We've had some fun and interesting experiences these past couple of weeks. The first story involves my Pre-K3 students and my TA. Every friday we play "Starfall". It is a computer website that helps kids learn the phonetic sounds of the alphabet. We have one computer in our classroom so all the kids sit on the carpet next to my desk, we turn the computer and put the mouse and keyboard on the floor. Each kid gets a turn to pick the letter they would like to learn about. Well one of our students chose X. During the various activities there is a picture of a fox. They computer says the word fox and asks the students to repeat it. Well my TA repeated the word fox, but in the Khmer language there is no such letter sound as X. She pronounced it more like fok leaving out the s sound that we say at the end of an x. Well all of our 3 year olds begin to repeat the word fox just like my TA pronounced it. As you already know it sounded as if they were swearing in an English accent all at the same time over and over again. I giggled inside and let Ms. Sorphorn know the correct pronunciation! :)
The second story involves our moto. We were so proud of ourselves that we had been driving around on our moto for three weeks and still hadn't been pulled over. You see our friends that are also new to Phnom Penh bought a moto and the second day they owned it they were pulled over, and have been pulled over two or three more times since that. The police here are very corrupt. They pull people over and ask for bribes instead of writing them a ticket or who else knows what they are suppose to do when someone does something illegal. Well when they see foreigners on a moto they think we can get a lot of money out of them. They don't know anything about our laws and they are rich. We thought for a while that the cops just thought I was the foreigner and Gideon was a motodop drive, a moto taxi driver, due to the color of his skin. Well that wasn't the case with these two cops. We were downtown and the one cop steps in the middle of the rode and waves his bat to pull us to the side. We sit on the moto starring at the cop and all he does is wave us over to his friend standing on the sidewalk. We get off our moto, walk over to the other policeman and continue to stare because he isn't talking either. Finally Gideon says, What is the problem?. The policeman pulls out his rule book all written in Khmer with some pictures of a stop lights and says, You were coming south and you turned right and the light was red. We said ok, we didn't know that was illegal. He says I need to see your cambodian drivers license. Well we don't have one. Nobody really has a drivers license. They can not pull you over for not having a license but if they find out you don't have one you have to pay a fine of 3500 riel equal to 80 US cents. The policeman says well i have to take your moto down to the police station. Gideon said no we won't have a way to get back home. I guess they always threaten to take your moto but they never follow through with it. We were waiting for him to ask for money, but he never did. So fianlly Gideon says we will pay the fine and be on our way. He says how much will you pay? I said 2 dollars, because that is what we heard is a good amount to pay the cops. We always hear don't pay them more than two dollars. The cop says, no not enough you should pay 5 dollars, really it is 100 dollars for Americans but for you five dollars. We knew that we shouldn't pay him five dollars, but we were nervous and we just wanted to be done with cops. So we slipped him five dollars; he hid it in his pocket very fast and told us to be safe as we drove away.
I talked to my TA who is Khmer about our encounter with the cops and she got soooo mad. She said it makes me want to hit them when they are like that. She said it is legal to turn right on a red light. She said do not be scared of the cops when you know you did nothing wrong. Next time ask them why everyone else turns right on a red light and they do not get pulled over. And then tell them you have 1 dollar or 2 dollars and that is all you have. Hold it out so they can see it and say this is all I have if you want it you can take it and i'll be on my way. If you don't want it I will wait here with you. We have learned that you keep one or two dollars in a separate part of your wallet so that when you get it out they can see that is all the money you have. It makes me want to read their traffic laws so that I know what is legal and illegal but i'm not sure there is any translated into English. It is so ironic that they pull you over when nobody follows any kind of traffic laws here and the streets are chaos. I guess we will learn by experience what is legal and illegal. I would rather follow the rules so when I do get pulled over I know I was not in the wrong. Also they must give you a reason they pulled you over. If the cop pulls you over and either can't speak english or can't give you a reason why you were wrong you have no obligation to sit there. You can just smile and say have a good day and drive off.
I hope you enjoyed these few stories. I hope it gives you a better glimpse of our life in Phnom Penh. We continue to thank God for your support of our calling here. We are so blessed to know you are praying for us as we think of you all and miss you all very much!
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