January
came in on the beach on Rabbit Island (so called for its shape not its animal
population) on the Gulf of Thailand, a short boat ride from the southern coast
at Kep, where Cambodian families go at holiday times to dance in the water,
fully clothed.
We’d slept
in a tent on the sand, as there were no beach chalets left – as with most
things in Cambodia, you can’t easily book in advance – and I woke at first
light as I usually do, about 6 am here. Straight into the water (I still had my
swimsuit on under my clothes from the night before, and modesty is a thing
here) with a pink light on the ripples, and a boat rocking. Two little boys
swimming and jumping around the boat. Plastic bottles in the water. The first
time for me.
There is no
winter here, only a time in December and January of breezy blue mornings and no
rain, with a light coating of dust and dead insects on the faces of the tuktuk
drivers on Monivong Boulevard. I think sometimes about the four years in the
1970s when Phnom Penh was empty. No people at all. They were driven out, and
some were even pushed along the roads in hospital beds, with drip stands rattling at
their sides. Money was burned in the streets. The people would have no need of
it now. It was April, when the heat is like a punishment. The 17th
of April, which is my birthday. I cannot tell Khmer people when my birthday is,
though they sometimes ask. The date is one of infamy and the deepest of bad
fortune. It is also the date of the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam in 1954,
the day I was born in fact, when the French lost their empire in Indochina. I
am quite sure that Brother No. 1, Pol Pot, and his henchpeople chose this date
for the boy soldiers in black pyjamas to go in and take the capital, as a deliberate reminder of the end of war and colonial bombing. Of course the Khmer
Rouge were welcomed at first, which is how they were able to fan out and take
over the city. The people were told at the beginning that they were being
evacuated to protect them against American bombing. Some of them even believed
it, at first, but none of them had a choice. Four years later people began
coming back to the city, though a civil war of sorts dragged on until the
1990s. The people just moved into houses. Not necessarily their houses, any
houses. They and their children and grandchildren still live in them today.
I have
lived the expat life here this year, teaching English to Cambodian teenagers
whose parents can afford to pay for lessons. The students have a fair knowledge
of English grammar and vocabulary, but they cannot pronounce or speak in any
way that someone who is not Khmer or resident in Cambodia can understand. This is not a problem for most, as very few have any intention of ever leaving Cambodia. As far as I can tell they mostly want to be web designers and YouTube billionaires. They
also cannot get information from what they hear or read, as they are used to
being told what to think by their teachers. They do not willingly ask
questions, and given the opportunity they copy each other’s work and cheat in
exams. But there are many compensations and rewards in this work despite all
this. We have talked about Cambodian ghost stories, of which there are many, and
some of the students have written wonderful (and very scary) ghost stories in
English. We have learned songs, and even written some. And I can teach past
modals like a BASTARD.
The expat
life here is a good one. I define an expat as someone who goes to live in a
country where the cost of living is lower than their income presupposes, and
they are not obliged to learn the language. By contrast, a migrant worker is someone who is
poorer than their income presupposes, and who is obliged to learn the language
to survive. The latter was the situation of my companion in France, which is
where we lived for nine and ten years respectively before coming to Cambodia. I
have of course been trying to learn the language in Cambodia, with so far
limited success. One difficulty is that Khmer people assume that if a foreigner
is speaking to them it must be in English, and so they patiently try and decode
what they hear. If the foreigner is actually speaking in Khmer, they fail, and
so does communication.
This has
been 2017. I left Cambodia in June, taking a term out to go to the UK and see
family, especially Third Granddaughter, who was born in early July. I spent
five weeks on the campus of Brunel University, Uxbridge, outer west London (a
mile or two from where I was born and spent my first seven years), teaching
multinational teenagers at summer school, and topped this off with a week in
Bloomsbury for the same organisation. It was surprisingly good fun, and I made
some new friends too. One of them is even coming to work in Cambodia next
month! I hope to be back next year. The rest of the chilly English summer was
spent travelling around the UK seeing various friends and spending time with
family, all good. I like the peripatetic life, only wish I could afford to lead
it permanently. I made a short visit to France with First Granddaughter. She is
now my travelling companion of choice.
A general
election in the UK came and went in June. I didn’t vote. I had a proxy
arranged, but seeing my (Labour) MP posing with Nigel Farage, and seeing the racist
Jew-hatred at the heart of the Labour Party, made me draw the line. Anyway, I
have been out of the UK over ten years now, and as an overseas voter you have
to vote in the last constituency you were registered in, an area I no longer
feel any connection with. Well, the time difference meant I saw the exit poll, ‘Hung
Parliament’, at 3.45 am, and was able to follow the results through the
morning, overnight UK time. Ultimately the only two I connected with
emotionally were ‘Con Hold Reading West’ – cue much glee at the confirmed
political ineptitude of the corrupt group of men (still) running Reading Labour
Party – and, even better, ‘Lab Gain Reading East’. I hope Matt Rodda has as
good a time representing Reading East for Labour as I did, and I say so without
irony. I also hope he is better at circumventing the corrupt bullies at the
heart of Reading Labour than I was.
Well, it doesn’t
much matter what I think or feel about UK politics in 2017. I do hope though
that something good can come out of all the crap, even Brexit. But it’s hard to
be optimistic. I would say too that Theresa May is doing an almost impossible
job not badly. I did know her when in politics – we represented neighbouring
constituencies and went to some of the same functions.
I started
learning Khmer (pronounced K’my), the language spoken by the overwhelming
majority of Cambodia’s 13-million population, in January. I unashamedly plug
the school, Gateway to Khmer, who do not know I am writing this. They use the
CELTA method (those who know, know) and the teachers, all native speakers of
Khmer, are not allowed to speak English to the students, even absolute
beginners as I was in January. There is a strong emphasis on phonics and
phonetics, a Very Good Thing in my view. It means I can PRONOUNCE yay! Well,
trying to speak Khmer when all Khmer people seem to assume that if a foreigner
is speaking to them it must be in English, and patiently try to decode your
Khmer into the English they don’t know, has its moments of misery and frustration.
But I am keeping on. It has been striking that ALL my fellow students so far,
almost all USians, with the occasional Australian and Brit, have been Christian
missionaries. Because all those people have it as a rule that you have to learn
the language before you can do the missioning, so that is where the market is. I’ve
learned a lot from them. My failings as a language learner so far are however all my responsibility.
September
to December, back teaching in Phnom Penh. Also going to the gym and having
adventures in sobriety, all part of my preparation for being old, which some
would say I am already. Some days in Penang, Malaysia (go there! it's fab!), when term ended in
December, followed by a lovely laid-back Australian Christmas with Andrew’s
family. Thanks to them all for their kind and generous hospitality, and for the
opportunity for Andrew to get to know his niece and nephew. Now we’re back, and
I’m still here, still negotiating the Phnom Penh traffic on my bike with what I
hope is aplomb.
See you in
2018.
