It shouldn’t be a problem.  On my scouting visit, I encountered Cambodian shops fully stocked with American brands.  But when I ran out of deodorant on that trip, I learned that made-in-Asia products often use different formulas or ingredients. 

Without aluminum chlorohydrate, my newly purchased (Cambodian) Lady Speed Stick left me sweaty and stinky. Finding peanut M&Ms cheered me up until I tore open the bag and threw a handful in my mouth. Even American candy brands betrayed me.  Gritty and stale, the M&Ms quickly disappeared into a wad of kleenex.  

When I returned to the US and started packing for our move, I tried to anticipate everything we might need in our new life. Taking full advantage of our Costco membership, I loaded my cart with what seemed like a lifetime supply of snacks, toiletries, and over-the-counter medication. Today, my stockpile fits in a shoebox.

Something as simple as toothpaste turns into a quest. I read a Substack essay about smart travel where the author suggested that nobody should ever pack toothpaste. He observes that you can find local toothpaste that is interesting or different, guaranteed to open your horizons. In other words, buying local toothpaste clears a path to incarnate living.

In at least one respect, this is true. Our grocery store stocks black charcoal, licorice, Himalayan salt, and herbal toothpaste.  Maybe if I were on vacation, I would embrace a short-term, savory-toothpaste foray into local culture. But I live here. And even thinking about black toothpaste turns my stomach. 

Standard American brands like Crest and Colgate fill the shelves, inexpensive and familiar. But I couldn’t find fluoride listed as an ingredient. Shouldn’t toothpaste have fluoride?  (Especially since we skipped our last three dental appointments.)  After spending too long squinting at small print, I spy a 3-ounce tube of Oral-B brand toothpaste with fluoride for $6. I toss it in my basket. 

Sometimes, finding an equivalent product in Cambodia poses an insurmountable challenge. Shampoo for example. I brought a huge supply of Aveda “Blonde Revival Purple Toning Shampoo” for my newly-white hair. For several months, I toted two blue bottles to T.B.’s salon every Saturday. 

The staff disliked my American shampoo because its sulfate free formula didn’t lather up well. (They like a big lather in Cambodia.) Weekly, the shampoo technicians poured two or three ounces over my scalp. It didn’t last long. Purple shampoo for white hair isn’t a thing here. These days, I just let them use whatever shampoo they keep on hand. Gradually, my white hair trends more and more yellow. Oh well. Blondes have more fun. 

I’ve developed some savvy strategies for stocking cosmetics. Once, I placed a Clinique order and had it shipped to the mother of a friend who was visiting the US from Cambodia. My friend carried it back for me in her suitcase. But then I realized that I could buy almost everything I need at Duty Free shops when we travel. I even discovered a Duty Free shop at the bus station between Cambodia and Vietnam. I buy Korean sun-screen (the best in the world) at specialty shops in Phnom Penh.  And when we visited Robert and his family in Australia, I scored BareMinerals products at MECCA (the Australia Sephora). 

But many times, not being able to replace our American items leads us to better alternatives. When I ate the last mini KIND bar from my Costco stash, a flare of panic threatened to derail my growing confidence that I was truly rooting myself in Cambodia. But once I started shopping for Cambodian treats, I realized that living without the processed snacks I was used to would be easy.

Fruit in Cambodia astounds us. Years ago when bringing up kids in Mississippi, I offered Thomas and a play-date guest some cut up apples. The little boy declared, “That ain’t a snack! That’s fruit.” But here, there is no better snack than the tropical fruit piled up at the market. We sometimes savor rambutan, dragon fruit, mango, papaya, and watermelon, all in the same week.  

Nobody needs KIND bars in Cambodia. Just go to any market and pick up two pounds of roasted cashews for less than $10. Cambodia produces more raw cashews than almost any other country in the world. A favorite variety here, the extra large, creamy and sweet M23 cashew rivals anything I’ve ever tasted. When I crave a treat, nothing satisfies like a handful of cashews.   

We discovered how much we like Cambodian coffee the first morning after we arrived. The GBGM-Cambodia office asked for a list of groceries so they could stock our apartment.  I knew I was going to pack our Bodum French press coffee pot in my suitcase, so I asked them to make sure we had an electric kettle and some ground coffee.  

Ming (Auntie) Sophal buys Mondulkiri coffee at the market from a vendor who gets it straight from plantations located in the northeastern highlands of Cambodia. We love its rich, almost chocolaty flavor. When we start running low, I shoot her a text. My coffee connect, Ming slides the half-kilo aromatic packages across the office conference table, and I slide a few thousand riel back her way.  

But one recent morning, I tapped downstairs to a tragedy instead of a hot cup of coffee.  The beaker of our French press lay in four jagged pieces at the bottom of the sink. At home, this would be no big deal.  Here, this was an emergency.  

We started shopping for a replacement. After a few disappointing experiences with Cambodian electrical appliances, we hoped to find another French press. We located only one, at a Lock & Lock store in the mall. It cost almost $40 and looked like it would be a pain to wash compared to our sleek Bodum.  

At that point, we thought about the metal drip filters that we see all over Phnom Penh at street-coffee kiosks. At the front of the cart, a ribbon of glass jars, each sporting a metal top-hat and a few inches of dark black liquid at the bottom, wait to be poured over a mixture of ice and sweetened condensed milk. Often, the vendor pours the whole concoction into a plastic bag, sticks a straw into the mouth of the bag, and twists a little rubber band tight to close the top.  People don’t even get a cup for their iced coffee; they just go around sipping out of bags.

The metal hat sitting on top of the jar is called a phin. At its base is a flat metal disc full of tiny holes. The brewing chamber is attached to the disc. Imagine a tin coffee mug with tiny holes punched in the bottom.  Inside the brewing chamber sits another, smaller metal disc, also full of tiny holes. A little metal handle pokes up from the center of the small disc; this is the tamper. You place the phin directly on top of your coffee cup. You remove the tamper and scoop ground coffee into the phin. You pat the coffee down with the tamper. Then you pour a tablespoon of boiling water over the tamper and let the coffee “bloom” for a minute or two. Finally, you fill the phin with boiling water, cover it with a lid, and wait for the coffee to drip into your cup. 

We decided to try a phin filter.  But first we had to find one. We thought they would surely have them in the grocery stores. Nope. Department stores. No. Coffee shops. Nada. Finally, we told Vannak what we were looking for, and he led us into the bowels of the market by our house. 

We usually shop at the open-air stalls for food; the inside stalls display clothing and household goods. He located a phin, ripped it out of the plastic packaging, inspected it, and started haggling. Vannak haggles fiercely and with great enthusiasm. When he reaches the final price, he looks over at us and shouts the amount for our approval. We don’t know why he bothers because we never know if it is a good price or a bad price. He always acts like it’s a bad price. We always say, “OK, yes, get it.”

With the phin in hand, we told him we needed coffee. The coffee we had at home was coarse ground for the French press, but phin filters require a finer grind. Vannak humphed, “Only coffee here from Vietnam. No good.” He took off race-walking through the crowd and we struggled to keep up, dodging carts and motos.  

Finally, we found ourselves back on the big highway. He ducked inside a dark little shop we had never noticed. There it was: Mondulkiri coffee.  A huge coffee grinder dominated the center of the shop. Piled high along the walls, flimsy plastic bags full of ground coffee threatened to tumble over. As far as I could tell, we only needed to make one decision: big bag or small bag. Even through the bag, we could smell the sweet, nutty aroma.

Our first cup of Cambodian coffee, made with our Cambodian phin filter, sipped in our Cambodian kitchen was definitely the best cup of coffee we have ever enjoyed at home, maybe the best cup of coffee we have ever enjoyed anywhere.  

We could have bought an Italian espresso maker at the mall.  We could have given up home-brewed coffee and picked up coffee from a kiosk on the way to work.  We could have switched to tea.  

But looking around and learning how to drink coffee like our neighbors gave us a much richer—and more delicious—experience.  

We won’t always live in Cambodia.  But I’m pretty sure we will always use our phin filter.  And once we move back to the US, we will probably long for Mondulkiri coffee the way we now long for 5 Guys burgers. 

The more we embrace our new life without fearing the new aspects of it, the happier we are. But you still won't find me buying black charcoal toothpaste any time soon!

Calmly and competently, he worked the crowd. Greeting familiar faces and introducing himself to strangers, Tom eased the visitors into the little chapel just as he eased my pounding heart. As I lifted the Karaoke microphone and launched into my welcome speech, he held my eye, nodding and smiling. My pulse slowed. When it was time for the first group to leave for their tour, he disappeared behind them, ensuring all was well.  

Tom found the students waiting for the last group of guests and kept them company. He took photographs of guests in conversation with students. He escorted people to the restrooms. He passed out cold water. The gray-haired, plaid-shirted troubleshooter slipped unnoticed at the edges of the school. Right where he has been for over thirty years.

More than lip service, Tom’s support of my career and life choices defines our marriage. He could have completed his Ob/Gyn residency anywhere in the US, but he moved a thousand miles from home so I could attend graduate school at Michigan State. I dreamed of life as an English Literature professor. He put his dreams on hold and worked locum tenens from Vermont to Wyoming while I searched in vain for a room in the ivory tower.    

When I gave up on finding an English professor job, we looked for a place close to our families.  We wound up in Natchez where my job as a part-time high school English teacher at a small Episcopal school didn’t earn enough to cover child-care. He never grumbled. 

He chaperoned proms and used vacation days to travel on class trips. After one trip to New York City, a student got stopped at airport security for the switchblade souvenir he had bought in Chinatown. Tom somehow managed to persuade the TSA not to arrest him. On a cold Saturday in November while hauling several hundred fund-raiser Poinsettias off a delivery truck and into my classroom, he complained, “I feel awful.” I snapped, “Quit malingering.” (As an English teacher, I was expected to use big words like that.) Later we realized he was coming down with a raging case of shingles. My bad.

After four years, I decided that being a Bed-and-Breakfast hostess rather than an English teacher sounded like a good idea. Tom never blinked. He went from intimidating dirty dancers in the gym with his Maglite to vacuuming up rabbit poop left behind by guest-smuggled bunnies. For a few short months, he did enjoy a clean house and all the leftover sausage-egg-and-cheese casserole he could eat. I enjoyed purchasing new furniture, linens, and tableware and calling it a tax deduction. But the thrill of a career in hospitality faded quickly.

Thirty weeks pregnant with our third child, I decided that my future lay in school administration. The school where I had been teaching was roiling in a leadership crisis, and I hubristically thought I could rescue it. I don’t even remember discussing it with Tom. But I do remember all the crazy ways my commitment to that job and Tom’s concurrent commitment to me shaped the next nine years.

Trinity needed a physics teacher. LSU decreed high school physics a prerequisite for college admission, and at least half of our graduates attended LSU. The only qualified physics teacher I found who was even willing to consider moving to Natchez lived outside of Hattiesburg where his wife was in nursing school. They couldn’t afford two apartments. So I moved him into one of our newly-vacant B&B rooms to live until she graduated. My husband treated him like a long-lost relative. Later, Tom became the American dad to an Australian foreign exchange student I installed in the downstairs B&B room. No whining, just welcoming.  

The State of Mississippi accredited Trinity, and my Ph.D. in English did not impress them. I needed a master’s degree in educational administration. So with my still-nursing infant riding shotgun in his car seat, I commuted to LSU two nights a week. Tom and our nanny Florence co-parented Margaret and Thomas. He came home after a long day in the clinic to cranky preschoolers who needed supper, baths, bedtime stories, and their mother. By the time the baby and I rolled up at midnight, Tom lay passed out snoring on the recliner, monitor by his side. Hoping he wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital that night, he kissed me, stumbled upstairs, and collapsed, ready to do it all again in two days without a peep.

Eventually, I graduated, but there was always something else. One year, I decided that the athletic concession stands could be profitable if they were managed correctly. Who better to manage them than my husband? Between youth sports, JV sports, and Varsity sports, our concession stands ran almost every week. Head of this busy operation, Tom fried burgers, grilled hot-dogs, concocted queso, and counted cash when he wasn’t delivering babies, performing surgeries, or seeing patients in his clinic. The most over-qualified short-order cook in history, he went home smelling like food and fatigue. He never complained. 

(Sadly, we learned that no matter how good the management is, the only way for a small athletic concession stand to be profitable is to sell inferior products or gouge the customers. Next time you pay $15 for a concession stand hamburger, just know it’s for the school. Hopefully, it will be a good hamburger; Tom’s were delicious!)

That season of our lives ended and we moved to Louisiana. I decided to become a stay-at-home mom. Tom would have been within his rights to argue that since he supported me through not one but two advanced degrees, the least I could do is use my education to earn some money. He didn’t. He never asked whether I thought spending mornings as a volunteer at the STM library re-shelving books was a wise use of my time. He didn’t suggest that there were more profitable things I could be doing than cooking team dinners and working the gate at basketball games. Tom fired up the grill and fed the players and coaches.   

When our youngest was going into seventh grade, I went back to work as the department chair and freshman English teacher at the Episcopal School of Acadiana, a job I held for eleven years. Tom was working as an Ob Hospitalist at that time, and his schedule didn’t permit as many honey-do-at-school tasks. But he gamely showed up as often as he could until I retired in 2024. He had always felt called to serve as a medical missionary. Putting Tom’s goals first for a change, we initiated that application process. Almost as an afterthought, I applied as well.

A year after we hit “submit” on our global missionary applications with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, we were flying to Uganda for the last missionary training and commissioning. We had been assigned to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. According to our “letter of assignment,” Tom would be working at two Christian mission hospitals and I would be the principal of a brand new vocational school. 

Almost as soon as we arrived in Cambodia, we realized that my skill set had determined our placement. The school was ready and waiting for me. But it took Tom two months of knocking on doors and filling out hospital privilege applications before he actually started working as a medical missionary. In those discouraging house-husband days, he wondered what he was doing in Cambodia. He half-jokingly suggested flying back to the US and picking up some shifts at his old job. But despite his disappointment and with his usual aplomb, Tom assumed his familiar role as first gentleman of the school.   

Eventually, he worked out two jobs for himself. But even today, if Tom isn’t at one of the hospitals, he’s at Hope Vocational School. He helps me host open houses. Our Khmer is still pretty bad, but Tom stands beside me at the front gate, sweating in the late-afternoon sun, bowing and smiling to parents as they arrive. He helps me teach my classes. When the Conversational English students were learning job interview skills, Tom conducted the mock interviews, patiently trying to keep my terrified students from giving up and shutting down. He helps me entertain guests. Donors and supporters visit the school, and Tom’s gravitas and gentle kindness help reassure them that their gifts are well received.

The anonymous “generous donor” behind some of my most excessive ideas, Tom spends as much money in Cambodia on this school as he used to spend in Mississippi on child-care. HVS is a mission school with an adequate but basic budget. I am not always satisfied with basic. 

I’m not actually sure it’s wise to enumerate all the Tom-funded projects and activities at HVS. He might read this and decide to economize. But the beautiful Cambodian custom-built furniture in my office wasn’t in the budget. And neither are the staff luncheons at the end of each term. Without Tom, the school’s extravagant Khmer New Year party, complete with games and a feast, couldn’t have happened. 

And that’s just a start. Tom’s munificence has actually become a running topic with our supervisor Rev. Paul Kong, head of Global Ministries' Asia Regional Office. The other day I brought a birthday cake to a meeting for a staff member. Paul teased, “Did an anonymous donor buy this cake? I wish I had a donor!” Tom fired back, “I wish I had a donor too!” Everybody laughed.  

It’s no joke to say that I’ve lived my adult life cradled in Tom Carey’s generosity, confidence, and love. Time after time, my aspirations and desires took precedence. The choices Tom made to ensure my happiness shaped everything. Even now, no matter how preposterous or extreme my plans, he never balks. Whether he’s showing up or spending money – usually both at once – Tom steps up, willing to make my dreams – whatever they might be and however they might change – come true.

How is it possible that I am “Grand-D” to two precious little boys in Australia? 

We said, “Yes.”

I always intended to have four children. In 1995, I pushed two-month-old Thomas in his stroller through Cortana Mall to The Christmas Shoppe and bought four coordinating needlepoint stockings. Thinking long term, I left nothing to chance. Our Christmas mantle would be ready for the Southern Living photo shoot once all the progeny arrived.

Eight years later, Dr. Godfrey explained that my third baby would almost certainly be my last. But by that time, my job as the headmaster at Trinity wasn’t leaving much room for babies (or anything else). So I resigned myself to a trio instead of a quartet.  

Way before I was the headmaster, Trinity became a pipeline for Australian high school basketball players. In Australia, basketball isn’t a school sport, only a club sport. Australian kids with NBA dreams often attend high school in the US. Once the first Australian had a good experience at our little Mississippi school, others followed. Robert Manson arrived in 2003, the six-foot-seven inch son of a former Australian National Team basketball player. 

Robert’s first year at Trinity was a little rough. Host families fell through, and he bounced around a bit. At the end of his junior year, it was unclear where he would live if he returned a second year. His sponsor asked us to consider inviting him to live at our house. By that time, I knew he was a good kid, and I was embarrassed that his living situation had been unstable. I said, “Yes.”

Not the least bit interested in living with us and our three children (what could be more un-cool than living with the headmaster?) Robert decided to try a new school in Colorado for his senior year. But by Halloween, he jetted back to Mississippi. We had four children. I expected being Robert’s American mum to be a temporary adventure. It changed my life.   

Becoming the parents of a teen-ager is supposed to happen gradually. You grow into it. We dove into it. And we weren’t ready for the deep end.  

Ready or not, Robert moved in. His bedroom wasn’t a closet under the stairs, but his bathroom was; he stooped over for every shower. He slept on the diagonal in his double bed.  He brought with him all the baggage of a teen-aged athlete in the early 2000s, including body spray. Axe Phoenix wafted through the house, melding with sweaty basketball player smells to produce an unforgettable aroma.  

When he wasn’t hanging out with his friends, he was shut up in his room. He wanted to stay out late. He wanted to drive. He wanted a cell phone. He annoyed Margaret, and he turned Matthew and Thomas into little wild men. He didn’t want ice in his drinks, and he wanted Apple Crisp (whoever heard of that??) for dessert.  

We begrudgingly put him on our family cell phone plan. That was back when you got 100 free text messages a month and then paid 15 cents for each message after that. The first bill after he got his phone was several hundred dollars. He said, “That’s impossible!  I’m supposed to get 100 free texts.” Tom thundered, “I saw you send 100 texts last night during supper!” Robert and I fled to the Cellular South store and changed to the unlimited text plan.  

I don’t know when having a teenager under our roof stopped being quite so difficult. But it did. He folded his lanky frame into the pews at Jefferson Street every Sunday, and he helped wrestle the kids into carseats every Monday. Robert turned nineteen in December, and before he opened the first gift Matthew shouted, “LSU shorts! LSU shorts!  We got you LSU shorts!!” And that first Christmas, I broke out the fourth Christmas stocking. Before we knew it, he graduated.  

But he didn’t go away. He stayed in the US for two years of junior college in Texas and three years of university at Loyola in New Orleans. All that time, we were “home base.” He’s in our photo albums over the years, wearing Christmas pajamas and hanging the fourth stocking. He’s in Tom’s parents 50th Anniversary family photo. I have pictures with him at Loyola senior night and pictures at his college graduation. He wove himself into the fabric of our family.

Robert moved back to Australia and fell in love. He brought Jodie to America for one visit before they got engaged. And Tom and I went to Australia for their wedding. Our eldest son Thomas was actually studying at the University of Brisbane at that time, so we got to visit two of our three sons that September. 

Robert’s parents gave us a Grand Tour of northeastern Australia despite being parents of the groom and having a wedding to prepare for. And to our surprise, we were seated at the parent’s table at the wedding reception and treated like treasured family members. 

As we drove to the airport after the wedding, I couldn't stop weeping. I sobbed ugly tears and gasped and shook, telling Tom that was the last time I would ever see Robert. I was wrong.  

When his first son Nash was born in 2019, I went to Australia and stayed with Robert and Jodie for a week. That’s when I got my grandmother name. (And probably when I overstayed my welcome, but they never made me feel that way.) Chase was born in 2021 and Australian COVID restrictions kept me from repeating my visit. But Robert started making occasional trips to the US for business, and we were able to meet up. Eventually, I quit feeling like each goodbye was forever.

Which brings me to our latest trip to Australia. When Tom and I accepted the missionary posting to Cambodia, I cheered because we would be closer to Robert and his family. We promised ourselves that we would go to Brisbane in 2026.  

My blissful American ignorance of geography led me to believe it would be an easy trip. We didn’t want to stay too long because we remembered what hosting guests was like when our kids were little. So I told our travel agent we wanted to go to Brisbane for a long weekend. He said, “It can’t be done.” The truth is more like, “It shouldn’t be done.” 

Robert located tickets for us on Cathay Pacific and we booked them directly with the airline. The week before our trip, I realized we had five nights away, but two of those would be spent sitting up in economy class. Turns out, while we now inhabit the same side of the globe, Cambodia is still over 4,000 miles from Australia.

The trip was worth it. Robert’s boys are perfect: beautiful, gentle, smart, curious, kind, polite, athletic, affectionate. We picked them up the first day at school, and I asked Chase, “Can I give you a hug?” He jumped into my arms. We spent the entire next day outside. My Merlin birdwatching app fascinated them, and they helped me add sixteen new birds to my Life List.  

The next day they stayed on the alert for one missing species, the butcher bird. “Grand-D, Grand-D!  He’s here!! Get your phone!! Take a picture!!! Play the song!!!!” As butcher birds swooped all over the yard looking for the interloper squawking from my iphone, the boys and I scuttled, giggling, under the porch.   

Robert and I did the math and realized that he is now the same age we were when he moved in with us. How is that possible? I felt like we were so old back then. I feel like he is so young now. But numbers don’t lie. I may have blinked back a tear or two at the airport, and Robert may have too. But we know it isn’t a forever goodbye.  

Back when I was parenting a teenager along with my little ones and devouring all the self-help books I could find, I remember Dr. William Sears’ advice to stop constantly saying, “No.” He pointed out how often “no” is our default response to children. I think sometimes “no” becomes our default response to life. How much richer our lives can be when we just say, “Yes!”

From mid-May to early October, heavy rains and high humidity define the climate.  Rain buckets down for one or two hours most afternoons, but heavy storms can, and do, drench us any time of the day or night.  Despite the fact that rainy season has defined the climate of this region for thousands of years, nobody seems prepared.  Roads become rivers, and rivers become oceans.  

Before we moved to Cambodia, I had lived in Louisiana for two thirds of my life, but Louisiana rain and humidity did not prepare me for rainy season here.  The subdivision where we lived in Maurice for fourteen years was built over an old rice field with inadequate detention ponds. The entrance flooded two or three times a year. One of our neighbors would run out and stick reflective stakes into the ground to mark the edges of the roadway, and we would all drive gingerly home. Once or twice, I heard the “fwop, fwop, fwop” of water lapping the underside of my van.  And Margaret sometimes parked her Accord at a nearby school to let Tom pick her up in his truck.  But thanks to Mr. David, we never really felt afraid as we crept into the neighborhood.  

And on the first day of The Great Louisiana Flood of 2016, I was almost stranded at ESA in Cade.  As I tried to drive home through the pouring rain, I kept backtracking away from flooded roads. I wound up threading down the middle of a soggy US Hwy 14 from Duson to Abbeville right before they closed the road. Then I hydroplaned my way up US Hwy 167 to our house. But I remember those incidents so clearly because they were so rare. I’ve already lost count of how many times I’ve held my breath and wished to cover my ears as we navigate flooded roads in Cambodia. 

Rainy season constrains attendance at Hope Vocational School. The school is in a rural area and some students live on unpaved roads that transform into muddy swamps in the rain. Often, the rain peaks about the time the students should be headed to school for their 5:30 class. Almost all ride motorcycles or bicycles to school, sometimes with three or more students crowded onto one vehicle. Nobody’s mom is dropping them off in the carpool line. And nobody can safely ride a motorcycle in one of these storms. We know to expect more absences, and we tolerate tardiness due to deluge.  

In Phnom Penh itself, flooded roads can’t be avoided most afternoons. The city sprawls like Houston, and almost everything is built on reclaimed land. According to a 2020 Voice of America report, about half Phnom Penh’s wetlands have disappeared over the last fifteen years, and fifteen of twenty-five urban lakes have been infilled to make room for development. Urban lakes, marshes, and swamps once acted as natural flood control. The ditches and canals that replaced them can’t get the job done.

Our most harrowing rainy-day voyage came as we headed home from Hebron Medical Center one day last July. Tom and I cowered in the backseat as Vannak gritted his teeth and kept his foot on the gas. Looking out the window, I could see water standing several inches deep in the shops and restaurants lining the road.  A few entrepreneurs had fashioned dikes of questionable effectiveness at the front of their businesses. Plastic bottles and litter swirled alongside the car. One woman standing shin deep in front of her shop swept a broom fruitlessly towards the road. I wanted to yell at her to stop before she swamped our car, but that would have been an equally hollow gesture. We were already swamped.

Tom looked over at me and shook his head decisively. I realized that I was swaying in my seat and humming “How Great Thou Art.” When I put my babies to bed, that was one of the trio of “rocking songs” that soothed them to sleep. Clearly, I needed some soothing at that moment.  As long as I was humming, I couldn’t hear the constant “fwop, fwop, fwop.”  I started wondering what we would do when the engine flooded.  Would we get out of the car?  Or just sit there until dark?  Why had we ever left Hebron in the first place?

There was no pulling over or slowing down. Other cars pinned us in ahead and behind, and the water was higher on the sidewalks and shoulders than the road. When we peered through the rain up the side streets — streets sloping down from the main road — we saw even more destruction.  Tuk-tuk drivers stood outside their vehicles in the streaming water, human anchors desperately gripping the frames so their livelihoods wouldn’t float away.  

The only way out was through the inundated roadway. Finally, after dog-paddling down the street for at least thirty minutes, our car reached a major intersection. We could see blacktop on the other side of the highway divide. Men standing in the muck blew whistles and waved at cars, steering everyone away from treacherous pot holes and wash-outs.  Somehow, we made it to dry land with the Camry still running. 

I know other missionaries face risks far greater than the flooded roadways of Phnom Penh. We aren’t responding to Ebola or religious persecution or famine or war or any number of other challenges our comrades-in-mission across the globe face. In fact, I sometimes wonder if we even deserve to call ourselves missionaries at all since our lives here are so relatively free of hardship. Recognizing that the worst thing we are likely to experience here is a flooded engine can keep us grounded.  And learning when to stay put rather than get on the road can keep us dry.  I promise, we’re trying to stay dryer this year.

”I establish my covenant with you.  Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  — Genesis 9:11

I stood up and walked the roll to his end of the table so we could figure out if he was registered.  His index finger shook as he ran it down the column, stopping at his name.  Later I learned that although his name is spelled V-I-C-H-H-A-T — a name I pronounced V-CHAT — his name is actually pronounced WE-CHAD.  (Cambodians pronounce the letter V like Americans pronounce the letter W, and they usually do not pronounce the last letter of a word.)  But that first night, I don’t think he would have been brave enough to say, “Here!” even if I had pronounced his name correctly.

The dark facial hair flagged Vichhat as older than most of my students, but his demeanor suggested otherwise.  When I called on him, his first response was always an agitated, “Oh, my god! Oh, my god!” before he blurted out an answer.  Often, I couldn’t understand him, but I didn’t want to press too much and risk shutting him down. I smiled and nodded. I worried that each class would be his last. But two evenings a week, right on time, Vichhat took his seat at the table.

I first recognized the full extent of Vichhat’s resolve when students gave short oral presentations on coffee.  I filmed the presentations on my phone and texted them to students via Telegram.  Vichhat texted me back: “On Wednesday my second time I make a good for you. I’m finnish for practice it again.”  He wasn’t satisfied, and he wasn’t giving up.  He reprised his presentation on Wednesday.

Day after day, Vichhat plugged away.  Gradually, he inched his way down the table, moving closer and closer to my seat.  From our conversations about daily routines, I learned that Vichhat gets up at 5:00 am every morning. He helps his mother get ready for her work as a seller in the local market before driving his motorcycle 45 minutes to Phnom Penh where he studies information technology engineering (ITE) at Royal University of Phnom Penh.  After class, he drives his motorcycle 45 minutes back to Dei Eth Koh Phos Village.  Two nights a week, he attends “Conversational English.” 

Along the way, I discovered Vichhat’s secret talents and true passions.  A karaoke master, he proved himself at an Open House when he borrowed the Korean teacher’s speaker and microphones, linked his phone, and crooned traditional Khmer songs. Now, Vichhat karaoke DJs at every event. He loves Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer star, something I learned when he chose Portugal for his EU country presentation.  

I decided to have a school-wide celebration for Khmer New Year.  We decorated the school with the traditional multi-colored flags.  I thought the school looked great.  Vichhat did not agree. I was surprised to see him motor up to the school the night before the party with a big coil of rope lassoed over his shoulder. He didn’t have class that night. He declared, “I am here to make the sign.”  He was still working when I went home at 7:00 pm, but on the day of the party, Vichhat’s magnificent hand-crafted sign proudly adorned the festivities.

Recently, Vichhat sent me a text: “Tomorrow when I go to study at university I want to give you a gift for tasting.”  He had to take a thirty minute detour each way on his motorcycle to get to me. When he reached my borey, the guard refused to let him in until I walked to the gate and vouched for him.  Even then, the guard demurred. Fortunately, my Khmer has progressed enough for me to say, “Koat suh robah khnom.”  (He is my student.)  

The gift was num ansom chek (banana) and num ansom chrouk (pork), cylinder shaped sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.  He told me that these are normally served for Pchum Ben (Ancestors’ Day) but his grandmother got a hankering to eat some. She and his mom had spent hours the day before preparing them.  And they wanted to share them with me. I can’t count all the gifts I have received from students, but none compare to Vichhat’s gift of food and the effort he made to bring it to me.

In many ways, little differentiates Vichhat from the hundreds of students I’ve taught in the past 39 years.  On the other hand, my previous students all knew why they were sitting in my classroom. For one thing, Louisiana laws require students to stay in school until their eighteenth birthday. Furthermore, Louisiana students earn grades that determine their eligibility for higher education. 

Vichhat attends HVS completely on his own initiative.  “Conversational English” students don’t even earn grades.  Vichhat isn’t sure how the two nights a week that he spends with me will benefit him.  But he has faith that what he is doing matters. And because of his faith, my obligation weighs more heavily than any I have felt before.  

After a year, Vichhat sits right next to me at the seminar table. The frightened boy disappeared a while ago.  I didn’t notice his departure, but the other day I realized that I hadn’t heard, “Oh, my god!” in months.  Last week, important guests visited HVS. I asked Vichhhat, now a confident young man, to entertain them in English.  He didn’t hesitate.

And what a wardrobe it was. I wore suits and high heels almost every day.  Our school colors were black and red, so that palette dominated my closet. Mostly, I wore skirts with matching jackets. I told myself that I didn’t want to look like my student’s mothers: I wanted to look like their mother’s lawyers. I can close my eyes and feel the nubby surface of my beautiful red and black bouclé suit.  And when I really needed to girl boss, I pulled out the houndstooth jacket from Katie’s Ladies that cost so much I financed it. I tried to look the part even when I wasn’t feeling it.

That season of my life ended so abruptly I wound up with plantar fasciitis from trading high heels for flip flops overnight. A few years later when I went back to teaching in Louisiana, imposter syndrome no longer haunted my imagination. I still dressed professionally, but instead of skirt suits, I favored slacks and jackets. And I stuck with flats. 

At the end of every season, I crashed the sale racks at Talbot’s and Chico’s to stock up.  I liked bright or pastel-colored jackets accessorized with costume jewelry brooches from my collection. Softer and gentler than my headmaster wardrobe, my teacher wardrobe still embodied my ethos.

I retired from teaching when Tom and I applied for jobs as missionaries with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church.  I initially expected to be a missionary spouse and church lady while Tom practiced medicine in a foreign country, but God had other plans. 

In 2024, Paul Kong, head of the GBGM-Asia regional office, asked me to consider becoming the principal of a new vocational school under construction outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I hadn’t expected to be a school administrator again, but my credentials and experience fit the job description he gave me so well I thought maybe he wrote it after seeing my resume. He hadn’t. I said yes.  

In February 2025, one month before our missionary service officially started, I visited Cambodia so that I could be present for the first day of school and find an apartment. I packed jackets, dress pants, flats, and brooches. I never considered that my old wardrobe could be inadequate for my new position. It took me almost a year to realize the full extent of my wardrobe’s inadequacy.

I first confronted my wardrobe’s climatic inadequacy. No person would describe the climate in south Louisiana as mild.  But winter is a thing.  And ubiquitous air-conditioning allows us to pretty much disconnect what we wear from the temperature outside.  Winter in Cambodia is not a thing.  And most air-conditioning, when it exists, can best be described as unenthusiastic.  

That first week, when I got back to the hotel after school, I wilted into the cold shower. I peeled off jackets and slacks and hung them from the ceiling to dry.  It’s not as if I packed wool blazers.  I knew Cambodia would be hot, and I brought summer-weight knit jackets. But I didn’t expect to be wearing those jackets in a stifling office under a sputtering air-conditioner. 

I reassessed. When I returned to Cambodia the second time — the for real time — I brought the only three cotton twill blazers I owned: deep pink, Capri blue, cadmium red. 

It turns out, professional women in Asia do not wear bright colors.  But I only realized this several weeks after I arrived.  For the first Open House, the Cambodian teachers showed up in black suits. My pink blazer and khaki slacks, the ones that had seemed so appropriate in Louisiana, suddenly made me feel even more foreign than usual.  

There was little to be done.  I can’t just bop over to the mall and pick up some principal clothes. Nothing for sale in a Cambodian mall fits me.  Average-sized in the US, I’m a giantess here. 

I decided to make do with what I had. Save the blazers for formal occasions like Open House and wear one of my three (also brightly colored) long-sleeved cotton voile blouses from Talbots for ordinary days. When the blouses are dirty or I’m just sick of them, I wear something else with long sleeves.  

Adult women in Cambodia never wear sleeveless tops no matter how hot it is. My color palette may be too flashy, but my long sleeves keep me from completely violating decorum.  And now that I am a 61-year-old school principal instead of a 35-year-old headmaster, I don’t need my wardrobe to legitimize me.

That said . . . 

Two months ago, Paul Kong (now my boss) informed me that a team from Korea would be visiting our school. Almost half of the funds that support Hope Vocational School come from a Korean Christian NGO called Bridge of Hope that works in partnership with GBGM. The Chairman of Bridge of Hope and some important donors were coming to Cambodia to see our school as well as other projects they support. 

When I mentioned to business manager Pich Chey that I was considering having a professional suit made to wear for the Bridge of Hope visit, her reaction confirmed my suspicions. My Cambodian staff doesn’t approve of my wardrobe, but they are way too polite to tell me. 

Pich shifted into high gear. Before I knew it, she was marching me through the Russian Market to the shop of a highly recommended tailor. According to Pich, the tailor used to make suits for the diplomats working at the Embassy of Dubai, her former employer.  

I wrote about Cambodian markets in one of my first Substack essays.  Big warehouses full of open stalls, the indoor shopping centers resemble American flea markets more than anything else I can think of.  Shops clump together based on what they sell.  

Down one aisle, greasy auto parts teeter on precarious piles.  Down another aisle, shop after shop displays shiny silver jewelry.  In the art section, at least ten shops exhibit stacks of brightly painted canvases: temples and sunsets and elephants and elevated stilt houses can be yours for a very reasonable price. The seller will roll your favorite up and slide it in a tube or mount it on a stretcher bar.

In the middle of all this clutter, Pich found the tailor aisle.  Walls of garments hanging all the way up to the ceiling divide each little shop from its neighbor.  Sewing machines stand sentry at the front of every stall.  Pich guided me up one step and onto the low platform of the embassy-endorsed tailor’s shop.  After a rapid Khmer conversation with Pich, the tailor pulled out fabric swatches and asked her what style of suit I wanted.

I should have thought more about this before I got there, but I quickly googled “Asian businesswoman suits” and screen shotted a style I thought would work for me.  I didn’t want navy or black, but I knew it needed to be a darkish, serious color.  I chose royal blue and picked a fabric that felt thin enough not to suffocate me and didn’t seem to wrinkle too badly.  Then the tailor’s assistant got busy with her measuring tape.  She measured every inch of me, even the circumference of my thighs!  

I told them I needed a blouse and shocked them by insisting that the blouse be sleeveless.  They kept asking, “Are you sure, madame?” But I knew I would not be taking the coat off, and I wasn’t about to add any layers I didn’t absolutely need.  I’ve seen models in magazines wearing suit jackets without any blouses at all underneath.  But that look would undermine my efforts to impress the Korean donors, so I settled for ordering two sleeveless blouses with fabric covered buttons.

The whole time this was going on, Tom and Vannak were sitting on stools out in the aisle.  Tom was getting a migraine, and Vannak was getting bored.  We were all getting hot.  Then the money conversation started.  

I wasn’t included. Pich negotiated. The final price was about 40% less than I would pay for a regular-price jacket, dress pants, and blouse at Talbot’s. Not cheap, but not outrageous in my opinion.  Vannak, however, was horrified.  All Tom said was, “Happy Birthday! Now I don’t have to shop for a present.”  The tailor said it would be ready in a week.  

Ten days later, we returned to pick up the suit.  I didn’t expect it to be totally finished when I arrived back at the shop; I assumed they would have to alter something after I tried it on.  And I wasn’t sure where I would try it on anyway because I had not seen dressing rooms. Pretty soon, I realized that I had not seen dressing rooms because there were not any dressing rooms to be seen.  

The assistant laid the suit out on a table in the corner of the shop.  Then the tailor took an old chenille bedspread and hooked one edge to the dressmaker's dummy posing next to the sewing machines at the front of the shop.  He gestured for me to walk to the corner where the suit was.  He hoisted the bedspread over his head and stretched it out in front of me.  With Vannak, the tailor, his assistants, and various curious bystanders assembled just on the other side of the bedspread,  I undressed and tried on the suit.  

I have never owned such an exquisitely crafted garment.  The fully lined coat features big pockets finished with elegant single welts.  It even has a deep left interior pocket.  My daddy kept cigars there; I’m not sure what I’ll put in mine.  But I like it!

I’ve also never owned anything that fit me so well. The slightly padded shoulders hit at exactly the right place, and the sleeves end right at my wrist bone. The pants follow every curve and  fall precisely at the middle of my ankle. The sleeveless blouse doesn’t have even the slightest gap; it’s long enough to stay tucked in but not so long it bunches. 

Everything about this suit was perfect the first moment I tried it on.  No alterations required.  So I ducked back behind the bedspread, took it off, and took it home.

Two weeks later, I armored up and went to greet the Korean visitors. The reactions to my new principal costume at Hope Vocational School validated my wardrobe upgrade decision.  Administrative assistant Mony gasped and applauded.  

Sophoan summoned her daughters, and they wanted to pet it.  Lenny gave me a thumbs up and, putting on her best Tony-the-Tiger imitation, declared in squeaky, elementary English, “It’s great!” The teachers smiled and nodded their approval.

I can’t really say if my new suit had the desired effect on our guests. But when I walked into my classroom and my students broke into excited oohs and aahs, their reaction was all that mattered. 

The royal blue suit sends a message, and the HVS community hears it: I care about this school and my role in it. Dressing to match Cambodian professional standards is a way for me to say, “I respect you.”  

I won’t wear the new suit every day, but when the occasion calls for it — Open Houses or special guests or celebrations — I’ll gladly sweat for a few hours. That suit helps me tell our teachers and our students and our staff, “I love you.”

I don’t remember the first time I tasted a mango, but I must have been an adult.  My children probably never ate mangos either, at least while we were living in Mississippi.  Natchez Market always carried bananas, and sometimes you would find a stack of green pineapples. That’s as tropical as it got back then. 

Once we moved to Lafayette and they opened the Whole Foods though, mangos appeared throughout the summer.  I bought them as a special treat and watched YouTube videos to learn how to cut them up. I don’t remember loving them.  They had probably been picked way too early and shipped way too far.

When I first toured our Cambodian shop-house, my landlord pointed out the mango tree – at that time covered with green, hard, robin-egg sized fruit – and assured me that the tree was ours. We could pick all we wanted.  A month later when we moved in, the fruit was still green and hard, but it had grown to chicken-egg size. A month after that, we were looking at green goose eggs and even a few green emu eggs, but they were all still as hard as apples.

We asked our Cambodian colleagues how to know when it was time to harvest.  They said, “You’ll know.” Not helpful.  But then we noticed that our neighbors had started to pick their mangos.  Our tree stands exactly between our shop-house and the one next door.  The next-door neighbors meticulously plucked every mango they could reach from their half of the big tree. We assumed harvest time was upon us. 

Landscapers cut the lower branches of the trees on our street so people can park their cars. Therefore, most of the fruit dangles way out of reach. But the family across the street owns a mango picker, and everyone borrows it.  Impossibly long bamboo poles with tiki-torch shaped baskets at the top, mango pickers challenge amateurs like us.  

First you lift the pole up to the mango you want to pick.  Align the small opening in the side of the basket under the mango. Lift the pole slightly higher until the mango dips inside the basket. Jerk the pole towards yourself hard enough for the stem to snap on the edge of the basket.  When it works, the mango falls inside the basket and you reel the pole back to yourself to retrieve the fruit. Important: during this final maneuver, do not knock out the windows of your shop-house or any nearby cars with the butt end of the mango picker. I may or may not have learned this the hard way.  

We picked a few still-green mangos and brought them inside.  We excitedly cut one open.  The flesh was the shade of the outside of a not-quite-ripe peach. In fact, everything about our first mango – from its texture to its taste – resembled an unripe peach. It even smelled green. Not our idea of delicious.

That afternoon, we learned an important mango lesson.  We complained at the GBGM office, and the staff informed us that Cambodians like their mangos on the sour side.  They dip the slices in bokma-ka-thnot (powder for sour fruit). A mixture of ground chili peppers and salt (some people include sugar), this condiment sits in tiny saran-wrapped bundles piled next to the fruit at every market. We had never even noticed it.  Bokma-ka-thnot does marginally improve the taste of underripe mangos.  Marginally.

Fortunately, like bananas and other tropical fruit, mangos continue to ripen after you pick them.  And once we let our initial harvest sit on the counter for a few more days, we savored every bite.  The skin transformed from green to yellow, and the flesh gained that beautiful orangish-yellow hue we call – no surprise – mango. We like our mango sweet, not sour.  And once it started getting ripe, we ate as much of it as we could.

We learned a few more important mango lessons.  First, two people cannot possibly consume even a fraction of the mangos that one half of one large mango tree produces.  Second, nobody wants your mangos.  Everybody has more than they know what to do with. It’s like zucchini squash in the summertime.  Strangers leave bags of mangos on your porch.  You leave bags of mangos on theirs.  Third, you can’t leave them on the tree to ripen.  

As mangos ripen, they grow heavier and heavier.  Eventually, the stem breaks and they plummet to the ground.  Or to the roof of your porch.  Or to the hood of Vannak’s car.  They splatter and instantly begin to ferment in the blazing Cambodian heat.  Mangos transform from delicious treat to nuisance fruit if you aren’t careful.  You have to pick them while they are still a little green (if you can reach them.)  But our tree stretches over forty feet high and our neighbor’s mango picker is only about fifteen feet long.  

We decided that what we needed was a second mango picker for our second-floor balcony.  My purveyor of all things Cambodian, Vannak rode up to our house wielding the new mango picker off to the side of his motorcycle like Sir. Lancelot getting ready for a joust.  We passed it up over the patio roof and used it to gather the second-floor mangos.  But the third-floor mangos thud down on the street even as I write.  Each one sounds like a rifle shot.  Each time, I jump.

Our across-the-street neighbors (generous owners of the mango picker, helpful charcoal fire starters, expert outdoor laundresses) have a recipe for mangos that is (mostly) a mystery to us.  They pick underripe mangos.  They cook the mangos with sugar into a thick syrup.  They pour the syrup onto trays and set the trays outside to dry on folding tables.  After the mango syrup mostly dries, they peel up the sheets of sticky fruit and drape them over clothes hangers to dangle for a few more days next to their laundry.  The end result resembles an extra-thick fruit roll-up.  

Last year, all I saw were the unsanitary conditions.  I politely accepted the gift of mango roll-ups and then clandestinely dumped them in the kitchen trashcan.  A lot has changed in a year.  Last week, I scraped the dead fly off a fruit roll up and stuffed it in my mouth. Delicious.

Truly, I don’t know why we thought we wanted the second-floor mangos.  We don’t have our neighbor’s recipe, and we can’t stay ahead of the fast-ripening fruit. My mango chef, Tom, cuts the mangos up and puts them in the refrigerator for breakfast.  Tom cuts them up and puts them in zip lock bags for the freezer.  Tom cuts them up and puts them in chutneys for dinner.  Tom scours New York Times Cooking for new recipes.  

All I do is eat them.  And I love mangos, I truly do.  I hope my skin doesn’t start to turn orange the way Thomas’ nose did on strained carrots when he was a baby.  But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

In April, I wrote about my struggle to locate myself in time here in this tropical country, a place lacking the seasonal indicators I’ve depended on all my life.  But now, a few months into my second year in Cambodia, I’m starting to recognize the subtle seasonal signals of my new home.  

Mango season is one.  I know from last year that these delicacies will vanish almost instantly.  One day I’m shoveling putrid piles of splattered mangos off the street and into the trash.  The next: no mangos anywhere. That day arrives soon.  

Today, Tom returned from the market with the first bundle of lychee fruit.  We now know to eat all the lychee fruit we can as they make their unbelievably sweet, limited-time-only appearance.  Last week, only a couple of market stalls displayed avocados.  This week, bright green and black footballs pyramided every corner.  Next week, some new delight awaits.  We won’t take it for granted.

“To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

I was already feeling ancient as I sat next to her, already worrying that our decision to delay starting a family would backfire into infertility.  And there she was telling me I looked too elderly to ever have a baby.  In 1992, that old Clairol jingle still inhabited my mental playlist: “I’m gonna wash that grey right outta my hair.”  So I headed to the salon and demanded a new look.

At first, I only went to the salon every eight weeks.  The stylist concocted a recipe that matched my natural color: brown. Initially, this satisfied me. But as the years went by and my natural hair grew more and more grey, I fought an unwinnable war against my roots.  

My visits to the salon became more frequent until, at the end, I showed up every three weeks.  And my stylist had to keep mixing the color lighter and lighter to camouflage the contrast between my now-white roots and the rest of my head.  By the time Thomas and Lydia got married in 2023, I was as blonde as I had been in preschool. 

In thirty years, I only took four salon sabbaticals.  I didn’t go when I was trying to get pregnant, and I stayed home until the end of the first trimester with all three children.  Somebody who sat behind me at church said, “We always knew you were pregnant before you told anybody because of how bad your roots looked.” Thanks?  And then, along with the rest of the country, I didn’t go to the salon during the COVID shutdowns.  

But other than that, by my calculations, I’ve made more than 400 visits to the salon over the past thirty years.  And I love going to the salon.  During the years I was running a school, mothering young children, and serving our church, Anruss was the only place nobody expected anything from me.  I didn’t have time for therapy, but Angela was the next best thing to a therapist.  And when I moved to Maurice, I found Michelle who became a true friend.   

But as Tom and I started seriously contemplating starting new lives as global missionaries, I worried about my hair.  For one thing, I didn’t think twice-a-month salon visits would fit our new budget.  Tom had long ago adopted a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy about the money I spent at the salon, but I knew I probably couldn’t sustain that habit on a missionary stipend.  

For another thing, I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to obtain the products I needed to stay blonde.  When I moved from Mississippi to Louisiana, Angela carefully wrote the color recipe down and Michelle carefully followed it the first time, adjusting it over the years as needed.  But I had no idea what products might be available in another country, much less whether I could find a stylist who could read Michelle’s recipe. 

We weren’t even sure if GBGM was going to hire us, but we wanted to be ready in case they did.  So we sold our house, and I quit coloring my hair.  Selling the house was the easier decision.  

Not fully on board, Michelle agreed to help me “go natural.” The first time she used a chemical to strip the color, I looked up to see Bozo-the-Clown’s sister in the mirror. “Tom is not going to like this!” Michelle proclaimed, dumping a bottle of something else on the rusty mess. But over the next several months, she cut my hair shorter and shorter and painted more and more highlights until the ombre effect looked intentional (if not natural.)  When we boarded the plane for Cambodia, I felt confident that I was on my way to a salon-free life. 

I was not.

Although I now had (pretty much) white hair, it was still as thick and hard to manage as ever.  I never learned how to blow-dry my hair, so even in 2025, I was still using hot rollers every day.  I packed an adapter so I could plug them in. 

The first time I used the rollers in Cambodia, I thought they were unusually hot, but they worked. The second time, I smelled something sharp and bitter and glanced over to see gray smoke pouring out of the plastic case. Note to self: you can’t plug American 120V hot rollers into Cambodian 230V wall sockets even if you have an adapter. You need a converter.

After I burned up my hot rollers, I was stuck looking like Albert Einstein most of the time.  One of my new Cambodian colleagues, unsolicited, brought me a bottle of “Maxwell Argan Oil” and told me, “This is what we use.” And it helped my hair.  A little. But not my feelings. 

Washing my hair turned out to be a challenge too. The sputter of water trickling from our shower could barely wet my hair, much less rinse the shampoo out. I started shopping for hats, but just like everything else about me, my head is too big for ready-to-wear in this country.

I’ve always known how much my self image depends on my hair. I contracted a pretty bad case of COVID in July 2020. In August, my thick hair started falling out by handfuls. I had to twist the elastic four times instead of two to hold my ponytail.  I panicked. Thankfully, after a few months, it stabilized, leaving me with sprouts of new-growth baby hairs.  

But now here I was in a new country with newly white hair, looking so fuzzy that new acquaintances were putting in their two cents. I wallowed in one of those low places they try to prepare you for during missionary training.

About that time, Tom needed his first haircut.  While I was at school, he walked around the corner to TB Salon. Nobody there spoke English, and we hadn’t even started studying Khmer.  But he managed to convey what he wanted, and they took charge.  Not only did he get a haircut, he also got a shampoo and an amazing head massage.  As soon as I got home from work, he started urging me to try TB Salon.

I really didn’t want to. When you move to a new country, you are slammed with so many new things all at once.  And most of them are things you can’t avoid. You have to set up the internet. You have to figure out how to shop for groceries. You have to learn how to get from place to place. I was feeling new experience fatigue, and I didn’t want to add going to the salon to my list. Tom offered to go with me, and finally one Saturday morning, I reluctantly consented.

TB Salon changed my life.

When I walk up to the door, two shampoo technicians hold it open and welcome me inside with bows and smiles. I’d call them shampoo girls because the oldest are probably only fourteen, but I don’t want to lose my feminist card. This essay probably jeopardizes it enough as it is.

They usher me back to the shampoo room where four cushioned tables extend from four shampoo bowls. I lie down on a table and put my head on the little plastic stool that sits inside the basin.  They cover me with a big towel and get to work. 

The shampoo lasts at least thirty minutes. They wash my hair twice as they scrub and massage my scalp, neck, and shoulders. They use cold water, which seemed strange at first, but now I love how refreshing it feels.  I try to be fully present throughout the shampoo and appreciate the gift of touch and care and talent lavished on my head.  

After the shampoo, the techs walk me into the main room for more shoulder massage and a few minutes of light blow drying. Then, like Marshal Matt Dillon descending the stairs of Miss Kitty’s Saloon to confront an outlaw, TB stalks down from the living quarters of the shop house and subdues my scruffy mop.  He brandishes the dryer on high and wields his round brushes to sculpt a perfect long bob.  When he’s done, he sprays his creation in place, whips off the cape, and bows. My coiffure lasts all week. 

I have not washed my own hair in over a year.  When he thinks it’s time for a haircut, TB pulls out the scissors and gives me a trim.  Sometimes he looks at me first, raises his eyebrows, and does a snip-snip in the air, but sometimes he doesn’t even ask.  

The biggest hair surprise in Cambodia isn’t how much I love my Saturday morning routine at TB Salon or even the fact that I never wash my own hair any more. The biggest hair surprise is how much Asians adore my white hair.  

Every week, someone tells me how beautiful it is. Strangers ask to have their pictures taken with me. Children stare. One child practicing her English with me at a coffee shop asked, “Why is your hair so white?” Every now and then, someone will surreptitiously, gently pull my hair. Vannak says they are checking to see if it’s real. If I hadn’t stopped coloring my hair, I’d just be another American. But with this hair, I’m a celebrity!

I feel nurtured and pampered and beautiful thanks to TB Salon. I can’t help but wonder how much I would be struggling in Cambodia if I had not let Tom talk me into that first visit. It probably doesn’t speak well of my character that so much of my emotional well-being depends on my hair. But some part of me also thinks that God knew my missionary hair was going to require some help when he put me in a shop house around the corner from TB Salon. 

“Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Do not be afraid; you are far more valuable than many sparrows.” Luke 12:7 

At the famous Saigon Central Post Office, I’m the tourist attraction!

Over the pounding, I hear the unmistakable sound of glass shattering.   At first, I wonder what broke next door.  But then I notice blue shards all over my floor.  The glass Louisiana ornament I snagged at our Sunday school class Cajun-Christmas swap sprawls all over the dining room in a million jagged pieces. It vibrated right off its shelf and smashed spectacularly. 

My heart sank.  We didn’t bring much with us to Cambodia, and that ornament represented love for my home state as well as love for our Seekers Sunday school class.  The prickle behind my nose threatened tears before I reminded myself that Caroline and Co. would still be selling those ornaments long after our missionary service ends.  Just a thing, the shiny blue Louisiana, replaceable and impermanent.

In the years we spent getting ready to become missionaries and in this first year serving in Cambodia, our relationship to the material objects in our life evolved.  We started downsizing in 2010 when we moved from our Victorian mansion in Natchez to a suburban subdivision in Maurice.  Then in 2024, we sold the subdivision house and moved to a two-bedroom apartment in Lafayette.  Finally in 2025 when we moved to Cambodia, we crammed our lives into a 250 cubic foot shipping container — about the size of a small walk-in closet — plus what we could carry with us on the airplane.

Shipping, storing, and disposing of a lifetime of stuff illuminated our priorities and passions.  I watched hours of YouTube videos on topics like “25 Move Abroad Packing Tips” and  “What I Wish I Had Packed When I Moved to Asia.”  In one especially good video, an Australian couple who had been living in Cambodia for two years filmed all the items they brought with them to Cambodia when they returned from their first trip to Australia after their move.  Their video revealed items unavailable or prohibitively expensive in Cambodia. Cutlery topped their list.

A cutlery fanatic myself, I had been coming to terms with my silverware obsession for quite a while as we whittled down our lives.  At one time, I owned twenty-four place settings of antique sterling flatware, twenty-four place settings of contemporary sterling flatware, and twenty-four place settings of art-deco style silver-plate flatware. Plus serving pieces, including two punch ladles! In what universe would I ever host a dinner party for seventy-two people?  On top of that, we only ever used a rusty set of stainless steel for ordinary meals.

The first thing I did when we moved to the apartment was donate the old, stained stainless steel and start using my grandmother’s silver-plate every day.  “First Love” features heavy pieces with simple tapered handles ending in subtle floral bouquets. The beaded edges lend the pieces their Art Deco flair. I ordered some additional pieces on EBay, including gumbo and coffee spoons. (My Arkansas Granny had no use for gumbo spoons!) 

We relished using the beautiful utensils; they made every meal feel special. I regretted all the years I set the table with spotty stainless steel I didn’t even like while Granny’s beautiful silver sat gathering dust in a box under the bed. 

The second thing I did was give the set of antique sterling to my daughter Margaret and her husband Eli as a second wedding anniversary gift.  That set was a family heirloom, loved by three generations in Natchez before it came to me.  It came with a tomato server, an anglefood cake knife, and multiple serving pieces I still can’t identify, all monogrammed with the first owner’s initials.  

My dear friend’s mother needed to sell it, and the family offered to let us buy it so they wouldn’t have to sell it through an auction.  At the time, we couldn’t really afford it.  And I had my wedding silver, so I didn’t need it.  But I loved it so much, and I wanted to help my friend.  Tom bought it for me. For years, I loved that silver because it was beautiful, because it reminded me of my friend and her mother, and because it reminded me of Tom’s generosity.  

Margaret knew the antique silver was my favorite; I always set the table with it for special meals.  When she and Eli got engaged, I suggested that she register for “Old Master,” my wedding silver pattern.  She said, “OK, but when you die, I want the antique set. Don’t leave it to the boys.”  

As we started downsizing, I considered what to do with that huge, velvet-lined chest of monogrammed silver. I thought about bank deposit boxes and safes.  But then I thought about Granny’s silver-plate sitting unused for forty years.  And I decided not to make Margaret wait until she became an old lady to inherit the antique silver.  We hauled the mahogany coffer with us to Savannah, and deposited the heavy box in her lap.

I thought it would make me sad to give away something I loved so much.  But it made me feel lighter.  It doesn’t diminish any of the happy memories of our Christmas, Easter, and birthday dinners using the fine, old silver.  And I know Margaret will love it for all the reasons I did and more.  I just hope it doesn’t spend too much time hiding under the bed.

At the same time we were trying to figure out how to fit our life into a shipping crate, I was also helping my mother move from the home she and my dad built in 1970 to an apartment at a Senior Living Community.  She had a beautiful set of sterling silver, “Rose Solitaire.”  It features slender handles with a single, long-stemmed rose bud at the tip. It screams Mid-Century Modern.  My parents bought it from a jeweler in Madison, Wisconsin after they married in 1959, and they paid for it with $5 monthly installments for years.  Mother loved it. 

She never wanted help washing her silver, and we weren’t allowed to pile it up in the sink after Christmas dinner.  Something might get scratched. Mother filled the plastic dish pan with hot sudsy water, donned her insulated blue gloves, and carefully washed each utensil, one at a time.  She rinsed every piece, wiped it with a soft cloth, and left it out overnight — neat, shiny ranks of knives and forks and spoons —  to ensure no trace of moisture would taint the special chest.

As her only daughter, I always assumed I would inherit my mother’s sliver. But just as we were moving Mother, my niece — her oldest granddaughter — was getting married.  Jessica’s personal style is totally Mid-Century Modern, and I urged Mother to give the sliver to her and Casey as a wedding gift.  I expected to feel a little sense of loss as I wrapped the box in tissue and put it in the extra-large gift bag, but not even a twinge crossed my heart.  Not having the silver doesn’t obscure the memory of how special it was to my mother or how much she loved using it. I don’t know if Jessica loves it, but I hope she does.

I still have my wedding silver, “Old Master.”  I chose it before I chose Tom. (Or did he choose me?  We never really agree on the answer to that question!) I had a few pieces in my hope chest when we married. (Hope chest? That should tell you how old I am!) We received several place settings as wedding gifts, and my parents continued to give me pieces on special occasions until I had a complete set. A classic pattern with a star-shaped flower at the end of each handle, my wedding silver has always made me smile.  

Tom’s mother’s silver pattern was also “Old Master.”  When his parents died, we purchased her set from the estate.  So now I own 24 place settings of “Old Master,” plus serving pieces.  I can imagine having dinner parties for that many people when we go back to our old lives, so I’ve got it safely stored. Maybe I’ll set special Christmas tables for my (yet to be born) grandchildren.  And someday (definitely before I die) I’ll give half of it to Thomas and half of it to Matthew.

But we had an immediate problem: what were we going to eat with in Cambodia?  Thanks to the Australian YouTube video, we knew we needed to bring cutlery from home.  At first, I thought we should buy a cheap set from Costco and plan to leave it in Cambodia.  But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to bring Granny’s silver-plate.  I wasted so many years not using it, and I didn’t want to waste any more.  Sure, Granny’s silver has sentimental value.  But it’s also easy to find on E-Bay.  And it’s silver-plate, so it’s not that expensive. If it disappeared over the ocean, I could buy more.  Or live without it.  

David McCormick, one of our GBGM mentors, advised us to bring things to Cambodia that would make us feel “normal” and “at home.”  So I rolled up four place settings in t-shirts and put them on the airplane.  And I boxed up the rest for the shipping crate.  We ate with our beautiful, familiar, sentimental flatware on day one.  And four months later, the rest of the set arrived.  After a year, it looks a little tarnished, and I need to figure out where to buy some Hagerty’s polish in Phnom Penh.  But every time we sit down at the table, we feel “normal” and “at home.”  

I know someone might break in and steal the silver.  It’s right there in the kitchen drawer.  And I know it might not make it back to the US from Cambodia when we retire.  Things sometimes disappear out of shipping crates. That could make me sad for a minute.  

But it probably won’t.  All this downsizing has taught me to enjoy the beautiful things in my life — like glass ornaments and silver flatware — without worrying about how long I will have them. Keep the things I use, and give away what I don’t.  Even if I love them.  Remember that the material possessions of my life, like silver spoons, are just objects. Only the memories of using them with the people I love truly matter.

“Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  Luke 12:15

I forgive you for assuming I summarize the story of Odysseus’ courtship of Penelope in The Odyssey. This actually recounts the story of  Preah Ream winning the hand of Neang Seda from The Reamker (the Cambodian version of the Indian epic Ramayana). 

I knew about Ramayana because a year or two into my tenure at Episcopal School of Acadiana I decided to add an Asian epic to the curriculum.  I taught The Odyssey in the context of Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey,” and Ramayana provided a perfect mirror.  It gave me a dual pleasure.  It revealed archetypal story patterns that transcend time, geography, and culture. And it conferred center-stage status to an essential Indian cultural narrative at our south Louisiana school.  

My colleague Shome Dasgupta consulted with his father, a scholar of Indian literature, and they helped me select Sanjay Patel’s beautifully illustrated graphic re-telling of Ramayana, The Divine Loophole.  In 2016, this became a core text in the freshman ESA curriculum.  I had never studied it before I taught it, but I spent years researching and refining my lessons. Patel was a former Pixar illustrator, and his stunning CGI-enhanced drawings added depth and interest to this great story, one most of my students had never heard of. 

I left all my books and teaching materials behind for my successors at ESA and headed off to Cambodia to start a new teaching career, never dreaming that Ramayana waited for me here.  

One of the most important tourist sites in Phnom Penh, the Royal Palace complex requires several hours and a guide to fully appreciate.  It is surrounded by a high yellow wall over which loom steep roofs topped with elaborate dragons and snakes.  They beckon, “Come inside!” A large grassy park full of pigeons and panhandlers and picnickers occupies the space between the drop-off and what should be the entrance. But once you sweat your way across the park, you find no entrance, just more wall.

The first time we went, a fast-talking remorque driver chased us down.  He helpfully informed us, “The Royal Palace is closed today for a special event.” He added graciously, “But do not worry!  I can take you on a private tour of the city.  You will see monkeys!” We declined his offer and sadly plodded off to a different museum.  Later, we learned that this is a famous scam to lure unwary tourists away from the legitimate sites and onto sketchy guided tours. The next time, we ignored the tour hawkers outside the walls and found the actual entrance around the corner.

Once inside, we hired an official guide and explored the palace. I was stunned to find more than 650 yards of elaborate 19th century frescoes illustrating the story of Rama, Sita, Lakshman, Hanuman, and Ravana. The frescoes extend along gallery walls that border the inner Silver Pagoda compound. The gallery is covered but it is also open-air, and the frescoes are undergoing restoration. But even in their compromised state, they shine with beauty and imagination.  I couldn’t stop admiring and photographing them.  At first, our guide was impressed and pleased with my interest, but he eventually grew impatient. I only got to examine a fraction of the frescoes. I want to go back on my own, but I haven’t yet.

Our guide explained that Hinduism replaced animism in Cambodia around the 1st Century CE. In the 5th century CE, Buddhism began its rise to prominence. For a long time, Hinduism and Buddhism existed side by side, but by the 13th century, Theravada Buddhism became dominant and is now the state religion.  But Hindu myths still play an important role in the culture of Cambodia, and the most important is The Reamker (the Cambodian version of Ramayana).

Immediately, I started wishing for a classroom set of The Divine Loophole. I thought using a story familiar to my students would be a perfect way to introduce them to reading literature in English. But that wasn’t happening. Instead, I decided to make my first foray into teaching literature to my “Conversational English” students with a reader’s theater version of an Asian folk tale, Po-Wan the Generous. 

I re-wrote the play using a more basic vocabulary, assigned roles, taught the unfamiliar words, and went to work. I’ve been teaching literature all my adult life, but nothing prepared me for the challenge of teaching literature to students reading in their second language. And that wasn’t even the most difficult thing. Getting my students to think abstractly or symbolically or critically: hopeless.  Every time I asked a question, they all bowed their heads over the text and searched valiantly for the answer. They refused to draw conclusions, much less make inferences, on their own. Partly, they feared failure.  They didn’t want to be wrong.  But partly, they have never been asked to engage in literary analysis, not in Khmer and certainly not in English.  

We slogged through Po-Wan the Generous, and I wracked my mind for a project that would snap them out of their doldrums.  And that’s when I remembered The Reamker.  I didn’t have a book, but they didn’t need a book. They all knew the story, and so did I. I took the myth and broke it down into eight chapters, one for each student. I told them that as their final assignment, they would give a presentation in English on their section of The Reamker, complete with at least one illustrated PowerPoint slide.

The class buzzed. They giggled and laughed about their assigned sections, trading so each could get their favorite part. They pulled out their phones and started researching. Two days after I made the assignment, the slides started pouring in. Vichhat sent me twelve slides, including one with a picture of himself posing beside a statue of Preah Ream taken at the National Museum of Cambodia. Kakada – usually thirty minutes late to class every day because of his job as a waiter – submitted ten slides a week early, many illustrated with pictures of the frescoes at the Royal Palace. Later, he submitted revised slides, and I had to edit the class presentation all over again for him. Vattey used historic photographs of classical Cambodian dance performances of Reamker to illustrate her slides.  Each student worked to make their presentation excellent.

On the day of the presentations, the students stood proudly in front of the room, placed palms together, bowed to me, and began: “Hello teacher, and hello classmates.  Today, I tell you the story of Reamker. . . .”  They knew the story inside and out, and they proudly recounted the ancient narrative in their new language.  I marveled at how engaged these young men and women became as soon as I invited them to share their cultural and literary heritage with me.  

I’ve written about ways God used my years as headmaster of Trinity Episcopal Day School in Mississippi to prepare me for this missionary job as school principal in Cambodia.  But this week, I realized just how much God also used the years I spent teaching English at Episcopal School of Acadiana to prepare me for this job.  Where else but ESA would I have been encouraged to teach a graphic novel version of a Hindu epic? A straight line connects that teaching experience to this one. Ramayana gave me the key I needed to invite my students to celebrate their Cambodian literary heritage, Reamker, in English class. I thought the term was fizzling out, but instead, it ended in a festival. 

Christian youth groups often ask kids to respond to the question, “Where did you see God today?” The answer has probably never been, “I saw God in an ancient Hindu epic.”  But this week, that's my answer. 

Their joy was short-lived.  About the time Cena and Margaret reached the other children, an enormous man wearing a terrifying rabbit suit rounded the corner of the house and headed towards the celebration.  The costume had seen better days, but the girls only registered its huge furry head and hollow cartoon eyes before screams and tears replaced squeals and laughter.  They were done with the Easter Bunny for 1999. 

That year, and for the next several years, Lansing’s mom planned an Easter egg hunt as her daughter’s birthday party.  Georgeanne knew a good thing when she found it.  Lansing’s older brother Chase has a November birthday. The stuffed poultry and decorated pine cones that still grace our Thanksgiving table-scape are relics from Chase’s “Turkey Hunt” parties.  I don’t remember a man in a turkey costume, although there may have been one. 

The rabbit-man worked for Brakenridge Furniture, and the costume no doubt came from some long ago Easter promotion: “Come to Brakenridge Furniture this weekend!  Buy a new mattress and take your child’s picture with the Easter Bunny!!” Or something like that.  But every Easter after that first one, we spent the long ride to Ferriday demystifying the scary bunny and preparing for his awkward arrival. Lansing’s Easter egg birthday party represented a signpost in our year, signifying the end of winter and the beginning of spring. That party, coupled with warmer days and budding trees, let us know where we were in the calendar. 

Many of the ways we oriented ourselves to time in the US don’t help us here in Cambodia where weather varies from summer to extra-summer. Leaves don’t fall. Flowers don’t fade. Fruit doesn’t go out of season. Cambodians do enthusiastically register the slight changes in temperature. In December, we saw people wearing puffer jackets when it was 75 degrees Fahrenheit. But in an entire year, Tom and I have never even unpacked our windbreakers. If I have to go to the hospital for some reason and they administer a mental status exam, I’ll probably fail the orientation test. I’m never quite sure what month it is.

And it’s not just the weather that keeps me confused.  A teacher for almost forty years, I depend on school starting in August to anchor the entire rhythm of my year.  Here, it starts whenever it wants to. Some schools start in September, some start in March.  The Hope Vocational School year starts in January. But I haven’t adjusted.

LSU and New Orleans Saints football fans, Tom and I didn’t watch a single football game during the 2025 season.  There are streaming services, but nothing owned by Disney (including ESPN and the SEC Network) works in Cambodia. March Madness is going on now according to the New York Times, but we have no idea who’s playing.  We used to plan our whole spring schedule around that basketball tournament.  

The only sport that helps us keep time is baseball.  We subscribe to MLB TV (let’s all hope Disney doesn’t gobble it up before we leave Cambodia!) and follow the Atlanta Braves devotedly.  But baseball season is six months long, so it isn’t that helpful for tracking time.  And in 2025, the Braves were out of it long before the season ended, so we stopped watching.  Hopefully, they won’t let us down this year.  We’ll for sure know it’s October if we’re watching the Braves in the World Series!  Possibly that would keep us oriented for an entire year.

Here, the biggest thing missing that used to keep us tied to the season is the celebration of Easter. The rhythms of Mardi Gras-to-Lent-to-Holy Week-to-Easter simply aren’t visible the way they were in Natchez and Lafayette.  We don’t even see the commercial signifiers of Easter like Easter baskets wrapped up in bright cellophane or decorations plastering store windows. Cambodians celebrate Christmas as a commercial holiday.  Easter is just . . . absent.

We have to be intentional in our efforts to celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord.  We can’t depend on Easter egg parties or Living Stations of the Cross pageants to remind us what time it is.  I already dropped the ball by forgetting Ash Wednesday.  In Louisiana, we had been gorging ourselves on king cake for weeks by then and exhausting ourselves at Mardi Gras balls and parades. And just in case we forgot what day it was, there were always a few early birds wandering around on Wednesday morning with black crosses on their foreheads to remind us to get to church. Sliding into the pew on Ash Wednesday felt like a reprieve, a re-set, an opportunity to get ready for the Main Event. But I totally missed it this year.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday.  As I did last year, I’ll go to the Easter celebration at the Cambodian Students Children Fund Organization (GBGM’s Street Children’s Ministry). The children will enthusiastically sing and sign to songs I’ve never heard. Then a group of costumed teenaged girls will perform traditional Cambodian dances. As they slide across the stage with smooth and elaborate hand and foot movements, a band will pound gongs, xylophones, and drums behind them.  After that, we’ll play games. Clay pots filled with rice powder and cash or candy, Cambodian pinatas don’t mess around.  When someone manages to make contact with the pot hard enough to break it, shards and dust and treasure shower the scrambling children.  Frightening in a different way from Lansing’s Easter egg hunt, the party should definitely be memorable.  I’ll try to stay out of the way of the stick.

My favorite Palm Sunday memories feature the chaos of children marching around Jefferson Street United Methodist Church waving Jade-leaf stems. Matthew broke his in half one year and stumped around with tears streaming until Laurie Wells noticed and replaced it. This year, while I attend the Street Children’s celebration, Tom will go to our church in Phnom Penh (International Christian Fellowship Church). It’s his week to lead the intercessory prayer.  Worshippers will reenact the triumphal entry into Jerusalem by waving kramas.  Fortunately, we have already amassed a small collection of those sturdy, versatile cotton scarves.  Usually checked, they are employed for everything including bandanas, sun protection, and baby carriers. Sunday, kramas will wave in the air to welcome Christ. Surely, nobody will cry.

And then the rest of the week unfolds. I hope we will find ways to mark Maundy Thursday and Good Friday before we make it to Easter Sunday. We want to prepare our hearts to celebrate the good news of the resurrection with our new church family.  We will be worshipping at a school instead of our usual location. The school has a pool. There will be baptisms. It’s going to be nothing like any Easter celebration I’ve ever attended.  Hopefully, despite the unfamiliarity, I’ll be able to hold on tight enough to the miracle and the majesty of God’s perfect love for us that I’ll know where I am in time and space. Easter People are the same all over the world, after all.

It’s been a long time since sound regulated my internal clock.  Like everybody else, I now check my phone constantly to see what time it is.  But at Hebron Medical Center, I’ve gotten used to another kind of lunchtime signal: worship music drifting down the hall from the assembly / patient waiting room.  The faint notes of old hymns give me the same comforting sense of joy and anticipation that I remember feeling back in Leakesville.  Here, not only is my stomach about to get soothed, but my soul is too.  It’s time for the pre-lunch devotional service.

I leave the GYN clinic, walk down the hall, and join the entire hospital staff: twenty-five medical residents, fifteen Khmer attending physicians, eight missionary physicians, countless nurses, nursing students, technicians, housekeepers, administrators, and clerical staff. The short service includes a song, a prayer, and announcements.  My favorite part is when we turn to one another, bow and say, “Thank you for today.”  It’s a beautiful pause in the middle of our work day to honor God and honor the work that each of us is trying to do in his service. And then we eat.

Recently, the room was unusually crowded, and I realized that a large contingent of people I didn’t know filled the extra seats and flowed out into the isles.   But they were strangers only to me.  Pastor Park introduced them as members of the EMAS team here for their sixth Hebron mission trip since 2018.  EMAS Canada (Education, Medical Aid, and Service) is a Non-governmental Organization (NGO) founded in Ontario, Canada, in 1948. The relationship between EMAS and Hebron shines as a model for what effective medical mission work can be.  They served not only patients, but also every member of the Hebron staff.  Their visit reminded me of another ritual from my childhood: the revival meeting.  

This team included fifteen people: nine from Edmonton, Alberta; five from Toronto, and one from Taipei, Taiwan. Because of their longstanding relationship with our hospital, they understood very well what services were most needed at Hebron and compiled a team that would best serve our patients and our resident physicians. The range of services stretched from Internal Medicine to Anesthesia to Plastic Surgery to Occupational Therapy to Psychological Therapy to Nursing. 

At Hebron, we provide outpatient services, inpatient services, hemodialysis, and surgery. Currently we have a pediatric surgeon, two gynecological surgeons, and a general surgeon who also does a significant amount of urologic surgery. But often, there are surgical needs we cannot meet, including some plastic surgery cases. 

On their most recent visit, EMAS physicians performed nine cases, ranging from eyelid repairs (that interfered with their eyesight), a foreign body abscess from the left palm, a nerve repair and separation of fingers (birth defect) on a two year old, a surgery on a toe with bone fixation and tendon repair on a fifteen year old, a surgery on a large scar on the shoulder of a four year old, excision of a scalp mass, and a left ear repair on a birth defect on a fourteen year old. On past visits, they have also done surgeries on cleft lips /palates, burn contractures and vascular malformations.

Hebron resident physicians, technicians, and nurses were able to receive hands-on training from these visiting physicians in surgical techniques they usually don’t see at our hospital.  EMAS understands our teaching mission perfectly, and they provided continuing education lectures and seminars throughout the week.  They allowed our residents to shadow them during clinics and included them in rounds all week.  Because they come regularly, they know people by name (even some patients!)

But I think the most impactful thing about the EMAS visit was the way they ministered to the staff.  They hosted special meals for different groups of employees. They made sure to spend time really connecting with our staff, all the people who work so hard to serve others every day at Hebron.  They made each of us feel seen and valued.  Each day after lunch, EMAS hosted a worship service filled with meaningful music and heartfelt testimony.  They shared their call stories and they asked us to share ours.  

One day, I mounted the stairs to the sounds of a concert pianist at work.  I walked into the chapel to find Dr. Josh Wong, one of the visiting plastic surgeons, playing the prelude.  Music in heaven must sound like that.  During the testimony part of the worship service, nurse Jonathan Lo shared his story.  The first Christian in his family, he explained that following a motorcycle accident that should have killed him, Dr. Wong sewed his body back together and then led him to Christ. 

Nurse Jonathan was in Cambodia with Dr. Wong because he believes that God saved his life for such a time as this.  I think the fact that Jonathan is about the same age as my youngest son Matthew, a nursing student in Louisiana, made his testimony especially meaningful to me.  That these people, so gifted and so busy with their own lives, felt called to serve beside us at Hebron gave me a renewed sense of the importance of my own call to serve here.

EMAS offered a ministry of medicine, certainly, but their ministry of presence was just as meaningful.  Writing this makes me smile because I am reminded of how much comfort and uplift those fifteen people brought in one short week.  I didn’t know them on Monday, but by Friday when I heard the music drifting down the hall, I felt like I was headed to sit with family and tell them, “Thank you for today.” The only thing missing was sweet tea!

Like Paul, I say, “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel” (Philippians 1:3-5a).

Before he drove for us, Vannack was a chef specializing in Chinese cooking at a casino restaurant. Sometimes he pulls his dark green Camry up to our door and jumps out carrying plastic containers full of steaming curries, soups, and rice dishes prepared especially for us.  Most of the time, we inhale every morsel right then.  One day, he asked me if I liked marinated chicken legs.  Who doesn’t like chicken legs?  Sadly (at least for me) the dish he delivered the next day contained marinated chicken feet.  But I tell him truthfully if I don’t care for something because I don’t want him to cast his culinary pearls before me if I can’t appreciate his gifts.  

He takes us to a big wet market near our house every Friday morning.  We hand him our list, and he leads the way. Barreling around slimy puddles and putrid piles, dodging aggressive vendors who clamor for his attention, and swerving around reckless motorcyclists who inexplicably speed down the crowded alleys, Vannak directs us to his preferred stalls.  He carefully selects every piece of produce while haggling enthusiastically with the vendors.  

One day, he detoured right through the middle of the poultry section.  Live chickens trussed by their legs (aka feet) complained next to fat ducks panting on the pavement.  Vannak explained that he wanted to avoid the beef lady because she would not stop begging him to bring us to her stall.  When we commit the faux pas of standing in front of a stall where we aren’t shopping, he ushers us along before we get in trouble. We’d be lost in the market without him.

A polyglot who speaks English, Mandarin, Indonesian, and Filipino, Vannak hardly accepts anything less than perfection when we lean on him for Khmer instruction.  We probably should spend more of our car hours letting him tutor us, but his exactitude hurts our feelings.  Our Khmer teacher always coos, “l’or, l’or, good, good,” when we try to pronounce a word.  Vannak hits the steering wheel and raises his voice.  On the grounds that it might distract him from driving, we don’t ask for his help very often.  Truly, we prefer the false praise of our teacher over the fierce demands of our driver.

It doesn’t matter what we need, Vannak finds it. Whether it’s a set of bamboo poles to stake our bougainvilleas or a Khmer shirt for Tom to wear to a wedding, Vannak’s on top of it.  When we had to fly out of the brand new Phnom Penh airport, we had nothing to fear.  Vannak conducted a dry run ahead of our departure.  He solves problems before we know we have them.    

At school, I depend on a different man to solve my problems: Phirum.  Phirum, his wife Sophoan, and their daughters Linny and Nysa live at Hope Vocational School.  Phirum belonged to the GBGM Project ARK crew that built the school.  After the building was completed, Phirum and Sophoan stayed on as school keepers.  Phirum can fix anything. 

The school budgeted $1,200 for repairs in 2025. The school spent $185 for repairs in 2025.  A brand new school doesn’t require extensive repairs, of course.  But any new homeowner can tell you that things break, especially that first year.  At HVS, windows, doors, and air conditioners leaked. Fuses blew, plumbing clogged, and generators died.  Planters, glass, and plaster cracked.  Phirum fixed everything. 

Not only that, he functions as the school’s de facto IT Director. I thought the computer teacher would serve that role, but it turned out to be Phirum.  When the network is down, he wakes it back up.  When the SMART-TVs act stupid, he schools them.  At first, only two teachers at a time could access the network. We called the internet company to come to the school a few times, but nothing worked properly until Phirum re-wired the routers and set up some extenders. Who needs Mark Broussard when you have Phirum?

Phirum and Vannak are two of the most capable men I have ever met.  I could not function in my Cambodian life without them.  But there are moments when I realize that my understanding of what constitutes capability is culturally constructed, and that culture is entirely American.

One February morning Patrick Booth, one of the other GBGM missionaries in Cambodia, and I decided to go for coffee after a staff meeting.  We don’t normally go to Starbucks in Phnom Penh.  Brown Coffee is a Cambodian-owned chain we prefer.  Instead of cookie-cutter reproductions, its cafes are beautiful, architecturally unique reflections of their neighborhoods.  But a Secret Santa had given everyone Starbucks gift cards at the Christmas party, so we decided to use them.  

As soon as I sent Vannak the location and asked him to drive me to Starbucks, he pulled his Starbucks gift card out of the glove compartment and waved it over the seat at me. “What is this?” he demanded.  “I have received this thing, but what is it for?”  Vannak didn’t know how to use a gift card.  

He parked the car and came inside with me. I showed him how to use the card to pay for a drink.  I made sure to explain that he still had enough credit on the card to pay for two more drinks.  I marveled at my own blind-spot that kept me from realizing that to this amazingly capable man — the one who snowplows the roads of Cambodian life before me — a gift card is nothing but a decorative piece of plastic.  

My moment of truth with Phirum shook me even harder.  Employers in Cambodia are legally required to register with and contribute to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) for employees, covering occupational risks, healthcare, and pensions. Because of the many loopholes and exceptions, enforcement is irregular and many people don’t receive NSSF from their employers. 

I decided that all HVS employees would enroll in NSSF and that the school would bear the full cost of the benefit (less than $14 per month, per employee).  But in order to qualify, everyone had to sign an employment contract, something Phirum and Sophoan had not previously done.

I asked our business manager to prepare contracts and arrange meetings with each employee.  When Phirum came to his meeting, I learned that he could neither read nor write.  The business manager read the contract to him, and Phirum signed with his mark.  Our IT Director cannot read. Evidently, he doesn’t need to. 

In the forty years I have been a supervisor, I may have employed no one more skilled or capable than Vannak or Phirum. They might be lost in Louisiana, but they know everything they need to succeed in Cambodia. I would be the one lost without them here. 

Culturally and situationally determined, competence is context dependent.  We can’t afford to forget that lesson, not here in Cambodia nor anywhere else in the world.  I thank God for Vannak and Phirum. I pray I will never fail to recognize the Vannaks and Phirums who cross my path here in Cambodia and for the rest of my life.

Many people in Cambodia, especially in neighborhoods as nice as ours, own clothes washing machines.  But I never saw a clothes dryer in any of the apartments I viewed before our move. Most people don’t own them here, so I don’t either. But especially at first, living without a clothes dryer tested my commitment to incarnate living.

We live in a borey, a gated residential community. Our part of the borey consists of shophouses (a little like townhouses in the US) clustered together in tight rows. Tall and skinny, one room wide shophouses feature large patios between the street and the front door.  Nobody has a yard.  People who use the first floor of their home as a shop store their merchandise in the living room and display goods for sale on the patio.  Everybody else uses the patio as a combination dining room/laundry room/storage room.

That liminal space is not entirely public, but it’s not entirely private either.  People bathe their children in plastic tubs on their patios, and they routinely wander around wrapped only in towels or kramas. And, of course, they hang their laundry on their patios.  Clothes swing on metal racks constructed specifically for that purpose.  Everything from pants to panties stands on view for all the neighborhood to see. Actually, I think there’s an unwritten rule: act like whatever happens on the patio is invisible.

But patio laundry action entertains me.  Across the street, dad serves as laundress.  Three or four racks mark the edges of his patio.  Some days, he loads a rack with wet clothes before hoisting the whole thing and walking it to our side of the street, a sunnier spot.  If it starts raining, he hustles across to rescue the laundry.  In the mornings, wrapped in a towel, his teen-aged son scrounges through the racks looking for clean clothes.  I imagine dad told him, “I’ll wash your clothes, but you have to bring them to your room.”  Evidently, son thinks using the laundry rack as a closet works just fine.

I can’t embrace the patio-as-laundry-room custom.  Probably because I won’t stop staring at other people’s laundry, I don’t want to put mine on public display.  But that’s not the only reason I don’t dry our clothes on the patio.  Air pollution in Phnom Penh is some of the worst in the world.  I wipe my front patio bench every time I sit on it to prevent my pants from getting smudged.  And when I take a tuk tuk, I wear a silk scarf over my (now white) hair just so I don’t have to wash it after every outing.  Once a week, maintenance comes around fogging for mosquitoes.  The thick chemicals hang suspended in the air knocking out visibility for several minutes.  Hanging my clean clothes to dry in that dirty air doesn’t appeal to me.

We run our air conditioner 24-7 so it filters some of the pollution, and we brought our Dyson air filter from the US.  Inside our shophouse, we hang our clothes on hangers along the built-in bookcase above the television.  We strategically arrange the hangers to keep our view unimpeded.  Bedsheets pose the greatest challenge.  I packed our oldest, thinnest sheets from home, which helps.  We arrange water jugs along the center of the dining table and drape the sheet over the jugs and the chairs blanket fort style.  We can only dry one sheet at a time that way though, so it takes at least two days just to wash sheets. Fortunately, I brought two sets.

I have learned some helpful things by stepping back to pre-industrial laundry practices.  I own three long-sleeved cotton voile blouses from Talbots.  My favorite wardrobe pieces in Cambodia, the blouses are modest yet cool. (Despite the sweltering heat, sleeveless tops are not considered appropriate attire for grown women.) In the US, these blouses either lived in the bottom of the ironing basket or got taken to A-1 Cleaners.  Here, I realized that if I shake them out and smooth the wrinkles while they are damp, the blouses dry perfectly.  The same goes for Tom’s cotton shirts.  Who knew?  If we get to go home before our service ends, I’m going to stock up on more blouses.  And once we retire, our guy at A-1 Cleaners is out of luck because now I know I don’t need him. 

My laundry lessons aren’t profound.  But not everything here is.  Sometimes the challenges of learning how to live in another country within another culture rest in the mundane details.  That’s incarnate living.  I don’t have to hang my laundry on the patio if I don’t want to, but I also don’t have to run out and buy a clothes dryer.  (They do sell them; I checked.) I need to exist here in Cambodia by balancing my foreignness with God’s call to live in community with the people I serve.  Little by little, I’m figuring it out.

I was at Hope Vocational School for the first day of school in 2025 as an observer because school started in February, and I didn’t actually start my term as a GBGM Global Missionary until March.  Since the first day of school is so important, GBGM funded a “scouting trip,” allowing me to be present. Before I arrived at this brand new school, the teachers had all been hired, and the students had all been recruited.  My only job was to look competent and lend an official air to the Convocation.  

Chaos somewhat hampered my ability to fulfill that one job, but I managed.  Until the first day of the 2025 school year, we had no idea how many students were going to show up.  When I asked how long the term lasted, they told me, “We wanted to let you decide that.” When I wanted to know about the curriculum, I learned that too was undecided.  

Confident that these were details I would be able to address in the future, I tried not to fret.  After all, that’s why GBGM assigned me to Cambodia.  I assumed, as did they, that my nine years as the head of one Episcopal school in Mississippi and my eleven years as the department chair of another Espiscopal school in Louisiana prepared me to run this mission school in Cambodia. I told myself that the first day of school in 2026 would be different. I lied.

Most of my school difficulties stem from culture clashes.  That’s to be expected.  Trainers spoke extensively about that during missionary orientation.  But Cambodians are so conflict averse and so respectful of hierarchy that they almost never let me know when we are experiencing a culture clash.  I usually don’t figure it out until after the fact.

Sometimes, however, I commit an error so egregious that my Cambodian colleagues must take overt action.  For example, last week we held an Open House for students and parents. I struggle during Open Houses. Partly because of my rudimentary Khmer and partly because our parents are so shy, I wind up just standing around feeling awkward.  

I decided that it would be nice to serve refreshments to our guests.  I ordered 180 home-made cookies from the Susanna Wesley House Bakers, another GBGM ministry in Phnom Penh. The cookies were as beautiful as they were delicious, three-inch confections shiny with chocolate chips and sprinkles. I thought standing in the breezeway and passing out cookies would be the perfect way to stay occupied and extend hospitality to our school community. 

Evidently, the concept of servant leadership has yet to reach Cambodia.  Without exception, every member of my faculty and staff reacted with horror to the idea that I would be the one passing out cookies at the Open House.  I managed to give away three or four cookies before Mony, my administrative assistant, wrestled the tongs away from me and Pich, the business manager, grasped my hand and dragged me to the front gate. What seemed like a good idea to me turned out to be an unacceptable devaluation of dignity to my staff.  My only option was to go back to feeling awkward.

Unlike the cookie catastrophe, my staff resolves most culture clashes behind the scenes without consulting me. For instance, I naively thought it would be a good idea for students to register and pay at least a portion of tuition before the first day of school.  This is how it works at every school I have ever known from church preschools to universities.  I wanted a way to ensure that our limited spots would be allocated to the students who were truly committed to studying with us.  I also wanted to avoid the debacle of the first day of school in 2025, when more than fifty students arrived to study English with our only (at that time) teacher.  If students enrolled and paid ahead of time, when we reached twenty-five students in each class, we could close the class and start a wait list.

To this end, I wrote a brochure outlining course offerings, tuition and fees, enrollment deadlines, and policies.  I created an application and Pich translated everything into Khmer. The documents underwent several iterations at the printer until I was satisfied that they looked professional and informative. We distributed the 2026 enrollment packet to all students and parents two months ago at the Term Three mid-term Open House and later passed it out to anyone who inquired about the school. 

In 2025, we didn’t charge tuition, but in 2026 we are charging 10% of our actual cost to educate a student: $21 a term.  Students can pay $7 a month or get a big discount and pay only $15 for the whole term. I hoped to communicate this clearly to our students and their families.  Thus, facilitated by the clear expectations and policies outlined in the brochure, student applications and tuition payments would accrue well ahead of the first day of school. 

My brilliant plan went up in smoke. On the first day of school, we had collected exactly zero dollars and zero cents of tuition money.  We had no idea how many students were actually going to arrive that day.  We were in the identical boat we had been in on the first day of school the previous year.  Little had changed, although we now had a beautiful brochure that, evidently, meant absolutely nothing.

The previous week, I sat down with my administrative assistant to review projected enrollment numbers.  “Let’s look at the class lists,” I suggested.  “Don’t have,” Mony replied.  “How many students have paid?” I inquired.  “None yet,” Mony declared.  My head tried to explode, but I prayed it back to my neck.  “Why not?”

My avant-garde idea to collect tuition payments before the first day of school died on arrival, although nobody informed me.  Likewise, my plan for current students to submit a new application for the new year got put on the back burner.  Mony decreed that all the existing students would show up on 26 January.  She made a list only of new applicants. 

When I stomped upstairs and complained to the business manager, she gently said, “Cambodians do not do it this way.” Pich and Mony explained their plan, which involved distributing invoices to students on the third day of school.  By then, they reasoned, we should know who the new students actually are. They expected we would have enough teachers to teach them. If we didn’t, they expected us to figure it out like we did last year.  And that’s what happened.

Our missionary training included conversations about the differences between “hot-climate cultures” and “cold-climate cultures.”  And I knew I was coming from a “cold-climate culture” (although Louisiana and Mississippi have more “hot climate” characteristics than much of the United States.)  I expected Cambodians to prioritize relationships over tasks.  And I even expected them to view time as flexible.  But I underestimated the ways the Cambodian flexible, spontaneous approach to planning would impact my role as a school administrator.  

In addition to creating beautiful but meaningless brochures, I made a school calendar for the entire 2026 school year.  I printed it up, laminated it, and hung it on the wall in the teacher's work-room.  Pich thought it would be enough to hang two months at a time, but I ignored her suggestion and posted the whole thing. It’s there, a silent testimony to my “cold climate” administrative strategies.  There’s nothing wrong with it; however, I am going to try and remind myself not to get unwound if it functions more like a suggestion than a mandate. 

When I look at that calendar today, I’m happy to see that Back-to-School is behind us, and next week gleams, a blank slate.  Hopefully in the future, I’ll remember where I am and try some “hot climate” strategies when I get stuck.  And maybe I’ll even do a better job asking Pich and Mony for advice instead of telling them what I think we should do.

Even jet-lagged and disoriented, I eventually realized “bong” was a vocative, a noun of direct address. I decided it was Cambodian for “ma’am,” the word a well-mannered telecom worker in Natchez, Mississippi would no doubt employ to address me, even in 2026.  But it’s not that simple.  

A few weeks later, we started studying Khmer.  (Yet another lesson learned: the language people speak in Cambodia is Khmer, not Cambodian.)  In our first class, we learned how to politely address the people we meet in our daily lives.  As I had surmised, “bong” is a noun of direct address, but it doesn’t translate to “ma’am.”  It translates to “sister” or “brother.”  A world of difference lies in the gap between ma’am and sister.  After almost a year, I think I’m beginning to understand that gap, and it’s one of the things I love most about Cambodia.

In the United States today, Roman Catholics routinely address priests as “Father,” monks as “Brother,” and nuns as “Sister.”  And some Protestants still address their ministers as “Brother,” although that isn’t as common as it was a generation ago.  In my Southern Baptist childhood, I remember Brother Hale and Brother Webb as benevolent dictators who certainly seemed to have a closer relationship with Father God than the rest of us.  

Even today in some Christian faith traditions, church members address each other as brother or sister to emphasize their shared kinship as members of the family of God.  In men’s college fraternities, members also occasionally address each other as brother, especially at formal events or during rituals.  Black Americans tend to use brother and sister as honorifics more frequently than white Americans do. Tom’s two sisters routinely address each other as “sister.”  Every now and then, they even address me as “sister,” which always gives me a little glow up.  

So, using the word brother or sister as a vocative doesn’t totally violate American language norms.  But it isn’t normal for Americans to call anyone and everyone, including complete strangers, brother or sister.  This leads to a reasonable question: If you call everyone brother or sister, as they seem to do in Cambodia, do those words still have the same connotative weight as they have in the US?  Isn’t bong just another way of saying ma’am or sir as in “Ma’am, I believe you dropped your handkerchief” or “Sir, please refill our water glasses.”

In my experience, the answer to that question is “No.” Bong does not simply mean ma’am or sir in the neutral way we tend to use those words in English.  I saw this play out in real time at a Big Box store in Phnom Penh when I was looking for a new cooktop.  The floor gleamed with samples crammed so closely together it wasn’t clear where one range top ended and another began.  

A tall American wearing cut off shorts and a tank top gave up trying to figure things out on his own and attempted to flag down a sales clerk.  “Bong!” he called.  She appeared not to hear him and kept on walking.  The customer raised his voice: “Bong! Bong!!”  She continued to ignore him, although, along with everyone else in the store, she most certainly heard him. Frustrated, he ran after her and clutched her elbow; she executed a quick 180 and faced him with a “look” designed to demonstrate to him his linguistic miscalculation. I don’t know if he learned the lesson, but I did.

Bong is not a word to summon an underling the way ma’am or sir can be.  Bong connotes connection and mutuality.  It doesn’t automatically mean “I like you,” but it does mean “I’m open to the possibility that I would like you if we knew each other better.” It says, “We have a relationship,” even if that relationship may be fleeting.  

I love it when someone in Cambodia calls me bong.  And I try to use bong as often as I can.  Last Friday, as usual, Vannak orchestrated my weekly fruit purchase at our regular market stall.  Under a magnificent blue sky, I relished the breeze and the rare 74 degree morning as I pondered waxy pomegranates and pale yellow Asian pears.  The vendor, bundled up in a pink puffy jacket, peeked out from under her fuzzy winter hat and urged me to taste her sweet local satsumas, tiny orange golf balls still attached to green leafy branches. 

I made my selection, and as Vannak was counting the change, I leaned over and said, “Akoun, bong” (“Thank you, sister.”)  The vendor clapped her hands and exclaimed, “Neang niyeay pheasaea Khmer!” (“She speaks Khmer!”) before tossing an extra passion fruit into my bag.  One little phrase, and she and I were more than vendor and customer; we were sisters.

Tom and I try not to obsess about the news in the US, or we would spend all our time doomscrolling.  God didn’t call us as missionaries to Cambodia to bury our noses in our phones. But the stories from home are breaking our hearts.  I can’t help but wonder how our country would be different if civilians and law enforcement officers called each other brother and sister instead of sir and ma’am.  Would Jonathan Ross have pulled the trigger if his last words to Renee Good had been, “You can’t park there, sister”?  What if Renee had told Jonathan, “Brother, I’m not mad at you”? I desperately want to think there could have been a different ending to this tragedy.  

Sometimes I marvel at how Cambodians can be so gentle and generous towards one another as well as towards all the rest of us.  Everyone knows their dark, recent history.  How can people only one generation removed from genocide treat everyone with such kindness and respect? I would expect Cambodians to be defensive and guarded rather than inclusive and open.  But in 2026, their language shapes their culture, just as their culture shapes their language. With every bong, they tie themselves closer to one another.

I can’t count how many articles I’ve read recently that explain the many ways dehumanizing language desensitizes people and makes violence and cruelty seem acceptable.  I think it’s time for us Americans to learn from the Cambodians. Let us experiment with humanizing language.  Every single human is a precious child of God.  We are all, every one of us, whether we love him or not, God’s children.  

I used to tell my own children, “use your words” when they were struggling with big emotions.  It’s time for us to all use our words.  Let us name our human connection when we speak to one another. If we label our relationships with our words, maybe we can start to feel them in our hearts.

And it’s not enough to just call the members of our church family, our racial group, our social club “brother” or “sister.”  That’s easy to do.  Cambodians don’t restrict bong to the humans they identify with.  They spread it out, and we can too.  

Try calling your mail carrier “sister” and see what happens.  The next time you see a uniformed law enforcement officer, smile and say, “Good morning, brother.” That harried clerk at the DMV? Say, “Thank you, sister” when she finally hands over your new license.  The man in line at Wal-Mart speaking to his children in a language you don’t understand? Smile and say, “Brother, your baby is so cute!” I’m not sure what their reactions will be, but I am sure it will make you feel better.

If Cambodians, after all they have been through, can still call one another brother and sister, Americans surely can. And maybe, just maybe, that will change everything. Members of one human family, we can honor this connection, even if obliquely, if we call one another bong. 

We had decided to spend Christmas in Singapore, only a short non-stop flight from Phnom Penh.  I dreaded my first Christmas without any of our children.  I hoped the excitement of visiting a new city would distract me.  And it did.

Christmas Day started out well. Rolling out of bed at our “boutique hotel” on the edge of Chinatown, we headed for a traditional Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast, soft-boiled eggs, and kopi (coffee).  Kaya is a coconut-pandan jam. They slather it on one side of a piece of toasted bread, plop a big slab of butter over it, and top the butter with another piece of kaya-laden toast: a butter-sugar-coconut sandwich. I would fly back to Singapore just to eat more kaya toast. Who needs French toast casserole (our traditional Christmas breakfast) when you can eat kaya toast?

Then we walked down the street to Fairfield Methodist Church to attend the Christmas morning worship service.  We heard the music when we were still across the street as we watched the crowds stream inside.  When we entered the lobby, familiar Christmas chaos greeted us.   A four-piece ensemble belted out “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and baristas whipped up fancy coffee drinks at a big snack bar.  People clustered around shaking our hands and welcoming us.  

Fairfield’s “Miss Libby” commandeered us, marched us up a huge sweeping staircase, and dragged us to the third row, front-and-center, directly below the pulpit. Before the service started, without even knowing we were Methodist missionaries, all four pastors made a point of greeting us and asking our names.  Later, one pastor welcomed us by name from the pulpit.

Originally the Jing Hwa Cinema, the church was once Singapore Chinatown’s most famous movie house.  Now hundreds of worshipers filled the sanctuary with joyful Christmas songs.  A choir of children signed along to one song, and a team of teen-aged flag dancers kept time to another.  A father and his young son read Luke’s Christmas story, and a pastor preached about miracles.  The Fairfield service left no space for homesickness.  As we were leaving, a pastor found us, held our hands, and prayed a blessing over us and our ministry.  

Right across the street from Fairfield, Singapore’s famous Maxwell Food Center waited with dozens of Christmas dinner options on offer.  You won’t find Cambodian-style street food in Singapore.  In an effort to clean up the streets and regulate food safety, the government built “Hawker Centers” and requires vendors to rent space there.  The closest analogue to a hawker center in the US is probably a mall food court, but more than 200 different stalls line up along rows at some Singapore hawker centers.  You walk up and down the isles like you are at a grocery store, just searching for something to eat. Hawker centers aren’t air conditioned, but big fans make the seating areas tolerable.  The food: better and cheaper than you can possibly imagine.

One famous Singapore delicacy is Hainanese chicken rice.  In preparation for our trip, we watched countless YouTube videos extolling the excellence of this dish.  Poached chicken on top of rice with cucumbers on the side, Hainanese chicken rice looks like something you would feed a picky toddler. The line at the Michelin rated Tian Tian Chicken Rice Stall stretched out the building, but Tom decided to brave it anyway. I saved us seats under a fan while guzzling a sugarcane juice.  When he made it back, we learned what all the fuss was about.  Chicken rice may look like baby food, but it tastes like ambrosia. Soft, juicy chicken with a hint of soy sauce and cilantro served over perfectly, deliciously greasy rice, it is almost as good as kaya toast. After a second sugarcane juice and a huge Ice Kachang dessert, we waddled back to the hotel for a nap.

If our day had ended then, I would have nothing but happy memories of Christmas Day in Singapore.  But everyone said we needed to see the Christmas lights on Orchard Road.  The night before, I glimpsed them from a bus window, and I was determined to get a better look.  Tom told the concierge at our hotel where we were headed.  Jeremy suggested some other options.  He said, “I haven’t even taken my wife to see the lights on Orchard Road.”  In retrospect, we understand that we should have interpreted his gentle redirection as a warning: “Do not go there!” Asian subtlety still sometimes escapes us.  So we jumped on an MRT train and headed to Orchard Road.  

Orchard Road is a mile long luxury shopping mecca. Along the beautiful boulevard, there are more than twenty malls, countless luxury boutiques, several department stores, and at least seven five-star hotels.  And they go all out for Christmas, stringing elaborate garlands of lights that span the wide street every few feet. Each store and hotel boasts at least one enormous, elaborately decorated tree. Pop-up Christmas markets fill every corner.  One particularly striking tree stood framed by the bright white lights of the Balenciaga store on one side and the silver lights of the Prada store on the other. In the center of the tree, the overlapping red and gold circles of the MasterCard logo throbbed.

As we strolled down the boulevard, mouths agape, we encountered an intersection with no pedestrian crosswalk.  Then we saw the signs pointing to an underground link-way.  We stepped on the down escalator and it deposited us in an underground mall.  Hell must be something like this underground mall.  The narrow corridors, the low ceilings, the deafening noise, and the suffocating crowds all trumpeted the same message: “Get out now!” But as we struggled through solid walls of people, we couldn’t find our way out.  There were EXIT signs, but they led only to cluttered storerooms and empty corridors.  Finally, we found an information desk and pleaded for help. When we emerged from the retail dungeon, we had mercifully crossed the street, but now rain bucketed down.

At that moment, a tiny glimmer of the Spirit of Christmas magically appeared.  A stranger with an umbrella swooped up beside me: “Madame must allow me to walk her to the awning.”  The man escorted me to a portico and Tom followed. My personal Christmas angel vanished as quickly as he arrived. 

We tried to salvage the evening, but we hadn’t made dinner reservations.  Tom’s iPhone told him we were near a Michelin-mentioned Italian restaurant. We decided to take a chance.  The maitre d’hotel looked from my frizzy hair to my damp tennis shoes and pronounced, “Tonight is Christmas.  There is a minimum spend.”  We were so glad to get out of the rain and find a table that we didn’t even ask how much.  

Late that night, we snuggled down under the air conditioner in our hotel room and made three phone calls.  As we put Christmas to bed in Singapore, Thomas, Margaret, and Matthew were just waking up on Christmas morning in the US.  All three of our adult children celebrated Christmas with partners we love more than we can possibly say.  And they know what they are celebrating: the hope, peace, joy, and love of the birth of Christ.  What more could any parent want?  

Hot and nervous, Tom struggled into the Santa costume that GBGM-Cambodia country coordinator Helen Camarce had unceremoniously stuffed into a plastic bag earlier in the week.  The shiny, thin fabric resembled red little-kid pajamas.  I fished around in my zip lock bag of safety pins and tape hoping I could pin the coat securely enough that it wouldn’t bust open the first time a child sat on his lap.  A shoe-lace barely held the drawstring pants up. The beard had vanished some time between Christmas 2024 and Christmas 2025, so Helen suggested I make one out of paper.

The only thing that could make that costume any sorrier would be a paper beard.  So I spent Sunday searching for a beard (or at least something I could use to make a beard.) Cambodian office supply stores stock Christmas decorations, but not Santa beards.  At the third store, I found a plastic package of white fur hanging on a rack for $2.99. I think it was supposed to be a tree skirt. When we moved, I packed sewing supplies, but I imagined hemming pants or replacing buttons, not making beards. 

Nevertheless, I managed to create something resembling a Santa beard by attaching a rectangle of fur to two ribbons and tying them bandanna-style behind Tom’s head.  Double stick toupee tape (left over from Margaret’s 2015 prom dress and lurking at the bottom of my sewing basket) kept the beard anchored to his chin and the furry mustache-worm glued to his upper lip. The hat barely fit around his head, but at least it kept the ribbons from sliding off.  I tucked the ends under the white hat band and told Tom he looked great.  

All month, I worked to assemble gift bags for the fourteen children Helen had invited to the party. They ranged from four months to fourteen years. Most were children or grandchildren of GBGM-Cambodia employees or kids who live near the office. The youngest were infants and the oldest were teens.  I couldn’t find Christmas gift bags, but I made do with red bags, green tissue, and Christmas stickers.  HVS business manager Pich Chey and Vannak shopped with me at Winsou, the Cambodian dollar store, and I picked up items here and there to fill the bags.  Helen and the girls at the office added candy and sweets.  

I couldn’t help but remember the magical Christmas parties we hosted for our children and their friends at the F. J. Arrighi house in Natchez.  My dad impersonated Santa every year, wearing a magnificent costume custom made by my mother.  He stomped up the stairs lugging bags of presents (previously dropped off at our house by the parents of our guests) and shouting, “Ho! Ho! Ho!”  When Matthew was four years old, he tiptoed up to me in the chaos of the party, eyes shining, and whispered, “I know a secret. . . Santa Claus is Paw Paw!” 

I wasn’t sure what the Cambodian kids would make of this pale facsimile.  But that’s the magic of Santa Claus.  They were every bit as excited as those Natchez children had been twenty years ago.  As Santa Tom’s Cambodian elf called out names, the children scampered shyly to his side looking out of the corners of sparkling eyes.  They didn’t see the cheap costume or the home-made beard.  They saw Santa. And Santa knew exactly what to do. 

Those words from Anil Cacodcar, a former student, arrived at a perfect time.  He emailed the good news that he has been selected as a Rhodes Scholar, the first to represent Louisiana in ten years.  He could not possibly know that the day before, the results of my first “Student Evaluation of Faculty” survey dropped.  My current student comments did not glow:

She can see the student’s abilities but sometime student don’t know what the teacher said.

Because some thing we don’t understand the words.

The course not increasing my understanding.

I won’t be winning Star Teacher in Cambodia any time soon.  And that is entirely my own fault, starting with the fact that I sometimes forget the young adults in my Conversational English classes are not looking for the same things that the young adults I taught for the past thirty-eight years were. It’s easy to forget because in many ways the two groups are indistinguishable. 

Just like Riley Hulin and Matt Hebert (ESA class of 2020, now married!) BunThea and Leakhena can’t stop shining at each other.  I didn’t realize they were a couple the first term because they were in different sections.  But when school started this term, they slipped into adjacent seats at the big conference table and sparkled.  I thought they were excited to be back at school.  And they were, but Conversational English wasn’t firing them up.  When BunThea drew the descriptive adjectives “beautiful” and “cheerful” out of our conversation cup, he declaimed, “Leakhena  is cheerful and her smile is beautiful!”  Leakhena ducked her head while the lightbulb came on in mine.  

Young Cambodians in love may feel like young Americans in love, but they don’t act like it.  For one thing, you seldom see couples, even married couples, touch each other in public.  BunThea can’t keep his eyes off Leakhena, but that’s as far as it goes.  If they go on dates, young Cambodian women usually bring a younger relative or friend as a chaperone. BunThea and Leakhena get to class a little early most days. It would embarrass them if I asked, but I assume they arrive early because otherwise they don’t have much time together.  

When BunThea isn’t staring at Lakhenna, he’s talking about football (soccer to  Americans.)  Students gave presentations on different EU countries, and he chose Portugal because the great Cristiano Ronaldo stars there.  For Halloween, I invited students to share scary stories.  I expected tales about ghosts and moto accidents, but BunThea chronicled the time he broke his arm playing football, complete with gruesome sound effects.  His obsession isn’t any different from Greer Hernandez (ESA class of 2023) who wrote about nothing but soccer the entire semester of “Sports in Literature.”  I’m used to sports obsessed boys, but these Cambodian boys dream of different things.

Greer plays soccer at Millsaps college.  BunThea doesn’t own a soccer ball of his own.  I learned this when polling my class about Christmas gifts.  Our office assigned me to buy a Secret Santa gift for a ten-year-old boy I’ve never met, the grandson of a Cambodian staff member.  I wanted to know if they thought a real soccer ball would be a good gift or if they thought the boy probably already had one.  My students insisted that no ten-year-old boy would have a soccer ball of his own.  Only one of BunThea’s friends has his own soccer ball.  If they want to play soccer with a good ball, they have to invite him.  They also weren’t sure if a ten-year-old boy deserved a soccer ball.  Someone suggested Legos.

I imagine whipping out Tom’s credit card and ordering 111 soccer balls.  I can give one to every HVS student for Christmas. I also learned that out of the sixteen students I teach this term, only two can swim.  What can I do about that? Build a swimming pool in the parking lot! 

Sometimes mission work looks like that.  Heroes gallop up, throw money at perceived problems, and ride off into the sunset, confident that they have made a difference. But for me to be an effective missionary, I have to remove myself from the center, recognize my privilege, submit to God, and let the people I want to serve show me what they need.  My students aren’t looking to me for soccer balls or swimming pools.  They are looking to me to help them improve their English.  Which brings me back to my mediocre evaluations.

I’m not used to being a mediocre teacher.  And back in my comfort zone, I wasn’t.  I polished my craft for almost forty years, teaching native English speakers how to read critically, write analytically, and think independently.  But those skills don’t necessarily translate to teaching non-native speakers how to communicate in English.  I didn’t expect that they would.  I’ve been reading books, watching videos, and subscribing to ESL websites. But a few months of research and two terms of teaching obviously haven’t transformed me into an expert.   

I’m not teaching future Rhodes scholars.  I’m teaching young men and women who desperately hope to ace interviews and convince prospective employers they can function in an English speaking workplace. My current students aren’t fundamentally different from the students I’ve taught for all these years.  They still fall in love, they still obsess about sports, they still worry about the future.  But they don’t need to learn about Shakespeare. They need to learn how to listen and understand English speakers, and they need to learn how to speak English well enough to be understood.  They probably need to learn other things as well. I haven’t actually asked them, and that’s something else I should remedy.  

I need to remember that I didn’t become an expert literature teacher by watching YouTube videos.  I became an expert by working in communities filled with amazing teachers who shared their craft with me, mentored me, and critiqued me.  If I want to be a teacher who changes my Cambodian student’s lives, I have to find a community who will help me develop the new skills I need here. English schools fill the Facebook ads. I surely can discover (or create) a community of other English language teachers.

I have to be humble enough to admit that, as flattering as Anil’s email was, it isn’t evidence that I can do this job — the one God called me to do — well.  I’ve got work to do.  But in the meantime, my nights are full of joy and laughter as I get to know a whole new generation of students.  I love these students as much as I’ve loved all the students who came before them.  Hopefully along the way, I’ll become an expert ESL teacher. Maybe next term, my evaluations will improve.  But right now, my students know I’m crazy about them, and that’s important too.

I tried to convince myself that this was business as usual, but I remembered how different things had been the only other time I practiced medicine outside of the United States. On a short term mission trip with my dad to Jamaica, I learned pretty quickly that communication isn’t the only hard part about medical mission work.  And then I thought of the instructions Dr. Les Dornon, a long-term missionary physician in Nepal, gave me about the culture of medicine in Asia. How would I keep from offending my new colleagues? All the lessons GBGM provided during our training about patience and humility ricocheted through my head. 

Finally, people started filing into the room in small groups. Pastel gray, pink, and teal scrubs clustered together.  I stood out in my forest green OB-Hospitalist garb from Women’s and Children’s in Lafayette, but everyone smiled warmly.  Folks started singing the morning hymn, and the familiar tune soothed my mind despite the unfamiliar words. The hospital chaplain led a short Bible study.  He spoke in Korean and someone translated into Khmer.  But the rhythms of scripture reading and prayer don’t always have to be translated to be meaningful. 

The chapel transformed seamlessly into morning report room, and the night resident launched an audiovisual-aided presentation about the patients in the hospital. Fortunately, he spoke in English, the language used for all things medical at Hebron. He focused on new admissions including lab reports, x-rays, CTs, ultrasound, images, differential diagnoses, and action plans. The attendings fired off questions, and the residents did their best to answer.  Most replied sharply, but some floundered. The attendings kept prodding. I was back in my comfort zone.  After thirty-six years in medicine, I knew this drill. Or so I thought. 

After the presentation, I joined the thirty-five residents and seven attendings as we hiked up the stairs to the inpatient floor. On the last step, I stumbled but grabbed the rail and managed not to fall. That was the first – but by far not the last – time I tripped going up those stairs. They proved emblematic over the next few weeks as I tried to get used to practicing medicine in Cambodia. 

Once everyone made it to the top of the stairs, we lined up along the hall where the night resident led another prayer.  Five nurses joined us, and the whole entourage proceeded to see every patient.  Although the hospital has six private rooms, most patients reside in one of the four single-sex, sixteen-bed wards.  My Louisiana-trained medical people remember similar rooms at “Big Charity” before the damage from hurricane Katrina closed its doors. But the wards at Hebron don’t even provide privacy curtains between the beds.

As the lead resident questioned the first patient in the women’s ward, the doctors and nurses weren’t the only people listening to her replies.  Other patients craned their necks to join our examinations of healing incisions, painful knees, and infected feet.  Whoa, I thought, HIPAA? I reminded myself that US privacy laws don’t apply here. As if to emphasize that, I noticed the chart hanging at the foot of each patient bed. Large printed notes trumpet name, age, and diagnosis for all the room to see. 

Most charts also include a “rule out diagnoses” section. “Rule out melioidosis” caught my eye. What the heck is that? I assumed that somebody had misspelled melanoma or myositis, conditions familiar to me. After rounds, I found a mostly secluded area to look up melioidosis. It’s a real disease!  I have since seen multiple cases of melioidosis in our hospital. It is caused by a bacteria that lives in the soil and commonly infects people via water when exposed to broken skin. It can spread easily from skin lesions to cause liver abscesses and septic joints. Treatment involves two weeks of IV antibiotics and four more weeks of oral. Trust me, you don’t want this infection!  Melioidosis is a highly prevalent disease in southeast Asia and northern Australia. The most recent case in the US was from 2022 and involved only one patient. Cambodian medical stumble number two: forgetting that there’s a lot I don’t know about tropical diseases. 

My stumbles continued into the clinic day.  Our GYN clinic is a single room, divided by a curtain that separates the examination and ultrasound area from the charting and microscope area. If we see a patient and she needs labs, we send her for testing and ask her to return later that day for the results. Commonly, the patients returning from the lab just open the door while we are interviewing another patient, come inside, and stand against the wall waiting for us to finish. At first, I tried to shoo the returning patients back into the hall, but that just confused and offended everyone. Group medicine bothers neither the new patients nor the returning patients. I had to get over my qualms and stop looking over my shoulder for the HIPAA police. 

The person working the hardest to catch me when I stumble is Dr. Sokly Bun. When I started at Hebron, she was finishing up her residency training there.  After she graduated in April, she joined our attending staff as a family practitioner specializing in women’s health. From day one, we have had a recurring conversation:

Tom: We should use medicine W.

Sokly: It is not in our pharmacy.

Tom: Do they have medicine X?

Sokly: No.

Tom: Can we order it from an outside pharmacy?

Sokly: Let me look for price. 

Sokly makes some phone calls and discusses costs with the patient.

Sokly: She can not afford.

Tom looks up alternative medicines.

Tom: Medicine Y and Z are both generic.

Sokly: We have in stock!

Me: Excellent.

Most people in Cambodia earn between $300 and $600 a month. Our hospital offers deeply discounted services and sells donated medicine at extremely reduced fees. If a treatment or medicine costs more than $10 or $15,  “The Conversation” usually transpires. One of the most important lessons Sokly tries to teach me is that the price of a test or treatment constrains the practice of medicine in Cambodia. Consequently, we employ cheap diagnostic tests frequently.  Almost everyone gets an ultrasound because we have a pretty good one right in our office.  And Sokly wields it like a boss.  All it costs the hospital is electricity.

One of my first patients was a 48 year old woman presenting with vaginal discharge. Sokly placed the speculum, took one look, and turned to me saying, “She has cancer.” 

Leaning over, I saw a bleeding 5 cm cervical lesion.  Before I processed what I was seeing, Sokly powered up the vaginal ultrasound. She identified some of her cervical lesions and then announced, “I think that fluid is  her right ureter.” All I saw on the ultrasound was a small black hypo echogenic area. I didn’t see a similar area on the left side, but I admitted to Sokly that I wasn’t sure. She removed the vaginal probe and grabbed the abdominal probe. Sliding the probe to the patient’s right flank, we saw hydronephrosis and hydroureter (enlargement of the kidney and its draining tube to the bladder). The left kidney was normal. Satisfied, Sokly declared, “I knew it was the ureter in the pelvis.” Sure enough, CT later confirmed that cancer was blocking off the ureter.

As Sokly and I weighed our options and developed a plan of action, our conversation reminded me how far I was from Louisiana.

Sokly: Will you do the biopsy? It is so big.

Tom: Do we have cervical biopsy forceps?

Sokly: Yes.

Tom: How will we stop the bleeding? Do we have Monsel’s?

Sokly: No.

Tom: How will we stop the bleeding?

Sokly: It’s OK, Lok-Kru Tom. We have.

She then retrieved a small gauze bandage with cloth ties, placed two 4X4 gauze sponges inside, and tied the gauze over it. Sokly told me, “We will place it inside the vagina after the biopsy and she can remove it in the morning.” And that’s what we did. And it worked fine. Sokly keeps me from tripping over my assumptions that there is only one way to solve any medical problem.

Sokly and the other Khmer physicians are, by unfortunate necessity, great at end stage disease diagnosis.  For example, when she takes a history and physical she asks every patient, “Do you bleed after intercourse?”  I used to ask that question when I was a medical student and fourteen-page H&Ps were the norm.  But later, I only asked that question if I had another reason to suspect cervical cancer.  In the US, we see a lot of of cervical pre-cancer. But with early treatment, we hardly see any cancers. In thirty-six years, I only remember diagnosing five patients with cervical cancer.  In Cambodia where cervical screening is rare and infrequent, however, cancers of the cervix are pretty common. In the six months I’ve been practicing here, we have already diagnosed seven cases of cervical cancer.  Sokly asks end-stage disease questions because so many of her patients have cervical cancer. And unless I want to keep tripping up, I have to start asking them too.

For weeks, every time I reached the top of the steps headed to the inpatient wards, I stumbled. Not until I stopped and examined the stairs did I realize the final step is a few inches higher than all the rest. When they were pouring the concrete, the steps didn’t line up. So they improvised and made the last step a little higher. Complaining about poor construction practices or limited building inspections in Cambodia would be just as useless as complaining about a lack of Monsel’s solution. So I adjust.  It’s been a while since I tripped up the stairs.  I’m still stumbling in some ways, but thanks to Dr. Sokly and my other colleagues, I usually don’t fall.