ADVENTURES
WITH THE
CAMBODIA
BARNES
Episode
№3
Kim lets us in on a secret and uncovers the big cultural importance of a small grain.
In the last edition of 'Adventures
with the Barnes’, I shared my joy in
discovering that I could cook cakes in
a rice cooker. Well it’s confession time...
After living in Cambodia for nine
months, I don’t actually know how to
cook rice in a rice cooker! Sounds so
silly, but it’s true. I was always taught
that one cup of rice and one and half
cups of water in the rice cooker will
give you perfect rice every time. Well,
in Cambodia, that is not the case! Here
cooking rice is an art not a science.
Navigating a new culture is full
of so many interesting twists and
turns. Learning language doesn’t
just help you communicate, but it
helps you understand the values
and emphasis of a culture. In Khmer
there is one word that describes so
many emotions. Happy, excited, fun,
content, fulfilled and almost all positive
feelings are frequently summed up in
one word, ‘Sabay’.
The flip side is true though when
talking about rice. In Khmer there are
different words for rice in its stages
of growth, harvest and cooking. ‘Rice
time’ is used to describe the nap that
you take in the middle of the day and
greetings often include the question,
‘Have you eaten rice?’. So why can’t I cook perfect rice
in Cambodia? In the West we love
prescriptive instructions. We love our
Thermomixers telling us to mix for eight
seconds at speed three, we love our
recipe books that tell us to add 125g
of butter to 55g of sugar and cook for
15 minutes.
Rice is a central part of life in
Khmer culture, and a day without
rice is a day you don’t eat. Cooking rice in Cambodia is not like
that. There is no measuring tool except
for ‘knowing’ the right amount of water
to put in the pot. This amount changes
depending on the season (hot or wet),
the type of rice, and how long after
cooking you want to eat it. It’s a skill I
am learning and relearning as I live here.
So when I turn to the English
translations of the Bible I am
confronted by the fact that there is
not a single scripture that talks about
rice. ‘Give us this day our daily bread’
was prayed by Jesus in a culture where
fresh bread was made every day and
considered old as soon as it was no
longer warm.
To the Khmer people a prayer that
would make sense to them is, ‘Give us
this day our daily rice’. Could Jesus also
be the ‘Rice of Life’? Can communion
in Cambodia be sharing a bowl of rice
together instead of breaking bread?
It’s the same with learning how to
share Jesus in this culture. Slowly,
slowly we are learning cultural
values, core beliefs and to lay aside
our own prescriptive methods in
order to share life in a way that
makes sense here.
resonate
· issue 33 · page 2