TRAVEL ADVENTURE FUN AND AN ISSUE!
The Itching Million-Bump Anus Curse
A True Story from ESL Teaching Days in Cambodia
After backpacking around Southeast Asia with my ex, we settled down in Cambodia and pulled our bachelor’s degree photocopies out of the bottoms of our packs. Of course we’d taken them!
Who wouldn’t want to teach English in Cambodia, given the chance? And we loved it. My students were delightful, and we worked with adult learners mostly.
They occasionally had to miss class, as all of us do.
Students come up with the best excuses
We teachers have heard them all, for the most part.
The best excuse ever came from a Cambodian student in Phnom Penh.
I taught and then was an administrator for a large English-language school based in Phnom Penh, and we had a diverse and fun group of young teachers, and some older like I am now.
We exchanged teaching stories, as teachers do. Aside from gossiping nonstop about who was having sex with whom, or who had developed a penchant for ecstasy and was struggling to maintain a work schedule, we also told the fun student stories.
Of fun student stories, I had several. One vivacious and outgoing female student, in her early 20s, asked me questions all the time. Did I like boys?
Oh, I had a husband. Did I like kissing him? Did I like other guys, or just my husband? Very curious girl.
She raised her hand one day and asked me, “Teacher, what means fuck?”
I used it as a teachable moment: what does ‘glass’ mean? what does ‘book’ mean? and yes, what does ‘fuck’ mean?
Her eyes got big, and I had a class full of forty-something year old men, so I just whispered the Cambodian word to her. She laughed hard. The men all knew what it meant already, and they sat looking mildly uncomfortable.
Cambodian men are very respectful toward female teachers for the most part. Very much so. Protective, too.
One time, I was teaching in a wooden shack, and it started raining. Immediately, centipedes began crawling up the walls to avoid rain. I’d never seen anything like this. Their bite can be dangerous. The students all took off their flip flops and began pounding them to death.
‘Teacher, you stay in the middle,’ they said. ‘Go there!’ They were so protective and wonderful.
In my entire life, never have I known such good people. I miss them every day.
Another time, I had a handsome young male student in a class, and he was ready with a joke the first day of class.
He knew a bit about religion, and he knew a bit about playing with language.
First, I need you to know that in Cambodian language, ‘joy’ means ‘fuck.’ Side note: adding knea to any verb means together. Tvehknea, work together. Joyknea, well.
When a competing school came to town on the southern coast of Cambodia, the owner was a woman from the Philipines. Her name?
Joy.
I’ll never forget my students all gossiping about the new person in town whose name was, basically, Fuck.
Here’s the joke my young handsome student told me, back when I was a slightly sweeter and more demure version of myself.
Teacher, do you know why nuns are always unhappy?
They never know the ‘joy’ of marriage.
The other students did a collective eye-roll. Apparently this is a common joke in Cambodia.
The best excuse ever for missing class came from a sincere male student. He wrote a note.
Dear Teacher
I must apologize. I am unable to attend class. I have what we call the million itching-burning anus bumps.
I will return soon.
Sincerely,
Student
In the hot tropical climate, I could imagine he was in discomfort. May you never suffer the horrors of this problem!
