Jake and Charlie usually went to prayer at their local mosque between two and five times each day, and some of their closest friendships were formed with older men, teenagers, and young boys at the mosque. In his presentation, Charlie spoke about the usual ablutions before entering the mosque and then recited the prayers in a Khmer-accented Arabic.

In other presentations, Environmental Science major Julian spoke about environmental concerns regarding the Tonle Sap Lake, which he and Annalisa lived on during their service term. Four of the Tampoun village students gave presentations on aspects of their experience: Bailey talked about cashew farming; Seth showed the group a Tampoun cultural guide he developed; Corinne spoke about aspects of Tampoun culture for teenagers, focusing on education; and Chloe showed teaching materials she and her peers developed related to teaching English to Tampoun students.

Annalisa talked us through the feature article she wrote on the Returnee Integration Support Center, which temporarily houses Cambodian-Americans who are forcibly returned to Cambodia after commiting sometimes minor crimes. The returnees are nearly always Cambodians who were refugees during or after the Khmer Rouge period, and some have never actually lived in Cambodia before — only along the Thai border, where they were born in refugee camps.

Finally, Kat showed some of the jewelry she made from wire, pliers, and found objects — delightful, whimsical works.

The final project presentations will take place Monday afternoon. Students are enjoying having their mornings and evenings relatively free to be with their host families, do market shopping, or hang out with their SST peers.

For Saturday lunch, the Graber Millers were invited to share a meal with Allison’s family’s along with Allison and Trisha. Since Trisha and Allison’s families are related (Allison’s parents are also the parents of Trisha’s host brother/dad), the families often get together on the weekends. Saturday’s lunch was a feast of Cambodian pancakes with pork, shrimp, and a wide range of greens, plus a curry soup. The meal was done in haystack style, or by wrapping leaves around bits of pancake, fish and pork, and other greens. Many of Allison and Trish’s extended family members were present as well, and we ate in the traditional style of Cambodians — as has been true for students throughout the term — on mats on the floor. The meal was utterly fantastic and the experience meaningful, and we all were thankful for such gracious host families.

Saturday afternoon and evening everyone was at the Graber Miller apartment for term project presentations, individual interviews with Ann and Keith, and a P’teah Goshen Night of pizza and storytelling. Rachel and Phil both read excerpts from their poetry; Kelly spoke about health care in Cambodia; Annie read her children’s book and Khmer alphabet book, both written in Khmer and illustrated; Allison spoke about concepts of beauty in Cambodia; Stephanie talked about Christianity and Buddhism in Cambodia; and Trisha showed the PR materials she developed for Devi House, the NGO with which she and Allison were working.

Throughout the day many group members wore their new SST Cambodia 2010 T-shirts, which we had made while students were out on service. Ann and Niles designed the T-shirts, which included everyone’s names as well as “Goshen College” written in Khmer. Kelly’s host family, which has a T-shirt making and printing business, made the T-shirts from scratch in their home, sewing together the fabric and then silk-screening all of the shirts in their nearby church. Many of the students wore the shirts because, well, they didn’t have any other clean clothes after just returning from the provinces. But it was great to see the collected displays of purple.

Project presentations, interviews, and reorientation continue on Easter Sunday and Monday afternoons before part of the group heads back to the U.S. Tuesday evening.

The first returnees were the folks from only several hours away: Kelly and Phil from Mesang District in Prey Veng Province; Stephanie from Prey Veng town; Allison and Trisha from Kampot Province; and Annie from Svay Rieng. They all were back between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and welcomed Jake and Charlie back from Kampong Cham in mid-afternoon. After hanging out at the Graber Miller apartment for several hours, the group took walks and bike rides in the city, exploring their old stomping grounds.

Most of that initial group returned to the house by 5 or 6 p.m. to welcome back the latecomers, who didn’t arrive until about 7:30 p.m., and then all came in a huge batch. Julian and Annalisa had left on a 12:30 p.m. bus, and their return journey was relatively painless. Kat and Rachel’s trip from Banteay Meanchey was extended dramatically by a driver who stopped every half hour to smoke, and then meandered around Phnom Penh for two hours before stopping at the station to let them off. The Ratanakiri crowd (Chloe, Sarah, Seth, Bailey, Corinne, Austin, and Mikey) had a 13-hour sojourn on a non-airconditioned bus, in our 100-plus heat, and arrived back sweaty and filthy, covered in head-to-toe red dust.

The latecomers arrived just after our huge batch of Indian food arrived, and they ate ravenously, consuming the meal and then woofing down bread with nutella and salsa and chips to boot. They were a little too stimulated to even sit down during the meal, so we stood to eat and tell stories.

This morning (Saturday) we’ll all be back at the Royal University of Phnom Penh for language testing and then we will start our reorientation this afternoon with project presentations and individual interviews. Tonight is our final regular P’teah Goshen night, with pizza and ice cream — two food groups not readily available out in the provinces.

Today the Graber Millers also say goodbye to their household helper, Sokhorn, who worked with them in 2007 as well as this year. Mia made up a “thank you” poster for Sokhorn, which we will give to her this afternoon.

It’s good to have everyone back in the city and we look forward to these last several days together.

Students arrive back in town Friday throughout the day, and then we’ll have several days of reorientation activities before we scatter across Southeast Asia and back to Goshen. We’re looking forward to having everyone together again over the weekend.

Sochua was one of our lecturers this spring, speaking about women and children’s issues in Cambodia and her own tensions with some Cambodian government officials. After the lecture we spoke with her about Devi House, a Cambodian-run NGO that her sister runs and Sochua supports. As our service assignments evolved, Trisha and Allison chose to take on working with Devi House. Although they initially thought they would be working with silk weavers or basket weavers, they discovered prior to going to the site that the Kampong Kreang branch of Devi House consists of cookie makers. Women of the village make six different kinds of rolled cookies, which can be found for sale throughout Cambodia. Allison and Trisha’s service assignment has included marketing the cookies in Kampot, Kep, and surrounding towns, getting small businesses to carry the cookies to provide income to the women of Kampong Kreang. They also do some interviewing of local women, including local Cham Muslim women, and some grant-writing for Devi House. Their primary work, though, is teaching English in several different settings in the village.

Kampong Kreang is a rural village at the end of one of Cambodia’s worst, most rocky roads, inhabited by many people of Chinese descent, many of whom have one-level, concrete-style homes instead of the typical provincial wooden homes on stilts. The village runs right along Tek Chhou (Waterfall River), a wide river that flows from and to the Gulf of Thailand. Allison and Trisha’s home has tile floors, and they share a Pink Princess Bed (their description) in a room that also houses their 12-year-old nephew Thong and Mommy, their mother figure in the home. Their family configuration is a bit unusual: their father, Khou, is single and owns the house as well as an outdoor restaurant along the river. His mother, whom the women call Mommy, also lives there, along with an aunt (whom they call Yey, or Grandma) and their nephew, who isn’t the child of anyone living in the house. Khou’s sister also lives nearby with her family. The women’s family has many animals around, including dogs, cats, guinea hens, and chickens, most of which are kept as pets rather than food.

On Monday and Thursday Allison and Trisha teach a morning English class from 9 to 11 a.m. outdoors on Mu Sochua’s sister Kim’s farmette, working with 11- to 14-year-olds. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they co-teach English with Chien from 5 to 6 p.m., at the end of the school day. And three times a week they teach English at night in their home with the women of the house as well as other local women and neighbors whom come by for lessons.

Mu Sochua has invited the women to use the computer at her house whenever they need to, so they occasionally take the 15-minute trek there to check their email, write a grant proposal for Devi House, or work on their term projects. Sochua also graciously invited the Graber Millers to stay at her home when they were there, so they stayed in her remarkably beautiful home right along the Tek Chhou, as did Trisha and Allison the first night the Graber Millers visited. They also were able to swim in the adjacent neighbors’ pool — a Dutch family that has been longtime friends with Sochua and her husband Scott. Having access to the homes made for a comfortable, relaxing visit for the Graber Millers and for Allison and Trisha.

Overall, Kampot Kreang is a tranquil, aesthetically beautiful place with gracious hosts and family members. Allison and Trisha are enjoying their time there and will miss their family and their work.

Over the last week we’ve had a few illnesses (families have been informed) in other service locations, though those who were sick are on the upswing now. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone back in Phnom Penh next Friday for our reorientation. Fifteen of the 19 students will be staying in Cambodia or Southeast Asia for as much as two weeks after SST, so only four will fly back to the States on April 6.

While all other 2010 Cambodia SSTers are living with Buddhist or animist families, Rachel and Kat are living with Christian families in this largely Buddhist culture. (Stephanie’s Buddhist family includes two siblings who are Christian, too, so she relates with their church a good bit.) That Christian context has clearly shaped Kat and Rachel’s experience, illuminating similarities and differences in the range of Christianity practiced around the world and helping them reflect on the ways in which Cambodia’s first-generation Christians practice the “good news” of the gospel. Sometimes the differences have been difficult to negotiate for the SSTers, with injunctions against dancing and card-playing, though they also have seen many strengths in familial relationships, the presence of their fathers in the home, and other very positive relational aspects influenced by Christianity.

Their service work is at Rachel’s family’s church, where her father is the pastor and her mom sometimes co-preaches. Kat and Rachel assist with the morning preschool program at the church, helping White Cigarette, the lead teacher. After their 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. stint with the younger children, they usually spend several hours on the church/school property playing and talking with the older children. That’s where Keith found them the day he visited — interacting with the kids, who clearly appreciated their presence and spirit.

By about 1 p.m., Kat and Rachel usually are back at their homes, so they spend the afternoon relaxing, riding bikes, or going to what they affectionately call “Buddhaland,” the local wat, which is even more colorful than most wats, with a golden Buddha inside what seems to be the track for an amusement ride. They then spend the evenings with their families. Kat’s family often watches TV just outside her bedroom, and Rachel’s family often sits on the front porch, where it is a bit cooler. The evening Keith visited Rachel helped her younger siblings with their Khmer homework. Both of the women are speaking Khmer quite well. When they spent a night at a Battambang hotel recently, they discovered that they identified with and were more comfortable conversing with the Cambodian families at the hotel rather than the Western tourists who were there that night.

Kat’s home is a wooden structure on top of a concrete church meetinghouse room. Her father is the pastor of the church, and her brother assists with the work of the church. A sister and brother-in-law and their baby also live across the street from the home.

Although she uses the neighbors’ dump shower, Rachel’s home is perhaps the most modest of all the SSTers’ service families, at least in terms of scale and construction. The house’s one room is about 12′ x 12′, plus a front porch and attached kitchen. In terms of worldly possessions, both Rachel and Kat’s families have far more books than Keith saw in any other SST home — perhaps 6 linear feet of books and booklets, mostly ones related to Christian faith. (One of the Tampoun students had remarked earlier that even with significantly scaling back the clothes and personal items she took on service — down to one backpack full — she realized upon arrival that her essential possessions for six weeks were more than her entire family owned collectively. This was especially true in the indigenous villages.)

Kat and Rachel’s mothers are both good cooks, so they are eating well. Often Rachel’s mother makes them lunch at the school. The night Keith visited we went up to Svay Sisophon, about nine kilometers north, to eat some Western-ish food, and the women were both thrilled to have french fries, pumpkin soup, toast, and ice cream. Keith stayed at Rachel’s home for the night, sleeping in the house’s one room (Rachel gave up her mattressed bed), with Rachel on the hardwood floor along with her little brother and sister, Elijah and Naomi, and Rachel’s parents out on the front porch.

Rachel and Kat are enthusiastic about relating with their families and working at the school. Quite removed from any of the other SSTers, the nearest ones being three hours away and most being eight to 12 hours away, they spend much of their day hours together. They seem rather happy and content, though like most others they’ll be glad to see their peers two weeks from now when they all return to the city. We’re grateful to their families and to the various other families and NGOs with whom we are working/serving for their very gracious hospitality across the provinces.

Keith will make the final service visit this week to a small village outside Kampot, where Trisha and Allison are working.

Right now we are nearing the end of the dry season, so the river running through Kampong Phluck (pronounced “pluck”) is about six or eight feet lower than it was when we visited two months ago. Julian is living on one side of the community’s wat and Annalisa is on the other side of the wat, which technically places them in different villages even though they are a two-minute walk away from each other. Julian is the only 2010 SSTer who is living with a service family who hosted 2007 SSTers: his family hosted Greg Yoder and Jesse Shirk-Byler in the first Cambodia SST. All other families in every Cambodia service location are new this year. Julian loves his family, including his mom and dad, a couple of sisters and brothers-in-law who live at the house or nearby; at least two brothers, one of whom lives in Siem Reap; and several nephews as well as neighbor children.

Sometimes Julian bathes on the back bamboo deck, draped in his krama but in clear view of the river snaking through the town. On at least one occasion he and Annalisa have experienced Western tourists coming through town while they were bathing, and then been the subject of tourists’ photos as they went by their homes. (Chloe experienced something similar in her Tampoun visitor, when she was bathing at the well when tourists came by to buy fabrics from her mother.) More often now, Julian bathes in the brown pond 100 yards from his home, where most other men bathe as well. Julian’s usual attire is only his krama, as is shown in most of the pictures, though he also puts on a shirt in the evening when he teaches. Julian says his mother is a great cook, and (nor surprisingly) he eats fish nearly every day.

Annalisa’s family also has been warm and wonderful, with a collection of sisters and brothers as well as younger children around the house. Although the family had no bathroom before she arrived — most homes in the villages, including Julian’s, don’t have bathrooms — Annalisa’s family installed a squat toilet after she arrived in Kampong Phluck. She bathes back behind her home, first gathering water from a brown pond and then putting it into a cut-off barrel. Her home includes a vegetable garden on the dirt, but both her home and Julian’s also have small gardens up on the outer deck of the home — the only gardens they are able to use during the rainy season. The day Keith visited, Annalisa’s sister Sambath spent part of the afternoon with us, clearly enjoying Annalisa and Julian’s company.

Julian and Annalisa have almost their entire day free to read, shower, relax, play sei, take walks, and watch volleyball. As many as a dozen tourists also make their way through town on many days, so when they are available, they also chat with the tourists, amazing them with their stories about living in the exotic village. One day they boated out through the “flooded forest” with their friend Sovin, and another time they walked nearly all the way to the Tonle Sap Lake, but eventually were stopped by deep mud. They discovered that the lake area where the SSTers swam in late January is now only waist-deep, as is true for much of the Tonle Sap before it makes its monumental expansion in a few months.

Annalisa and Julian’s teaching begins in the evening, either at the school beside the wat (on several days) or on the floating boat restaurant that is moored along the bank a few hundred metres from their houses. The floating boat restaurant has a bathroom, which Julian used some last week when he was ill. Julian and Annalisa’s friend Sovin lives on the boat, runs the restaurant, and greets tourists, and Sovin also teaches some English in the village. In any event, all of their teaching is confined to 5:00 or 6:30 slots in the evenings.

During the day Annalisa and Julian have sought to help around their homes. Annalisa assists with a lot of cooking. Julian helped his Dad tear down the previous back ladder to the house and reconstruct a new bamboo ladder (see photo). In preparation for his sister’s wedding 10 days ago, Julian also painted the front porch and railing of his stilted house. The Kampong Phluckers also have taken the hour-long trip into Siem Reap on a couple of occasions, once when Julian was sick and another time when other SSTers came to visit. When the Graber Millers visited, Annalisa and Julian returned to Siem Reap with Keith to join the rest of the family at the Green Garden Home Hotel, where we stayed with the whole group in late January. There we enjoyed meals at the Blue Pumpkin and a favorite Indian restaurant and also spent time playing sei (the hackysack/shuttlecock game) in the hotel pool.

Kampong Phluck is an ideal and idyllic village for SST service, and Julian and Annalisa are making their mark and immersing themselves thoroughly. They and the other SSTers have two more weeks yet in their villages before they return to Phnom Penh for their reorientation. Later today we’ll post another blog about Kat and Rachel’s site in Bantey Meanchey.

Jake and Charlie had wanted to live with a Cham Muslim family for their service experience, so our local assistant Marya arranged for this village placement in Svay Khleang. Cham Muslims are one of the minority groups in a country that is almost entirely Buddhist, with some animists and others thrown in the religious mix. Charlie and Jake are learning much about Cambodian Muslim culture, having been given Muslim names (Ahmed for Jake and Muhammad for Charlie) and participating in daily prayers at the local mosque. Some of the younger boys in the village are teaching Jake and Charlie Arabic prayers to say when they respond (sometimes) to the five-times-daily call for prayer, and also showing them how to properly do ablutions (ritual washings) at the well just outside the mosque.

Svay Khleang residents’ primary income is growing tobacco, so lush tobacco fields are everywhere in the community, including on the island situated in the Mekong right across from Charlie and Jake’s home. Under their house is a stack of shredded tobacco drying until it is ready to be shipped out.

The two thoroughly enjoy their kind-hearted Muslim parents, who have been gracious in every way. They are loving their mother’s cooking, with frequent curries and other delicacies prepared for them. The two share a bed in one corner of their homes’ open spaces (what we might call a living room). During the open parts of the day they hang out with their family or take walks or bike rides. The pair then teaches at both noon and 5:00 each day, sometimes together and sometimes alone. Their teaching takes place at the local school, with a classroom full of eager children from the village.

Charlie and Jake seem completely pumped about their experience, enjoying the Khmer and Muslim dimensions of their learning. Last weekend Charlie also took a weekend trip to Ratanakiri to visit the seven people there, and next weekend Jake will go to Kampong Phluck to see Annalisa and Julian.

On the way to Charlie and Jake’s village we stopped in Chluong so our driver, Sok Lee, could see his in-law’s family briefly before we headed out again.

Saturday night Trisha, Allison, and Annie were all in town, so the Graber Millers had dinner with them at Setsara, a local Thai restaurant. They are all doing well and enjoying their service assignments. Julian and Sarah both were ill last week but seem to be recovering admirably. All pairings/groups of students have a cell phone, so they report in regularly about their health (mostly quite good) and what is happening in their contexts. The Graber Millers are looking forward to seeing Julian and Annalisa and then Kat and Rachel this week.

Even though their days are quite slow-paced, Michael and Austin are extraordinarily enthusiastic about their service experience. Amounts of work vary a good deal from one service village to another, and Austin and Michael are clearly on the lighter end of things. Most mornings they spend reading or relaxing in their hammocks, taking a shower, and eating. Sometimes they walk through the jungle and through a bamboo forest, hearing exotic birds and watching out for something they’ve never seen but heard about: “snakes as big around as your leg.” On most afternoons they take a several-hour bicycle ride and then a second dump shower, and then wait for their fellow villagers to come back from the fields. Whenever possible, they play sei (a game like hackeysack but with a shuttlecock) or volleyball with the local boys.

Once the villagers return in the late afternoon, Austin and Michael have dinner and then hang out by the fire for much of the evening. There they teach their host father, siblings, and other neighbors English words while they learn Jarai terms. Sometimes Michael pulls out the guitar he purchased in Phnom Penh and plays Western songs for the villagers, who then respond by retuning the guitar and then playing Jarai songs.

Austin and Michael absolutely love their Jarai host parents, whom they call by their confusing Tampoun names — “Ma” for Dad and “Me” for Mom. As is true for many indigenous (and other) Cambodians, their parents are not sure of their ages, though they appear to be in their 50s. Their food tends to be simple. The day Keith visited we ate on a tarp out in the field where villagers where working — under a canopy of cashew trees. The meal included rice brought to the site wrapped in banana leaves; unripe jackfruit stripped and warmed over an open fire; and fish head soup briefly cooked on the fire. Most of the time Austin and Michael don’t have any meat with their meals, so they ate ravenously when we took them back into Banlung for the night. As did their Tampoun peers, they stayed at the Tree Top Ecolodge, a series of bungalows set on a verdant hillside. Banlung is abuzz with activity in preparation for an international conference taking place at a local school this week. On Thursday school-age children and teens thronged the streets cleaning up bits of trash since both Vietnam and Laotian representatives, as well as Prime Minister Hun Sen, will be present for the conference.

Both of the men left their razors at home, so they are now sporting “jungle boy” head and facial hair. They are quite pumped about their village experience, and looking forward to their recently begun formal teaching in the nearby village. Their village, site of one of the major land-grabbing cases in Cambodia (government officials and international corporations taking Jarai land), is one Goshen grad Daniel Lanctot has worked with extensively, and Daniel helped us arrange for the site.

The morning Austin and Michael went back to Kong Yuk, the Graber Millers took a 90-minute elephant trek through the jungle, stopping at the Katieng Waterfall at the end and swimming briefly in the frigid waters. Mia and Simon loved the elephant ride and the waterfall, as did others in the family. After that we headed southwest toward Kratie, stopping repeatedly along the way with radiator issues before settling into Kratie for the night before heading on to Kampong Cham Friday morning.