Dancing in Cambodia, Knowing Everyting's Gonna Be Okay

“Excuse me,” said a young man, approaching me to the left, “would you like to dance?”

He bowed slightly while asking the questions, hands up in prayer position, a typically Cambodian gesture.

While normally I’d be pretty thrilled if a guy asked me to dance, especially in such a formal and adorable way, I hesitated at this offer. This was Cambodia. Ancient, traditional Cambodia. Here, opposite genders didn’t mix. Here, public displays of affection were taboo.

How did young people here go about dancing with each other?

Moreover, how did people even dance here anyway?

I looked at the young, dark skinned man. I considered my options for a heartbeat. “Yes, definitely. BUT, you’ll have to teach me Cambodian dance.”

So he did. The rest of my friends joined in, and so did the other young Cambodians of Egbok. Step by step my dance partner showed me an easy Cambodian dance. A strange sort of swaying move, circling around a table. It was hard, the movement of the hands are just as important of the feet, and everything is pretty stylized. They way you hold your fingers, the pointing of toes, the rotation of the wrists.

I’m pretty sure Cambodians are born knowing how to flex their hands impossible and move them flawlessly between different gestures. Us westerners on the other hand, have a bit more difficulty. But it was a fun night, dancing clumsily along to the ruckus of Cambodian hip hop. 

Eventually, the my friends and I decided to show off a little American dancing. A few moments later, “Footloose” started playing on someone’s Ipod and we all broke out into the dance we’d all learned at the start of the trip before teaching it to our friends at Egbok. To their credit, they picked it up way faster than most of us.

Our dance party lasted a while, but we eventually had to say our goodbyes. And so, we ended the night, saying our goodbyes and thank yous.

During the walk back to the hostel, no one in our group could shut up.

“That was amazing!”

“I’m going to miss them so much. We have got to send other groups there next time.”

“Let’s stay in Siem Reap!”

That night had been an experiment. We had been in contact with this organization Egbok for a little while, and had managed to arrange one evening to go and visit.

As you can guess, it went wonderfully.

The ten of us set out one hot afternoon in Siem Reap to find the Egbok house. An address and poor quality map in hand, it’s a miracle we made it. But only twenty minutes later, we walked up the drive to a stately looking home (this was Cambodia after all, and anything with nice clean walls, a paved drive, and a pretty gate is nice). We were sweaty and dusty from the walk, but were welcomed in anyway.

Egbok, a name I’ve thrown around a few times already, stands for “Everything’s Gonna Be OK.” It’s a nonprofit started by a graduate of the Cornell Hospitality School that trains poor young men and women in Cambodia in hospitality, so that they can enter the booming hospitality business. These young people join a wonderful community when they join Egbok. They live as a family, get English and technology lessons, learn anything and everything they could possibly need to know when working in a hotel or restaurant, and they get plenty of practice with their new skills. But most importantly, Egbok changes their lives, and puts control back into their hands.

I had a lovely time at Egbok, learning and laughing with the Cambodians who were my age. This was the first time any of the service opportunities on this trip involved working with people my age, and it was a wonderful change of pace. How else could we have ended up throwing and impromptu dance party?

Besides dancing, we all cooked a Cambodian meal together, cutting up veggies to put into spring rolls, slicing bananas for dessert, stirring fish soup. When it came time to roll the spring rolls, the Egbok students laughed a lot—at us Americans who clearly do not understand how to roll spring rolls. But it was all in good fun, and eventually the food was ready. We sat down to eat.

Dinner was defined by laughter and good conversation. A number of the people working or volunteering at Egbok have very interesting stories, so we spent the evening learning about their experiences. Following dinner and a delicious banana and milk dessert, the ten of us Carpe people were all given kramas, the traditional Cambodian scarf, a symbol of their culture.

And then, then, someone announced that the Egbok students would teach us Cambodian dance. And so the party continued, into the starlit night.