what i’ve learned in peace corps cambodia [pt. 5]

how to eat less bread, more rice.

One of the most asked questions in Cambodia is probably “Have you eaten rice yet?” It can be a conversation starter, it can be used to fill a lull in a conversation, or it can be a complete conversation on its own. Basically, it means “Have you eaten yet?”, but since it is generally assumed that everybody in Cambodia eats rice for every meal, it is usually safe to specify ‘rice’ in the question. As simple as this question is, I often I find myself either not knowing how to answer it. Sometimes I will be walking around during the afternoon, and I will be asked this question at about 4 o’clock. Now, should I assume they are asking me if I ate lunch four hours ago? Or if I had an early dinner? Or, possibly, if I had an afternoon rice snack? And then there are the times when people ask me if I’ve eaten rice yet, and it happens to follow meal that didn’t actually include rice. Now I find myself in a quandary. Should I lie, to keep the conversation simple and avoid confusing the other person? Or should I say ‘No’? Sometimes, I do say ‘No’. And this is usually followed by more questions: “Why not?!?!” and “What did you eat, bread?” Cambodians have this image of their heads that all white people just eat bread all the time. I am often asked to compare how often I eat bread in Cambodia to how often I eat bread in America. Bread is sold in the town I live in, but it sits in the sun all day, it’s hard, crusty, and would be laughed at in America, then fed to animals. And this is the only type of bread that many Cambodians will ever know. And it’s hard to explain to them the wide variety of bread and grain products that there are in other countries. And it’s true, in America I do eat bread and bread products very often. But Cambodians produce much better rice than bread, so I have learned to put bread consumption on hold for two years and eat more rice. And it is because of this that I can confidently answer: “Yes, Cambodia, I have eaten rice already.”