playing cultural limbo

It was a pretty typical Saturday night compared to my life in America - I sat in a living room decorated with homemade art, sipping wine from a teacup and eating guac with fifteen or so ex-pats who now call Phnom Penh (the capital city) their home.

Urged on by the wine and the mild social anxiety that comes from being in a room full of mostly strangers, I began to strike up a couple of conversations with the people sitting next to me - reasonably hip, interesting, mainly European or American millennials working and living comfortably in the city. We talked about Cambodia, about jobs and Phnom Penh – comparing experiences and motivations, placed we’ve travelled and places we hope to go. Interesting, fun conversation, right?

For the ‘old me’, whatever that nebulous phrase implies.

Old me? What does that even mean anyways?

The ‘old me’ would be in her element - engaged and interested in these topics and people. However, for some reason, I couldn’t help but feel disengaged. I had to make conscious effort to try to be present in the conversation and come up with the right questions, the right replies – fake interest, consciously hold back the eye-rolls and judgment.

What the hell was the matter with me? I’ve never been so socially disengaged with my own people. And these are definitely ‘my people’ – open-minded adventurers and motivated do-gooders all sharing a common experience of living in an entirely different culture halfway across the world.

After maybe the third of these conversations had fizzled out, I was itching to talk to the hip-looking Khmer girl sitting near me. I’m not exactly sure what drew me to her – maybe it was the fact that nobody dressed that ‘urban’ in the village and she was therefore sort of an enigma to me – but I felt far more at ease and comfortable speaking to her in a mix of Khmer and English than the others, even though we speaking about largely the same topics as before.

What’s shifted?

When I arrived in Cambodia, I was uncomfortable around Khmer people; I didn’t really understand them - not just the language, but the culture and the Khmer way of thinking and behaving. I craved the company of my own fellow Americans – they made sense to me, we could relate on a deep, familiar level.

my Americans, month 2 in Cambodia - we still have no idea what's going on

Seven months later, why is it that I now naturally gravitate towards Khmer people and feel out of place with ex-pats? Is it me being an attention whore, loving when urban Khmer people compliment me on my language? Or is because it subconsciously fulfills my need to differentiate myself in a sea of ex-pats that can’t speak Khmer?

Maybe a little of both. But I think, more than anything, that it’s because I’ve integrated into Khmer culture just by living and working in my little village in Pursat for so long. Being surrounded by only Khmer people day in and day out, communicating and working mainly in Khmer language, hanging out with Khmer friends and family, teaching in Khmer…. Spelling it out like that makes it seem pretty obvious, but day-to-day, the scales tip almost imperceptibly until I am confronted with a direct challenge to my cultural identity such as at that party in Phnom Penh.

A lot of the time, it doesn’t feel like I’ve integrated at all. At site in semi-rural Pursat, I still stumble through awkward cultural interactions every day – whether it’s not understanding when someone is asking me a question, being unable to join a group conversation because I can’t keep up, being misunderstood, or misunderstanding the actions of others. I’m still ‘different’; I’m still ‘the American’. I still do things a little differently than most.

Yet sometimes, I feel totally integrated. I can sit down and have an ideological conversation. I can nyam bai and ankoy leng (eat rice and hang out) with the best of them. I even wear my matching floral village pajamas proudly instead of ironically. Sometimes, I’m extremely proud of how far I’ve come, despite the many stumbles every day.

still my original squad

some of the host family

I seem to exist in a sort of cultural limbo – not quite Khmer, not quite Western.

Let’s tack on another complication to this weird in-between state. To be quite honest, I live with a far different standard of living then the ex-pats in Phnom Penh and my friends and family back home. I deal with far different issues every day – concerning both personal challenges and community challenges. It’s extremely difficult for me to relate to the people that are living in the western bubble of Phnom Penh. Yes, they also live in Cambodia, but they work for NGOs in offices with air conditioning and toilet paper, they don’t need to speak Khmer in their jobs or every day life, they eat delicious western food at Southeast Asia prices, travel often… Same country, completely different experiences.

this is me pretending to be hip and urban but actually it's all a charade

I’m finding myself feeling increasingly alienated even with close my friends and family back home. As I attempt to somewhat keep up with their life happenings, I find myself not able to be as engaged and interested as before, similar to the experience at the party in Phnom Penh. Don’t get me wrong – I love to hear about what’s going on in their life. But living here in my village, largely isolated from participating in the Western world (with the exception of social media) has the effect of minimizing the experiences and challenges of people back home. This feeling is compounded by my own unique and difficult experience as well as being surrounded by a community that has many challenges that profoundly affect quality of living – challenges that most Americans will not ever have to face.

I nod, I laugh, I ask questions and I engage with my friends and family– but yet, it doesn’t quite feel authentic, and I’m sorry for that. I don’t know if you can sense it too. I’m good at faking it. There now exists a disconnect, a widening chasm between you and me that will slowly grow and expand over the next year and a half as I engage deeper in my community and my work and as you live out your life in the US – full of perfectly legitimate joys and challenges. Different experiences, but legitimate all the same, no matter how my gut reaction tells me to judge it.

In the Peace Corps, integration into your host culture and community is held up as the ultimate goal. The key to success, the top of the pyramid of Peace Corps living. But what they don’t tell you is that it comes at a price – leaving behind your friends and family, not just physically but also emotionally. That’s why they say that coming home is often more difficult than arriving in your host country.

For now, however, I’ll just enjoy my Saturday nights spent in the village with a cold bucket shower, Netflix in my mosquito net, and lights out by 9 or 9:30.

home (and Mai)