The first days

So! I am here in Cambodia as a part of the exchange project Open Your Eyes, a cooperation between the international organisation AIESEC and Fredskorpset, which is a governmental body under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (financed over Norway's state budget). The NGO I’ll be working for here is called SCAO, and it's located in the village Boeng Chhouk, 15 minutes north of Phnom Penh.


When I left Norway a couple of days ago, it was snowing in my hometown Oslo. Before leaving I took a few quick photos in my neighbourhood with my cell phone, just to have a memory of the norwegian winter in the warm and humid cambodian climate:

Frogner

The Oslo Fjord

Oscars gate

Vestre Gravlund

My street in Oslo

And now: my street in Boeng Chhouk

My new alarm clock

This is where I work 

This is where I live 

My sweet boss Samith 

 My cambodian colleague Sreylat and Norwegian colleague Ingrid

Laundry in a bucket

I received an e-mail from my mother today, saying that they were going cross country skiing. "We will trick/force your little sister to come with us", she says. Ah, the beauty of coerced winter sports. Pretty absurd to think about them in the snow, when I'm sitting here sweating in at least 30 degrees hot weather. There's no shower here, but a nice little bucket I can use to pour water over me. The animals I can hear right now around me are crickets, dogs barking, ducks quacking, a bird twirping and a gekko...gekkoing. Exotic! I wonder if there are snakes out there.

In our room, there is a shabby looking cat who refuses to leave. I've never been so good with cats. My family has a dog, and I think cats can be unpredictable and hard to understand. I tried to give the cat a special look, as if to say: Hello cat. I have not had my rabies vaccine. Please respect that. But the look can not have worked (it's probably different in Khmer), it spends all its time right under my bed, and sometimes jumps up on my pillow. I am of course just as surprised every time.

On the plane to Cambodia, I thought of a friend of mine. She is sometimes struck by the question, if all of a sudden I was on the North Pole now, what would I have done? What things do I have in my backpack that could help me in the cold climate? Maybe I could light a fire with my school books, or make a small tent out of my jacket and umbrella? How would I react to the challenges, how long would I survive?

I of course thought about my luggage, and the possibility that I might not get it at Phnom Penh airport. And what if no one was there to meet me? What was I carrying with me that could help me survive in Cambodia on my own? I had enough clothes from Norway, that’s for sure. It would have been useful to have my guide book to Cambodia, if I hadn’t conveniently forgotten it on my desk at home. I also got a nice book for Christmas about Cambodian culture and customs, but I ended up trading it in for a high tech mosquito net. Both because I was going to bring (but didn’t bring) the guidebook which had a lot of the same content, and because it’s heavy to bring a lot of books, and because I will admit that I’m nervous about Cambodian mosquitos.

I mean, what’s the use of being an expert in Cambodian traditions if you’re lying there itching all over, with a second round of dengue fever and a hint of malaria? You will regret it. So I had a mosquito net, a pocket with Norwegian money, my iPod, a medical book where you can look up different illnesses, some grenola and a book by Pierre Bordieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. (A very intellectual gift given to me before I left.) I’m not sure how far this would get me in Cambodia. I would most likely panic, wrap myself in the net, eat grenola and look up diseases in the book.

Yesterday my grenola was attacked by an army of tiny small ants, I thought that was very rude and unnecessary. (They fortunately didn't touch A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.) The Cambodians, on the other hand, are incredibly sweet people! Always smiling and laughing and being helpful and understanding. I think I will enjoy my stay here in the Khmer Kingdom very much.