Giving Thanks

I grew up in the US celebrating Thanksgiving. While I don’t consider it my favorite holiday, it does hold a special place for its role of breaking the ‘holiday fast’. The three big ones for my whole family to celebrate together are Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. With Thanksgiving arriving more than 7 months after Easter festivities are wrapped up, I’m usually feeling pretty excited to celebrate again and eat a lot of good food when November comes around every year.

On that note, Thanksgiving also typically provides my favorite selection of holiday food, so I’m not shy with portions. The same was true this year as we celebrated a very traditional American Thanksgiving with the whole MCC Cambodia team complete with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato casserole (my contribution with some help from Shepher), rolls, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, corn, roasted carrots, pumpkin pie, apple pie and pumpkin cookies. It was special to be able to have a taste of home while also sharing those traditions with a lot of people who were participating in their first Thanksgiving meal.

One of the things I missed most from this first major holiday away from home was going around the table with my family and naming something we were each thankful for. Almost as if sensing this, the MCC Cambodia reps hosting the meal set up a ‘gratitude tree’ with the help of their two energetic and enthusiastic children for everyone to write some item of thanks on a paper leaf to add to the tree. Maybe a new tradition for my family in the future.

Origins of the American Thanksgiving tradition are rightly controversial, but in the best light it is a time to celebrate things we are thankful for and the abundant harvest as the growing season closes and ushers in the cold bearness of winter. While there is unfortunately for me no frost to welcome here in Cambodia (we are currently in the cold season and it still reaches 90 most days), there is a parallel in the harvest season as the rainy season draws to an end and rice comes ready to harvest. All around me for the past month, fields that were a soft green fuzz when I arrived in September suddenly jumped to golden yellow one after the other. Heavy heads of rice pull the tops of the stalks towards the ground, threatening to topple the plant when the wind blows or in a heavy rain.

This incidentally has been a major problem in Cambodia with damaged rice crops in the age of climate change, especially this year. Late season rains knock down whole fields of rice, leaving them sitting in the water beneath the usually efficient grasp of the combines dotting the landscape during harvest season. This leaves the both labor- and time-intensive option of harvesting by hand as was traditionally done in the whole country until the adoption of combines a little over a decade ago, or losing the crop. Once predictable rains no longer follow such a precise schedule, proving a major challenge for such sensitive agriculture as rain-dependent rice production. In a province where 97% of people rely on agriculture for their primary source of income, climate change poses a significant threat to nearly everyone. Though supposedly well into the dry season here, storms still slide across the sky more days than not, their damage conflicting with the beauty and drama they often bring to the evening sky.

I have really enjoyed being able to participate in the local rice harvest with my family and community in a number of ways. From helping to collect hay in the field behind the combine, to spreading the rice to dry in the sun, to jostling for position with a bunch of kids running in the mud behind the plow to grab fish, there are a lot of moments recently when I have been welcomed to jump in and experience the process. There have also been a lot of moments when I take a break from helping to grab my camera to photograph whatever is happening. Some of my favorite experiences here so far have been when I come home from work in the evening, and with the 30 minutes or so of sunlight left in the day I go out walking with my camera to see what my neighbors are doing. Recently this has been a lot of work in the fields with the harvest. At the bottom of this post you can find some of the photos from the past several weeks, primarily of the harvest.

On a different note, for the first time since I moved in with my host family nearly three months ago, I had the privilege of helping to host some visitors. I’ve done a bit of traveling to visit my friends based in Phnom Penh, but until just over a week ago, only the MCCers responsible for setting up my assignment had been out to see my home and workplace. Just over a week ago, nearly the entire MCC team took a trip out of the city to both visit me here and some MCC work happening in Prey Veng town about an hour from where I live. While visiting Mesang, I had the chance to accompany them with some of my coworkers to an ODOV farm with a fishpond and garden and give a tour and overview of my office and work placement. My host family also graciously offered to host the group for lunch, so all 15 guests had the privilege to experience my host family’s abundant hospitality and food.

Later that day, we climbed a local mountain near the Mekong River called Ba Phnom (‘Hill of the Ancestors’), visited the family home of another MCC employee, and finally ended up at our guesthouse in Prey Veng town for the night. Ba Phnom, as the only point of significant elevation in the region at approximately 425 ft at the summit, compared with the average elevation of Prey Veng province at 30 ft, it was pretty stunning to get such a panoramic view of the landscape I have adopted as a new home for the year. The visit to my coworker’s family home also fanned a spark in my mind to become a permaculture fruit farmer.

After a fun and eventful day in Prey Veng town the next day, two fellow YALTers, Sarah and Ladai, came back with me to my home to get the full Mesang experience for the weekend. It was so much fun to be able to spend time with friends in my own home setting and give them a taste of life in the countryside. (The word for countryside in Khmer, srok srae, means literally the ‘ricefield district’). We took a long walk into town where I showed them a lot of the places I eat breakfast and lunch, buy snacks, go shopping, etc. They also helped my family move lots of rice back and forth as it was drying, went fishing with me and my little cousin, ate meals with my family, and just relaxed in the fresh breezy air away from the congestion and noise of the city. It felt a little odd to speak English and communicate freely with someone actually present in my own house, one of the first times that has been an option here.

There is certainly a lot to be thankful for here, and I do my best to remember that both on days where everything feels easy and on the days when it doesn’t. Over the next few weeks I look forward to some projects in the field at ODOV I will be participating in and the cooler mornings that I have begun to wake up to. Additionally, while I expect the holiday season to bring some thoughts of missed family gatherings and traditions, I’m excited to celebrate Christmas and New Years with my host family, coworkers, and YALT friends in new ways.

Below are some of the photos from the past few weeks...