Kampuchea Noir 2

Episode 2! Enjoy.

Kampuchea Noir 2

Amanda

Cooking Success!

   After my failed cooking attempts have been recorded on this blog, I need to redeem myself with stories of cooking triumphs. 

“She can be taught!”

So while success stories do not have nearly enough drama to make an interesting tale, they do bring fond memories to mind, and tasty food to the lunch…bowl. 

Cooking story #1: Tacos.  Tacos are super easy, even for this girl.  Everything was washed thoroughly and cut properly (ok, Maak helped out with the cutting) and the meat ended up being pork.  The pork was actually kind of fried and then taco seasoning was added.  I showed the host fam how we eat tacos (in hard shells purchased in Phnom Penh) and won rave reviews.  Ok, well not really.  My host mom liked them, but the boys didn’t.  She told me that it was an expensive meal to make though, mostly because the taco shells were like $6 from the supermarket and everything else added up to about $1.  She was right. 

Cooking story #2: Eggplant Marinara – This lunch is pretty self explanatory.  I got some eggplant from a stand nearby, marinara is a purchase from the city (Phnom Penh, as it happens) and the grocery store, and I chopped some onions because I figured that with only two ingredients I couldn't call it “cooking” – that’s just “mixing”.  Anyway, the sliced eggplant, together with marinara sauce, ended up quite delicious.  And if you’re wondering if marinara sauce keeps for the next day with no refrigeration, no, it does not. 

Cooking story #3: Pumpkin Soup!  Very exciting to attempt, even if it is just soup.  For this one, I had less than an idea of how to go about making soup from pumpkins, much less what other kinds of ingredients to include or how to begin a recipe.  So I used my problem-solving, highly educated, 21^st century American brain: I googled it.  Google gave me a few recipes on how to make pumpkin soup using actual pumpkins, and I had to modify the recipe because when I tried to make pumpkin soup, I didn’t have any butter…or spices…or anything but pumpkin, canned milk, and carrots on hand.  So it goes.  It was delicious.  Also I would have eaten pumpkin-anything at that point. 

And of course, there are the baking items.  Baking, I can do.  Baking is pretty exact, requires instructions and measuring and order. Baking is fun and easy and not like cooking.  Thanks to the toaster oven gifted to me by a K5 Volunteer who left, baking is relatively easy.  I have successfully only made muffins though, because when the angel food cake was attempted, I tried to improvise and add cocoa powder, vanilla powder, and cinnamon.  Not all in the same cake.  Not even the boys would eat it.  But they do like chocolate chip muffins *fist pump*.

I asked my parents what they thought about my self-depiction of cooking debacles on my blog.

Supermom tried to be generous, “You don’t portray yourself as bad at cooking so much as accident prone!”

Fair enough, I do go through a lot of band-aids. 

xo-Amanda

Names

     The funniest thing about names is that though we call them our own, answer to them, and believe them inherently ours, they do not come from us; names are given to us by our parents or guardians.  Through names, the first name that is chosen for us and the last name that is inherited, we are claimed.  In American culture, people generally have a “given name” (of which mine, for example, is “Amanda”), and a family name (of which mine is “Arand”) commonly passed down via the patriarch –  because we are a patriarchal society.

     Sometimes people are named after others – handed a family name as a given name or a name passed down from Grandma or Grandpa.  Sometimes it is from the baby book.  I can’t begin to imagine how new or not-so-new parents might go through the choosing process.  All I know is that my two names are two letters off of each other and that when I was in college and writing fast, sometimes I accidentally wrote, “Amanda Aranda.”  What a great conversation starter with the Professor.  Thanks Mom and Dad. 

     Other quirks with names come when one moves to a society or different language.  For example, when I was in college, I studied abroad in Athens, Greece, and no matter what I said to Greeks, no matter how many times I repeated my name, they forever called me, “Amina.”  My roommate happened to be standing next to me when one of these encounters took place. 

"Πώς σε λένε;" (pos se llene?)(“What is your name?”)

“Amanda.”

“Amina?”

“Amanda.”

“Amina?”

“OK.” 

     I embraced it. So did my roommate.  After learning a bit of modern Greek I came to find that the hard “d” sound isn’t actually in the Greek alphabet (delta is actually pronounced like “thelta” – the “th” soft as in “the”…but Greek lessons are for another day) and so whose fault was it if they didn’t have the letters of my name in their alphabet?  Alphabet reconstructions are for another day, when I have more time on my hands. 

     Added names-I, for example, have a baptismal name and a confirmation name-are added in for good measure (I suppose) to show the world that we are otherwise involved in a religion, have passed a certain age, or have hit some other sort of mark in the world.  Sometimes people receive new names when they pass from one family to another, are adopted or married.  Sometimes they choose new names for themselves.  Whatever the reason, a change in a name can signify a change in a life, or a change in the surroundings of a person.

     For most people, names are important.  They identify us.  They are how we identify ourselves.  People don’t go around trading names willy nilly.  Oftentimes this indicates that something is wrong, or someone is not who they say they are.  We guard our names from people we don’t trust or for protection.  Names are incredibly personal. 

     In fact, in a study on attention – the dichotic listening test, (I just got out of school, remember?…or something like that, so I figure I can cite journal articles – check out this MSU journal article or Arciuli 2011) people who were told to concentrate on what they were being told in one ear were always distracted by their names spoken into their other ear, but not by more conversation or a switch in languages from English to German.  They could concentrate on anything they were told to (it's called, "selective attention" or "the Cocktail Party Effect"), but were always distracted by hearing their own names.  People like hearing their own names. 

Why am I telling you all of this?

    To remind you that names are important, that’s all, no matter what culture you are in.  When so much of your identity changes, it’s nice to fall back on something that’s not supposed to: your name. 

     In Khmer culture, like many Asian cultures, the family names come first.  So if I were a Khmer person (which I am mistaken for more often than not, here), my name would be Arand Amanda.  But in Cambodia, my name is not “Amanda,” “Arand,” “Amanda Arand” or even “Arand Amanda,” it is “ManDAAH.” 

     Something that I found very interesting and was explained to me when Diana visited, was a quirk of the language involving names: to preface a name with “Aaahhh” (as in Ahhh-manda) is endearing to a person when said by someone older than them.  So that means that my host mom or HCD might call me Ahh-man-DAAH and that would be completely acceptable (indeed, it’s even my name) but if one of my host brothers were to call me Ahh-man-DAAH, instead of “Bong” (the respectful term for “older sister”) or even “Bong Man-DA” (which they sometimes resort to) it would be considered rude.  Therefore my name, Amanda, is not entirely proper in Cambodia due to the first syllable – but only for people younger than me.  Likewise, my host mom has called Diana, “Ahh-Dian-AAh” because adding in that extra “Ahhh” is kind of like nicknaming a person you like who is younger than you.  I think.

    

     A Khmer nickname isn't so bad.  I have gotten used to both versions.  In fact, I have decided that more than anything, it signifies my acceptance into my community; assimilation and integration. 

     During the last wedding season I learned that the people of my village think that my name is Da.  As in, they think my full name is “Man Da” – my family name being “Man,” and my given name being “Da.”  More than one wedding invitation I received in which the person was able to write in English was addressed to “Man.Da.”  Interesting.   I have been adopted and renamed. 

     One afternoon Man Kheang, Sokchea, Mea, and their friends asked me about English and American culture and I explained to them that in America and many other Western cultures, we do not use hierarchical names or greetings, and that the family name goes second; the two names are dtawh-dto (swapped). 

They spent the next few days walking around, calling me “Da Man.” 

I couldn't object.

xo-Amanda