Nearing Completion

Sua s’dei! Here we are. At this point, home is close enough to be able to reach out and tug a sleeve. (When will we get the house painted? A flag comes up on my computer to say an Edmonton client wants three months’ notice of my return.) At this point, what we have left to do for LWF Cambodia…what we had hoped to do before we left…seems much bigger than the time allotted.  

Seven years ago at this time, we looked back eight years before that to compare our Japanese and Mauritanian adventures. Recently, I happened to find the 9th month report from Mauritania on my computer and we’re amused to find the comparisons we made then. 

Our entire assignment in Nayoro was only eight months in duration. It ended in March with the end of the 1992-93 school year so our departure coincided with graduation ceremonies. We spent the next four months travelling through Southeast Asia (except Cambodia) and Australia, circling the Pacific. 

We worked until the end of June 2001 in Nouakchott, creating assignments beyond Communications to fill out the time, and then left the desert for seven weeks in green and rainy Europe. 

Six and a half weeks from now, we’ll wrap up our assignments here. We will need to set priorities and finish what we can, leaving other tasks for Ratna and Rachel Cook (from Idaho, our ELCA-sponsored successor) to pick up on in the coming months. With the month remaining before our one-year airline ticket draws us back to Edmonton, we’ll revisit that first placement in Nayoro (as well as visit friends in Asahikawa and Yaizu). 

Our tickets have been scheduled for the last flights home from Seoul–Seoul to Vancouver, Vancouver to Kelowna, Kelowna to Edmonton (via Calgary)–and we’ve paid the carbon offset for them. 

We were just talking recently about all the different ways our three placements might be compared: work, accommodation, food, culture, transportation, climate, geography, religion, sanitation, hospitality, technology, ease of living, flora and fauna, hosts, recreation, tourist opportunities. 

The bests: the presentation, quality, and flavours of food in Japan;  the beach in Nouakchott; the ease of settling in in Cambodia.

The challenges: the most demanding language in Japan;  the most poverty in Mauritania; the worst driving conditions in Cambodia.

Seven years ago, we quoted Kathleen Norris (Dakota: A spiritual geography, 2001): “These places demand that you give up any notion of dominance or control. In these places you wait, and the places mold you.” Rob, our guide and mentor in Japan, had advertised for anyone open to experiencing the helplessness of living in a foreign culture. It was our first experience of immersion in helplessness. Learning to wait was a particular challenge in Mauritania. Here in Cambodia, the first challenge was to slow down and let the heat set the pace. 

In Nayoro, the noon-time siren set all the dogs barking. Other than the rats in the walls, I can’t recall noting other wildlife. In Nouakchott, a city inhabited by former nomads, herds of camels stood waiting, donkeys dragged carts, and goats wandered at will. On any given day in Phnom Penh, we might see Sambo, the Wat Phnom elephant, out for his daily constitutional; the fruit bats swooping back to the tree between us and the Wat; and the Wat Phnom monkeys making nuisances of themselves. In fact, one monkey had to be subdued by an M16 last week after attacking several people. The Wat Phnom monkey troop appears to be growing at leaps and bounds and newspaper reports often threaten that they will be removed or reduced in numbers.  

As time passed, the junta in Burma seemed to be prodded into action. But wait… now the whole country seems to have slipped off the media’s radar. What have you heard lately? Relief agencies seem to have found various ways to begin the much needed work. David Mueller has put our names out there as possibilities, but other Asian Lutherans are picking up the tasks and perhaps even slipping in. David is spending four days in Bangkok this week trying to sort out details for LWF’s role in rehabilitation, if not relief. We doubt we’ll be called on.

David will return tomorrow evening, just in time to read over the PowerPoint presentation I created for him to present to the Club of Cambodian Journalists. With the Club, Ratna has organized a Journalists’ Rural Development Writing Contest, which will be launched on Friday morning. My job is to get PowerPoint’s Presenter View working for David to be able to read his script and control the slides from the podium. It hasn’t worked for him before, so I hope I can succeed at that. 

Preparing the PowerPoint stole time away from formatting Marcus’s history. Today I managed to drop in several charts and graphs, so progress has been made. This may not be the best time to be learning a new page layout program, but I’m sure it will come in handy in the future. 

I’ve been editing letters for David and stories on disaster risk management for Phallay in and around these other assignments. Marcus has updated the visitor information handout and has now turned his attention to the numerous forms used throughout the organization. Now that our Communications Policies and Guidelines have received official approval, we can confidently insist on standardizing the forms. Marcus has also started to draft letters of reference for Boran and Maly, another step closer to that final day. 

While we carry on with work, happy to check off our accomplishments one by one, Phallay insists on feeding us every day. We try to reciprocate, but she’ll have none of it. We suggest restaurants and she prevaricates; we suggest home and she says it’s too hot. She says it’s better to eat home-cooked food at the office. When we ask why she should feed us every day, she says, “Why not?” It’s hard to argue with her. Every day at noon, she appears with her “keep warm” pot stacked with rice and chicken curry or stir-fried beef and tomato or peppery beef and lotus root. Phallay insists she’s not a good cook, but we come away satisfied every day! So, now, we’re often eating rice twice a day. 

At the moment, we’re also eating jack-fruit every day, which is a little more frequent than we prefer. But if you’ve ever seen a jack-fruit, you’ll know that this could go on for a very long time! Beautiful colour, jack-fruit (INside); interesting texture, but just that hint of durian we shy away from! 

This week Maly introduced us to custard apples (aka sweet sop). Another interesting taste and texture sensation. As Marcus likes to remind me, even on our last day here we’ll likely be experiencing things for the first time. 

Tonight as I type and Marcus writes in his diary, the power has gone off. This happens sporadically. it just means that Marcus has to go down to Mrs Kim Lay and use an old French expression from Mauritania: “le current est coupé!” Unfortunately, Mr Kim Lay is visiting in France at the moment, but still Mrs Kim Lay can usually get things done. Except this time. She reports that she has three lines coming in from the city and one of them has been cut. Which explains why Mrs Kim Lay has power, our next-door neighbour has power, the stairwell has power, but the park is in darkness. Happily–as Glenn discovered last month–the only power in our apartment is in the air conditioning unit in the guest bedroom. Alhamdoulilahi! Another Mauritanian expression for “thanks be to God” which also translates in this case to “we can sleep tonight!” Mrs Kim Lay suggests it may take several hours to be reconnected. 

This means I can’t send this to you tonight, but be assured that we were thinking of all of you and sent our greetings. The subject of the email is in Khmer, Hassaniya, and Japanese–typical greetings for welcome or hello.

24 hours later, we are back on the power grid, and this message comes flying out to you,

Margaret and Marcus