Monks followed by chewing out the help

I've never set out to be acting tyrannical
Though truly my work ethic is puritanical
And if they don't try and live up to my needs
I'll whack 'em and pull 'em, uproot 'em like weeds

KEP, CAMBODIA

June 25 - 27, 2008

Wednesday was supposed to be my day off, and I took it as such and I definitely enjoyed hanging around with TH and H and doing only a minimum of work, which consisted mostly of giving feedback to Peon 2 on his previous day's worth of surveying. However, it was the evening that I was super excited about. Sokun, our translator, is an English teacher at a school, but also teaches English to monks at a pagoda six nights a week, and asked us if we would come and help him teach.

TH and I were pretty psyched, and managed to get out of the CIH weekly meeting to go teach too. We also broke another rule: riding two on the back of Sokun's moto...in the rain...

So, when we arrived at the pagoda, all of the monks were staring of course (what are foreigners doing here?). For the first class, we tried to teach out of Sokun's text book, but sadly, quickly learned that neither of us knew anything about English grammar and were thus underqualified to teach. So we ended up having conversations with the monks instead. Same went for the second class.


Pretty interesting conversation though. It was a bit of a shame because only a handful of the monks were keen enough or comfortable enough with their English to actually interact and participate in the conversation. We talked a little bit about ourselves, what we were doing in Cambodia, but mostly about their ideas for improving the health of Cambodians. I think for the most part the monks were interested in what we are studying, so far as they seem to believe that health is a right for all Cambodians, rich or poor, and that the poor generally suffer from poorer health than their rich counterparts.


We got into a little philosophical debate at one point: one of the monks asked our religions; they were fine with my "Catholic" response, but seemed to be genuinely confused with TH's response that she doesn't believe in any religion. One of the monks asked her if she believes in God and she replied that she didn't. Now completely confused, the monk then asked her if she believed in herself. Interesting question; neither of us could understand what he meant by that. There's cultural difference for you.

Not sure we were entirely helpful, but I suppose there's value in hearing native speakers speak a language. I don't think Sokun was all that impressed with us though...he never mentioned our lesson afterwards.

***

Later, after arriving back at Seaside, I got a call from Peon 2. He was supposed to go out into the field on Thursday while I stuck around and hung out with TH and H for another day off. He was supposed to be taking off for Phnom Penh and then Bangkok on Friday or Saturday; I'd do the rest of the surveying for the weekend and then head to Phnom Penh on Monday morning. I haven't had a weekend off in a few weeks, because I knew that I would be spending a few days in Phnom Penh -- and Peon 2 knew this as well, even thought he snuck off to Kampot last weekend in that whole big disappearance debacle.

So...he called me to tell me that he couldn't go out into the field the next day because he wanted to leave for Phnom Penh the next morning, and he wouldn't be back for a week and a half. Naturally, I was not on board. Turns out he wanted to leave on Thursday morning because he wanted to get a ride into PP from Bunthoeun instead of taking the bus like everyone else does. Sure, the bus sucks, but I had plans to bus it on Monday because work needed to be done on the weekend.

So...I met with him and chewed him out for being irresponsible and unreliable and taking no interest or initiative in the project. What killed me, though, was that he just didn't get why I was pissed off at him and the situation. He offered to go out several times in a row when he got back (to which I replied, "no sh*t, you are"). I

n the end, what was I going to do? I ended up letting him go, but making him come back early. Too soft, I think, I'm definitely getting too soft. If this were a couple of years ago, I would have beat him with a stick.

So, I ended up going out into the field the following day. At least I got to meet some cute babies and kids. Brings up the whole interesting thing about "poverty tourism" though, that was brought up at the meeting we missed (maybe will be discussed in a future post). Then Friday was spent doing all sorts of fun stuff...like data entry. Can't wait till Phnom Penh. Only two more days in the field until then.