Scenes from Life in Cambodia

This week I went to the hairdresser here for the first time. It was really an experience. My friend, Donna Rudy had given me the name of hairdresser she used while she lived here. The shop is in a section of town frequented by tourists and the customers are mostly foreigners. I had reached the stage where I tell my hairdresser in Philadelphia, "I look like a shaggy dog. I need a haircut."

While they were shampooing me, they gave me a facial. They wiped my face with a wet cloth and laid strips of cucumber on me. "Hey! I smell like a salad!" After a few minutes they took off the cucumber and wiped my face again with another wet cloth. Then they did a facial massage that was absolutely delicious. Interestingly, the man in the chair net next to me was also getting the full treatment.

The lady in charge cut my hair and did a good job. When she finished she rubbed mousse into my hair and blow dried it so it came out a bit more boffant than I'd have liked. "Oh, my goodness! This is how my mother used to wear her hair. I don't want to look like my mother!!!"

When she finished my hair the next team came along and did an arm, shoulder and back massage that utterly revived me and calmed me down to the point that I didn't even complain about wearing my mother's hairdo. The cost of all this treatment? Beyond the budget of most Cambodians, but for foreigners it's a real bargain: $8.00.


I don't speak Cambodian but I gather that this is a culture in which everyone needs a title. I volunteer an afternoon a week with the Evangelical Fellowship of Cambodia and the woman I'm working with asked what she ought to call me. "Call me Cora." "Yes, but what title should I give you? Mother, aunt, sister..." "Call me sister."

All this would explain the greeting that I get from the guys who work in the furniture refinishing shop down the street from where I live: "Hello, Mama!" I learned years ago in Kenya that "Mama" is a title of respect used for any woman older than one''s self.The first time a Kenyan called me "Mama" I wondered who on earth he thought I was. Here in Cambodian culture I don't freak out any more.


One of the sad things about being here is seeing all the poverty. There are beggars everywhere and they are quite agressive and persistent. The saddest thing is to see the children who beg for a living. Co workers tell me that there are organziations of beggars and the kids are beaten and required to go out and beg. Sometimes there is a mother with children begging on the street. They camp out in front of restaurants frequented by tourists. If you sit at a sidewalk table, they realyly get up close and personal. In the neighborhood where the hairdresser is located there are disabled people begging, children, mothers with babies, the gamut. While I was having my hair cut some beggar kids were playing with a bike parked outside the shop and doing who knows what else and one of the employees of the shop grabbed, of all things a feather duster, ran outside and chased them down the street. The other evening as I was buying fruit in the open market two elderly ladies came along begging. The lady selling fruit gave them a handful of fruit, then the ladies turned to me to beg silently with hands in what we would call a "praying position". I said "No". The fruit seller said, "But these ladies are very poor." (And I've seen them sitting on the sidewalk in the shade, counting their money.)


There is a lot of crime and corruption here. It's everywhere. Sometimes it comes out in unusual ways. At 5:00 a.m. on Sunday the electricity went off. When the ceiling fan in my room stopped I knew the electricity had quit. We were without power for the whole day--the only house in the neighborhood so deprived. The landlord came and brought an electrician, who tried to find the source of the problem. Finally it was obvious: Someone had cut and stolen our power line.