New Chickens

When there was an H1N1 breakout in southeast Asia, the method of prevention for farmers was not as technologically adept as that of American farmers, for example. Rather than vaccinating the animals or putting antivirals into the food, they would keep animals separate from each for about ten days, and if any in the group died unnaturally, the whole group had to be killed. If they all survived, they could enter the general population. This is a well known practice and had been in use for lots of other diseases throughout time in Cambodia as well.

When there was an outbreak of another flu in Cambodia, the director of the orphanage here bought face masks for everyone (so popular in Japan) and insisted that everyone wore them. Of course, they were hot, uncomfortable, kind of funny-looking to westerners, and they aren't so good for your skin, and so the three American female volunteers refused to wear them.

After a while, some kids came up to Mike and said, "Mike, the new chickens won't wear their face masks." And Mike had no idea what they were talking about, so they said again, "The new chickens. They won't wear their face masks." And Mike still was totally clueless. And then they turned to each other and started speaking Khmae, checking the words with each other. The concluded that the Khmae phrase "moo'in t'may" definitely did translate to "new chicken," but Mike knew those words so he stopped them in the middle. "No, no, I understand the word 'new' and the word 'chicken,' but I have no idea what you're trying to tell me about the new chickens, or why we have chickens at all."

They actually didn't piece it together for a while.

Peace out.