In Chains

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So I made it to Kampong Thom. I’m staying in the local TPO office. It’s a more traditional style house raised up above the ground, not as swish as the Phnom Penh branch. Much to my disappointment only the boss’s office has internet access, so it looks like this blog will never get uploaded. The team here are very friendly though their English is nowhere near as good as the guys in PP, which will take some getting used to. My room is big and the bed is comfy. The bathroom has a squat toilet and a bucket for a shower, but can’t complain. Two other staff members are also living here at the moment, including Sunnari the team leader.

The whole building is teeming with animal life. In my room alone there is a fascinating variety of insects, several large geckos, who have been allowed to stay in the hope that they will eat the insects, and an extremely large, noisy cricket, who I have been trying to catch without any success. There is also definitely some kind of rodent residing in the ceiling, but this is no different from the house I used to live at in Hyde Park, so not too concerned. The most important thing is the notable absence of SPIDERS (believe me, I checked) and the sturdy mosquito net provided. So it’s all good.

In fact I had a great night’s sleep, without getting bitten, after I’d methodically caught and squashed all the insects that were somehow already inside my mosquito net. Reading a book in bed, by torchlight, is ideal. The light on the white page attracts the insects, then when they land you just slam the book shut. Splat. Quite satisfying.

Now it’s the second night, and the roof of my room is leaking quite spectacularly. I don’t want to tell them, because I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. They’ll only offer to swap and give me one of their rooms, and I don’t want that. They are always worried about me, can I eat the food, do I like the room, am I scared of the thunder?

They always try to give me the best bits of food as well. I’m paying $1 per meal here. Even by Cambodian standards, this is bargainus. At lunch time the whole office eats together, in the evening it’s just the three of us who sleep in the building, plus the night guard. The meal generally includes rice, two different dishes, fruit and a bowl of fried crickets, which I am developing quite a taste for. If ever there is a cricket in the office they catch it and store it in a tub outside, for later. I have my eye on that noisy one that’s hiding in my room. He’s looking tasty.

An hour later the roof has stopped leaking, which doesn’t make any sense because it’s still raining. I’m glad I didn’t say anything.

If this journal doesn’t make any chronological sense it’s because I’m writing it on my laptop, as things occur to me, usually while I’m supposed to be working, then just pasting in into my online journal when I get internet access, which is rarely.

So far, in terms of my project, I have managed to interview one monk and one traditional healer, which has been extremely interesting. This has proven to be way easier than I thought it would, and I really don’t think I’m going to have any trouble finding enough participants. My translator is actually the team leader, Sunnari. He just takes me to see people in whatever village we happen to be in, when he has an hour to spare. The rest of the time I have been zipping around the gorgeous countryside on motorbikes (on the back, not allowed to ride my own unfortunately) tagging along watching whatever the team are doing - seeing patients, facilitating support groups, holding meetings with the village chiefs. This has been absolutely fascinating. Someone always translates for me.

People are curious. I field a lot of questions.

How old are you?
Are you married?
Why not?
Would you like to marry a nice Cambodian boy? I know someone from my village, you could stay at my house
Your skin is so white, it’s kind of blue…
Yeah, your skin in like a newborn baby
How much rice does England produce?
What do you eat if you don’t eat rice?
Why don’t you grow rice?
Don’t you like rice?
Do you like Cambodia?
Will you come back here when you are a doctor?
Will you bring your doctor friends?

I particularly loved the ladies in the women’s domestic violence support group. One of them was upset because her cow got hit by a bus. The cow was worth $250 but she only got $100 selling the meat at the market. Now she has no cows, and her husband is having nightmares about the accident (he saw it happen, you see) and is scared that the bus company will come and ask him for money, because the cow shouldn’t have been in the road. I felt genuinely heartbroken for her. I wanted to buy her a new cow.

The patient I saw on the first morning, he was probably the single saddest thing I have ever witnessed in the whole of my (not so vast) medical experience. This young man was perfectly healthy, until he suffered a head trauma that left him unconscious for nearly three days. After that he became delusional. He killed his mother during a psychotic episode. Since then his family has had to keep him in chains. I went to meet him this morning, when the nurse visited to give him his medication. Sunnari translated everything he said for me. He was very pleasant and perfectly lucid, aside from the fact that he thought he was 400 years old and living in heaven. He was chained by his ankle to a stake in the ground at the bottom of the garden, under a shade of woven palm leaves. This man also had a very developmentally delayed younger brother, two years old, who had been brain damaged during birth after a difficult labour. The family really struggled to look after them both. The child was going to be moved to an orphanage run by an Australian charity, where he would have been cared for and taught skills, but they were waiting until a new building was completed so there would be room for him. When we got to the house, they told us he died 10 days ago. It was too late.

On the way back, Sunnari took me to see a dam across the river, built by forced labour in the time of the Khmer Rouge. Most of the people who worked on it died. Everything had to be done by hand, because science and machinery were corrupting western influences. One of the guys who works in the office told me five people from his village were sent to work there, and never came back.

Sorry if this blog is starting to sound like some kind of ultra morbid Oxfam advert.

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Comments

[Kit]

Pheeeeeew
Boy oh boy, Hulse you do find yourself in some pretty intense situations. I just read all of your blog entries (very entertaining, great, if harrowing pictures). I had assumed that you had not made any and had simply fallen 'off the grid'. I am happy to see that you are on top of this blogging thing. I know how annoyed you were with yourself when you didn't get round to blogging South America, but being annoyed with yourself is defiantly your favorite hobby. . . I am proud of you and what you are doing. I am glad everything worked out with your NGO and your translator and everything (what did I say!?) but I knew it would. Things tend to work out for pretty girls. I never found my dictaphone, but I bought an adapter that turns your ipod into a perfect dicataphone that you can keep when you get back if you like. Its pretty useful, especially if you like recording things. Everything I am doing here would sound so awfully pedestrian compared to what you are doing so I am not even going to bore you with it. Just know that I have reverted to type and that my motivational posters and daily plans didn't amount to much. I still have not been given ethical approval (apparently they are CONVINCED i am trying to spam people even though I have never once mentioned doing this). As I still cannot begin my research (even though I have) without ethical approval I decided to throw a massive shitfit at my tutor and she seems to realise now that unless i get approved pretty soon there will be no students left to survey. Anyway I will let you know more about what is going on in the near future. I know its nice to get mail abroad. Send me a postcard. By the way, you forgot to register to postal vote! Your democracy despairs. Its all kicking off here by the way, all Gordon Browns ministers are leaving the cabinet and his premiership is looking increasingly like a clowns car, both because of the number of people leaving it so rapidly and because of the way in which it is falling apart. At least GB is keeping me entertained. Anyway, all my love and kick some ass Kit

[Chris]

thank you!
Hi, just want to say that this blog does not sound like some kind of ultra morbid Oxfam avert. Instead I'm happy to read about your experiences and how you cope with them. I don't want to imagine some of the many places on earth where no NGO are present... There are so many people suffering from whatever you never want to know. And it's always encouraging to know that there are good souls out, using their power to contribute to something better than just their own bank account. @Kit: as a child we were praced sitting on the handlebar and riding the bycicle backwards... look, without hands! Still hurts when I think about that one ;-) Hope you both are well, enjoy each day and meet again soon ;-)