what i’ve learned in peace corps cambodia. [pt. 1]

how to eat (around) bugs.

I spent the first 22 years of my life avoiding bugs. Granted, bugs are not that difficult to avoid in America compared to what most of the world’s population has to deal with. In America, if you want to avoid bugs, you stay indoors and out of the woods. In Cambodia, if you want to avoid bugs, a flight to Singapore is probably your best option. Aside from slapping a few summertime mosquitos, avoiding  springtime bees, and kicking over sidewalk anthills, I grew up in a fairly bug-free environment. And then suddenly I found myself living in a country where not only do the people *not avoid* the bugs and little critters, but they actively search them out in order to eat them. It’s not uncommon to be sitting next to someone in Cambodia munching on a little bag of fried crickets, grasshoppers, or spiders. I’ve eaten them from time to time, but only for the novelty of it. If I am going to buy a snack, it’ll most likely be some fruit or bread. Cambodians surely cover more of the food chain than most countries do, though. From bugs, to snakes, rats, dogs, mice, and bats, they find a way to eat them.  So that’s how I’ve learned to eat bugs. (and those other things.)

I’ve also learned to eat around bugs, in many different scenarios. In Cambodia, there’s no sure-fire way to store food. A refrigerator would be nice, yes, but they’re expensive here and not entirely practical. (I could buy one in the town I live in, but the nearest grocery store is in phnom penh, so it would merely be used to keep my water cold.) I wouldn’t get my money’s worth out of that purchase. So when I find myself with food that I’d like to save for a few days or a week, I use tupperware or ziploc bags. This works well, for a day or so, but after that it becomes a race against time to finish it before the ants do. They find a way in anything. I still don’t know how. It’s like they are just born in food. They materialize where you least want them, and they do know, somehow, where you least want them. I’ve opened sealed bags to find established ant colonies eating the pretzels I was once excited to eat. Individually wrapped pieces of candy, crackers, homemade cookies, you name it, they love it and will find a way in it. It seems the ants are just as eager to eat “American” food as I am. For example, I recently had a big box of pop-tarts sent from home. (Thanks, Mom!) I ate one pack every morning and was ever so excited the last morning when I realized I still had one pack left. …Until I opened it to notice there was a pin-prick-sized-hole in the bag and a trail of ants coming from the next village, into my house, and up onto my counter, to share my treats. These are things that just can’t be thrown away, though. I blew and I picked and I blew some more until I was all out of wind power and they were all on the floor and not on my breakfast.

I used to eat dinner at an outdoor market. The food was delicious. And cheap. Basically, it’s a long table lined with pre-cooked food in pots. Sick of cooking my own meals, I ate out for dinner almost every night for about 2 months. I usually waited until sundown and then went to get my favorite three thousand riel beef and fried vegetable meal.  I did this until the night I went before sundown, when I could see everything I was eating, and noticed the amount of ants that had been fried into the veggies, and even cooked into the rice (and not purposefully, as opposed to stir-fried tree ant dishes). I picked around the ants the best I could and then decided it was a good time to start  cooking my own dinners again, where I could better control what went into my own food.

Similarly, I still haven’t found a way to properly store rice. I rarely have rice for more than a month or two before buying more from the market, but without fail, every time, it is infested with weevils by the second or third week. Luckily, when they’re full grown, they’re big, black bugs that are easily distinguishable from the white grains of rice and easy to pick out. It just takes time. The others are not quite as noticeable, they’re small and grey, barely able to be seen with the naked eye. But they do float, so rinsing and soaking the rice enough times will ensure a weevil-free (or at least a visibly weevil-free) meal.

I see these all not as negative aspects of Cambodia, but as learning experiences in appreciation.

Upon returning to America, even the food will seem clean.