Veng market for the occassion. 

We will be ready to return to America in a year for sure!

as if cambodia wasn't interesting enough already...

...this little peanut should provide some entertainment!

*

and now

our top 10 responses to the top 10 questions we've received so far:

(1) the baby is due in mid-july.

(2) we'll go to a hospital in bangkok (with its own starbucks) to deliver.

(3) yes, you read right. the ultrasound pic does say FOETUS.

(4) no, we don't know if it's a boy or girl.

(5) nope, don't know that either.

(6) yes, "morning" (i.e. all-day-long) sickness is miserable.

(7) yep, daphne will likely have the hugest stomach in prey veng.

(8) no, you cannot eat red-tailed fish if you are preggo in cambodia.

(9) we are indeed seeing a doctor monthly in phnom penh.

(10) and that's about all we know, folks.

nepal

how exactly do you summarize a trip that included both the taj mahal and the himalayas? 

and reconnecting with friends and crisp weather and fifty cent plates of momos and spicy chai and ancient cobble-stone streets and pagodas and temples and terraced rice padies and lakes and beads and bangles!

[insert superlative here]

this being my third time back in nepal, and ryan's first, we had an amazing 2 weeks discovering and re-discovering this place i love so much. it remains as intruiging as my first visit. the sacred and the mundane so intertwined that it's impossible to distinguish a tree from a temple. the ancient and the new side-by-side: a 7th century buddha nestled in a side-walk next to a coca-cola vendor. the massive himals and imposing stupas towering over and yet somehow not overshadowing the tiniest most intricate wood carving or bright red drop of a bindi.

a highlight was our short 4-day trek in the annapurna range, which included a morning walk up to Poon Hill ("hill" here meaning 10,000+ feet) to watch the sun rise over the himalayas. ryan and i agreed it's probably the most stunning site we've ever soon!  (and we're hoping that the friendly couple at the top with the nice camera will send us a few photos...)

{ view of poon hill & phewa lake with a dinky disposable camera we found }

and the kathmandu area is a gem...besides all the pollution...and the haze the blanketed the sky most of the time we were there.  other than that, love it!  a few pics we snapped on one of our final days with a new camera...

 { ancient creaky crooked architecture of kathmandu }

{ bouddanath stupa }

{ till next time! }

giving thanks

we just finished up the leftovers from our first thanksgiving feast in prey veng! we are thankful for some awesome phnom penh friends who made the trip out for the weekend, for loads of delicious food, and for the innumerable other blessings God graces us with every single day.  i am also thankful for ryan's delicious turkey, which was oh so successfully delicious and juicy, without an accurate oven temp or thermometer (he guessed) or roasting pan (we made a makeshift one) or string to hold the bird together (we used...thumb-tacks).

{ featuring: michael & lisa's stuffing and babaganoush and tropical sangria, steve & jodi's corn casserole and sweet potatos with roasted marshmellows, aimee's pumpkin biscuits, ryan's turkey and mashed potatoes, mok & seyha's cambodian rice wine, lisa s.'s cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, alex's salad, my apple crisp, and caleb's nuts&choc ice-cream }

{ final family foto thanks to steve chee }

india

After months and months of looking forward to our trip to India and Nepal, it is suddenly over.  Normally at this point, I would be obsessively looking through photos and selecting just which ones to load on the blog or facebook or whatever.  As you may have heard, our camera was pick-pocketed while we were in Nepal, so we just have a few pics of our last day or so in Kathmandu.  And none of the India that I had so much wanted to see again since my family lived in Pune when I was just 5 years old.

And so, instead of madly sorting photos, I suppose I now have the opportunity to actually reflect on all we were able to see and experience.  To paint some pictures with words (thanks for the reminder, Andrea).  To appreciate beauty even when it can't be captured in a 4x6.  As if it could be anyway.

India.  What I remember from when I was 5 is: spicy smells, garbage smells, bright colors, dirty streets, women with hair so long it dragged on the ground, different people, different religions, cow dung, train cars, bells ringing, incense burning, tiny shacks, and the one time I vomitted in the middle of the street and a woman walked right through it barefoot (sorry, graphic, but it's one of my most clear memories).

Our first morning in Delhi was surprisingly chilly.  I even got a runny nose and sore throat (which maybe proves more about how hot Cambodia is rather than how cold India is).  We stepped out into the littered street and - SMELLS!  If you know me well, you know I have a pretty good sniffer on me.  Probably too good of a nose.  Anyway, I've heard that your sense of smell is the first sense to fully develop, so I suppose it's no surprise that the smells of India are what I most remember from when I was a child, and what first struck me returning as a 30-year-old.

Our noses led us to an incredibly delicious warming spicy breakfast of aloo paratha at a nearby stall.  Hot spices first thing in the morning?  Yes, please! 

From there we had a whirlwind tour of Delhi (thanks to an awesome gift from Rachel & Shane).  What a wealth of history and diversity.  The mingling of ancient Islamic floral inlay and script, of Mughul architecture, of Hindu temples, and even a Bahai place of worship in the shape of a lotus flower.

Day two of our 3-day transit visa consisted of a trip out to Agra.  You may have heard of the Taj Mahal?  Even after seeing it in so many photos, Ryan and I concluded that the Taj Mahal is definitely not over-reated.  It is breath-taking.  Which sounds cheesy, but it really is that stunning.  You must see it for yourself.

(By the way, we were pretty popular at the Taj.  Approximately 13 different groups of people approached us to have their picture taken with us.  So, I suppose someone out there has a pic of us at the Taj.  If you are friends with any groups of Indian teenagers on facebook please look for our photo.)

India is as intense as I remember.  We definitely got *almost * scammed a number of times.  But no money lost, no detour trips taken, and all in all we had a fabulous time.

The morning we left we enjoyed another delicious spicy breakfast of puri, served up in a leaf bowl.  As our one souvenir from India, we took a rikshaw to Asia's largest spice market, and bought one bag of hot hot chilly powder.

Which we are now enjoying in Prey Veng.

the wrong funeral

Last week we went to the wrong funeral. 

Our national staff began arriving at the office friday morning, sharing the news about a Christian woman who had just died in a moto accident, "the woman who sold things in front of your old house", they explained.  My heart ached.  This was such a sweet woman, a Christian, but whose husband wouldn't allow her to go to church.

In Cambodia a loudspeaker announces deaths shorly after someone passes away, day or night.  And a funeral is held almost immediately.  So an hour after receiving this bitter news we changed into white shirts and dark pants and went over to join the mourners.

The room was filled with members of our church, holding hands and weeping with the woman's daughters.  But wait a minute, was that her daughter??  If it was, we'd never met her.  And where was our woman-who-sold-things-in-front-of-our-house's daughter that we knew and often visited with?  Someone lifted the light sheet covering the woman's body and I barely glimpsed her face.  A face I didn't really recognize, although I suppose...

People whispered about the family as we waited for the songs and prayers to begin.  We asked a few questions to the friends around us and by that point were about 90% sure that we did not, in fact, know this woman.  Even though she was our old neighbor, and even though she attended our church.

As we left the wooden house, the elders at our church thanked us so much for coming.  Our presence was appreciated, even expected as members of the church.  When someone is in pain, you are all in pain.  You mourn together.

We stepped out of the front gate, and our dear woman-who-sold-things-in-front-of-our-old-house was smiling and waving at us from across the street.  Yep, this was the wrong funeral.  And yet the right one to be at as members of this community.  A reminder that in Cambodia a funeral isn't some personal, private thing for those you know best, but rather a gathering of an entire community no matter how well you recognize the face beneath the white sheet.

Oh, and the "woman who sold things in front of your old house" was actually "the woman whose house is in front of the woman who sold things."  Oops.

patience

One of the things I really appreciate about a lot of people we've met in Cambodia is their patience.  Sometimes it throws me off.  ("That person's about to get hit by a truck on their moto and he doesn't even flinch?!")  More often, I am challenged by the ability to wait and extend understanding of circumstances beyond one's control, rather than being so quick to resort to crisis-mode.  On our bus ride out of town last week the bus literally circled the station for 1 hour until we finally, slowly, started making our way out of town 1.5 hours late.  We demand an explanation, immediately!!  And yet the Cambodians in the seats in front of us and behind us just laughed and joked, "coming and going, coming and going!"

Prey Veng is what I would currently be quick to call: crisis mode.  The flood waters are covering 90% of the province.  Almost every village that we've passed is accessible only by boat.  The cows and water buffalo that normally reside below peoples' houses (which are built on stilts) are tied up along the very edges of the road, gnawing at any remaining grass.  The water reaks of the sewage within.  Vast expanses of rice fields are totally submerged, and I'm worrying even though our food supply is not at all dependent on one field of rice.  Like most of Prey Veng's rice farmers.

Over the last few days people gather regularly along bridges and waterways to watch the flow.  To comment on its rising or receding.  But more often: to fish!  Food carts selling steamed cobs of corn and little baked breads suddenly have appeared along stretches of water.  People gather, laughing, eating, fishing, swimming, stuffing sytrofoam down their pants to float in the water.  Boys yanking snakes out of the water and tossing them on screaming girls.  Back flips out of trees.  Mobs of people enjoying some family time.

I know there are discomforts and anxieties.  People are quick to talk about those as well.  But rather than resorting to complaint and anger, I am again challenged by the grace to accept circumstance and make the best of it while still smiling.

 

 

29

celebrating my wonderful husband's birthday last week...

water

Updates from Prey Veng: flooding.  And updates from East Coast friends at home: more flooding.  Basically there is A LOT of water right now.  This is what it looks like here:

Fishing at the Prey Veng water-front.

Families along the edge of town built hand-drawn ferries out of innertubes and wood to float their way into town.

Making fishing nets for sale.

bethie

The past few months brought with them many visitors...including my wonderful friend Beth!  Beth and I studied biology together in college, and she's one of those awesome friends who graces me with her visits even when I'm on the other side of the country, or the other side of the world.  As one of those types who would rather get to know the "real" Cambodia biking around Prey Veng rather than hanging out at a beach resort, we had a great time doing just that.  And just plain catching up with each others' lives.  Thank you SO much for visiting, Bethie!!

Eating my favorite noodle soup at Central Market.

Biking through Prey Veng rice paddies.

Trying out a Cambodian cyclo.