How to Drink Coffee (Cambodia Edition)

I was prepared for a return to a tea-based life in Cambodia. Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese...all the places I know in Asia drink tea. With the exception of Ethiopia and the USA, the entire world I know drinks tea. Tea stirs up thoughts of fuzzy nighttime routines, formal high tea with biscuits, African women heaping sugar into chai, and old Pakistani men staring on street corners. This is tea as I know it. It can be a beautiful thing. But on some days I self-identify as a quasi-American from New York. The Americans I know from New York drink coffee. I don't know many Americans from New York...but that's not the point.

I was not grieved to learn that I can drink lots of coffee in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh is Southeast Asia's NGO Mecca because visas are so easily obtained. The capital city's economy caters to this massive foreign population clustered across the city from every Western destination known to mankind. Foreign influence aside, even Cambodians drink iced coffee. Coffee is rarely if ever served hot. It's also fixed with sweetened condensed milk making it ridiculously sweet, so you ask for "fresh milk" for a less milkshake-tasting morning beverage.

I've found iced coffee on literally every corner at any type of local restaurant, such as the place down from my office where I try not to watch how the dishes are washed. I learned the straws are rewashed so I haven't been back. I've yet to learn how it's brewed because the normal implements are nonexistent, God-forbid it's boiled, yet this might be true. It's not exactly good coffee but it's on ice with lots of sugar.

I've learned if I walk 20 minutes to the Russian Market, there are an abundance of the foreigner (or brongs in slang Khmer) frequented coffee shops. There I can pay more, but it will be hygienically appealing and I will be consuming my cappuccino or iced mocha with other brongs in an air-conditioned environment. I can even pretend I'm in France, or Zimbabwe, or Pakistan....or any other foreign hang-out I grew up in. Everyone else looks just like you so you don't feel foreign.

Or, I can buy the canned Nescafe iced coffees which aren't either bad or expensive. Vietnam produces quite a few decent canned ice coffee mixtures, one of the larger coffee producers in the Southeast Asia region, some of which are not entirely bad. They'll shoot you up with caffeine and sugar just like a red bull, very unglamorous. Cambodians say that Laotian coffee is the best, because everything negative is associated with Vietnam.

I've learned that coffee at the grocery store is mostly instant which inspires many strong negative feelings which I often express vocally with great passion.  I may never drink hot coffee in Cambodia, which makes it easier to run down to the sketchy local coffee shop then ever brew it myself which just might happen.

Thinking of coffee and tea overseas constantly reminds me of a dear friend my family knew from years ago...."in 50 years, you're going to have Pepsi declared the national drink. You'll have folk songs written about drinking Pepsi and there will be books with titles like, 'Three Cups of Pepsi.'" Noah's not entirely wrong. That could happen for Cambodia. Globalized beverage preferences are hardly new...the quest for tea took Europeans East...and now Asians go West for coffee...and Justin Bieber.

How to Survive A First Week in Phnom Penh

Most global nomads know the different between surviving and thriving. There are books about it, talks about it, awareness of it...but everyone agrees survival alone is perfectly acceptable for your first week in any new place.

So I survived a full week in Phnom Penh. I forced my eyes open and stood speechless before all the noise and chaos while my eyes and mind accepted to process the images, smells, sounds, and faces passing before me in rapid procession. Some call it culture shock. I call is processing. Culture shock has so much baggage attached to it. I'm just processing, categorizing, sleeping and imaging myself in a new place. It's part of a normal process. I know this process. I excel at this process. I love this process! So I survive the first week, with some crucial survival stories.

I survived the initial discovery that coffee is generally bad, but specialty coffees and iced coffees are respectably good.

I survived two pork and bean breakfasts with iced coffee for $1.25 is a good deal, and a very culturally appropriate morning meal.

I survived traffic, and learned I'm only responsible for the three inches in front of me, and nothing else. It's fine if the motos also clip me, as long as they don't full out hit me.

I survived doing business in two currencies, because the riel and the dollar share power, very democratically.

I survived meeting my new colleagues, getting over jet-leg, learning to roam the windy neighborhoods, and finding where the good local coffee shops, grocery stores and markets are located. I survived the inertia when  my fast post-college life came to a screeching halt upon arrival, and the realization--even permission--to return to a slower, more socially based and more contemplative life. And I think, three years? I finished college in three years. In Phnom Penh, three years is totally thrive-able. 

How I Got to Phnom Penh

My sejour in the United States involved some travel. Idaho, home for Christmas, DC and back (twice), Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia... It was altogether quite easy. I learned to travel in carry-ons, liquids in one-quart zip-lock, and that a drivers permit is a perfectly acceptable form of ID. Traveling domestically is easy, so I learned. And with an Ipod and some good new music, it's even easier.

Alas though, those days are over. I will miss being charged for food, the stewardesses unkind words, and the TSA people telling me to throw out my toothpaste. I will miss the short flights where five hours is suddenly epic and 20 minutes is normal. I will miss seat-mates who wear deodorant and the feeling of racially integrating because everyone else looks just like me. Traveling in America is easy.

Because for now, I'm in Asia. Flying out here was 20 minutes, 14 hours, and 5 hours. Korean Air was nice to me, except for the lousy food, and quite amusing to me was the stewardess who didn't know enough English to tell me to turn off my Ipod. I found myself wandering the terminals of Dulles and Seoul with the rest of the international travelers, me in my Keens, the Asian businessmen in suits, and knew I was not among the ranks of American travelers off to see family and friends. I saw "the missionaries;" a stereotype applied to those who aren't missionaries but carry generic backpacks, wear sneakers and shorts and express a look of complete exhaustion. I bet I even looked like one. Traveling internationally isn't always easy. More then anything else, it's just utterly completely and inexplicably exhausting. 

I had no problems getting to Phnom Penh. My problems lie in the fact, that I am chronically tired. Jet-lag for 11 time zones is terrible which I have only just begun to discover. Yet at the end of the day, I can comfort myself in the knowledge that I won't have to make that trip again for many moons. Any local travel, will be on the back of moto, or in a smelly bus. 

How I Visited Pennsylvania

You can build you're entire life around a global nomad identity and still not have all the answers. I'm still asking myself, can you prepare to go overseas? You can't prepare to be a global nomad. That you just have to deal with because it will hit you like a Pakistani lorry when you actually are one. If you chose to be a global nomad, you aren't a global nomad because you can't predict it and global nomad implies a sense of...well...hmm...confusion? But can you prepare to leave one place for another? Technically, this is one of my easier transitions. I've finished college. My family returned homes in Sudan. My sister is in uni. It's time for the new. But can you prepare to go overseas?

I'm in Akron Pennsylvainia for training for my life and position overseas. I sit through meetings, I meet other people going overseas, and my eyes glaze over with something between fear and exhaustion. We talk about peace and service, and organization leadership, who does what job, and how we're all going to make the world a better place. We're all wrapping up loose ends back home. We're supposedly preparing to go overseas. But do two weeks of meetings prepare you for life overseas, or do they just give you questions to ponder?

I don't know if you can prepare to go overseas. You can read. You can get shots. You can buy Keens and pack a years worth of make-up and migraine meds. You can look at google maps. You can talk to people. You can even visit Pennsylvania. But nothing will ever take away that overwhelming, numbing, joy mixed with confusion during the over-stimulation panic you feel when you finally walk off the plane into a typically very ugly and concrete airport. You can't predict that. You'll have no framework to hold the information which you'll encounter so you'll have to build one, perhaps using tools from former lives but no two frameworks will ever be identical. I've given up on expections because no matter what I expect, I never expect the right thing. I've tried over and over again and after scientifically concluding I'm horrific with predictions, I decided I'll just wing it.

I'm not prepared. I can't be prepared. I've gone to uni and have peacebuilding tools. I've lived overseas and have global nomad tools. I've said my goodbyes to the people I love most and still wish they weren't so far away. I even visited Pennsylvania! What more can I do? That's why...I'm...just...going...off the diving board...

How to Justify Visiting Baltimore

This week I went to Baltimore. I have no fondness for Baltimore. In fact, BWI has a history of disturbing me, one of the few places in America where I actually feel like a minority and where I could likely get a fix of anything at multiple street corners. But I overcame my rational distaste and went down to Catholic Relief Services to join up with an ecumenical delegation of bishops from Sudan. My connection? Well, most global nomads will recognize that anywhere outside the West, family is central. Not just your family, but you're whole clan. And because the entire delegation knows most of my family, I was very welcome.

The delegation is touring DC, BWI and NYC promoting peace and policy awareness before 9 January 2011 when Southern Sudan will formally have a referendum and secede from Sudan, becoming their own sovereign state. Northern Sudan has oppressed, explored, repressed and warred with the South almost continuously from 1956 to 2005 when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, essentially a ceasefire which granted the South the right to hold a referendum in 2011 to stay united or separate. Scarcely 90 days from now, and without a doubt in any one's mind that separation is a foregone conclusion, everyone worries...will it be peaceful? Or is this a return to war?

The bishops are touring the East Coast promoting peace with the US Government, the Catholic Church, and the United Nations Security Council. The church is the only remaining structures in Southern Sudan that didn't collapse during the war as well as the only institution that wasn't enveloped in the Islamization of the North. As a result, it's moral authority and credibility are well established. Africa is a religious and a holistic continent. People don't separate church and state, and the church is seen as a place for education, health services, and spiritual guidance as well as a champion for peace and justice. The Sudan Ecumenical Forum is vocal and active promoting a peaceful succession because...everyone knows that Southerners want independence. And yet, what will happen to the Christians left in the North after the split who are doomed for persecution?

And so we discuss policy options, and seneros for the vote, and even if the vote will happen on time. Who will react and how. Will Southerners be relocated back from the North? What will happen to the oil? What about the three disputed boarder territories? What about border demarkation? There are millions of details outside the church and the humanitarian world's control that have to be decided. Yet the sole thing the bishops requested from the US Catholic Church? Prayer; prayer that Southern Sudan's oppression will finally come with the referendum, and that it will come peacefully.

It was worth enduring the Baltimore creepiness and the short flights down from Upstate New York because this is peacebuilding on a massive scale. These are champions of peace, justice, and even joy, and finally, on January 9, 2011 several million people will declare their desire for a new nation state.

Bishop Daniel made a statement in a meeting that resounded with me. He said that his people don't have the luxury of hopelessness. These are their lives, their futures and they are moving forward with hope because they need hope to survive. Such courage from the fearless leader of the Northern Sudanese Catholic Church...and I worry that being a global nomad is an affliction. If he can have hope, then all of us should.

How I Officially Became a Global Nomad

As I reflect back on my global nomadic life, one moment stands. In some ways, it all came down to this. It was a cold February day. There was snow coming down in sheets. I was in Virginia, wrapped in a Columbia Parka and carrying my green book bag (which incidentally expresses some political opinions).

It was graduation checklist. You checked your name, your major, and your hometown for the commencement's program in May. That's when I told the admin people I wanted my hometown left blank. They were very compliant, a little amused, and it was settled. I didn't think it would be hard. It was a deliberate choice I had carefully spent months considering. Yet walking out of that hall back into the snow, I completely broke down. I walked back to my house unable to stop crying. I walked past my housemates to my room, sat on the floor, and just kept crying. I didn't even know why, but I thought of Shawnee, Spartanburg, Rochester, Medford, Shantou, Nairobi, Limuru, Addia Ababa, Harare, Lusaka, Paris, Islamabad, Bath, Harrisonburg, Washington DC...

It's hard not knowing where you're from. There isn't one place on earth that claims me. I know I'm deeply loved by people in many places, but I don't have a home. I've gone back and forth over the course my higher education, struggling to find an answer...and I didn't. I'm a global nomad. The act of telling the world at that symbolic event that I don't have a home was unexpectedly painful and surprisingly healing.

I kept comparing graduation to my idea of a wedding. I don't know if I'll ever get married, and I don't really care, and that's not really the point either. But I marched my way through 15 years of education, 14 different homes and some very bad classes to come out the proudest owner of a Bachelor's degree, with high honors. May 2, 2010 was my glory day, ugly cap and gown aside. It's my most impressive achievement, and to the world, on that day, I said, I'm a global nomad.

I'm a global nomad. On May 2, 2010 I confessed that to the world and I confess it still. I don't know where I'm coming from and honestly, I don't know where I'm going. (I'm going to Cambodia next but that's not the point either.) Instead, I live this truth that I discovered and wholeheartedly believe....that happiness, joy and peace and be found anywhere.

How to Visit Idaho

My dream this past spring semester at uni was to visit Idaho. My soul craved Idaho. Who visits Idaho? Very few people which therefore meant that I had to go. That was the first reason. The second reason was that I've never been there. Third, it's really far West which seems like reason enough. And forth, finally, and most importantly, the girl who made college survivable for me is an Idaho native and loves the state heart and soul.



The Snake River, the Green, the Desert, and the Sky

So before hopping off to build peace half way around the world (though ironically I'll be closer to Idaho then New York), I had to hop out to Idaho and see it for myself, learn about the big wide west, and give my friend Sarah a huge East Coast hug. I went to Southern Idaho, which is different from Eastern Idaho (and the potatoes) and Northern Idaho (massive Rockies). Southern Idaho is desert; beautiful, flat, dry, treeless and often cloud free. The region is marked by the Snake River which provides the only water available in the area. I didn't expect that, but I was fascinated.

 

1) Visit Ketchum and the Sawtooths. I loved Idaho. I loved everything about the flatness and sunshine and big blue sky. But I'm a East Coaster (or my experience of the United States centers along the East Coast), so the flat shrubby landscape of Idaho hurt my soul just a little bit. But up in the Sawtooth Mountains range of the Idaho Rockies is the adorable touristy get-away town of Ketchum. The Sawtooths are massive, to die for...and really really big.

Desert and Farming: Two-Faced Southern Idaho



2) Visit Bruneo Canyon: Deep into the crevices of the earth, far below where sane men should travel (and can't for technical reasons), there exists, a river, Bruneo River...at the bottom of Bruneo Canyon. Actually, it's completely amazing but the only thing more amazing is that it's at the end of civilization. You literally drive for 45 minutes without seeing another car, or house, or person, or sign, except for the bombing range. And I truly despise when other tourists end up in my pictures which is far from an issue at as far as Bruneo.



3) Visit the Bruneo Sand Dunes: How many landlocked states have massive sand dunes? Not that many and rarities deserve the attention of global nomads. But sit on top of the Idaho's sand dunes and stargaze, feel the sunshine, and well....it's just awesome. Geologists believe that the area was once covered by a giant lake extending beyond the Salt Lakes of Utah, often called Lake Bonneville. The sand remains, even if Bonneville was just a myth.



4) Visit a farm: Sarah is a farm girl. I got to pick veggies, back Seasonal Baskets for her brother's Community Sponsored Agriculture project, dry corn, can tomatoes, and make ketchup. I went to Idaho to see Sarah, and so I had to love her Stoneybrook Farm. (I did really feel like a global nomad though. I'm pretty urban.)



Beautiful food, beautiful farms, beautiful state

5) Walk on the Oregon Trail: I may have grown up overseas, but as a child in Mainland China I played Oregon Trail. It's a computer game simulating what it was like to traverse from Missouri to Oregon, walking for between four and seven months over 2000 miles, all your life in a covered wagon, trying not to die in the 1850s. People did that, half a million people did that...continental nomads! You can still see the trail if you look for it, deep ruts carved into the soil...and marvel.



6) See a good friend: Hols are fun with friends, beautiful, gifted, golden-hearted friends. They know the lay of the land best, and they are the natives to your global nomad. If you visit Idaho, visit a friend...or make one.