my house

bye bye phnom penical, hello houses of battambang (tr: town of the disappearing stick)

...and a few days later:

i am dusty, of the ricefield not the springfield, of the drying-end-of-rainy-season, moto proficient to ride an hour each way through choppy gravel and collapsy soil roads to a school today, tired and dirty, hungry and happy.
i have been in the downstairs of my new house, soon (when i leave the internet now) to move upstairs to my future abode. the family:

lovely chilled older lady whose name ive embarrassingly not remembered so call by the polite term who talks away at me in incomprehensible khmer but we occasionally understand each other. she folds back my shutters at eight when she thinks i should probably have been up for three hours like everyone else and lays her elbows on the sill and talks away. she shuffles in a walk that i can recognise from far away, so we wave at each other in town when i pass her on my bike as she goes visiting the wat and other older ladies for tea (or equivilent). Her seemingly vast family seem to be always dropping in and take some interest in this latest in a long line of tenants - the first being landmine clearance ngo workers in 1996.

two wee girls of said extended family. they LOVE the guitar and although cant play chords have wicked rhythm. may form a family band....the one on the left has a beautiful low singing voice but is too shy at moment to sing around me. nice thing about wooden walls.

her dad, a silent deaf man who is apparently 96, is tall and slow and has a small white beard on his chin. he spends the day in bed or in a hammock and doesnt really respond to much around him i think. he sometimes seems a bit worried and confused if i greet him, but other times smiles a bit, so i generally greet him gently all the same.

savant. savant. last night she told me she had several names, including 'sray kmao' (dark girl -did i say before that every cream and soap in the country is full of bleach?) and 'kom sot', 'sad one', which she said they called her after her mum died when she was five. she's now sixteen, though she's small and quiet and home-based enough to make me think she's about twelve. she does all the cleaning and the cooking for the family, and she sleeps on a mat on the floor outside each night with the poodle. im not sure if she's paid or if she just earns her keep. i found out she comes from a village near to where i was working on friday, about a 40minute moto ride away, and she said she hasnt been back for two years.
she is so practical and capable, constantly managing with ease and grace to open difficult locks or wash with her hands stains that im struggling to clean with a brush. and she is endlessly curious, a face at the window, a finger on my guitar, an extra tool brought to me while im cooking. she seems to pay attention to small things and enjoys my quiet company in the evenings as i try to ask her about what kind of flight she has in dreams, or whether four legs would be better than two, and she plays with expert novice exploration the strings and drum of my guitar. its as if we're both stoned. and its tender and quiet. and i like her a lot.
the poodle is called kam kaioo, which i think means 'bites glass', which althouh ive asked about has yet to be clearer. she is as enduringly loveable as id anticipated. i cant see it waning at all.
moggins is the unexpected name of the cat. he's a weird one, spirited and determined but addicted to human company. i am unpleasantly allergic to him, and he keeps literally throwing himself, claws out, three feet high against the mosquito screens on my doors. i also suspect him of having made all my shoes smell of cat piss.

work has begun, in hesitant earnest and hearty interest. but ill save it for another time. now off home on the moto after 12 hours out and about to clean cat-fur from my new home and move myself in.

love to all xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxox