When I’m in Cambodia, I’m from Seattle. This is because Puyallup may have the 7th largest fair in North America, but most people who ask where I’m from in the States have no idea where “Pu – ALL – up?” is. When I mention my hometown I normally received a raised eyebrow or two and then quickly change my answer to Tacoma. Even then, that doesn’t always do the trick. So until Puyallup gets its act together and does something besides welcome Weird Al, Chicago, and Adam Lambert to the grandstand once a year, Seattle it is.
Regardless of which of these three western Washington cities I call home, one thing they have in common is the rain. The cold, windy rainfall is not something I’ve been missing, thanks to the Cambodian rainy season. I love it here. You can ride your bike in shorts and a tank top in the middle of an afternoon downpour. You have to wear sunglasses sometimes, since the sun is shining while it rains. Sandals are the best option, since they don’t take time to dry and you wear them everyday anyway. The splashing water that hits the pedaling calves and shins is bathwater warm. Heaven.
So when I returned to drenched Siem Reap after a week in bone-dry Phnom Penh, my first evening was spent standing curbside with my backpack amide a half dozen tuk-tuk drivers who were doing the normal Khmer tuk-tuk driver thing: watching the world go by and occasionally pointing out a ridiculously dressed foreigner, talking about what they had for lunch, or (my favorite) pulling up their shirt to expose their brown bellies to alleviate the heat. But this wasn’t a quick “I’m waiting for my tuk-tuk driver to come get me so I’ll wait along the side of the road” stint like normal. Instead it was, “There are literally 8 tuk-tuk drivers standing with me and none of them are capable of getting their moto’s engines through the overflowing river that’s imposed itself along downtown’s busiest intersection.” The one intersection, of course, that requires crossing in order for me to get to my guesthouse.
It’s here, while waiting for my tuk-tuk to come, that the comparison surfaces. It’s in the following days that the similarities concrete themselves in my mind so that I find myself mentioning to a fellow volunteer that I feel like it should be Christmas.
The rain in Cambodia is the same as snow in Puyallup, Tacoma, or Seattle. Children play in the streets – instead of sleds, toddlers float downstream in buckets. Older boys harass each other by wrestling in the 2.5 foot deep water, and bicyclists have to dismount in order to trudge through the murky flow. Coconuts bobble on the surface like buoys and occasionally a flip flop will slip off from underfoot and is quickly located by scrambling the streets’ surface with both hands before it drifts too far.
The main similarity, and the one I first noticed, was the way traffic stops, people stand along the street, and as a community, just watch the wackos on motos attempt to get through the half mile flooded area. It doesn’t matter where you were planning on going, or how important your task was – when there’s an overflowing river and motos have to be pushed through the tides, it’s easiest to just stop, sit on your moto, and watch the world (try to) go by. The motos that attempt to gain distance seem to compete with one another to see how far they can progress before a certain engine part (I’m no mechanic) gets too drenched to keep the engine alive. Then the march of man and moto begin when he hops off slowly, covertly glancing around to see how many bystanders witnessed his defeat.
I am reminded of the glorious snow days in school, and how on some winter evenings I’d accompany my father to the road in front of our house. If the snow had already fallen and the roads were coated, we’d stroll a ways in each direction, testing the road’s iciness to predict tomorrow’s chance of school cancellation. He’d listen to me coax him into talking about how sure he was the weather was so bad that school would certainly be canceled the next day. We’d stand and stare at the occasional car that passed, assessing its movement and commenting on how snow-ready its make and model was (I mentioned I was in the company of my father, right?).
Although the temperature and weather conditions are a bit dissimilar, when I trek in the knee deep water to the EGBOK Mission office with other volunteers, we make these (slightly) comparable observations, “Uh oh. Looks like he’ll have to take his entire family of 5 off the moto and make them walk!” Or, “Did you realize the crocodile farm is right next door to us? Can we assume that the crocodile’s caretakers will leash them up or something?” My favorite is the questions that’s swept through town; every tuk tuk driver, hotel bellboy, and coffee shop waiter isn’t content until they ask, “Lady, can you swim? You swim with me?” And instead of listing the dozen reasons why I’d never consider it (the leaking sewage, for one), I just smile and say, “Not today. But thanks anyway.”
Walking in it every day with the brown water splashing up to my mid-thigh isn’t the most ideal daily routine. But, it’s rainy season in Cambodia. And in 3 months when I’m standing outside the road in Puyallup with my father anticipating the evening’s snowfall, I’ll remember these similarities. But for now, I’ll keep trudging with my bicycle in tow, listening to the teenage boys screaming like girls as they splash one another and playfully attempt to aim their splashes in my direction. There’s higher ground somewhere, and I hope it’s close by.
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