by Phally Chroy
Let’s do the math: if you can relate to the following entry, then I guess we have something in common. If not, do not feel left out. I still love you like my brother, sisters, father, mother– like my family.
Here are some random things to think about when you are sitting there thinking about your life, how far you have traveled, how much you have accomplished, and how there are those the things that you wish you had done less of.
1. Khmer people love to go the park (if you grew up in America and are remotely Khmer, then you know what I am talking about). We go to the park whenever it is hot and treat it like a family gathering: Always looking to buy those small, dirty clams and eat them at home with tamarind garlic sauce. If not, then we’re probably buying bok-la-hung from the Laos lady instead of the Khmer lady, because the Laos lady makes her homemade crab sauce spicier. When done with the bok-la hung, and looking for something else to eat, we head for the grilled chicken or beef (never touching the grilled fish because we know better. It was probably caught in the same lake we remember jumping and swimming in when we were young). Then our sweet tooth takes hold… and either we get some of that pink or green sweet drink stuff mixed with ice (that makes your teeth rot), reserving the coffee flavor drink stuff for the old folks or, head for the Khmer dessert: the green noodles with sugar and coconut syrup (we enjoy the latter the older we get). The whole day, aside from eating, is spent hoping to go home–when will your parents get tired from all the gossiping and card playing?– as we down our third bag of that green stuff. Just waiting… until the dust suffocates our lungs and observing the day slowly pass by from the light off the grass. And when we return back home, we sometimes forget to shower and just go to sleep. This cycles less and less, every week as one gets older and no longer are we willing to be stuffed into the family minivan–the same one that your dad use to drive to work, opting instead to stay home or, go somewhere else with our own car. And if we “choose” to go to the park, it will only be every once in a while, and we think back to our memories formed there.
2. Khmer people love roadside plants. In fact, we can probably eat everything and anything that grows out of the ground. If you can salt it, sugar it, pickle it–Khmer style– you can eat it. Mild diarrhea is not problem. We will just get a rub of white monkey tiger balm on our bellies and walk it off. And we knew better than to eat that unknown plant growing on the highway, but when it is next to that pra-hok or duk-krung, we can’t help ourselves. Remember how we didn’t like to eat Khmer food growing up? How we longed for hamburgers, hotdogs, and pizza, because that was more American and more in line with what we saw on T.V. (like when we saw them eat turkey and other American cuisine at their family gatherings, a la FULL HOUSE with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen)! But now, we eat Khmer food with vicious ambition. But I digress…Going back then, to the Khmer people and plants, we don’t even know the plant’s name, only it’s location on the highway or, on the grounds of the shopping mall. And of course, there are other identifiers: what “could” be eaten is given a prefix of year and number identification. So that when something new becomes edible, the species discovered in that year will be called by plant year (2008) and then number of discovery (#1), so that there is no confusion. Plants discovered since the last follow the pattern until the end of that qualifying year. The information is passed to the community and soon the plant, its location, shape, taste, and cooking method is public information. In no time, the plant species becomes extinct because everyone will have stripped that sucker down to the bone (The same thing that happened to that crab apple tree and what’s happening to plant 1985 #01. 1985 #01 grows near the airport, is long and stringy, and is pickled and eaten with grilled fish). Yum.
3. Khmer people love their music, I will say it again; KHMER PEOPLE LOVE THEIR MUSIC. Growing up and going on family trips to the park, in the family first car (which was a wagon of some kind with un-tinted windows so other people saw the whole family stuffed into the Japanese vehicle), or going on trips to pick plant 1995 #56, we listened to that strange Khmer music with the language that we did not understand. We would have preferred to take those tapes, toss them out the window, or hide them from mom and dad before getting in the car. To really breaking our parents’ hearts, the night before a trip, we would record the top 10 countdown from the radio over the classic Khmer tape, so that in the middle of a Sin Si Samuth song, 2Pac or Bone Thugs and Harmony screaming “THUG LIFE!!!” or “It’s Da First of Da Month” respectively, could be heard loud and clear. And how our parents wondered if something was wrong with the stereo?! Being the smart one in the family, we would exercise our American education and reply that “nothing is wrong and that is how the stereo works.” Telling your parents that they do not know technology as well as we do because we are now officially American (having spent 9am to 3pm in a western educational setting on a daily basis and since we no longer associate ourselves as Khmer). But as much as you tried to erase those words of Sin Si Samouth, Pen Rom, Srey Sros Sothear, Ing Nary, Meas Samorn from those tapes, those words still stuck inside your mind. And even though you cannot sing along, you listen along and you learned. These songs slowly crept into our minds as we got older, and now we wish we didn’t erase all of those treasures. We no longer want to be American. We want to be Khmer. So we started thinking about every possible way to repent what we did in our youth. We started looking on the Internet for places to download (and if you are feeling guilty, places to purchase) the Khmer songs you used to hate. Until you discover Napster and then, boom!!!! We’ve got a whole, newly-refreshed Khmer musical library. We start playing the music every single day, and our parents are so proud that we like the things they cherish. That is, until they are tired of hearing the same stupid song over and over again. Now they are getting tired of us and our songs. They would prefer to listen to rap instead of the constant annoyance of Khmer music blaring 24/7. All of our friends think that we are crazy but we know that we are not. With the Khmer flag in our rooms, and all those Angkor Wat T-shirts we bought off eBay, we feel like the saviors of Khmer culture– popping our Khmer bangers in, bopping our heads, and rolling down the Khmer strip of our cities in our 1995 civics.
Then we hit a roadblock in our lives. We are older now and have seen how much of our lives are Khmer and not really Cambodian. We think about our need to go to Cambodia and see what Cambodia is like. So we dream about all the things in our hearts, about the country our parents left behind. But then when we look at our demeanor and mannerisms, we can see that we are far from being Cambodian, Cambodian/American, and far from being American. Holding that American passport in hand, we start to become unsure about who we really are. Then our identities come back to us in questions needing answers. We take that passport, get on a plane, somehow with whatever means, and fly to what we think is our motherland. We take a good look back at America and silently ask ourselves, “Who am I?” (often afraid to ask loudly because we are so proud to be survivors in America). Trying to find our histories, we got years of knowing how bad our days growing up American was instead of counting the contrary. Trying not to feel defeated by society, we wish that the country that we most feel connects us (the motherland), will help us discover our heritage and overcome the cowardice of ignorance from years of not knowing our story.
We arrive to taste the fresh air that is Cambodia, only to be choked by the dust and exhaust from the traffic there. We spend ten months avoiding being hit by motos, or being run over by Lexus and Land cruisers with RCAF and Government green license plates. We sit in places of solitude only to be disturbed by the “Beautiful Girls” ringtone. We hear people talking about how much their land is worth now, while their bodyguards sport AK-47s (They are nothing without their bodyguards we think, because their body flows blood like everybody else… and they breathe the same pollution as you). We sit there and think about how we have spent our lives trying to figure out how to win in this world and knowing full well that we are only playing with ourselves. Then we feel discouraged that more and more, Cambodians abroad reveal themselves by not appreciating their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters who came from back home. We think about our gifts and talents and the hope we can give back to the place inside our hearts. Yet we only see the corruption that happens everywhere, replacing the light with the darkness, and we refuse to think that this is only a Cambodian problem. Then we hope for it to be over, and start counting the days until we come back home. We have given up on Cambodia and now know who we are. We are Khmer, more Khmer that we have understood. We are not Cambodian– Cambodians are people who live in Cambodia, there is no Cambodian living where we came from. We are just Khmer kids who grew up with Khmer experiences somewhere else… So how many more days ’til I go?
I am counting less than 100 and all I gave Cambodia is six kilos of my body. So in the meantime, I spend some better days watching old people exercise in unison at the Olympic stadium. That is how I manage my time amidst the problems, even though I lost 6 kilos since I got here. I wish I still had the motivation to dance with the people in the video but, I feel it better to share their smiles from behind my camera.
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The views and information presented are the Fulbright grantee’s own and do not represent the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State.
