spectacle

a few weeks ago i (amanda) travelled to kompong cham province with a small organization i work with here called women peacemakers.

the organization provides training in rural cambodia about women's right, domestic violence issues, peacebuilding & conflict mediation skills. cambodia has only recently emerged from decades of brutal & traumatizing civil war so education about peaceful alternatives to mediating conflict are so vital to the country's development.

the work of women peacemakers is inspiring. we traveled five hours by bus from phnom penh to a regional town with a guesthouse & a market.

[can you spot the pig head?]

& early every morning we drove an hour & a half

through miles & miles of rice fields

until we reached the primiary school in the isolated community where the training was held.

the two young women who led the workshop are strong & articulate & i was so impressed with their dedication to their work.

the workshop participants were gentle & kind & tried very patiently to understand my heavily accented khmer.

however, the entire time i attended the training i was an utter spectacle.

[kids gathering to peek in at me during the training]

with my limited khmer, i was able to pick up that the participants were constantly narrating my actions to each other. "she is sitting down". "she is eating fruit". "she is writing with her left hand". & then discussions about my appearance. "her skin is so white". "her shirt is not khmer style" "she looks like angelina" (who people like here because she adopted a cambodian child, somehow skirting the US ban on adoptions from cambodia due to child trafficking issues) .

it was endearing & unnerving all at the same time & provides a lot of food for thought on the arbitrary nature of cultural standards of power & beauty. behind the admiration, do the older participants ever think about my country's devastating bombings of their land & their people? or do they only see the media's idealization of all things western & young?

& the children.

in phnom penh, the kids i see on my street love to run out & yell "HELLO" when we pass by. the kids in this village just seemed totally stunned by my presence.

[when i came out of the bathroom on the first day, i was greeted with a crowd of stares]

they didn't yell greetings, because i think they had actually just never seen a foreigner before. (babies cried!)

but their fascination was tender & once they realised i spoke khmer at a child's level, curiosity got the best of them & they followed me around for days.

their bright smiles were the highlight of my trip, but their reality is much darker than i think i can ever really understand. the widespread poverty in their region means that they are very vulnerable to exploitation & abuse.

[please pray for these sweet children]

[it looks oddly hip, but many of the children have blond streaks in their hair because of a nutrient deficiency & malnutrition]

[i posted this little one-shoed guy in my last post, but i haven't been able to get him out of my mind. the villagers told me that his mother had to go to malaysia to get work (a lot of cambodians are migrant workers in malaysia, thailand, and singapore) & so he does not get proper care]

& it was all yellow

[a collection of photos from various countryside schools]

one weekend in bangkok

the church has left the building

last month i had the opportunity to travel to stellenbosch, south africa (a small university town outside of capetown). it was my first venture outside of southeast asia in nearly a year & my time away was full of joy, learning, cold weather & weeks without rice!.

[just chillin' with some penguins]

in may i started a master's program of international development through eastern university, a school in pennsylvania. it is a hybrid program (which sounds like a graduate program of the future!) which means that i have three week of intensive courses in person & then take the rest of the courses online.

[the faculty of theology building where we studied. pretty posh, eh?]

i learned a lot from the course material over the three weeks (i took the theology of poverty, leadership & empowerment, economic development, community development & social enteprenuership, planning & marketing), but i learned the most from my classmates & professors during the times we had to eat, drink (stellenbosh is wine country...think the napa valley of south africa!), talk, laugh, sing, & pray together.

[the wonderful 1st year international development women]

the program is full of people from all over the world who are working with all kinds of organizations (like the International Justice Mission, World Vision, The Warehouse, Iris Ministries, Invision Global Network, etc) & doing amazing things in their communities. they are people who realize that they cannot look at a world full of poverty, suffering & hopelessness & do nothing.

[the entire group of students studying international development, organization leadership & economic development]

they are the global body of Christ & i glimpsed the kingdom of God in their midst. i was privileged to be among them.

i was also able to do a bit of sightseeing around the capetown area...

[cape point, where the atlantic & indian oceans meet. the different color swirls in the water are because the two oceans are different temperatures]

[a long way from home!]

[the capetown harbour]

[this guy played on an old oil tin & was a really great guitar player]

[sleepy seal]

[penguins!]

[i spent 8 hours in doha, qatar, but didn't see much except on the shuttle ride to the plane]

on my way back to cambodia, i met up with daniel in bangkok, thailand for a short visit. more to come about that next time...

the life & death of an office gecko

Yesterday, our office, usually a place of quiet & peacefulness, became a place of terror for one tiny, incredibly unlucky gecko.

when we arrived at our office i watched a small gecko climb curiously into the air conditioning unit near our ceiling. this had happened once previously & the gecko came flying out of the front of the a.c. with spectacular force, sat stunned for a moment, & then scampered away. at the time, i concluded that was probably the single most exciting thing that would ever happen to that gecko.

i was thinking about that, when the current gecko also came hurling out of the front of the a.c. & landed on our floor with a thud. his tail was moving, but further inspection showed that the top of his little head had been sliced off. his little tongue was even hanging out of his little mouth.

so we swept him out the door, where he was immediately attacked by an army of ants. a day later, we now have a completely clean tiny gecko skeleton on our doorpost.

we were prepared to encounter trauma here in this war-torn country, but i was not prepared for such gecko trauma! :)