This Week At Home

The thing I love about where I live is that I can take 10 steps from my bedroom door and have 10 conversations with 10 different people. I can sit at the front gate for 30 minutes and chat with half a dozen other friends and neighbours. Maybe it is because I’m too lazy to make an appointment and then go to visit someone. This way people just knock on my bedroom door, sit down on the mat, grab a couple of cushions and start talking. I love it. Here are a few highlights from this past week:

MONDAY- I cooked. This is the one night of the week we all eat together. This week’s menu was ginger pork; steamed green beans with a bacon and onion topping; wheat noodles with vegetables; steamed rice.
TUESDAY- It rained. This probably isn’t big news where you are but it is not supposed to rain in the middle of Cambodia’s hot, dry season. The temperature dropped to somewhere in the mid-20s and I got sick. I came home from my morning meeting wearing a hooded sweater and the first thing I did was put the kettle on. We had a visitor so I joined my room-mates in the lounge room. We chatted and joked for about 20 minutes while I sipped hot coffee and swallowed a couple of Panadols. The pills, the coffee and the laughter all worked. Then it was off to another appointment.
On Tuesday night the hairdresser came over. She did my hair and we talked about clothes, shoes, work and faith. She said she has believed in Jesus for 5 months now but Jesus hasn’t done anything for her. She still works 6-7 days a week in a factory, her baby daughter always seems to be sick and her husband still works night shifts. I didn’t know what to say but I told her my hair looked good, gave her a tip and a raincoat for the moto ride home.
WEDNESDAY: On Wednesday night I had a regular meeting with a young woman I am mentoring. It is always a highlight of my week.
THURSDAY: The second person I’m mentoring came over in her lunch-break. I cooked some more simple food and we ate, prayed and talked together.
There’s a concrete bathroom and a tap for doing laundry built on the balcony space adjacent to my window. On Thursday night another room-mate came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel with flip-flops on her feet, carrying her plastic basket of toiletries. Her hair was dripping wet. She saw me and smiled so I opened the window to say hello. She said that she’d had a bad day and asked if she could come in to talk. A few minutes later she was dressed in her pajamas, sitting on the mat with a cushion, talking about her day.
FRIDAY: What would Friday nights be like without a 9:30pm curfew? I’d just asked myself this question last night at about 9:40pm when anther room-mate knocked on my door and popped her head around the corner. From that moment, the curfew didn’t seem to be a restriction anymore. It became another opportunity to be present with a group of young Khmer women whose company is generous and enriching.