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Published: March 7th 2010
No blog entries for a week; Facebook is just so much easier. I can upload a photo and update my status in a minute or two, and it seems more interactive. If you aren't my Facebook friend yet, maybe now is the time...But if you're still a hold-out, here is a little overview of recent events:
We've had a busy week, in all the best possible ways (except for having to say goodbye to Erin, who we miss very much.) I taught the Knar students Monday, Wednesday and Friday night as usual. On Friday, I brought a new volunteer who will take on this class for the next two weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching these older students, and their need to understand
why we say and do things in particular ways in English provided me with a good challenge. On the last evening, some younger children were running around in the schoolyard for the first hour or so of class. With nothing better to do, they peeked in the classroom through the doorway and through the holes in the walls. I glanced over once to look at them running by and realized that the two littlest ones, who
were maybe two years old, were running around with plastic bags over their heads. I went running out of the room to snatch the bags away, which my students thought was hilarious. Crazy
barang, why does she do that? (Some photos are
here, though there are none of the plastic bags.)
We went to the Fourth Annual Siem Reap Giant Puppet Parade, where we watched hundreds of children parade through the streets with giant puppets they had built with various NGOs. It was as much fun watching the crowd as watching the parade. That evening seemed to be the hottest and most humid I can remember, and the sweat poured in sheets. The next morning, I went with the guest house kids to look at the puppets up close in the park. (Photos:
Puppet Parade)
I spent an evening with the girls at the PAGE house, where Miriam and I taught last November. The welcome I got there was one of the most heartwarming moments I've had in a long time. These 12 girls live many hours from their families, visiting home only twice a year for a few days, all so they can live in town
and finish their education. When I appeared at the gate of the house, there were shrieks and long, hard hugs all around. "I miss you! I miss you!" I just wanted to hold them tight and never let go until they can get home to see their mothers.
We also took a road trip to Koh Ker, a three-hour drive to the north. Well, it
should be a three-hour drive, but that would only be true if you didn't have a flat tire on one van and a failed fuel pump in the other. We spent an unexpected but pleasant hour along the road while both problems were fixed by barefoot greasy mechanics, and I was more grateful than ever for the fact that every road is lined with fix-it shops of every variety. We broke down literally right in front of one, which isn't hard to do.
Once we finally arrived at the Koh Ker school, we helped put together lunch for a couple hundred students and I spent a little time in the kindergarten classroom, watching them shovel in their noodles and then making up silly games to pass the time. They don't speak
English, and I don't speak Khmer, but they will imitate everything you say or do. When we first arrived, one of the tourists and I stuck our heads in the classroom as the kindergarteners sat politely at their desks (despite no adult in the room.) I waved and said, "Hello!" They all responded in unison: "
Hello!" The woman with me said, "Oh, they have such good English!" Well, not exactly, I thought, and demonstrated for her. "How are you?" I asked them. "
How are you?" they all called back to me. "Fine, thanks. And you?" "
Fine, thanks. And youuuuuu?" they all giggled back hysterically. There were a couple of kids in the class who had been too young for school when I was here last, and I rememember photo-stalking them in the schoolyard as they ran around half-naked among the students. And now here they were, sitting up straight at their desks in their uniforms. A few older children came into the classroom and gladly took over my camera when I offered. I've found that I get some pretty interesting photos when I hand the camera over to someone else, and it never takes them longer then 30 seconds to
learn which buttons to use to take pictures and then review them on the screen. Thanks to those older kids, I have many photos of them posing with each other, but unexpectedly, they also took some of me playing with the little kids. (For Koh Ker-related photos, look
here.)
I went to see Jaz at work at the Life and Hope Association at Wat Damnak. She teaches two English classes there every evening and is the "English Language School Coordinator." (This means taking care of details like registration, placement exams, paying the teachers' salaries, etc. and she's trying to figure out who will take over when she comes home for a couple of months.) She's the only foreign English teacher there, which means she is in demand. One of her her friends, who also teaches there, is a monk named
Venerable Yeum (though he has a completely different name on Facebook!) What is it about those smiling monks? Do their smiles seem more brilliant somehow without the distraction of hair and eyebrows? Does the sunny color of their robes somehow light up their faces? I don't know, but he can grin with the best of them. While I
was at Life & Hope Association, I also chatted with Sophanit, the bright young Cambodian woman who is in charge of lots of things there. Last fall, she took Steve and me out to visit the Children's Development Village, an orphanage run by LHA, and when I asked about health concerns there, she told me that her wish was that the children could all be immunized against Hepatitis B. I told her this week that I am committed to make that happen when we return in September. Either I find a cheap source at home and transport it over on ice, or I buy it here. I already asked about the cost, and the man at the lab down the street told me that it's $8 per dose to buy as much as I want. 48 kids x $8 x 3 doses = $1152. Anyone know of a donor who would like to help fund this project? Hepatitis is a serious problem in Cambodia. The kids at the CDV may or may not be actual orphans, so their families could return and take them back any time if they want, which usually means they will be back on the street
Medications
Some labels are in Thai; no idea what some things are...working to help support their parents. Their access to healthcare will then be practically nonexistent, and if we can protect them from hepatitis, that's one less thing they might suffer as a chronic illness in life. It may be a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop I can see and feel and touch, so it's the drop I have chosen to embrace.
And speaking of healthcare yet again, as I often seem to do, I believe I have found my "job" here. New Hope Community Center (such a lot of "hope" in this country!) has small clinic in the community they serve just outside of town. (Please check out
this link to New Hope's website.) The clinic consists of a 12-foot square room next to the classrooms and office. It is staffed by a Khmer "doctor" and an Australian nurse who leaves in September. The "doctor" has two weeks' worth of medical training in the army, and like most Khmer health "professionals," he is very fond of giving people IVs. The nurse came to Cambodia for a three-week holiday several months ago and never went home.
The clinic has a couple of medicine cabinets filled
with a jumble of antibiotics, pain-killers, de-worming meds and various vitamins and other supplements. There are a couple of stethoscopes, and an otoscope that looks like it came from the dollar store; if you whack it hard enough against your palm at just the right angle, the light comes in briefly. There are no extra specula for the otoscope, just one, used over and over and cleaned when there's time between patients.
Tracy, the nurse, is doing the best she can with incredibly limited resources, but there's so much room for improvement here. There are no medical records, no charts, no documentation. She is trying to work out a system for record-keeping, but there are many challenges, so right now, people come and go and if she's lucky, she'll remember a patient and what she gave her from the week before. (My co-workers can imagine how horrified I am!) There is a 18-year-old male translator named Sith, who wears his New Hope polo shirt with pride and appears not to have any qualms about asking anything of the mostly female patients. ("She say she have stomach ache and itchy bum! Need medicine for worms.") Patients line up outside
at 8 am, waiting to be seen. The day I was there, we saw a toddler with a boiling water burn, a kid with an infected foot, a woman with a UTI, and lots of complaints about headaches and stomachaches and coughs. We gave out antibiotics, meds for reflux, lots of tylenol and vitamins, and dressed wounds. (The doctor started an IV on a woman who felt "weak.") We looked up meds in the big reference book on the shelf and made our best guesses. (Now I can imagine how horrified all of my coworkers are!) But the alternative is nothing at all. Even when someone comes in very sick and Tracy takes them to the hospital, they are most often turned away. "Not very sick, Go home." I'm going back to spend all day Monday and Tuesday there (home visits happen in the afternoon) and I'm bring her my tropical disease books, my digital thermometer and my brand new otoscope (with a bag of extra specula!) I've started an Excel spreadsheet of some of the medications in the clinic cabinet - what they are, what they're used for, dosages and contraindications. I'm hoping that Tracy will find it helpful
and it will save her looking things up every time in the big book. (And I really hope she doesn't find it obnoxious of me.)
The timing of her leaving and my arriving in September seems to be destiny somehow, and as much as I enjoy teaching, I feel far more potentially useful as a nurse. She already introduced me to some of the other staff as "the nurse who will come when I leave." I'll try to speak with the New Hope director and confirm that before I leave, but I think the "job" is mine if I want it. They also have a need for social workers to visit families in the community, help enroll their children in school, try to figure out how to address some of the domestic violence and other challenges in this extraordinarily needy community. I see plenty of work for Steve as well. And some photos from the clinic are
here.
(Well, so much a "little overview"...)
In addition to everything else, I have had my hair cut twice (I had to work up to
really short, and I'm sure I'll be horrified when I get home
and look in the mirror, but it's perfect for here), priced blenders and toaster ovens and other items we might want to acquire here, been to the "carnival," broken one of my own cardinal rules about not giving money to children, played a little snooker (which I am terrible at, but sure I can get better with practice), finally read
Three Cups of Tea and started reading
The Kite Runner, pondered unanswerable questions, spent as much time as I could with Jaz's boyfriend Sovann (and wondered what the most appropriate response would be when he mentioned that his father had been a Khmer Rouge soldier), enjoyed many hours with the kids at the guest house while they drew countless pictures of mermaids and dolphins and flowers, celebrated Ponheary's birthday, watched the world go by from the second-floor balcony, been amazed by Jaz's ability to understand and speak Khmer, smoked too many cigarettes, drank my share of cheap beer, chatted with Steve online almost daily, and had an excellent time with Jaz. No complaints really, except for the fact that I leave here in five days - which is bittersweet.
I will be sustained by the countdown that begins
when I arrive home. Ballpark starting point: 167 days until we are back in this hot, crazy, smoky, trash-strewn, developing, hope-filled country.
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moving
Hi, 2 meanings to that title of mine. This blog was very moving and evoked a deep emotional reaction from me. And I can't wait till we move there. Thanks Jess you are so good at giving us readers a real sense of the Khmer world you experience. Jaz learning Khmer, very cool! MISS you, LOVE, me