Gilded Bananas: or How I danced in Front of 300 Cambodians

In a traditional Cambodian wedding the bride changes her entire outfit upwards of seven times.

When we first arrived at the wedding in the village of Ko Ki Thong, the bride was wrapped in silver silk: a silver sarong, a beaded silver bodice and satin silver heels.  Not to mention a silver necklace, large gold anklets, bracelets and earrings and a pearl studded tiara.

An hour later, the bride appeared to have been painted green.  The sarong, bodice, even the satin heels looked the same, except they were now a brilliant lime.  An hour after that, she was a vision in yellow.  By the time eating had given way to dancing, the bride had exchanged traditional Khmer for a billowing white gown.  By 10 pm dresses were abandoned all together, and the Bride danced the night away in jeans and a striped shirt.  She did, however, keep the tiara in her hair.

                                          

In the country less than a week, I found myself preparing that first Saturday afternoon, for a wedding out in the countryside.  My roommate Houng’s cousin was marrying and I was to be one of three western women in attendance.

To be specific we did not attend the actual wedding ceremony, only the extended reception and party.  But not even Houng could tell me precisely when vows had been exchanged – the party was the main event.

From the start we were a spectacle. Our car’s arrival at the reception was recorded on film, our presentation to the Bride and Groom exhaustively photographed.  We came early and were ushered past a line of colorfully dressed men and women and through a palm froned archway hanging with banana bunches spray-painted gold and silver.

For weddings and other major celebrations, Khmer women wear a silk sarong folded in the front and an elaborately beaded, gilded and lace-sewn bodice.  Everyone visits the hair salon for crimping, spraying and curled extensions. Although I had too little time to be fitted for a dress, I did submit to large quantities of purple eye shadow and fake eyelashes. 

Khmer wedding celebrations follow a particular pattern.  First there is food: plates and plates of steamed fish, fried chicken, grilled chicken, cashews, boxes of raisins, freely flowing beer, orange soda and sugary iced coffee.  Elaborately made up women wove between the tables distributing rice, while men did the same with cans of beer.

At our table Houng’s uncle sat across from me and monitored carefully the quantity of food on our plates, encouraging and then admonishing us with a waggling finger to take more.

Soon after we arrived, an oxen drawing a wood cart equipped with a generator pulled up and the live band -- with dancers, strobe lights and a perfumed fog machines -- started up in full force.  From then until early in the morning, Khmer music blared.

As the sky darkened the tables near the stage were pushed aside, all except one that sat in the very center. Around this table at least a hundred revelers danced.  Khmer dancing does not respond to the tempo of the music, rather it exists at one slow stately speed: A few steps forward a few steps back, much twisting of the hands.  The continual sway is like the lapping of seawater on the beach.

As the night progressed so did the intoxication of the men, who became more persistent in their attempts to persuade us to dance.   Rather than decline one just to be asked by another, I befriended Houng’s young cousins. With ten small children circling we made our way into the throngs on the dance floor.

While the men had no success cajoling me onto the dance floor, Houng somehow succeeded in convincing me that I must dance on stage.  I’m still not quite sure how this happened, but I am susceptible to the silly adventures that come with being a tall white American in South East Asia.  So there I was at 10 pm, dancing on a wedding stage in perfumed fog and strobe lights in front of 300 Khmer. 

Hours later, we slept under mosquito nets in Houng’s house.  The house, like most in the countryside was raised on stilts with one large room where everyone slept together.  The bathroom, which housed one hairy tarantula, was out back, surrounded by a collection of water urns for bucket showers and dish washing.

The next morning was for lounging, for eating noodle soup at the local market down the road and for playing badminton in the yard with the collection of kids who had adopted me the previous night.  Time at the stilt house in the countryside grew lazy. There was a second breakfast (hobbit style) of forest chicken – grilled and chopped by Houng’s grandmother – and of course large bowls of rice.  When the kids tired of badminton, they went in search of wildlife, returning to the yard with an endless collection of crabs, one snake and a cat.  The crabs became instant pets with impromptu leashes made of string secured to their claws.  The snake was prodded.  The cat smartly ran away.

We stayed as long as we could, relaxing under the shade of the house. In the end though, we needed to return to the dust and bustle of Phnom Penh.  And so we made our goodbyes, piled into the car and headed back to the city.

Tuk-Tuk, Madam?

By my calculation, since I’ve moved to Phnom Penh I have been in fifty-seven near-accidents in city traffic.  This is a conservative estimate.

I am not a stranger to the chaotic roadscapes of Asia.  I have waded into the rapids that are the Saigon streets – ten to twelve lanes abreast. I have snaked my way through the busting avenues of downtown Jaipur.

When I first arrived in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand two years ago, I found a general disregard for any variety of traffic regulation.  I documented with amusement the varying interpretations of traffic lights and stop signs and the liberal understanding of the purpose of sidewalks.  None of this, however, prevented me from hopping on my own motorbike and joining the driving experiment.

Here in Cambodia I am more ambivalent.

Succinctly put, Phnom Penh drivers make those of Chiang Mai appear law-abiding and demure.  Drivers here appear to believe they are steering the Knight Bus from Harry Potter, with the magical ability to squeeze through the tightest of spaces.  They do not.

And yet still they try. They accelerate and weave James Bond-style through rapidly narrowing gaps between a motley collection of motos, tuk-tuks and SUVs.

Sidewalks are unashamedly employed as extra lanes, and corner gas stations double as access ramps for perpendicular roads without having to wait for a green light.

Besides the cars and bikes and trucks and motos and tuk-tuks, the streets of Phnom Penh are filled with an entire produce markets on wheels.  There are flocks of chickens strapped to motos, and bags of rubbery plucked chickens in bags. There are towering bags of cabbage, stacks of eggs, bundles of eggplants and protruding poles of sugar cane.  There are large wicker baskets of mangosteens that sink on either side of the bike, extending the width of three motos strapped together.

In the weeks that I have been here, mostly I have ridden on the backs of motos.   They are cheaper by half, than the cushioned, canopied and wood carved tuk-tuks.  The increased danger of course may not be worth the cost.

As in New York or London, one never needs to search out tuk-tuks or motos.  They lounge on every street corner.  “Tuk-tuk, madam?” “Moto, moto.”  Their profusion on the streets of Phnom Penh is explained two-fold: it is a product of the imbalance between available jobs and city population, as well as the ease of becoming a chauffeur. If you have a moto, you have a job. 

The lack of barriers to entering the profession comes with tradeoffs.  In London, want-to-be cabbies must first learn “The Knowledge” – memorizing 320 routes, and upwards of 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks, to any of which passengers might request transport.  In Phnom Penh an aspiring cabbie need not know any streets or any landmarks.   A passing knowledge of the city is desirable, but beyond that it is often up to the passenger to navigate the journey.

I have yet to decide whether I will join the fray.  I continue to weigh the relative safety and stupidity of being a passenger versus being a driver.  I take motos when I must, and I inevitably clench my teeth the entire time – a fact that some passing moto drivers have noticed and laughed at.  If I can, I walk -- although sidewalks are haphazard. 

Perhaps, if I decide to get a moto of my own, I can start offering rides as well.  In the mean time, I’m practicing up on my Khmer driving vocabulary. 

Under Construction

Phnom Penh is being built at my doorstep.

Saws, wood sanders and hammers are the white noise of our alleyway, tucked into the southern tip of the city.  The alley is near what was once a small lake.  The lake is gone, recently drained, filled and built over.  On Western maps the lake still exists, they have not yet caught up with the rate of construction.

Phnom Penh used to be referred to as the “Pearl of Asia.”  The Vietnam (or American) War and the Khmer Rouge have dulled its luster.  The city is caught in the in between: dilapidated colonial grandeur, glitzy new skyscrapers and the low-storied growth of a developing nation.  Construction sites are everywhere.

From the balcony of my dorm I can watch the progress of five-story cement facades  criss-crossed by sapling scaffolding.  Construction workers double as trapeze artists along the roofs.

Craning over the balcony I can make out the alley’s carpentry shop below the coconut palm.  Men and women crouch over elaborately carved wood furniture, heavy bed boards and boxy chairs.  I pass the carpenters on my search for motos and tuk-tuks at the alley’s mouth.  Often I see the smallest of puppies playing in the sawdust.

Our dorm is set amidst apartments, primarily two story hastily constructed structures with exposed cement and jutting wire crossbeams.  The most active apartment is directly across from us, five stories and set with curved balconies that would not be out of place at a 70’s style movie theater.  In the early evening shirtless men spend long hours on these balconies, in between the hanging laundry.  They talk on their phones or lean over and watch the alley below.

In the alleyway, children, ages one to twelve, play.  The kids congregate on a parked tuk-tuk, or pedal wobbly tricycles, or shoot at each other with plastic gold automatics.  When I leave the dorm I am greeted with a chorus of “Hello” “Hello” “Hello.”

Farther down the alley, is a warren of slum dwellings – narrow alleys and lopsided structures. I have found tucked into a corner, a neighborhood temple that looks like just another cement construction until you get up close and peer through the grate and find Buddhist murals.

Outside our dorm there are two hole-in-the wall hair salons (quite literally).  I have spent an hour in one watching my roommate have her hair teased and sprayed and curled.  And I have submitted to heavy amounts of purple eye shadow and half inch lashes for the occasion of a wedding.

There are house fronts up and down the alley that double as storefronts.  On tables they sell everything from pre-wrapped sandwiches, to coconuts, to bottles of soy sauce, to whole glistening fishes beset by flies. A few stalls compress stalks of sugarcane, mixing limes in the juice and serving it in plastic bags with a straw – a Khmer to-go mug.

  

Food carts meander by at unpredictable hours hawking buns, bananas wrapped in sticky rice, and most commonly – salted and roasted eggs on a stick.  The man driving the cart plays a recording on-loop. “Eggs delicious eggs – they are hot, they are nice, they are delicious.” Even the singsong voice sounds heat-wearied.

In the evening when the sun dips behind the new construction, the street fills with families and neighbors dragging circles of plastic chairs into the road.  The men go shirtless and the small children pant-less.  It is not uncommon for small boys to run down the streets completely bare.

Our alley is a workspace, a playground, a communal living room.  By late evening though, the dust settled, the neighbors retreat into their homes and the on-and-off electricity.  Grates are pulled down and locked.  The symphony of a growing city – the saws and sanders – ceases. 

I like to stand on the balcony at this time – ignoring the hum of mosquitos, taking in the fleeting quiet, the slight breeze. 

And then clattering into the night a lone man walks down the now deserted alleyway. He carries two sticks in his hands and plays out a beat of taps - a delivery boy for the midnight snack attacks of the neighborhood.  Soup, noodles, dumplings – all of these he will seek out and deliver for a fee.  He disappears into the gloom of the alley, his tapping following in his wake.  Rat-ta-tat-tat, Rat-ta-tat-tat.

Four Electoral Votes

We were racing against the clock.

With an hour and fifteen minutes before the close of elections in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, we took to the cars and the streets.  We abandoned our staging location, grabbed walk packets and lists of sporadic voters and charged out into the dark for our final Get Out the Vote effort!

We tore down dark rural roads scanning mailbox numbers. When we reached a house on our list, the older woman accompanying me would zoom in to the driveway and I would hurdle out of the car and up to the door.  “We are just making sure everyone has voted.  And offering rides for those who haven’t.  Have you voted sir?”

For the last two and a half months, I suspended my life as a teacher, trading it for life on the campaign trail.  I moved up to New Hampshire and set up as a full-time, unpaid fellow with Organizing for America – President Obama’s grassroots campaign.

Four years ago I volunteered on Barak Obama’s campaign, but in a more limited capacity.  I was still in college. I canvassed and phone banked on holidays and during the final weeks of the election – on evenings in between paper writing. 

But this election, with no hard commitments, I wanted to do more.  Why? Simply put: I believe in the president.   But I also have a deep conviction that, as an American --  as a citizen of a country where I have the power to be involved in the political process and the possibility to effect change -- I have an obligation to participate.

And so, I traded lesson plans for walk packets.  For two months my life took on a new routine: hours of driving around rural New Hampshire, walking up drive ways and into trailer parks to talk to voters, then back to our office for yet more hours sitting on the floor making phone calls to more potential voters.

I canvassed the house of a 75-year-old Irish priest who invited me into discuss politics in the rectory, and I knocked on the door of a 19-year-old girl who had never considered voting before we talked.  I traipsed up a long driveway to a dilapidated mobile home and spoke with a grizzled, beer-bellied man with no shirt who politely refused to share his political leanings.

It wasn’t easy.   There were days when I canvassed for six hours alone, in the rain – going from silent home to silent home, leaving behind a wake of literature.  There were nights when I made 250 phone calls.  I would be cursed at, lied to, hung up on – not just by Republicans, but also by Democrats fed-up with the political season.  We would spend hours prepping canvassing packets and then be told that our targets had switched and we had to scrap our work and start afresh. 

But there were also the volunteers who worked with us week after week  -- as the leaves changed colors and then fell, as the air went from crisp to biting.  There was the sixteen-year-old high school girl who was a powerhouse on the phones, who admitted that her grades were slipping as a result of being at our office for so many hours a week, and who in the same sentence brushed that concern aside with a simple “This is more important.”  There was the 84-year-old British woman who had been a nurse in Boston and spoke bluntly about watching women die on the operating table from back-alley abortions in a time before Roe v. Wade.  She and an older gentleman would sit near the windows and, between phone calls to voters, reminisce about life under FDR.

For two months I listened to stories – from men, women, old and young.  I listened to worries, concerns, hopes, fears and dreams.

In the end, all of our hours of canvassing and phone calls came down to one day – November 6^th 2012. 

It came down to how many people we could encourage to vote.  It was a numbers game.  But it was also, on the ground, an individual game.  We arranged rides to the polls for elderly people.  We followed up with others to ensure that they registered at the right polling location.  These were men and women that I had grown to know over two months, whose doors I had knocked on, whose stories I had listened to.

Each vote was a story.

A week before the election one of my volunteers canvassed the house of a man with a minor criminal record.  A town clerk told him that he could not vote because of this record. Checking, we found that New Hampshire law disenfranchises only those still serving time or those convicted of voting fraud.  We returned to his house to tell him so.  At 6:30 am on Election Day he called my boss to thank her and say that he was off to the polls to vote for the President.

During that last hour of the election, as we sped along the back-roads of rural New Hampshire looking for final potential voters who had yet to make it to the polls, we swapped stories in the car.   The older woman with whom I was driving told me that she became politically active at a young age.  When she was fifteen, she proceeded to tell me, Dr. Martin Luther King came to Boston.  Skipping school, she wore her Catholic school uniform and joined in the parade. As they marched down the streets of Boston, older men began ushering her to the front, until she was, in the end, walking hand in hand with Dr. King.

Hours later we, all the staff in the Concord office, crowded into an unheated room in our office to watch as the polls come in,.  We fretted as we refreshed our internet browsers incessantly.  Around 10 pm, they called NH for the President. 

The election was still to be called. But we in New Hampshire, with our four precious electoral votes, we had done what we set out to do.  There was champagne, hugs, tears and a little dancing.  

And then, finally, we went home to sleep.

President Obama has another four years to help move America forward.

The campaign is over and I am heading back to the classroom.  I miss students, I miss teaching.  But for all the worry, stress, frustrations and pure exhaustion of the last two months I would not have had it any other way.  It has been my privilege and my honor as a young woman, and a young American, to work for my President.

There is still work to do. 

But I can now return to the classroom knowing that I have a President who has my back and has the back of my students. 

Elementary

This spring I became obsessed with the BCC’s Masterpiece Classic series about the famous literary detective, Sherlock. Within a week I had watched the series twice over. I then devoured all 2,000 pages of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. I talked about Sherlock, I dreamed about Sherlock. Yet I wanted more. And then I hit upon it: I would teach Sherlock.

With a week-and-a-half left in the school year and the June heat transforming classrooms into saunas, forging on with lessons about decimal conversions and sentence structure seemed not only pointless, but deleterious.

Instead, my fellow teachers and I turned our attention to teaching lessons whose content went beyond the standardized statewide MCAS test. Some conducted classes on the art of henna, the legends of Big Foot and American’s obsession with space aliens. Others crafted lessons on constructing catapults and sewing stuffed animals.

I taught Sherlock.

We opened the day with a little history about secret messages – a brief discussion of the American Code-Talkers and the German Enigma – before diving into the art and intricacies of codes.  Symbol codes, cypher wheels, code creation and code cracking strategies. My boys created codes with money signs and elaborate squiggles standing in for letters.  One girl created a code devised of twenty-six smiley face derivatives. Next, we launched into a four-way student riddle and logic-puzzle race.

I even managed to show a small excerpt from the BBC show, of Sherlock using his powers of deduction.

It’s an ancient maxim, but still valid: teach what you love.

Yes, our students are just middle schoolers. There are so many facts and concepts that they must absorb: times-tables, construction of grammatical sentences, how to compose a thesis-driven argument.  While I am not a fan of standardized tests, I grudgingly concede that they can help ensure that a student has acquired foundational knowledge and skills on which they can build.

Yet, I hope there continue to remain moments, even within a public school curriculum focused on end-of-year tests, when teachers can share their passions with their students.

Allowing us teachers that flexibility and freedom is not simply about letting us indulge our obsessions.

If I have ever been inspiring in the classroom (and I hope I have), it has most often been when I have drawn on my passions  -- delving into the art of Shakespearean insults and the character development of Macbeth, and sharing with my students the intricacies of the Thai political system.

I see the energy in my own teaching. I bounce on the balls of my feet, I stride up and down the rows of desks and, when a student makes a connection or an intellectual leap, I am known to exclaim with loud and enthusiastic validation. 

“So if the Prince is not respected then…then the monarchy will have less power…then, maybe there wont be a monarchy”

“YES!”

“Ms. Lander, when Macbeth says ‘out out brief candle,’ is that like the earlier scene where Lady Macbeth goes crazy and says ‘out, out damn spot?’”

“YES!” 

“Because of the code-letters we already know, that other symbol there must be an N and that one must be a D!”

“YES!”

At such moments I often take my students by surprise. I see it in their manner. They sit up a little straighter, they look hesitantly at their peers: Is Ms. Lander really bouncing up and down because of the answer I just gave?  They are also intrigued: passion and excitement is infectious.

I think back and wonder how much of my love of Asia comes from my own 6^th grade teacher sharing her passion for China.  I know that my drive to write creative non-fiction can be credited to a high-school English teacher who sent us to the cafeteria with notebooks, pencils and instructions to sit, listen and record.

I will continue to teach decimal-to-fraction conversions, basic geography lessons and the elements of writing a story.  I will continue to correct my students’ spelling and press them to give full synopses in their reading responses.  These are all essential building blocks they will need for the future.

But, in between such lessons, I will continue to slip in Shakespearean sonnets, and perhaps a code or two. Who knows: One of my 6^th graders might just grow up to serve in the FBI or the CIA. And, if not, I will at least have succeeded in cultivating a few more fans for Sherlock. 

Army of One?

The classroom can be a lonely place.

My students surround me.  They vie for attention, they want advice, they want answers, they want me to listen to a story about their weekend.  In the cafeteria it is a chorus of “Ms. Ms. Ms. Ms. Lander!” 

Simultaneously, I am alone.  For help on a math problem, my students turn to me.  I turn to myself. On hot muggy days when all my students want to do is poke each other or practice step routines, it is solely my responsibility to refocus the class.  I discipline the class clown, or break up an argument.  My students grumble, “You’re forcing it Ms. Lander.”

Out of the classroom, teaching is lonely too.  I worry about my students on the drive home – about how two students didn’t get along, or how another student is having difficulty grasping a math concept.  I dream about my students and wake up from nightmares set in classrooms.

These are solitary concerns.  I share classroom stories with friends and family.  I share with them stories about how one particular student wrote a particularly moving poem or made an insightful comment during a discussion.  My students infiltrate most of my conversations.  But to friends and family, they are just stories.

Yet, I know that, compared with most teachers, I am incredibly lucky.  As a teacher with Citizen Schools, I am surrounded by an incredible support system. It is this support system, a cadre of colleagues who are there for me each day that has let me grow so much as a teacher this year.

As a group of teachers, we meet before class, we meet after class. We discuss lesson plans and we practice lessons.  We strategize about certain students, we share success stories, we talk through disappointing classes.  We devise extra worksheets and pass them around in a flurry of paper.

The situation could not be more dissimilar to my teaching experience last year.   

Less than twenty-four hours after landing in Thailand, I was handed a pile of textbooks and a list of room numbers, and I was sent off to teach students at Chiang Mai University.  A semester later, my students sat their final exams.   In the intervening months, my teaching was never once observed.  Not that I expected that to happen, the university has 40,000 students.  The independence was daunting but also exhilarating: I had to find my own confidence in the classroom.

This year, colleagues not only sat in the back of the classroom to observe my class, they have once or twice pulled out a camera to film. Later, after students have gone home, we sat and discussed the films, as a coach does with their players: Could I have laid out this concept more clearly? What if I broke down those instructions to even more basic steps?

Yet, this kind of support system is not the norm for most teachers across America.

School days begin early and extend until early evening, leaving little room for additional meetings to discuss best practices.  Tight school budgets make it difficult to support a teacher who can observe other classes and provide feedback. And, observation systems that have recently been created in a number of districts for the purpose of setting merit pay have become more judgmental than instructive for teachers’ personal development.

In most professions, collaboration is an integral part of the job. Scientists, Lawyers, Doctors all work together, relying on support, feedback and discussion with peers and mentors.  

It is difficult to teach teaching.

You can’t simulate the experience of teaching a classroom full of 6^th graders, short of having an actual class of them in front of you.  For the sake of practicality, most classes about teaching are therefore taught in the abstract.

Before shipping off to Thailand, I attended days of sessions intended to train me to be an effective teacher.  But, I learned just as much in my first 45-minute class in Chiang Mai.

We know that great teachers make an enormous difference to students (Harvard and Colombia economists even quantified the impact, calculating that a great elementary school teacher increased the average lifetime earnings of a student by $25,000 compared to a subpar teacher.)

But, how can we fill our classrooms with great teachers?

There is no shortage of proposed solutions – from hiring teachers with better credentials, to providing merit pay for high performers, to developing stronger accreditation programs, to firing ineffective teachers.

Whatever the merits of these approaches, I wonder if we might be wise to help teachers, already in the school system, improve their game in the way that other professionals do – meeting in teams to discuss strategizing, taking time to visit classes taught by other teachers, having other teachers regularly visit one’s own classes, having master teachers serving as coaches and mentors to budding teachers. These measures might increase schools personnel budgets by 10% or even 20%. But the payoff for students could be enormous.

And, with teachers learning from each other, the classroom might just become a bit less of a lonely place.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/opinion/kristof-the-value-of-teachers.html