Fresh, Delicious Chicken
“She scoops up a fat hen from her yard and ties its feet upside down with the plastic bag and hands it to me. I’ve never been given a live chicken before, but feel compelled as I carry it home to tell the upside down bird how lucky it is to be a Cambodian chicken.”
By Kari Grady Grossman
CHRAUK TIEK, CAMBODIA-Chrauk Tiek has great food and everyday someone from the school committee brings me a tasty treat: bananas, papayas, coconut, and live chickens. The school breakfast cooks stay all day to prepare lunch and dinner as well- a mountain of fresh vegetables, hand pounded sweet brown rice and the world’s best chicken, skinny but delicious; a whole new experience in “free range.”
Thankfully, we have a very nice bathroom now, complete with two private stalls and a tile lined shower featuring a Khmer style cistern and plastic saucepan to dump cool river water over your head. This was the School Supporting Committee’s sustainability project last year, and I have to say I am quite pleased with the result, not only for my usage, but for the six guests teaching English. Each one of them ended up making a donation to the school. It is also special for the teachers, who are living in the teacher residence we occupy this week. It’s the first bathroom they’ve ever had in their lives.
We spent the afternoon of our Sanitation Day lounging in hammocks and taking refreshing dips in the river, feeling very satisfied with ourselves.
I held a training with Soka, our intrepid librarian, to hold story hour with the new Khmer language early reader system I had printed. She even has a “big book” to work from in front of the class. Soka is one of our gems. I met her four years ago when she bravely stepped forward, while pregnant with her fourth child, to give me a letter detailing her distress about the illegal logging that had descended upon her village. Since then I have learned that Soka is one of those impeccably honest, soft-spoken but strong willed women that holds a community together. She volunteers for every NGO project that comes through town, but she loves her job with us best. It is the only one that pays her. She shows up every morning at 4 am to dole out the UN World Food Program rations from the stock room; she is the only one trusted with the key. After cooking, serving the children breakfast and cleaning up, she opens the library for the children after their first recess, all for $45 per month. She grew up in an orphanage and graduated 8th grade, which is a high level of achievement for a woman her age and economic level. She is interested in the new early reader books but clearly tired. I hope we can find a way to give her more support.
The library needs more bookshelves and a ceiling installed to make it cooler. The tin roof bakes in the sweltering heat, which makes the space unbearably hot in the afternoon. Chanta, one of our Khmer - American volunteers from Minnesota, has brought a donation from her home community. She donates the bookshelves, a table for the director’s office and a thatch roof hut to give the children for a place to read outside in the cool breeze.
In the evening, the school committee members gather to eat dinner with us in the cooking shelter next to the stock room. The pleasant feel of our achievements gathers into a sing -a- long. Ek Chun, a small statured Souy man who’s daughter Saram is our scholarship student who will become the first Souy girl to ever go to high school, has decided that his gift to me is a song. He starts to sing a beautiful, stretched tone love song, and we all clap to the beat. Then one-by-one each of the Khmers sings for us, each expressing their joy in Khmer culture’s unique way. No one seems inhibited, except of course we westerners who can’t find a tune to save our life. The best we can come up with is John Denver songs and Oh My Darlin’ Clementine. It feels both tribal and spiritual, like the connection between our souls is celebrated.
The good vibes of our singing is cut short by the Chinese New Year Party we must attend at Vong Vaughn’s house. He is the chairman of the School Supporting Committee. I don’t want to insult him by not showing up. So we walk the half kilometer in the dark clapping to Khmer songs until we reach the loud music pulsing from his yard. I subject myself to another ear splitting go in the Romvong circle. Thankfully, since we are not the hosts it is easy to excuse ourselves when we’ve had enough and the party can go on all night without us.
Walking back in the dark, I am beckoned into Chen’s home, another member of the school committee, one of our favorite ladies who is well loved by Paul for her endless contributions of delicious treats. She scoops up a fat hen from her yard and ties its feet upside down with the plastic bag and hands it to me. I’ve never been given a live chicken before, but feel compelled as I carry it home to tell the upside down bird how lucky it is to be a Cambodian chicken. I explained how horrible it is to be a chicken in America, so she should consider herself blessed. She will be delicious in the morning.
The chicken comes with us and all the kids on a field trip to Piem Levia Lake the next day, giving us the chance to show our foreign guests just how low the economic situation can get in Cambodia. Our lorry full of children passes through the neighboring village of Sre Srap, where people seek out an existence from who knows what and dirty faced, naked children abound. Their school is in our target area. It only has 93 students and one teacher, and she has a fourth grade education; at least 3 days a week she’s gone. 90% of the children in this village don’t go to school at all.
The kids, the chicken, cooking implements, hammocks and table china for 30 are hauled through the forest to Piem Levia Lake, which in the dry season resembles more of a huge mud puddle. The chicken is boiled with a preparation of rice and peanut sauce with vegetables and fresh cashews we picked from the trees. The children splash and squeal ecstatically in the water. They’ve found three leaky dugout canoes and are playing battleship, continuously overloading and sinking their vessels. The Canadian teachers joke about what the mortified safety chaperones in our home would say. This is no matter. It is so pleasant to see children who have nothing expressing their joy with wreck less abandon.
