Cori Petro's Reflection from Cambodia

September, 2000

When I first arrived in Cambodia, I thought my biggest challenge would be learning how to speak and understand the Khmer language. However, as I began to learn Khmer I realized that learning what to say is even more difficult than learning the actual vocabulary words! Questions like the one above motivated me to spend a month living with a Cambodian family--I wanted to get to know people on their own terms and to have my life take place in their world.

I am still in awe of how openly the Bun family welcomed me into their home and into their lives. They are a family with four children (ages 11, 8, 5, and 3) who live in Siem Reap province--a five-hour boat ride from Phnom Penh and the location of the Angkor Wat temples. Their home is a traditional Cambodian house. It is a wooden structure built on stilts to protect it from flood waters during the rainy season. Inside, there is one main room which serves as the dining room, living room and sleeping place for all of the family members. A small room that had been built several years before became my room, and there was a kitchen in the back of the house with a clay wood-burning stove. We had electricity, although the water we used came from the communal water pump or from collected rain water. I was amazed at how instinctively I started to throw out things that they found quite useful!

Before I arrived, my biggest worry was: what am I going to do all day? Now I can laugh at myself since the whole point of being there was to do whatever they do. . . and each day presented a new gift. The entire community, which consisted mainly of their relatives, invited me to participate in almost everything they did: from selling fabric at the local market, to helping a teacher at the local school, doing household chores. In fact, one of my funniest experiences was studying with the 8 year-old daughter since we are both at the 3rd grade reading level! Throughout the whole time I was always just getting to know people.

That month will effect the way I live and think the whole time I will be in Cambodia. As I begin my ministry working in a community center and visiting an AIDS hospice, I realize how many little things I have learned that make people feel more comfortable talking to me, a foreigner. I am also more rooted in Cambodia. Not only do I know what Cambodian families are like, but I have my own Uncle Kao and Aunt Leak who I know I can always visit when I am lonely or troubled.

It has been only one month since I have returned to Phnom Penh, and I cannot believe how deeply I miss them. Instead of reading statistics and books about the experiences of Cambodian people, I am full of gratitude that they shared their lives and stories with me and I shared mine with them. They are my family here, and no longer local people who help me to survive. Cambodia is no longer just a country I work to develop, but it is a place whose future is tied to the future of people I have come to love very much.

Cori