Of motorbikes and bugs

Today I had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting with Sue Lloyd, of Inner Change. She is the coworker of a son of a friend of mine…lol. Her work focuses on marginalized peoples and poverty alleviation through one on one relationships. While not ignoring outcomes, Inner Change strives to achieve the goal of bringing people to Christ by integrating with a host culture through the vehicle of human relationships. This model for this culturally sensitive humanitarian approach is actually the life of Christ. He was able to affect a tremendous amount of change one life at a time.
Sue has been in Cambodia for about 10 years and feels quite Khmer herself. She picked me up at my hotel and we began a grand adventure through the city in a ‘tuk tuk’, a motorized bike with a trailer type carriage attached to the back. Let me tell you that riding through town is a faith adventure right there! I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. We hadn’t really talked about how much time she had or what we would do. I came to find out that that is the Cambodian way. Schedules, lists and counting is my American culture. Who knew?
We went to a popular market on the south end of town and shopped a little. She was very patient as I chose several things and discussed a more reasonable price with the shopkeepers. She insisted that she was very happy to see me having fun in ‘her’ country. I confessed that I’m not much of a shopper and was pretty overloaded already so she suggested we get a drink. There were several food stalls in the market. Now, before coming on this trip, I had been instructed to pretty much eat and drink whatever my hosts feed me and that’s it. No eating on the street, in the market, basically, no eating anywhere ‘strange.’ Hello! Why are we in a foreign country?? Anyway, she took me to a place she goes to a lot and we had fresh juice. She had orange juice which was squeezed right in front of us. I had carrot/ginger juice, also made right in front of me. It was so yummy. The she ordered some common dish of Cambodia but I can’t think of the name of it. I’ll look it up later. It looked like worms with vegetables, but she assured me worms are only for snacks, not for meals. The wormy looking stuff was noodles. I was game for a try so she ordered us up some lunch and we had a great chat.
Lunch was so wonderful. I admit that sweating it out in the market, eating weird food and drinking fresh carrot juice in a developing country is the kind of thing that just makes me very happy. After a bit, she took me to a spa for a massage. There are a million massage places there and they are veeeery inexpensive: $10-20 for one hour. You can find it for less, but they aren’t as clean and nice. The spa had a very soothing feel to it and smelled wonderful. I’ll tell you that when you aren’t smelling the aroma of a developing country in Cambodia, the fragrances are beautiful: jasmine, lemon grass, ginger and so much more. Of course, out on the street there’s mud, urine, animals, sweat, rotting trash and also so much more! I love all of it.
Feeling very relaxed, we got back in the tuk-tuk she had hired for the day and went to explore the riverfront. She patiently answered all my questions about her work and the country of Cambodia. I learned so much. It was much better than reading it in a book or watching a lecture. We dropped into a coffee shop for iced milk coffee, which was basically sweetened condensed milk in espresso with ice. Oh, yum! Then she showed me a stand where a vendor was selling various insects. (see previous post!) It was fun to try the tarantula, then pass the other items on to our driver. Actually, it tasted pretty good although obviously the fact that I was putting a scary spider into my MOUTH was pretty intense.
By the time Sue took me back to the hotel, I felt thoroughly Cambodian-ized. Ahhhhh!