Sanitation Brigade: The Introduction

The last ten days have been jam packed and I mean this in the best possible way.  I’m not going to lie, a good amount of my time spent here is what you would expect; reading, writing, pool, smoothies and occasional forays into the surrounding urban jungle from which I emerge sweating, slightly rattled and bearing hard won bags of tropical fruit (meaning that I bought them in a market where I did the least amount of bartering possible).  However, this past week I had a unique opportunity to expand my expat horizons, upon which I packed up my bag and saddled myself for an adventure.  Little did I know what was in store!  Crocodiles, floating gardens, giant sleeping Buddhas, sacred phalluses, huge toilets, no toilets, bright red bananas, and of course, tons of other fruit, floating houses, temples in jungles…the list goes on.  “What’s this?” you ask.  “Has the Zilla been participating in ritualistic fruit orgies?”  No indeed, friends.  But I did go out into the field with my father and his team of intrepid environmental cohorts.  Armed with clip boards and extensive biological and ecological engineering knowledge and waste water treatment techniques, we set off to the floating village of Prek Toal in Battambang Province.  Actually, I have no background other than what I’ve been exposed to as the daughter of a scientist in ecological engineering and economics.  I didn’t even get to hold a clip board.  But I did get to meet my 2^nd cousin Alexandra and her husband Rick, have some seriously surreal experiences, and watch/kinda sorta (not really) help out my dad.

                I want to share everything that happened, but to do that is going to require a 4 part blog special to which this will be the introduction and I’ll jump into it by laying out a bit of background about my father and what he and his team at Wetlands Work! Ltd are all about…

                Most of my childhood memories of Papa Zilla, when he was not wolfing down a hamburger or exclaiming excitedly about some supposedly rare and fascinating insect species he had stumbled upon and insisted on showing me (and then preserving in the freezer), are of a serious man at a desk covered with manila folders, loose paper and various texts books, all scattered about like offerings to the gods of higher education.  Perhaps absently rubbing a temple and adjusting the thin gold wiring of his glasses while his eyes flicked back and forth over a now monolithic computer screen.  My father’s dissertation took him, and occasionally my mother and I, to all over Southeast Asia.  Often he was there during times when it wasn’t safe to be anybody, let alone a foreigner.  In the 90s, when the Khmer Rouge still operated in scattered pockets, taking pot shots at passing boats from the dense wet foliage of the river banks, my father would travel between two guards commissioned by the UN, armed with AK-47s an rocket propelled grenade launchers, to wade into the wetlands and collect water and plant samples for his work.  His Ph.D. took him my childhood, but when completed, it was a five hundred page tome, intensively thorough and impervious to contradiction or further questioning.  It was the first of such work on the Tonle Sap flood plains and he dedicated it to his only child and daughter.

                In 2006, my father made Cambodia his permanent home, working as a consultant for a conservation agency and establishing Wetlands Work! Ltd in 2010, a social entrepreneurial business dedicated to the preservation of wetlands and their usage in sustainable and affordable waste water treatment.  Wetlands are nature’s water filtration system.  The bacteria that live on the roots eat the potentially dangerous bacteria introduced to bodies of water by human and animal excrement.  For the large populations of people living off the water in Cambodia, who fish, bathe, cook, clean and play in the same water in which they are forced to poop due to a lack of basic infrastructure, safe water is an essential issue.  Higher and condensed population areas + decimation of natural wetlands and ecological systems mean more disease and death, especially among children.  This is the meat Wetlands Work! chews, spits out and presents with a cost effective and minimally maintained solution.

Primary School in the Floating Village

And so, last Thursday (or perhaps it was the Thursday before that) we packed lightly, hopped on a bus to Siem Reap where we then met up with Rick and Alex who had been teaching children English in a nearby village before heading off to the floating village of Prek Toal where a water treatment option was sorely needed.  And thus, epicness ensued…

For more info and updates about cool people doing cool things, here's the link to Wetlands Work! on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/WetlandsWork

Join me next time for Part 1 of 4: Sanitation Brigade; Saving the Wetlands One Shit at a Time!

*There is a prevalent and ritualistic usage of phalluses and vulvas (the carving of which is called a "Yoni") in religious ceremonies among the Khmer.  These structures are called “Lingas” whereby water, after it has been poured on top of the phallus and flowed out through the yoni, is made holy.  In one of the sites in the Angkor Temple complex, on a river bed under the water, are 1000 carvings of lingas, making all the river water that flows over them and downstream sacred.

One Baby Zilla Stomp at a Time

I have been traveling back and forth from the United States to Southeast Asia for most of my life.  My mother, father, and I moved to Patumthani, right outside of Bangkok in 1995.  We lived on the Asian Institute of Technology campus where my father could further pursue his doctorate on the system dynamics of the Mekong River.  We were back in the States little more than a year later but would return sporadically during winters and summers with my father making his home in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, in 2006.

                Though I have visited my father on extended trips as often as possible, this stay is different.  Previously, timid and intimidated, I would try to hide my tall frame and blond hair behind the welcome figure of a chaperon.  Trips to the market were in the company of my father’s former wife or one of her employees who would direct, translate and deflect Khmer and customs from their shy, awkward charge.  I would like to say that at 22 years old, educated, tested and tried, that my first inclination is no longer to withdraw to the background, that I have outgrown my awkwardness and embrace opportunities for exploration with relish.  And to a certain extent this is true, but it is an on-going process…

                I transferred my junior year of high school to Deerfield Academy, where, it seemed, the cultural and circumstantial shift brought to the surface latent and subcutaneous tendencies.  Supremely uncomfortable with myself and my environment, I barely spoke, avoided eye contact and emanated disdain in a desperate attempt to defend myself from…from what?  From seeing my own self-dislike reflected back at me, I suppose.  Needless to say, junior year sucked ass.

                But it is not human nature to give up on ourselves.  Our journeys, while varied and unique, have a common thread of redemption and as my depression grew, so did the unwavering and ever-present voice that attested to my value and inherent self-worth rise from a whisper to a shout and from a shout to action.

                My senior year at Deerfield, I made the conscious decision to jolt myself from my self-imposed protective layers.  I registered for acting class, a creative writing workshop in which personal work is exposed and critiqued, tried out for the school play and got a job at the school grill.  Anything and everything to force myself from my shell.  It was terrifying, and for a time predicable panic attacks and discomfort ensued.  Slowly but surely, I started engaging with other students and faculty.  It was a slow process during which I often had to remind myself to smile and to respond to polite inquiries with polite inquiries of my own.  At first, this felt forced and unnatural.  Opening to people, even marginally, means giving them the opportunity to reject you.  But I found that being genuine, or at least on a path towards a semblance of it, feels so much better than imposed isolation, that it is worth any risk.

                For my senior meditation, I wrote an intensely personal essay detailing parts of the upheaval of a period of my life before Deerfield which I titled, “Waiting to Breathe.”  It was selected by a panel to be read during a school meeting at the end of the year.  I remember walking up to the podium, shaking, sweating, afraid I would stutter or sneeze or cough or not be perfect and I remember afterwards the silence and then the slow clapping and the standing ovation as well as the tears of some of the faculty to whom I was closest.  I realized in that moment and in that being of connectedness and sharing with my school, that my fear and loneliness had been my choice, as had been my acceptance.

What this boils down to and what I’m trying to convey, is the lesson that I’m continuously learning wherever I go and whatever I do.  A lesson in vulnerability and the power we choose to give our self-judgments.  That above all, there is a pervasive fear of being vulnerable.  That our judgments of ourselves are so harsh that we remain closed or only parcel out genuine pieces of who we are in certain circumstances to certain people as if love is a limited resources only accorded to a worthy few.  And yet, it is only when we let go of who we think we should be and share ourselves, only when we let ourselves be excruciatingly, devastatingly vulnerable, do we find that we are, in fact, invulnerable.  The only harm we are capable of is blocking our natural state; that of sharing.  Of loving and being loved.  When we allow ourselves the possibility of being vulnerable, we allow ourselves to truly live.  What we are is not subject to the destruction and shame we fear we are hiding in the recesses of our mind.

                Whew!  So, what does this have to do with Phnom Penh and adventures in general?  Well, I want to go to the market on my own.  I want to travel independently.  I stick out like a sore thumb and have little to no grasp of the language.  Self-confidence and the ability to handle confrontation with grace and skill (essentials for bargaining and getting around in a foreign country) are attributes I’m in the on-going process of building.  But I know that being afraid is something you learn how to deal with.  It isn’t something that goes away and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable takes practice and the willingness to experience discomfort.  So here I go, off into uncertainty one baby Zilla stomp at a time, armed only with the readiness to look silly, get lost and have fun doing it.  Here’s to vulnerability and the courage to fail.

Language Class, Cooking Class and Markets! Oh My!

A great way to ease into Cambodian culture, or any foreign culture, and meet new people while you're at it, is to take a class.  I was lucky enough that one of my dad's staff members introduced me to LINK--the Language Institute of Natural Khmer (naturalkhmer.com).  What's especially special about this nifty joint, besides the friendly teachers and $4 price of admission for a 50 minute class, is their method of teaching, a la Rosetta Stone, for those of familiar with the popular software.  Basically, at least in the beginner class, no one is allowed to speak Khmer, except for the instructors who speak only Khmer.  For the duration of the class period, they communicate with you; miming, telling stories and using pictures.

My awesome teachers and the white board full of drawings!

This splendid debacle gets you used to the rhythm and unique tonal system of the language as your subconscious picks up and stores visual cues and associations with the sounds.  This is all based on the premise that we learn languages by listening not speaking.  A choice of course that can be corroborated by babies everywhere.  Bonus point: the miming, stories and white board illustrations quickly descend (or rise) to hilarity.  Case-in-point, my female Khmer instructor miming laying an egg complete with clucking (and much straining--she really got into it).

Beware! In every class you get some asshole who insists on practicing the little Khmer he knows.  Unfortunately one of these creatures was sitting right next to me, ever so helpfully nudging me with his elbow and translating for the teacher in a whisper, "she's asking you when your birthday is," and "that means chicken."  Why, those of you who know me ask, did I not verbally castrate and/or create physical space between this Helpful Henry and myself?  Well, for one thing, I didn't want to disrupt the class.  And for another, he is my father.*

This is honestly the most fun I've ever had in a language class.  Just don't bring your parents with you.  Kidding!  Honest, I looooooove my father verrry much.

Another must-do I highly recommend while trapezing through Phnom Penh is a Khmer cooking class!  On Street 240, not too far from where I'm living, is Restaurant Frizz (http://www.cambodia-cooking-class.com), which offers cooking classes (half day $15, full day $24) complete with a tour of a nearby market place.  Markets are super cool.  A make-shift army of large umbrellas provides cover from the tropical sun for an array of fruit, spices, clothe, toys and meat, most of which are impaled on hooks.  If it's your first time (or tenth) the abundance of smells, people and still-floppin'-around fresh (and some not so fresh) produce can be overwhelming and having a guide showing you around isn't a bad idea.

Fruit fruit and more fruit!

I showed up outside the restaurant 9 am sharp, ready to get cooking, and greeted my fellow culinary students.  There was a nice lady from Norway, another quiet woman who I know nothing about or where she came from but was pleasant enough, a cool couple from Briton, and an interesting guy from Australia.  That's another awesome side benefit to taking a class--the people you get to meet are going to be a whole other kind of exposure to different cultures.  During down times when we had to wait for the food to finish frying or steaming, we got the chance to lounge around and learn about each other and our respective origins.  Cool beans!

Making spring rolls!

Our teacher was a hoot, too.  He'd come by our little cooking stations and taste the finished product, make a funny face, pretend (I think) to retch and then tell us we were doing great.  On the menu we had spring rolls and the national dish of Cambodia; fish amok, a thick curry steamed in a cup made out of banana leaves.  And it all turned out delicious!  Well, except for the sweet and sour sauce.  That was crap.  Something about me adding too many limes but I call bullshit on that, I think the Aussie put in too much fish sauce.  But hey whatever, blame the American.*

*I totally put in too much lime

It's a Holiday in Cambodia! OR The Place Where You Can Blow Up a Buffalo with a Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher for $500

There’s a lot to say about Cambodia, and about Phnom Penh, in particular.  An overwhelming amount.  History, current political tension, cuisine, the arts, the people, my shenanigans here past and present…it goes on and on.  A prevalent theme that I’ve noticed while researching other blogs and successful posts are the ever popular top ten lists.  A nice, simple, consolidated way to give the reader useful information, presented in a user-friendly format that’s short enough not to bore and long enough to give the impression that the topic of choice has been adequately covered. 

Well, I don’t have a top 10 list for Phnom Penh.  What I do have is a random conglomeration of tips, observations and whatever else I feel like throwing in.  I’ve got to start somewhere.  Enjoy!

1.      You can drink the water now!  Sometime in the last five years or so, Phnom Penh’s previously death inducing (if you were already sick or had open scratches, which you most certainly would, given the mosquito population) water supply was purified.  In most places.  It’s still a bit touch-and-go.  I would recommend using a filter.  Alright, screw it, just buy bottled water.

2.       People are finally wearing motorcycle helmets!  Mostly. At least it’s now a law.  But not at night.  Because there are no cops at night...yeah...  Most of Phnom Penh traffic consists of motorcycles and last time I was here I was the only one wearing anything resembling protective gear.  If you are visiting be sure to purchase a motorcycle helmet before getting on a moto-taxi.  This is a land where traffic lights are suggestions, NO ONE has the right of way and there is no right way to drive.  Or wrong way, apparently.

3.       DON’T flush toilet paper down the toilet.  You dispose of it in a bucket conveniently located next to the toilet.  Start rewiring your brain now—call it “bucket paper.”   Also, you clean yourself with a small hose attached to the toilet.  Multiple jokes and suggestions running through my head aside, this is actually a much more sanitary approach toilet hygiene.*

4.       A reasonably priced two hour massage is $12 + tip.  $12 PEOPLE!!!

5.       Open air markets are awesome.  And also terrifying.  But mostly awesome.

6.       The FOOD.  There has been a huge boom in the restaurant scene in the last couple years but don’t neglect street food and market vendors (if you dare!).  I will be doing a photo guide as an ode to all the easily accessible and delicious tropical fruit that I’m surrounded by.  Which will probably just turn into an ode to food.

                                  Passion Fruit!

7.       Art, silks, watches, pretty much anything you can think of is available here (see #5).  Be prepared to bargain.  Vendors can smell fresh meat and will charge you about four times or so what something is worth.  This is an excellent opportunity to engage in a cultural phenomenon and to practice your Khmer!  Remember, it’s all in good fun (and if it starts not to be, just walk away).

8.       The weather/climate.  There are four “seasons.”  June to August is hot and rainy.  September to October is cooler and rainy.  November to February is cooler and not so rainy.  March to May is HOT and mostly not rainy.  Overall, think humidity.  My NOLA people know what I’m talking about.  Also, be aware, when I say rainy some people say “monsoon season.”  Plan accordingly.

9.       The people.  They are very friendly!  You have a few buttheads everywhere, but hey, if you are looking for a place where everyone is the pinnacle of kindness and virtue, I suggest you try the bottom of the ocean.  Practice common sense, reach out to people and have a good time opening your mind to another way of life!  If you are a tourist, you are a driving force of the economy in Phnom Penh and this is a mutually acknowledged mixed blessing in your interactions with the locals.

10.   Last and not least, Southeast Asia is most obviously and most applicably the place where if you have enough money, you can do pretty much whatever you like and the consequences will likely only be moral and between you and God.  Hence, the shooting range where for $500 you can blow up a buffalo with a rocket propelled grenade launcher.*  I implore you not to do this.  I might.  Just kidding…

Well there you have it.  It even came out to ten!

*If you think that’s bad, don’t go to Senegal.  I was there on a service trip when I was fourteen and all you were allowed to use was a bucket of water and your left hand.  Any contraband toilet paper that found its way into the plumbing was to be removed manually by the unlucky culprit.  I was informed of this last bit by my home stay mother.

*My father says that he’s not positive that for $500 you can blow up a buffalo.  He says it might be $350…actually he just said he isn’t positive the place exists at all and not to spread internet rumors.  I’m pretty sure it exists, folks.

When Life Hands You Lemons

I have no idea what I’m doing.  I have no idea where I’m going.  I have no idea what’s going to happen.  Obviously, I know that right now*, I’m drinking coffee at the café down the street from my apartment in NOLA, writing my first blog entry (of which there will hopefully be many).  I know that I’m going to Cambodia to see my father and create some much needed space.  And I know that when I get there, I will give him the biggest hug he’s ever gotten and start to work on a business plan to revamp his socio entrepreneurial business Wetlands Works! (more on that later).  What I mean to say then, is that for the past month into now, for the first time in my memory, I have no meticulous and ambitious life plan.

In the sixth grade my teacher pulled me aside to tell me I was failing my classes.  Apparently blatantly reading Sci-Fi during homeroom wasn’t the way to honor roll.  Simultaneously, a guardian angel came into my life and impressed upon me the importance of hard work and taking responsibility for myself as a practice of self-respect.  I put my nose to the grindstone as a way to escape from and better my circumstances and never looked back.  Seventh and eighth grade were devoted to raising my grades to get into a decent high school.  Starting high school, I maintained an A average, joined clubs and made sports teams.  Applied and was rejected, applied and was rejected, applied and was finally accepted to the prestigious Deerfield Academy on financial aid.  After an awkward junior year of painful adjustment, I excelled at creative writing, earned my first real paycheck working at the school grill, and made high honors.  The summer before I went to Tulane University on scholarship, I worked as a life guard to raise some money and spent that and my savings in life thus far on an intensive summer internship to get my professional SCUBA diver’s license.  My next summer and subsequent semesters were usually spent interning at Banks and Financial Institutions. 

While in New Orleans attending college, I met the pivotal character who became my boxing and kickboxing coach, and together with a friend, we established GOW Martial Arts, a small dojo.  I became the ICMAC Heavyweight World Champion, a Title National Boxing Silver Medalist and won the Louisiana State Golden Gloves.  This past May, I graduated from Tulane Summa Cum Laude with Departmental Honors in Economics and that’s about when everything I was holding together shattered in helpless and long overdue release.

I began to experience shortness of breath, constantly feeling as if I could not get the air I so desperately needed.  Panic attacks, an ordeal I hadn’t experienced routinely since the sixth grade, left the metallic taste of fear in the back of my throat.  All the expectations and external motivations driving me to attain more and achieve greater were suffocating me.  I was (rather painfully) shedding outdated mechanisms I developed in adolescence to keep me safe.  Of course, I ignored this.  I did not stop, continuing to train three hours a day, jogging along the street car tracks on St. Charles, my lungs shriveled plastic bags refusing to fill.  After a week or two of this, I was at my gym sparring and my body stopped.  On a cellular level, I did not want to be where I was, physically in the ring, mentally forced and spiritually repressed.  I watched as a back leg round house cracked across my jaw and down I went.  My heart and mind weren't there to support the blow.  I tearfully confessed to my coach that I didn't know what I was doing anymore but I knew what I was doing wasn't working.

We both decided to see this as an opportunity for growth.  When life hands you lemons, examine the fucking lemons and decide what to do with them.  I canceled my tournaments and decided to focus on personal growth.  And fun.  Lots of fun.

So here I am, having sold my piece of the dojo and hopped on a plane, creating space with no plan to go pro or go to the Olympics, no distraction of academic pursuit and accolades, no high powered job to keep me climbing a ladder of loftier and loftier goals.

I dedicate this next year to me. 

To do whatever I want, to have fun, to travel, to explore, to be instead of always just doing.  This blog is here to record and share my adventures—the places, the people and the random happenstance.  Today, I leave for Southeast Asia.  I return to NOLA in a month for some more photo shoots, to finish up filming in a movie and to take a few stunt classes.  And then, who knows?  I certainly don’t and I’m enjoying the fuck out of it!

Stay tuned for my next entry:  It’s a Holiday in Cambodia!!  Or alternatively titled:  The Place Where You Can Blow Up a Buffalo With a Rocket Propelled Grenade Launcher for $500*!

*My computer’s wireless was, for some unknown but irritating reason, not working.  It's fixed (for now) so I’m still in a coffee shop posting this but the coffee shop is in Cambodia two days later.

*Please do not come to Cambodia and blow up Buffalo.  Not cool.