Tim Here!.....I am Sitting here at the computer typing in a word document so that I can download it to our blog later on. I have some Bob Marley and James Taylor playing on my I-Tunes and am listening to kids playing, vendors hawking, neighbors partying and a few people fighting. Not much different from back home if it wasn’t all in Cambodian “Khmer”
I really should have ordered a Rosetta Stone for Cambodian. The way things are written in the phrase book are really off when you try to pronounce it.
I have observed that the fruit juices here are quite a bit different than in the states. For one thing, they do not use high fructose corn syrup as the sweetener for anything. It is mostly cane sugar or something like that. Things like drinks just aren’t as sweet. However, this is not a bad thing. There seems to be a lot more fruit and pulp in the drinks and they taste much more like fresh squeezed. Juices come in large quart sized boxes instead of plastic. Same with milk….Oh and the milk, it is sweeter and just has a different taste entirely. It is quite good! I have been pretty careful about eating from street vendors and probably will only eat things that are cooked while I watch. I still have to get my Hepatitis A vaccination sometime in the near future. I have the Hep B and Typhoid, but did not have time to get the Hep A because we left in such a rush. I went down to the internet café about a ¼ mile walk from our apartment last night and had an iced coffee for $2. It came with a glass of yellow water, (I found out later it was Cambodian Iced Tea, however, did not taste at all like tea) which I did not touch. The Iced coffee seemed safe enough…. Yes, I woke up at about 2 in the AM and headed to the bathroom for a thorough, yet un-anticipated intestinal cleaning. After that, things settled down and I was just fine and went back to sleep until about 4:30 when two vendors decided to begin to yell good naturedly, yet very loudly at each other on the street below us. The day has started. I just lay there for a bit and thought about what a contrast our life is now after only a few short days to what it was in the USA. I feel fortunate to be here and in a place where I can do some good. Those of your who know me, also know how frustrated I get with the Church in America not putting themselves behind their convictions. Here there is no escape, no where to hide out, no where to go and be someone your not. Here everyone in the church serves and is involved in a full time ministry of some sort or another. I did not realize that only about 9% of the church in the world is English Speaking, yet about 95% of all dollars taken in by the church are spent amongst the 9% of English speakers...mostly in America. It is making me re-evaluate some of my priorities and I am coming to a quick understanding of the needs of missionaries overseas, especially in third world countries. I knew I would not really know until I came and lived… and now I am learning why this is true.
One thing Phnom Penh has that is unique is its smell. Any of you who know me know how sensitive I am to smells whether good or bad. Well…. The city has this unique blend of burning wood/coals from vendors cooking…along with rotting garbage, which is just put on the side of the streets for pick up as the garbage truck get to it…..along with cooking food, diesel and gas exhaust, dust, rotting vegetation, mahogany wood being worked and sanded in roadside mills and a bunch of smells I have not identified yet. Yes it is definitely not the pastoral countryside and well manicured yards (What is a yard?...they don’t have them here) I was reading today in the paper about how the working girls in town are rounded up in police raids and taken to detention stations where they are sometimes beaten, raped and left to bathe in stinking pools of water and don’t have any clean water to drink or access to food. It reminded me of the rights we have in the USA, even the criminals have more, and demand more rights in the USA than the common man here is able to. In the states you are annoyed and upset when you get stopped and get a ticket for something you did. Here if I were to get stopped I would not know the rules, because there really aren’t any that you can really count on. There is a sense of almost fear, because you don’t know the language and don’t really know what you would do if things did not go well. Would I end up in a Cambodian jail until someone discovered I was missing??... Hey, its something I just choose to not think about. Although, It can be a very insecure feeling, yet that is the way most people feel in a foreign country when they don’t know the language. Just a reminder to all…. Have compassion on those around you who do not speak the language. This includes churches when those who do not know God come to visit, because we in the church in America also speak a foreign language from that of the rest of Americans.
And never forget freedom is precious and a moral government that is just, and not corrupt, is a blessing from God to its citizens.
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