I went to a church yesterday morning in a big pink hotel with guards who smile at you and open the big glass double doors for you. Across the street from said hotel is the American embassy. It is big and grey and jail-like and I didn’t walk over there, but I doubt there are guards at the door with smiles on their faces. Both the pink hotel and the grey embassy are located beside a roundabout, and in the middle of this roundabout is the only hill in the entire city. It is twenty-seven meters high and on top of it sits Wat Phnom, a Buddhist temple.

They say this is where the city was founded hundreds of years ago when a woman built this temple to house some statues of Buddha that had floated down the Mekong River. How large stone statues float and how a woman singlehandedly builds a big temple is beyond me, but at a certain point you don’t ask questions. You just smile and nod. Phnom means hill or mountain and this woman was named Penh, and the city was thus named.

This was my first time in a real functioning Buddhist temple, and it was quite the contrast, to be in the church one minute, singing “Our Great God” and to be in this temple fifteen minutes later, where folks were kneeling before hundreds of statues of Buddha and whoever else, burning incense, holding candles, praying, leaving rice and fruit as offerings.

I’m not really sure what else to say about it, so I’ll let the photos do the talking.

The past few days were spent mostly on the road, or so it seems. I took a three hour bus ride with Engchy to the town of Kampong Thom, due north of PP, where we met up with Geof, WR’s health advisor who oversees the AIDS ministry and also works with the child survival program. He was on vacation at the beach a week or two ago and there he met a guy my age from Florida named Sam who just graduated from college and decided he’ll live in Cambodia until his money runs out, so naturally Geof invited him along to see his work. The four of us had a blast, if you ask me, driving all around the country listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Simon & Garfunkel for hours on end. Geof informed us that he has already decided that Freebird will be played at his funeral. It is a great song, he said. And we subsequently listened to it a few times with the volume cranked. His is very likely the only World Relief vehicle with a subwoofer, he told us.

The purpose of the trip for Geof was to visit the projects he oversees, Engchy was serving as translator, and Sam the Beach Bum, as I already mentioned, was along for the ride. My reason for being on this trip was mainly to establish contact with the program leaders and to get a feel for where I need to go when I return to get stories and take photos. I was able to get some photos, and I interviewed two women, whose stories I trust will move you once they’re written. One in particular is quite inspiring.

This was a whirlwind tour, really, driving north to the middle of the country and then back down to the southeast corner, an area of Cambodia jutting out into Vietnam dubbed “the parrot’s beak” by the locals. This area is where the US, during the war, believed that Vietnam had their version of the Pentagon, but nothing like this has ever been found.

A written account of a trip around Cambodia wouldn’t hardly be complete without at least a paragraph about food. In January I ate frog legs, which seemed pretty exotic to me at the time, but Sam tells me they eat them all the time in Florida, so I guess they are just exotic to Pennsylvanians. This week’s trip afforded me the opportunity to sample fried tarantula, which tastes like a strange barbeque potato chip. I also discovered that soursop juice, another January discovery, is prevalent just about everywhere, which is good news indeed. The other night we had traditional Khmer soup, which turned out to be quite the exotic experience. They sat us down in this hut with a roof and a radio with Khmer pop music and a fluorescent light and no walls, and the staff brought out each ingredient one by one, and then they brought out a grill thing and a pot with some chunky broth containing many an unidentified floating ingredient. When it was all said and done, the soup had some more or less regular looking beef, egg, some sort of edible grass, and then the good stuff: cow intestines, stomach lining, tendons, ligaments, and liver. However, even the Cambodians among us skipped the bone marrow, lumped on the plate resembling a human brain and making the rest of us nauseous just thinking about it. I skipped the tendons, ligaments and intestines myself, but did chow down on several pieces of stomach lining (before asking what it was, as is the best way to eat food around here) and I sipped the broth, flavored by all of the aforementioned delicacies. It is good to do these things once, you know. But once is probably enough.

Time now for 19 photos from this week’s adventure.

A Buddha factory.

This is Geof, the guy who wants them to play “Freebird” at his funeral.

This is one of Geof’s adopted daughters, who has since returned to live with extended family. When Geof first took her in as an orphan, she was less than a week from death. Now, happily, she is doing better than ever, Geof says.

A wat that is estimated to be from the 11th or 12th century or so, one of the best preserved ones, apart from Angkor Wat.

The temple grounds are quite well-kept, thanks to…

…one of the nicest temple keepers you could ever hope to meet.

Fried tarantulas, hooray!

In addition to some fried tarantulas, Engchy bought himself a live one. Later, much to Geof’s chagrin, he left it in the SUV when we went to eat dinner. Afterwards, the little critter was unaccounted for, which was a little unnerving as we drove in the dark, not knowing when any of us would keel over and die. After a brief search, the spider was found and we breathed easy. Sam then left him in his hotel room at check out, leaving the housekeeper with quite a nice surprise.

Engchy showing us how one goes about eating, and enjoying, fried tarantula.

As the writer Don Miller says, “We were made to jump off bridges into rivers.”

I am doing my best to indoctrinate Engchy with a lesson in computer superiority.

This is Sam. Please also notice the gi-normous gecko on the wall.

Here is a group of pastors and church leaders gathered for training in order to mobilize their churches to reach out to those in their communities living with HIV/AIDS.

Some sort of a war memorial I reckon.

Engchy picked me up this morning and we went to his church. The church is called New Life Fellowship, and they normally have two morning services, but this week was a special joint gathering, so they rented out the Phnom Penh Cultural Center. The theater was packed out with 600 or so people, mostly Cambodians, and mostly my age or younger. They did have English translation via headset for a handful of Westerners though.

The theme of the gathering, emblazoned on a big sign hanging above the stage, was Transformed Generation. The pastor was saying how we are transformed to be transformers, which is really another way of saying we are blessed to be a blessing. He spoke on Jonah, urging us to take God’s call seriously and obey when he sends us to our Nineveh.

Two things struck me during the service, and particularly during the time of worship through song. The first thing that stood out was how passionate everyone tended to be. As the announcements at the beginning were winding down and we were all about to stand to sing, you could see the eager anticipation all around. I think this stood out as something significant because in Buddhist Cambodian society, anesthestized numbness is a virtue. Being passionate about something, in this case Jesus, and expressing it openly, is incredibly counter-cultural.

The other thing that caught me by surprise was the subversive nature of it all. The guy up front was praying that we would be agents of change and that we would see the Kingdom of God come in this city and in the nation. You may have heard those words (Kingdom of God) a thousand times, and they might ring hollow for you, as they had for me until this morning. Blah, blah, blah, right? But when you are in a gathering with 600 young Cambodians and they are jumping and singing to the King, it just gives you goosebumps, even more than if a bunch of their American counterparts were doing likewise. What I mean by this is that up above everything, front and center, were the portraits you see in all public buildings - the former King and Queen of Cambodia, as well as the current one. And these Christians were pledging allegiance with all they had to Someone else.

After the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, there were only a few hundred Christians in Cambodia, possibly less than were in that room this morning. By 2000 there were an estimated 60,000 and today’s best guess is somewhere in the 150,000 range, with is a growth rate of 250% in five years time. The roots of this young church are spreading wide, but pray that they will also go deep in Christ.

After the gathering, Engchy took me to his house, where he lives with a bunch of other guys. The house is owned by the church, in order to provide housing for guys who come into Phnom Penh from the provinces in order to find work, but might not have money or a place to stay. They are taught English, which is very helpful in finding a job, and they are introduced to Jesus. This afternoon they were in there watching one of the Jurassic Park movies, so we joined them for an hour or so before heading over to the regular church building where they played musical chairs for hours on end.

I walked out onto the street around 11am or so today with a helmet in my hand and caught a ride on the first moto that pulled up beside me, telling the driver to take me across town. Moto drivers don’t generally know street names, so you tell them the wat closest to your destination. There is something freeing about riding on a moto, weaving in and out of cars and SUVs and a sea of other motos on the streets of Asia, where reds and greens are mere suggestions. And when you are running a red light and there are vehicles turning left, crossing your path, instead of stopping you veer over to the far left side of the street and then work your way back to the middle and eventually to the proper side of the street. Everyone appears so relaxed, and to their credit, I haven’t seen even a fender bender yet.

Here in Phnom Penh, wherever you go, there are always moto drivers eager to offer their services (and they are especially eager for a white guy with a motorcycle helmet in his hand) so when I walked out of a shop downtown today a handful or them on the corner eagerly yelled “Moto, sir?” I just nodded and stood there as each maneuvered to get to me first. I actually cheered them on and then congratulated the winner. He took me down to the riverfront, where I did some more walking around and took some photos.

I have been staying with Tim and Kathy Amstutz in their guest room here, and the plan as it now stands is for me to stay here for another month, but I will then be moving in with a middle- to upper-class Buddhist Cambodian family who live downtown. Jon, an intern with World Relief, has been staying with them, and Lord willing, I will take his place when he flies back to the States. I am really excited about this opportunity, which will include eating dinner with them every night. They don’t speak much English, and I speak next to no Khmer, but Jon says they are very nice and hospitable. They invite him to the market or the mall or the temple or wherever they go. They didn’t even want to charge him rent, but finally agreed that he could pay them whatever he decided he wanted to. Anyway, I walked up through that neighborhood today from the riverfront, but streets are scarcely marked, so I didn’t find it, but I got a better feel for the area. If you have Google Earth, you can check it out by typing in Streets 55 and 240 for Phnom Penh.

When hiring the third moto driver of the day, I knew it would be the tricky part because the house is in a part of town without any big landmarks. Add to this the fact that I don’t know my way around very well yet and moto drivers don’t know street names. I had been warned that when you tell them where you need to go, especially if it is not a common destination, they will often nod and smile and wisk you off and then get you lost and will refuse to admit they are lost. Such was my fate. I had a feeling he had no idea where we were going because he started slowing down and then we stopped in the middle of an intersection (on a dirt road on the outskirts of town) and he asked me if this was where I wanted. At least I think this is what he asked, since we had no common language at all. I said no, and again told him the directions he seemed to know quite well just twenty minutes prior: “Toul Kok, Mao Tse Tung.” They named a major north-south street in this city after the prolific Chinese dude, and it might be the busiest thoroughfare in the city. It is the route 30 of Lancaster. The name wasn’t ringing any bells with him, though. He pulled over to ask a group of other moto drivers and none of them knew. I thought I recognized a big antenna in the middle of a round-about a little earlier, so I directed him back and fortunately I was able to get home from there. At the gate to the house I gave him a one dollar bill. He smiled and drove off. I went inside and took a much-needed shower. Good times.

Here are some photos from the day.

I’ll let you guess what makes the pizza “happy”.

At 8.30 this morning, I got in the backseat of a Toyota Hilux pickup truck for the first time since 1998 when we left Guatemala and our own Hilux behind. I have spent many a bumpy mile (or a kilometer, I suppose) in the backseat of a Hilux, and today was nostalgic in that way.

Joke (pronounced Yoka) is originally from Holland, and one of her friends from high school days is visiting for three weeks, here to see if Cambodia is everything Joke makes it out to be. So it was the three of us, plus a Cambodian staff member named Sokha who I introduced myself to before being informed that we know each other. Apparently we met in January and he has a better memory than I do.

We crossed the Bassac river and headed outside Phnom Penh on a really bumpy dirt road for an hour or so before arriving at a village where World Relief seems to have quite a presence with the Hope project. Hope is one of World Relief’s four main projects, which puts on programs for young children and teens, as well as equipping churches to minister to those with HIV/AIDS and to raise awareness about prevention. Here are some photos from the day.

A lesson on fire safety

The woman in the yellowish sweater is living with HIV/AIDS. Her first husband died and her second husband left her when she tested positive for the virus. The boy to her right is her son, and the two women behind them are from the church care group that has been ministering to her and others with AIDS.

Joke with a young friend who is HIV positive. Joke told me that this girl writes her letters, and that she is in third grade but can barely read and write so it makes for comical letters.

The woman sitting with her two kids is a widow and she is also HIV positive. When her husband died, she had no place for her family, including her mother (drinking out of the cup), to live. The man in the black shirt in the background is from the local church and he decided to let them stay with his family, so he built an extra house for them beside his own.

This is the village chief who oversees all the areas we visited today. He has been a vital aspect of World Relief’s work here in terms of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, due in large part to the fact that he is the most respected man in the community.

Sorry I have not posted any exciting pictures here yet. I have been working in the office, and quite frankly, it is not very photogenic in here, with the fluorescent lights and drab walls. For whatever reason the mosquitoes seem to congregate in this room, which means I get eaten and then, when aggravated, I go on a killing spree. There is this electric-tennis-raquet-looking thing that you swat at the bugs to zap them. Hearing them sizzle makes the bug bites on my feet and arms itch a little bit less.

Tomorrow I will most likely be visiting some of the Hope children’s projects around Phnom Penh with Joke van Opstal. She is Dutch and is practically Cambodia’s Mother Teresa. I will then be heading out to visit the AIDS projects next week (for three or four days) with Geof Bowman, an Australian guy who serves as WR’s health advisor here. I’ll begin to do some interviews for stories I’m writing and will get introduced to the national staff in these areas. I will likely return to these places again, but next time I might be on my own, so I’ll need to pay attention to where I’m going this time around.

Below is a map of Cambodia along with some of the specific parts of the country where World Relief works. On the map you can see Kampong Thom, due north of Phnom Penh, and Svay Rieng to the southeast right along the Vietnam border. These are the places I’ll be traveling to next week to visit AIDS projects.

If any of you are wondering what it is exactly I’ll be doing with myself for three months in Cambodia, today is your lucky day. Here is my job description.

I went to bed each of the past two nights around 8.30, and with varying degrees of intensity, slept until 3 or 4am, followed by varying doses of sporadic sleep. This morning, for instance, I was up for good at 4.30, but was able to get in a solid eight hours of sleep by then. I turned on the a/c a little bit last night for the first time in my stay here. The past few months at my apartment in Lancaster have prepared me well for sleeping in the heat without a/c, having grown accustomed to lying on the bed without a blanket beside an open window and under the caress of the oscillating fan. But last night that ivory-colored knob was taunting me, offering me frigid air with just a simple twist, and I gave in for an indulgent half hour or so, but amenities such as a/c are to be rationed because of electrical costs.

The weekend was relaxing and fairly uneventful, spent mostly around the Amstutz home, and for me, it involved a fair share of reading. I was able to polish off The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs and I made a serious dent in Killing Fields, Living Fields by Don Cormack. Both books are long and daunting and written, I think, for weekends spent indoors in a strange new city like this one. Sachs is a world-renowned economist who has decided to put all he has into ending extreme poverty by 2025, and Cormack, a missionary to Cambodia, has written a well-documented account of the history of the church here. As one can imagine, both books have been tremendously relevant for me these days and I think they will each in their own ways help to frame the things I see and experience while here.

On Saturday afternoon, during the first major downpour since I arrived, there was a flash and some thunder like I’ve never heard before. REALLY LOUD. I was in my room at the time, lying down on the bed, reading a book, and I probably jumped a foot or two in the air. I figured this was just normal for these folks, but apparently I was wrong because the power surge blew out several appliances in the Amstutz home. They think the lightning bolt might have hit the house across the street.

Yesterday morning I went to a big international church with the family. The church, along with a couple other churches at various times throughout the weekend, meet in the World Vision building across town. I think the World Relief people might have some building envy because WV is renting a huge, very nice place, complete with a little goldfish pond in the lobby (though no fish could be found). Anyway, there were about 400 people in attendance at the church yesterday, and Tim tells me that about 30 nationalities are represented.

On the drive to the office with Tim this morning, we ran into a detour because there is a big demonstration going on down the street so it is all blocked off. Human rights something or other. Cops everywhere. A woman handed me a brochure about it but the whole thing is written in Khmer. So, beats me.

Today I am in the office for my first full day of work. It is Labor Day, but it seems that Cambodians actually labor on this day. I’m going to be jumping right in, separating the wheat from the chaff as I sort through the stories that have been written about the work here. In the coming weeks I will also be traveling around the country, visiting projects, writing some stories of my own. I will then be revamping the WR-Cambodia website with this new content. I will spare you the link for now.

I may have found a place to stay for the rest of my time here. I’ll have more on that in the next couple days, but it sounds like a great opportunity.

Today I went in to the World Relief office just a few blocks from the house here in Phnom Penh. The past few days they have been cleaning out the septic tank at the office. I am told that they don’t have pumps and vacuums and whatever we use in the states to do these jobs, so they send actual people down there with shovels. They set up little one-foot-tall walls made out of rocks out on the side of the road, and dump all of their findings within these enclosures and then let them sit there until the sun dries it all up. If only the smells could be transmitted over the Internet…

I was introduced (and re-introduced) to some of the office staff and was shown Sivan’s office, where I’ll be working on things. Sivan is a Cambodian woman who heads up the child survival program, but she is seldom in town, which means I will be using the office along with Jean, a woman from Arizona who is volunteering with World Relief part time. Jean took me around town a little bit.

I got set up with a bank account, at a new bank that is all the rage because it actually has ATM machines, a first for Cambodia. I was also provided with a cell phone for domestic calls, and it is one of the pre-paid variety, so we pulled over along the side of a street at a little phone card stand and got a $10 card that should last me a month and a half or so.

My sleep schedule is still trying to make sense of what I’m doing to it. I took a nap again this afternoon, and then attempted to stay awake through The Mission with Tim and Kathy, but was dozing off. It is now 9:52pm, and I am calling it a night.

One last thing I should mention is that the transfer from the old server (which was slow and unpredictible) to the new server (which is, hopefully, fast and reliable) is now complete and so our technical difficulties should be behind us. If you have tried emailing me but did not hear back, your message may have gotten lost during the transfer in a cyberspace black hole. Re-sending the message would be advised and appreciated.