The Need For Orientation

I was sitting out the front of my house this morning when I noticed a seller riding her bicycle slowly past our driveway. She was calling out, "rice, rice!" Sure enough, strapped on the back of her pushie was a large, see-through plastic container filled with this Nation's staple. Potential customers needed only to stop her, produce an empty bowl from their kitchen and for a few cents she would fill it.

Such events so quickly become normal that I forget that this may not be a common way to trade elsewhere. But this morning I thought about my arrival in Cambodia. I was reminded that all of us who come to live in a foreign place take some time to find our feet. And I recalled a sorry story about an unfortunate American who came to Cambodia and got hungry, even as rice sellers rode down his street.

A short-term volunteer from the US was received at the airport by a staff member of his organisation and taken to the house they use for short-term guests. It happened that at this time he was the only person staying in the house. Another team member was supposed to meet the short-termer later in the day at the guesthouse to begin orientation, but the meeting never happened. Two days later an administrator at the office received a phone call from an American male asking, "Ummmm... where do I get food?"

People selling rice, bread and all other kinds of food would have been calling out for business right outside his window. He may have heard a tapping of a stick on a wooden block, meaning that a mobile noodle seller was coming. If he heard a small hand-bell he could have bought an ice-cream sandwich for dessert. He could have bought fruit and all other kinds of food without going to a single supermarket or local market. But he didn't. He stayed inside and got hungry.

Foreigners have much to learn.