Showers and Spiders, Ducks or Dogs

This evening I took a shower...which doesn’t sound like a big deal.

The shower is in an outhouse behind the house, and it is in combo with the toilet...

The first one to take a shower was Mr. V...which wasn't a good sign.  Then Kyle showered and told us ALL about it.  "There were spiders all over the walls…the stench is almost unbearable…, there's nowhere to put your clothes…” etc. etc. etc.

After dinner it was my turn.  The first mishap came because it was dark, and I couldn’t see everything clearly. I stepped right in the middle of about three inches of thick black mud, which during the dry season isn't a good sign.

After that it got better...there were no spiders to be seen, only little fleas that bit your feet.  There was a barrel in the corner with a dipper in it and a spigot hanging above it.  The logical thing to do was to hang my clothes on the spigot, and everything went smoothly from there. It felt pretty good after dripping (literally) for the entire day. No towel, so the clothes go on and you're set.  Then you start sweating again.  Somehow I don't really mind the humidity.  I've gotten used to the heat, and it is actually rather pleasant.  I thought I was doing pretty good till I looked in the mirror...no Cambodian sweats like that...

Every culture has its dinner habits...and I've been learning a few recently.  (Don't worry...I'll lose them at the border).  This morning we were eating breakfast and I noticed that there were little piles of napkins under the tables.  We asked Pr. V. about it and he said that the napkin customs vary from region to region...some places they just throw them under the table, others leave them on the table.  Apparently the government decided that there should be trashcans under the tables, and there were.  But few it seemed, took any heed.  According to Pr.V. the store owners don't tell customers otherwise because then they won’t come back.

All the meals in this village have been on the floor which is VERY clean as nobody even wears their shoes inside. Tonight at dinner I noticed that the man across from me was piling a neat stack of little bones on the floor. (they’d served duck and all the little bones were in it; they do the same with the fish, except some of the bones are so small you can barely see them--I ended up with a an entire mouthful of minute skewers in my mouth at lunch, and the only thing to do then is to chew them up :-) . There was an interesting mix up with the duck...quite a few people here speak a smattering of English, but they put different emphasis on the words and say the vowels differently, so it makes for some funny conversations. One of the men pointed to one bowl, "this is duck", and to another similar dish "and this is dog".  It took quite a bit of discussing before we were able to determine that they were both the same and both duck. There are multitudes of scrawny dogs running around and, well, I've also got an active imagination...

We walked through a local market today and bought fish and cucumbers. The cucumbers were incredibly sweet, easily dessert, and were very fresh. They also served papaya--the best I've ever tasted.

A couple hours after we arrived at this village, after leaving Phnom Penh this morning and visiting another village on the way, there was a meeting with a number of other men from the area.  Some of it was translated, and it seemed to be a combination of ministry reports (to Vibol, who is the main pastor all over Cambodia); and testimony of what the Lord has done and is doing through them.  Prayer times were interspersed.  They have two different kinds of prayer here: the more formal kind, where one person prays, and another kind, where everyone prays at once.  They open these prayers with “Alleluia”, and repeat it several times in the first few words of their prayer. It's like a symphony of praise and worship and request being raised up to the Throne: dynamic, living and breathing prayer, and each person puts different tones and emphasis on their words, so it is not at all a cacophony.