Singulars and Plurals and Atrocities

Let me pose this question to you: What is the singular of boba?

The Independence Monument in Phnom Penh (which has nothing to do with boba)

I assume many people know what I mean by boba, especially those in the western half of the United States. Boba are tapioca pearls found in drinks, often called boba tea. I learned that boba were created in Taiwan, and the name is based on the Chinese word for breast. If you are from the eastern half of the United States, you probably call this drink bubble tea. I'm not sure where the dividing line is.

In Southeast Asia, it is called boba, and there are plenty of varieties of it. You don't even have to get tea, which is good for me, since I am not a fan of tea. There are many other flavored drinks with boba in them. Half of the fun for me is capturing and sucking out each individual tapioca pearl with my straw. But what do I call just one tapioca pearl?

We asked our kids and my son says the singular of boba is boba. The internet agrees with him. But I prefer to use bobus. So when I get one successfully out through my straw I say "bobus!"

A small wat

Right now, Alrica and I are in Phnom Penh and it leads me to a second question of similar form. What is the plural of Prius. I'm going with Pria. You would not believe how popular Pria are here. First, Toyota and Lexus hold a gigantic share of the car market here, if what I see on the streets is any indication. Hybrids are very popular, and the Toyota Prius is everywhere.

Three Pria side by side parked at a mall.

We arrived in Phnom Penh on a Sunday night. They have a brand new airport, less than two months old. It is very new looking, super clean. But it is also a long way out of the city. We took the local bus to get here, which cost us 1500 Cambodian riels (about 38 cents) per person. For the most part it was great, but we waited a long time for the bus. When it did finally arrive, Alrica had an experience with another passenger that would be one of those stereotypical American experiences, except I don't think he was American (based on his English, but he could be an American who learned English as a second language.) This man only had US dollars and didn't have any Cambodian riels. The bus driver had no way to take US dollars. And the man said to Alrica, "Why won't he take dollars?" Alrica replied, "Because we're in Cambodia."

But before we lambast this poor traveler, I want to explain he isn't entirely unreasonable. The US dollar is sort of a semi-official and semi-unofficial currency in Cambodia. And the history of it is somewhat unique in that it wasn't a governmental decision. Here's what happened:

Later in this post, I will talk some about the Khmer Rouge, which was a political group in power in Cambodia from 1974 to 1979. One of their many misguided ideas was to eliminate money from the society. They discontinued making riels and destroyed the banking industry. Riels returned in 1980, but the confidence that Cambodians had in their banks was gone.

There are a lot of chained off sidewalks (because people use sidewalks like parking lots) but either is problematic for pedestrians

In the first half of the 1990s, the Khmer riel (which is what Cambodians call their currency) underwent rapid hyperinflation. People would see a day to day change in their purchasing power. They had the same number of riels, but they could buy so much less than the previous day. The volatility of the currency was wild and both merchants and consumers were suffering. Then, in 1994, merchants stopped accepting riels. This wasn't a governmental policy. It was the people themselves who couldn't rely on the currency to still be good tomorrow. So businesses started accepting only US dollars for purchases. Soon, everyone was using dollars. Cambodian banks were stocking US currency in the ATM machines.

Why US Dollars? A few reasons. It was a very stable currency. The UN was sending humanitarian aid, often in the form of US dollars. And many Cambodians abroad were sending money (generally US dollars) home to their families.

Eventually, the government got riels back in circulation with an unofficial exchange rate of 4100 riels to one US dollar. But that is unofficial and it does fluctuate. Right now it is about 4000 riels for one dollar. In the villages, only riels are used. But in the cities, lots of businesses like hotels and restaurants will take dollars. In fact, plenty of them give their prices on the menus in dollars. They will also take riels. And if you get change, it will almost always be in riels. They government is trying to phase out US dollars, which is not going well. But they did phase out $1, $2, and $5 bills. So businesses can't make change that is less than $10 in dollars. It has to be in riels. So Cambodia today really runs with two currencies. Dare I say they have currency concurrency?

Back to the man on the bus. Unfortunately for him, public buses (which cost way less than $10) are one of those businesses that does not take US dollars, only Khmer riels. In the end, some of the Cambodians on the bus put up the money for the man to ride. (And the bus driver was also going to let him ride without paying.) That's how kind the Cambodians are.

On Monday, we took a cooking class. We made Green Mango Salad, Yellow Curry Chicken, and Banana Palm dessert. It started with a trip to a market where we bought our meat and vegetables and fruits and dry goods. Then we returned to the hotel/restaurant where we got to peel, slice, mix, and cook. We enjoyed the fruit of our own labors (and the vegetable of our own labors) for lunch.

Alrica in her cooking hat with her green mango salad

Here is another bus story. On the way back from the cooking class, we took another local bus. This one was very crowded and we had to stand. No big deal. But there was a Buddhist monk on the bus. You always know Buddhist monks because they are bald and wear orange robes. The monk had a seat. (Even if he hadn't had a seat, someone would have given him one, he's a monk.) The monk, who only spoke Khmer, talked to another man who was also standing that spoke both Khmer and English. And the bilingual man explained to Alrica that she had to move further back in the bus. Apparently, it is not acceptable for a woman to have her head higher than the monk's head. Or at least not in the direction that the monk is facing, not where he can see. So either Alrica had to sit on the floor (and there wasn't room for that) or she had to move back so she was behind the monk and out of his range of vision. Naturally, Alrica moved. We try to be considerate of other cultures and their beliefs. But the American in me was also thinking, "but this is what happens on buses! Why take a bus if you can't handle something that naturally occurs on a bus?"

My yellow curry, rice, and banana palm dessert

Tuesday we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It was super informative, but not fun. Still, it is important that this event is never forgotten. Here is a brief overview.

During the Vietnam War, the United States bombed the bejeebies (technical military term) out of Cambodia to try to disrupt the North Vietnamese Army's supply lines. This devastated the countryside and agricultural sector of Cambodia and sent many people into the cities. But there wasn't enough work for all these people and it was a crisis. Faith in the current government was lost. In 1975, the Cambodian Communist Party, which called itself the Khmer Rouge, gained tons of support with a promise of change. They took power. But their vision was horrifying.

The leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, wanted to return Cambodia to its agrarian roots. The Khmer Rouge military marched into the cities on April 17, 1976 and immediately began clearing them out. They told the people that more US bombings were expected and they were going to be moved for their own safety until the bombings were over. This was a lie. In truth, they moved people out into the countryside. Everyone was moved. Phnom Penh had been a city of 3 million people and soon it was a ghost town. Cambodians were all made to be farmers (or a few other professions like blacksmiths that could support farming.) People who had no idea how to grow rice were told to grow rice. The government demanded 3 tons of rice per hectare per year, regardless of the quality of the land where these people were working. Of course, it wasn't possible. People were weak and starving.

But that's not the genocide. It gets worse. The Khmer Rouge considered some people the "old people." That has nothing to do with age. It is the people who were engaged in farming and the old Cambodian professions. Others were "new people", including the educated, those working in banking, medicine, or education. These new people were shipped off to "security centers" which we kept secret. They were considered enemies of the revolution, enemies of the Khmer Rouge. They were tortured in horrible ways to get confessions and to name co-conspirators. Then they were murdered.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide museum was one of these security centers, called S21. The government took over a high school (no longer a high school since they eliminated education.) They turned it into a prison camp. Here people were held in leg irons, treated like animals, barely fed, and tortured up to three times a day. It wasn't just the "new people" either. Anyone who fell out of favor with the Khmer Rouge was sent to a security center.

Once you finally confessed to the satisfaction of the interrogators, you were sent to die. They didn't want to waste bullets, so most people were killed by bludgeoning and then had their throats slit, just to make sure. Children were separated from parents and killed.

Tuol Sleng Building C. The barbed wire is because someone managed to jump and kill himself. They didn't want that. You weren't allowed to die until they killed you.

S21 ran from 1976 until liberation in 1979. The Vietnamese army marched into Cambodia and flushed the Khmer Rouge out of much of the country. The Khmer Rouge fled to places near the Thailand border and the people were freed. And even after this, the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China continued to accept the Khmer Rouge as the official government of Cambodia for another couple decades. But back to 1979, when the staff at S21 learned the Vietnamese Army was approaching, they destroyed as many records as they could. They had some prisoners there and killed 14 of them on the spot. They took a few more with them as they relocated. It is estimated that over 18,000 people were imprisoned at S21 while it was in operation. Only 12 survived. And the destruction of records meant most of the prisoners are, to this day, unidentified. Their families don't know what happened to them, or even if they were at S21 or one of the other security centers in the country.

It is a horrible piece of history, but I am glad I learned more about it. It is these atrocities that we must never forget.

Sadly, it is not the only one. We speak of atrocities and genocides in the plural. But one day, maybe we can speak of their count being zero. That should be our ultimate goal.