I feel that it is impossible to describe the street where we
live. I think on an urban street of
comparable length in the U.S., there might be 30 homes. A suburban street would have even fewer
homes. Lets be generous and say that on this
urban American street there are 5 people living in each house. This means that about 150 people live on the
street. I honestly think that on our
street in Cambodia about 150 people live just at our end of the street. There is so much housing on our street; there
must be hundreds of people that I could call neighbors. With so many people living on our street, it
is no surprise that I meet someone new almost daily. After Jonah was born, we started being more
aware that our street was teeming with children. We were surprised to find that the name Jonah
is actually a pretty common name on our street.
There is a boys’ home a few doors down from us, and one of the boys
there is named the Khmer version of Jonah “Yuu-nah”. A few months ago, I met a German family that
had recently moved to our street, and one of their sons is named the German
version of Jonah “Yo-nah.” Then a new multi-generational
family moved in right next to us a few months ago. The family is fairly large, and I still haven’t
figured out how everyone is related.
They have opened a small store/restaurant, so there are often different
people hanging out there, and I’m honestly still trying to understand who
actually lives there. All this to be said,
until recently, I somehow forgot to ask them the name of the one-year-old boy
who lives there. So last week, I asked
their son’s name. They answered: “Yuu-nah.”
Confused, thinking that maybe I had asked them if they knew the name of my son,
I asked again. I got the same answer: “Yuu-nah.”
The confused look on my face pushed them to give further explanation: “You know
like in the Bible, the big fish.” I
laughed and said that I definitely knew that story since my son also is named
Jonah. As I go out on the street, I
expect to meet a lot of Pisets, Samnangs, or Sopieps (more common Khmer names),
but I never expected that there would be 4 Jonahs living on our street! Maybe there are even more whom I haven’t met
yet!
-Katy
