When we still lived in Ohio my family regularly got together with the the lovely retired couple we had bought our house from. I have many good memories of visiting them, but one especially sticks out in my memory. I remember sitting at their dining room table with my dad and Sarah and helping myself to a couple of heaping spoonfuls of this fruit salad that seemed to have been inspired by a 10 year-old's dream: grapes, apples, and some other fruit in this wonderful white marshmallow cream. Sarah was equally excited about the promise of creamy fluffy sugar and requested a good-sized portion as well. We both dug in and froze as we fought the instinct to gag and spit it out.
That was my first - and last ever - experience with Waldorf salad.
For those of you who don't know, that lovely white cream in the salad wasn't marshmallow fluff, it was mayonnaise. Yeach! Anyway, my sister and I looked at each other and for some reason felt that as gross as we thought this salad was, we were bound to eat it, bound by some unwritten rules of hospitality and with no way out. So, we forced the rest of it down, spoonful by spoonful and somehow the adults at the table completely managed to miss the whole thing. We felt we had saved our family's honor by being polite guests and were much more careful and suspicious when it came to fruit salads after that.
That was my first - and last ever - experience with Waldorf salad.
For those of you who don't know, that lovely white cream in the salad wasn't marshmallow fluff, it was mayonnaise. Yeach! Anyway, my sister and I looked at each other and for some reason felt that as gross as we thought this salad was, we were bound to eat it, bound by some unwritten rules of hospitality and with no way out. So, we forced the rest of it down, spoonful by spoonful and somehow the adults at the table completely managed to miss the whole thing. We felt we had saved our family's honor by being polite guests and were much more careful and suspicious when it came to fruit salads after that.
Fast forward 17 years and I found myself again in a similar situation. When Philipp and I spent Khmer New Year in a village in Takeo province, we often felt bound by the same unwritten rules of hospitality: eat what is served to you with a smile. *disclaimer: love Khmer food and am in no way comparing it to fruit salad with mayonnaise which is evil and should be outlawed* On our first whole day in the village, we ate and ate and ate, as people kept bringing us food to have the white visitors try. Savory dishes, desserts, fruit, fresh coconut water, sugar palm juice, and more were placed in front of us what felt like every half hour or so, leaving us no time to feel even the slightest pangs of hunger before we were digging into the next dish. But, even though we felt like those ducks they force-feed to make fois gras, what we were being fed was delicious. The family we were staying with grow their own rice, vegetables, and a lot of fruit, and have their own chickens, so we were getting super fresh food, loving prepared by a very good cook. The dishes were varied and well cooked and the fruit tasted amazing. So, we just smiled and ate away, swearing that we would just live off of salad and water for the next few weeks.
What happened next was inevitable, I guess, and not a complete surprise, but the intensity of the whole thing was what we weren't counting on. We got food poisoning and not only pretty much lost our appetite, but also felt bad whenever we had food in our stomach. So, Monday morning we sat down to breakfast, feeling a little queasy and ate as much as we could and figured we'd take a little medication, chill, and basically feel better soon. The problem was, that people started bringing us food again and we were not feeling up to eating like we had the day before. Philipp gave it his best to honor their hospitality, but I was feeling steadily worse, ending with me in bed ( = straw mat on the wooden floor upstairs) with a fever by sundown.
Well, that became the event of the neighborhood that evening, with everybody and their grandma waiting outside the house, looking up at were I was laying, wondering what was wrong with me, why, and what needed to be done to make me feel better. Thankfully, our friend, who speaks very good English, was there and managed to talk her mom out of coining me, explaining that Westerners don't like it. One common and utterly unshakable belief however, was that because we were sick, we needed to eat a lot, so that we would not feel weak and would get better again soon. This of course flies in the face of Western sayings like "feed a cold and starve a fever" and what you're normally told to do when you have food poisoning. And we also just felt plain ill when ever we even smelled food. That's when the fight against food started and didn't end until we decided to retreat back to Phnom Penh on Wednesday. It went something like this:
Hosts: Good morning. Do you want to eat now?
Us: Good morning. Yes, but maybe only tea and rice porridge.
H: Only porridge?
U: Yes, only porridge. Our stomachs don't feel good.
H: Really, only porridge?
U: Yes, really.
H: Hmmm, ok.
Twenty minutes later they bring us tea and rice porridge. We each take a small serving.
H: Eat more, eat more.
The pot gets moved closer and we take a little bit more. This is repeated until we make it clear we really can't eat any more, but that the food is very good.
Half-hour later:
H: Here are bananas/coconut/watermelon/sticky rice/coke/cake/etc. Eat! *smile*
U: Thank you, but our stomachs don't feel good.
H: This is good, try it. This will not make you sick.
U: Uhhh, I don't know...
H: Yes, try it! Eat! It is good! *bigger smile*
U: Hmmm, uh, ok. Thank you.
This repeats all morning, with us sometimes managing to actually say "no" and stick to it, but most of the time we lose. Then comes lunch. We have rice with fried fish (because we liked it so much the day before), pickles, stir-fried vegetables, and some stew with beef in it. We take rice and a tiny bit of the vegetables.
H: Here, take some fish.
U: Thank you, but I don't know if that is so good...
H: This is the fish you ate yesterday, it will not make you sick. Eat, eat!
U: No, I don't think it's so good for me right now, but it tasted very good yesterday.
H: Here, more vegetable, more rice. Eat, so you feel better.
U: No, thank you, I have had enough, my stomach is still not better.
H: Have some of the soup?
U: No...
H: More rice?
U: No.
H: Banana?
U: No.
H: Watermelon?
U: No.
This would go on much longer and would end with them looking disappointed and us wracked with guilt for most probably insulting their hospitality and at the same time feeling so, so ill. By Wednesday morning I was feeling so bad, that I figured this was one instance in my life where it was okay to put myself first and systematically refused everything that was offered to me except for tea, water, and crackers.
We felt really badly about the course of events, especially since you could see how worried our host family was about us and how badly the mother wished she could to something, anything, to make us feel better. At the same time it was an incredibly frustrating experience for us, being sick, unable to communicate well (the dialogue examples above are a lot clearer and more to the point that the actual ones were), unable to get people to understand or accept what we needed. We felt trapped by the hospitality that was being extended towards us, caught in social and cultural patterns that were unfamiliar to us, but yet were dictating our interactions. We were glad to get back to Phnom Penh after four days, to our "turf", our rules. Even then, we were sick for weeks afterwards and feel like, one month later, our bodies are still recovering, first from being sick and then from the disruption to our systems caused by the antibiotics. Consequently, I've been more or less avoiding Khmer food, even though I do like it, and cooking more at home and eating yogurt. Things are getting better, though, and we just returned from a lovely week of vacation where we did not get sick were able to really relax. More on "vacation - take II" next week.
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| learning how to make banana sticky rice with our host mother - why were we making more food?! |
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| oh, yes, those are Angry Birds pants |
What happened next was inevitable, I guess, and not a complete surprise, but the intensity of the whole thing was what we weren't counting on. We got food poisoning and not only pretty much lost our appetite, but also felt bad whenever we had food in our stomach. So, Monday morning we sat down to breakfast, feeling a little queasy and ate as much as we could and figured we'd take a little medication, chill, and basically feel better soon. The problem was, that people started bringing us food again and we were not feeling up to eating like we had the day before. Philipp gave it his best to honor their hospitality, but I was feeling steadily worse, ending with me in bed ( = straw mat on the wooden floor upstairs) with a fever by sundown.
Well, that became the event of the neighborhood that evening, with everybody and their grandma waiting outside the house, looking up at were I was laying, wondering what was wrong with me, why, and what needed to be done to make me feel better. Thankfully, our friend, who speaks very good English, was there and managed to talk her mom out of coining me, explaining that Westerners don't like it. One common and utterly unshakable belief however, was that because we were sick, we needed to eat a lot, so that we would not feel weak and would get better again soon. This of course flies in the face of Western sayings like "feed a cold and starve a fever" and what you're normally told to do when you have food poisoning. And we also just felt plain ill when ever we even smelled food. That's when the fight against food started and didn't end until we decided to retreat back to Phnom Penh on Wednesday. It went something like this:
Hosts: Good morning. Do you want to eat now?
Us: Good morning. Yes, but maybe only tea and rice porridge.
H: Only porridge?
U: Yes, only porridge. Our stomachs don't feel good.
H: Really, only porridge?
U: Yes, really.
H: Hmmm, ok.
Twenty minutes later they bring us tea and rice porridge. We each take a small serving.
H: Eat more, eat more.
The pot gets moved closer and we take a little bit more. This is repeated until we make it clear we really can't eat any more, but that the food is very good.
Half-hour later:
H: Here are bananas/coconut/watermelon/sticky rice/coke/cake/etc. Eat! *smile*
U: Thank you, but our stomachs don't feel good.
H: This is good, try it. This will not make you sick.
U: Uhhh, I don't know...
H: Yes, try it! Eat! It is good! *bigger smile*
U: Hmmm, uh, ok. Thank you.
This repeats all morning, with us sometimes managing to actually say "no" and stick to it, but most of the time we lose. Then comes lunch. We have rice with fried fish (because we liked it so much the day before), pickles, stir-fried vegetables, and some stew with beef in it. We take rice and a tiny bit of the vegetables.
H: Here, take some fish.
U: Thank you, but I don't know if that is so good...
H: This is the fish you ate yesterday, it will not make you sick. Eat, eat!
U: No, I don't think it's so good for me right now, but it tasted very good yesterday.
H: Here, more vegetable, more rice. Eat, so you feel better.
U: No, thank you, I have had enough, my stomach is still not better.
H: Have some of the soup?
U: No...
H: More rice?
U: No.
H: Banana?
U: No.
H: Watermelon?
U: No.
This would go on much longer and would end with them looking disappointed and us wracked with guilt for most probably insulting their hospitality and at the same time feeling so, so ill. By Wednesday morning I was feeling so bad, that I figured this was one instance in my life where it was okay to put myself first and systematically refused everything that was offered to me except for tea, water, and crackers.
 |
| can you see him? our host father up in a sugar palm tree collecting the juice |
We felt really badly about the course of events, especially since you could see how worried our host family was about us and how badly the mother wished she could to something, anything, to make us feel better. At the same time it was an incredibly frustrating experience for us, being sick, unable to communicate well (the dialogue examples above are a lot clearer and more to the point that the actual ones were), unable to get people to understand or accept what we needed. We felt trapped by the hospitality that was being extended towards us, caught in social and cultural patterns that were unfamiliar to us, but yet were dictating our interactions. We were glad to get back to Phnom Penh after four days, to our "turf", our rules. Even then, we were sick for weeks afterwards and feel like, one month later, our bodies are still recovering, first from being sick and then from the disruption to our systems caused by the antibiotics. Consequently, I've been more or less avoiding Khmer food, even though I do like it, and cooking more at home and eating yogurt. Things are getting better, though, and we just returned from a lovely week of vacation where we did not get sick were able to really relax. More on "vacation - take II" next week.
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