Sigh.

     Those of you who know me on Facebook may have noticed my posts about my computer - which started to make noises like a rainstick and is now on its way to China for repair - and about my back-up external hard drive - which just failed yesterday for no apparent reason, leaving me with a 4" x 6" paperweight which contains, but will not divulge, all of the Word documents I've ever created, as well as 120 GB of photos and 67GB of music. (In case you're wondering, I'm writing this on Steve's laptop.)

     Sigh. What did I do to deserve this? And what will become of me without my data?

     I was so pleased with myself for being the sort to make regular back-ups. It came in handy when my laptop was stolen in December, though my previous back-up had been in October so I still lost some stuff. Since then, I've made more frequent back-ups, so when my laptop had to go in for service and they told me it had to be sent to China, I congratulated myself for having backed everything up the very day before. I actually removed all my documents from the laptop before letting them send it off for repair, feeling like I didn't want some Chinese geek squad being able to read thousands of my personal and work-related documents. And then, three days later, the back-up hard drive just stopped working. The computer refuses to acknowledge its existence, no matter how many times I connect and disconnect it. I took it in to the local computer guys, who messed around with it for a while and then announced, "Sorry. Cannot fix."

      I like to think that my calm acceptance of this fact has something to do with my reshuffled priorities and healthier perspective about life in general. They're just documents, after all. It's not like I lost a loved one, or a kidney. But I may just be in denial, hoping that someone back home will be able to magically revive the hard drive.

     And if they can't, then I've lost a LOT of stuff. Journal entries, letters to and from friends over the years, research for work-related and other projects, silly birthday poems I've written, lists and more lists, tax returns,   resumes, etc. I suppose it would be like losing a box full of diaries and letters in a house fire or something. They might just be gone. Poof. Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've lost things in a fire, but I had hoped there wouldn't be a second time.

     And now that I don't have that big folder full of documents, I have to struggle to remember exactly what they all were. It seems they must have been very important, as I've been backing them up and moving them from one computer to another for years. I guess the lost tax returns could present a bit of a problem, but I don't think anything else will truly make my life difficult. Or maybe I won't know what else I lost and how important it is until months from now, when I need something and realize it's no longer there.

     What I do have - and wish I had more of - is a small collection of Google documents that live online and can be retrieved any time. At one point I had intended to back up everything I owned this way, but of course, I never got beyond a couple of folders' worth. And as far as music and photos go, all the music I really ever listen to is still on my iPod and about 16GB of photos are backed up on Picasa online. So it's not the end of the world, but still...

     Instead of thinking about this much, I'm trying to concentrate on the Things That Make Me Happy. Today, that list looks like this:

1. Having a productive day at work
2. Riding my motorcycle
3. Cheese
4. Knowing that next week I can eat cheese every day

     I might be thinking about cheese a lot because just to top off this unfortunate week, I got a stomach bug (or I ate something that didn't agree with me) and it happened to coincide with an evening we invited someone for dinner who brought an enormous selection of cheese. Cheese is a rare and beautiful - and expensive - thing here, and this was like a cheese orgy on a plate, straight from the most expensive hotel in town (where this woman happens to work.) And I couldn't eat any of it. 

     Sigh. What did I do to deserve this?

     So it's not my best week. And the weather - which was unseasonably and delightfully rainy for a week or so (thanks to my laptop/rainstick) has become more seasonably hot. It's 94 degrees in the shade right now. And the many pounds that I've gained since I got here are weighing heavily on me, both because of the heat and because I have no idea whether I have any warm clothes waiting for me in Vermont that will fit. (Those of you who have known me for a long time will not be shocked to hear that I've gained weight, since I've been gaining and losing for 20+ years, but I had hoped that a tropical climate would somehow make me immune to my usual ups and downs. Well, I certainly can't blame the weight gain on cheese.)

      We'll be home one week from now, which is strangely disorienting. I'm not excited about the travel itself - which will be arduous and far too long - but I'm excited to be home, to see my friends and family, to visit our house (even if it's full of other people's stuff), to smell the lilacs, to drink some good wine, to get a new driver's license, and to buy some good deodorant. I wonder what it will feel like to drive a car for the first time in more than eight months and how it will feel to enter the VNA building through the front door rather than slipping in through the staff entrance. I wonder what I will miss about Cambodia while we're in Vermont and how we'll manage the sticker shock of American prices. I wonder what it will feel like to see my son get married!

      I wonder if any American tech geek will be able to fix my hard drive....

     

And now, imagine this.

     While in the village one morning over Khmer New Year, a man lounging on the side of the road said, “Good morning, sir!” as we went by. His pronunciation was much clearer than any other local person we have ever heard, and we joked that he must have been practicing that phrase for years, just waiting for a foreigner to show up so he could use it. 

     Imagine our surprise when a little later in the morning he approached us and said, quite clearly, “Can you spare any change? I’m totally broke.” I did a double-take, and my first response was, “Where did you learn English???” 

     In California, it turns out. He and his family were Cambodian refugees who arrived in California in 1982 when he was just a little kid. He grew up there, dropped out of school, and got in trouble. “Three strikes, man. They deported me. Seven years ago. It’s really rough.” I’m guessing that neither nor his parents ever did what they needed to do to make him a citizen, so when he screwed up too many times, he was outta there.  (See more info about deportation of Cambodian refugees at Wikipedia , this newspaper article and this report.) So this guy, who spoke no Khmer and probably lacked some socially-acceptable basic life skills, found himself in a small village in Cambodia, a country he hadn’t been in for over 20 years, if ever – he may have been born in a Thai refugee camp. 

     It was so strangely disorienting to look at this obviously Khmer guy and listen to him speak English in his inner-city American accent. He went on for a few minutes about how we should contact a guy in San Luis Obispo who worked at the Conservation Corps – perhaps this was one of the stops during his misguided youth where they tried to help him turn his life around, without success, apparently. In retrospect, I wish I had talked to him a bit longer, but his mission was clear – he was looking for some money. I gave him a couple of dollars’ worth of riel. And 20 minutes later, he approached us again down the road. “Can you spare a quarter or something. I’m really broke.” I reminded him that he had already asked us once – ”I know.” – and we had already given him money – “I know. I spent it already.” I declined to give him any more. 

     I wondered how often he got to talk to other native English speakers. I wondered how he gets by day-to-day. I wondered if he had been part of a Cambodian gang in California – his tattoos would suggest that he was. I wondered if he had ever really had a decent chance in life. I wondered a lot of things.  

Susdei Chnam Thmey! (Happy Khmer New Year!)

     Going to stay in the Cambodian countryside is an adventure. Going there during the week of Khmer New Year is exponentially more interesting.

     Staying in the village is like camping, only louder and with fewer modern facilities. It’s loud because Khmer New Year is the holiday of all holidays here, and it goes on for days, and celebrations here always call for LOUD MUSIC at least 15 hours per day. Normally quiet pagodas and their grounds are turned into county fairs/nightclubs/boxing rings/food festivals. It would appear that the whole village attends, and if it’s a particularly big affair like the one in Rung Chrey village, people come from villages miles around.  Svay Duonkeo village had a slightly smaller affair, and we were lucky enough to attend both.

     Imagine an area about the size of a football field, with a Buddhist wat in the middle. Set up all around the wat are makeshift palm leaf and bamboo food stalls selling every kind of rice, noodles, meat, fish, and fruit that you can imagine – and many that you cannot. Christmas lights and fluorescent bulbs are strung somewhat haphazardly in every direction and are surrounded by clouds of bugs.  The ground is littered with plastic bags and empty beer cans and greasy napkins. (Keep in mind that even on restaurant tables, the most commonly found “napkin” here is a roll of pink toilet paper.) There are games  – especially the classic Khmer carnival game where for 25 cents you can throw a dart at a wall of balloons in the hope of winning anything from the plethora of prizes being displayed: bottles of Khmer whiskey or dish detergent, boxes of crackers, metal bowls, and plastic ware in all shapes and sizes. There are carnival rides – a ferris wheel that looks like it may have been beamed here from 1947, and for the littler ones there's a spinning contraption with plastic cars and animals hanging in metal cages. There is a boxing ring, curtained off from free viewing by an assortment of tarps. And there is a place to dance: an area marked by a wall of ancient Peavey speakers that stretches 25 feet long by 6 feet high, with a pole planted in the middle of the open ground nearby  – for in this country, one must always dance around in a circle, and the pole marks the center. The noise is deafening and distorted and is a mixed playlist of traditional Khmer music and pounding Khmer hip-hop. The air is thick with the smoke from the food stalls and cigarettes. It’s 87 degrees – which is a welcome change from the heat of the day - and you can feel a trickle of sweat running down your spine, and then lower still.

We had a run of good luck!

     And you must dance. It is completely unthinkable not to dance, especially if you are the only foreign guests within who knows how many square miles. The village chief insists on dancing with you, and when you try to take a break and catch your breath, strange men drag you back onto the dance floor. Children thread their way through the dancing crowd to sidle up and grin at you. Sometimes someone hands you a beer while you’re dancing, which goes down fast and easy to replenish the copious amounts of sweat that you’re producing. Sometimes people run up with a handful of baby powder and spread it all over your face. (It’s a Khmer New Year thing, and you learn quickly to close your eyes and hold your breath when you see it coming.) And those with cell phone cameras aim them at you, sometimes following you around the circle to get the best close-up shots or low-res video footage they can manage. As you dance, you look out into the crowd gathered around and see people of all ages who seem most interested in watching you, smiling at you, nudging their friends and pointing at you. You also see an occasional policeman, with a machine gun, and you’re told it’s make sure the “gangsters” don’t cause any trouble.

The village chief takes his dancing pretty seriously.

During the day, we ran into these "dancers" at the market,
accompanied by traditional Khmer musicians. 

      And all of this happens in the evening, after you’ve spent the day sitting around with all the men while the women bring you food and drinks and all the neighbors come by to look at the foreigners. You will be served chicken and duck and dog, and when you recognize that the morsel in your hands is a paw, you will politely pass it to someone who will appreciate it more than you will. You smile a lot, and offer traditional greetings, and quickly exhaust your seven-word Khmer vocabulary. Someone is kind enough to translate some of the questions people would like to ask you, and the answers always trigger laughter and general amusement. As the big plastic beer cooler is emptied and replenished, you must raise your glass and toast “Chul Muoy!” again and again, provoking more laughter and delight. Later, when you rise from your much-needed afternoon nap, you will hear that “many more people came to see the foreigners, but we told them you were sleeping” and you will feel bad for disappointing them. (And you will wonder if perhaps they peeked in at you while you slept.)

The women cook...

...while the men (and I) eat and drink.

The food never seems to stop coming.

One of many delicious meals with Sovann's family

The kitchen. No electricity or running water, chickens underfoot.
The food is great.

     Somewhere between the nap and the dancing at the pagoda, you will be offered a ride on an “ox-cart” which turns out to be a wagon pulled by the ubiquitous Khmer tractor, which oddly resembles an oversized rototiller. You will bump along admiring the rice fields and fruit trees, and then you will be paraded down the main road of the village so everyone can have a chance to notice you. People will smile, stare, do double-takes, and wave. You will hear people exclaiming in Khmer, and you hear the word “barang” over and over and over, which means foreigner. As you pass one house where some people are drinking and dancing, they chase after the wagon until it stops. Then they pull you off and drag you to their house, where they will squeal in drunken delight, cover you with powder, and stuff bananas in your mouth and dance you around and around their yard.

     At the end of the night, when you can’t dance for another minute, you can go back to the home of your generous hosts to sleep, but first you will want to wash off all the sweat and dust and smoke and grime. This will require bathing outside, scooping water from an enormous urn and pouring it all over yourself while trying to make sure your sarong doesn’t fall off and leave your large white body glowing in the moonlight in front of your hosts. You will be thankful for the darkness, because performing this feat in broad daylight while a dozen or so family members wander by (and sometimes try to engage you in conversation) is still quite a challenge, despite a few days of practice. You will daydream about the shower in your bathroom back in Siem Reap and vow never to take it for granted again. Then you will crawl up the stairs to your room, where a bright pink mosquito net has been carefully hung over a straw mat on the wooden floor, and the oppressive heat that accumulated all day through the tin roof still lingers. As you attempt to arrange yourself on the floor under the net, the music from the pagoda will sound as though it’s coming from the front yard, but the noise, the hard floor, and the heat will not stop you from falling into an exhausted sleep - until 4:00 am, when the music resumes and the monks begin to make announcements over their loudspeakers. Then you’ll wake up and do it all over again, because this holiday goes on and on and on.

If you're in the mood for some fresh coconut,
someone will happily climb a tree for you.

I was happy to read that almost 2000 land mines and 37 UXO
had been removed well before we arrived in Svay Duonkeo.

Jaz spent the whole week in the village. She read a lot of books.

Sovann's family getting their New Year blessing from mom.

The markets are busy this time of year.

Sovann's family cow

Artwork in process on the outside of a pagoda being built.

     I have no idea why I wrote this in the second person. Maybe just because during those three days, I repeatedly thought to myself, “I can never fully explain this experience to anyone who hasn’t been here. No one will really be able to imagine what this is like.” I guess I wanted to try anyway.

     I also feel compelled to say that the story told here is factual, but it's a blend of experiences from the two villages where we stayed. Not that I think that 60 Minutes will show up to expose the inaccuracies in my blog entry, but I like to admit my use of artistic license when I’ve made use of it.


Edited to add: Sorry for all the typos. Steve is now pointing them out to me. Feel free to point out those that remain so I can fix them!

My day in lists

     I make a lot of lists. This will come as no surprise to those who know me well, or possibly even to those who are just getting to know me. Lists are useful in part because I will otherwise forget things I need to do, but also because they give me a sense of accomplishment.  Checking off the items on a list is proof of my alleged productivity, and on a bad day, I can include a few easy-to-accomplish items just to kick-start that feeling of having DONE SOMETHING. (You know, things like “Brush teeth” and “Make coffee” that normally don’t require reminders.)

(Blurred to protect me from potential embarrassment)

Usually my lists include things like:

• Pay Metfone (They text me when the internet bill is due and I have to go in person to pay it.)

• Fix ______________. (There’s often something that needs to be fixed: my moto, a broken light fixture, my laptop,  etc. When the list says I should fix something, it really means I should find someone else to fix it, because I hardly ever can do it myself.)

• Buy a new broom (They self-destruct after a few weeks, so they get replaced often. They cost $1, and they smell like a fresh-cut Vermont hayfield in July. I love the smell of a new broom.)

The other thing that self-destructs regularly are the mosquito racquets.
They're a little pricier at $3 each, but we certainly get our money's worth out of them.

• Buy phone credit. (Prepaid phone credit is the way it works here, and I find about I use about $10 per month. You can buy what you need at any little corner store - then enter the code into the phone and you're good to go. This is definitely one of those things that's way cheaper here than at home, considering our cell phone bill was close to $100/month at home.)

• Laundry (This could mean wash the laundry, take the laundry off the clothesline, call to have the laundry picked up, or go pick up the laundry.)

• Print photos (People seem to enjoy having copies of photos we take of them; I’m happy to oblige.)

• Blog (I even have lists about things that I intend to blog about, yet I hardly ever refer back to them. Sometimes I don’t even know what I was imagining when I write some of those prompts. On a list from last week, I found “Blog about cereal.” At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but now I can’t imagine why anyone would be interested in our obsession with finding good breakfast cereal for less than $8 a box. Although I must admit that it was pretty exciting last week when we found Lightly Frosted Shredded Wheat at the Lucky Mall for only $2.60 a box. We bought all of them, depriving all the other ex-pats in town from enjoying this bounty.)

JACKPOT!

• Meet ____________ at _____________. (Despite my earlier reporting on my introverted nature, there are a lot of social opportunities. I meet people for lunch or for coffee with some regularity. Sometimes it’s work-related, but often it’s not.)

• Water. (This used to mean go to and buy 6-packs of large water bottles. Now, thanks to the profound generosity of our friends Joe and Carol who gave us their water dispenser when they left town, it means I should send Sovann to go buy 20-liter bottles. The dispenser gives us instant hot or icy cold water, which saves lots of room in the refrigerator, and makes us feel very spoiled. And well-hydrated.

• Study Khmer (Yeah, I’m still trying, somewhat sporadically. If I don’t write the alphabet once a day from memory, I forget how. I may have to get it tattooed on my arm. )

• ATM (This means I should withdraw money. Thanks to the internet and online bank transfers and a host of other neat tricks, my brother transfers the rent payment into my account every month and I can withdraw here at no charge. How would it have been possible to live here 10 years ago with no such convenience???)

• Haircut. (I found a guy who cuts my hair for $2. The price is right, but he always wants to part my hair like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. Oddly, I enjoy the experience anyway.)

• Buy RAID (We really only use it when we are suddenly and inexplicably swarmed by thousands of tiny ants, which happens rarely. Sometimes it’s just because they’ve found a dead bug in the corner somewhere and have apparently issued orders to the whole colony to come dismantle it and carry it back to the nest. They’re rarely in the kitchen and don’t seem the least bit interested in our food for the most part. Twice I’ve also found an army of the big red biting ants marching across the electric wires onto our balcony, but a half-can of RAID took care of that problem in a hurry.)

• Read (I have to put this on the list to remind myself not to waste all my free time on the internet. I worry about my short attention span if I can’t settle into a good book now and then.)

• “Do something creative.” (I’ve put this on the list several times lately, and it always gets moved to the next list because I can never check off the little box next to it. I suppose today I’ll let myself consider it done because I spent hours looking for and assembling good images and material to put together a health class for the girls at work. That’s creative, right?)

     The latest list I’ve started has two columns: Things to Bring With Us When We Go to Vermont, and Things to Bring Back When We Return. So far, the second list is much longer than the first. In between catching up with all our friends and family, I see some shopping in our future.

This is my favorite notebook for list-writing. The cover says:
"Our finest quality paper
ensures a smooth surface that is please to write on.
This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into
you will feel like writing with it all the time."
And I do. 

The social life of an introverted ex-pat

     I've always considered myself a not very social person. While I love my friends and family and enjoy their company, I've always craved and enjoyed time to myself. In some ways, many of my social needs were met at work, where I spent time every day talking to clients and co-workers. For many years, Steve had to work hard to talk me into attending parties, let alone hosting them, but over time I became more enthusiastic and less neurotic about it. Over the years, we developed a habit of hosting small dinner parties for 2-3 other couples at our house. In the beginning, I would freak out at the idea of inviting over two other couples who didn't already know each other. What would we talk about? What if they didn't hit it off? As with many things, immersion therapy worked and I came to enjoy these gatherings, but I would still be left feeling as though I needed a day to recover. I suppose I fit the definition of an introvert quite well: I am someone who recharges my internal batteries by having time to myself rather than by being with other people.

     Once I figured out Facebook a few years ago, I realized that it was exactly what I needed to stay connected to people without actually having to expend all the energy I require for face-to-face interactions. I really enjoy knowing what my friends and acquaintances are up to, and despite Steve's initial complaints about Facebook being a place "where people just post stupid shit like 'I just ate a muffin!'" I find that lots of people post lots of amusing sound bites about their daily lives, as well as links to things on the internet that are sometimes actually useful (and sometimes eat up ridiculous amounts of my time.) As my high school reunion was approaching last year, I was able to reconnect with some people who I hadn't heard from in 30 years and it turns out that some of them are really fascinating, or hilarious... or odd, but in a charming way.

     So having lived in the same place my entire life and worked in the same place for more than 20 years, I had a nice (but small) network of friends and family, and especially as parenting duties became less time-intensive over the years, I had found the balance of social time and alone time that worked for me. And now here I am, in Cambodia, and as with almost everything else, I've lost my equilibrium.

     There is no shortage of social opportunities here. Siem Reap is full of interesting ex-pats from all over the world, and people who choose to come and live here all have interesting tales to tell about how that came to be. But Siem Reap is a young town, meaning that the vast majority of those other Westerners are 20 years younger than I am. They have way more energy than I do for staying out late, drinking and dancing to burn off the stress of their NGO jobs. What I really enjoy is when someone has a party - especially an afternoon party, as we went to yesterday - and 20-30 people show up to eat (a lot) and drink (a little) and even listen to someone play the guitar. This setting allows for conversation without struggling over the din of a restaurant or bar, which is a refreshing change. Yesterday we met more Americans than we usually run into in one place, which is also refreshing in its own way.

     While I love meeting people from all over the world, and often find we have lots in common, there is something different about hanging with other Americans. There is some kind of shared cultural experience and shared point of reference, and not having to explain yourself quite as often is relaxing. Certainly there is the advantage of being with other native English speakers (though most every European I've met has perfect English), but while making language comparisons with Australian and British friends provides lots of amusement, it really is different. While I wouldn't say that I prefer the company of other Americans over others, I do find it somehow easier and more familiar. When we met another American family here, a couple in the same age bracket as we are along with their two teenage kids, it was wonderful. We were sorry for many reasons to see them leave. That's the other hard thing - people leave. There are far too many times we've had to say goodbye to people we will truly miss, and there are more goodbyes in our future.

     And while meeting new people every week can be exciting and I love to hear other people tell their tales of how they came to be here and what they did before making that move, telling the same about ourselves can get tedious after a while. The story of how we came to be here is not the least bit interesting to me any more, and I have condensed it into three sentences or so. (Everyone asks/answers the same questions: Where are you from? How long have you been here? How long will you stay? Why Cambodia? What do you do here?) Our story is different than most of the people we meet, since most of them are single and don't have kids, though we've met a few married couples in their 20's and 30's. Some people come here to volunteer, some come to do paid work or internships. Many are fresh out of college, looking for opportunities to travel and explore before settling down somewhere or going off to graduate school. (There are a handful of long-term ex-pats who have lived here for many years and are raising children, though all of their children are young.)

     When we first arrived, we often met people through Jaz's connections. When Steve found a couple of people to play tennis with, we expanded our social circle to include other tennis players. Our friend and house-mate Richard is probably our primary social facilitator these days - he seems to know everyone in town and is very good at getting people together and making introductions. And thanks to Facebook, it takes very little effort to "find" someone again after you've met them once through a mutual friend. (Steve and I showed our age yesterday when we started to ask someone for their email address, and then were reminded, "Oh, I'm on Facebook - find me there!")

     At the party yesterday (where we were, as usual, the token middle-aged couple) I was chatting with someone about life here in Siem Reap, and he asked if I found it difficult that the crowd here is so young. I said while I sometimes notice the age difference more than other times, I generally like the energy and vibe of the crowd. It was an honest answer, but I will say that I greatly look forward to hanging out with some middle-aged Americans in May!

     And what do people talk about at home with their friends? I've been so busy talking about how long we've  all been here and why we all came here that I sometimes can't remember what we usually talk about with people we've known for a long time. I suppose that back home we talk about our kids, our jobs, politics (Steve, not me), sports (again, Steve), news and things happening around town, the weather, our other friends, our gardens, food, our plans for the future. We also talk about our shared experiences of the past: "Remember that time...?" I miss that sometimes. Sometimes here I feel like we're all so busy getting to know each other that we're interviewing each other, digging and sifting for those common points of reference. Consequently, I find I have more in-depth conversations with people who have kids or who work in the health sector, as we can quickly establish topics of mutual interest. Otherwise, I suppose that conversation here drifts to some of the same things we all talk about at home, punctuated by people's stories of hilarious misadventures or frustrating experiences with the local culture, customs, and language. I love those stories, though I don't love them when they're told in disparaging tones, which doesn't happen too often, I'm glad to say. The very best part of chatting with new people is when you can acquire or share a tidbit of useful information: where to find a good dentist, where to get bagels, or which organization offers something you've been searching for far and wide for weeks. (The worst part might be listening to people report on their hangovers.)

     In a move that is completely contrary to my introverted temperament, I helped plan an event this past weekend to get lots of people together for what we called "Casual Collaboration Cambodia," a social and networking event at a local restaurant. The idea was to invite anyone and everyone who is here doing any kind of development work to get together for social time and to identify and share our collective expertise. Many of us have had the experience of spending weeks or months seeking information that someone else already has, and only finding it when you run across the right person to ask. As with everywhere else in the world, who you know does matter, especially when you're trying to get something done. Our hope was to start a monthly meeting and create a Google Group and Wiki page to conglomerate a lot of information and save people from re-inventing the wheel over and over. Thanks to Facebook (and Richard's vast social network!) over 60 people turned up for this event. It was my social nightmare: a crowded room with terrible acoustics and people drinking cocktails and schmoozing - but it was very useful as a first step. I met a midwife from England (and we made a lunch date for this week), someone from an organization I had been trying to contact, some people who could empathize with my struggle to learn Khmer, and a few other interesting folks - all without leaving my corner of the room. Thanks to people wearing name tags, I didn't embarrass myself by forgetting everyone's name immediately after being introduced. So despite how exhausting I found the whole thing, it was a productive evening.

    And today, I did almost nothing, spoke to almost no one, and have almost recovered...

Practical household items for a dollar

     The other day I went looking for some of those felt pads you put on the bottom of chair legs so they don't make a god-awful noise when you move them around on the tile floor. Luckily, they were easy to find, and cheap. Even better, they were amusing.

     The front of the package reads:

TO BE FIX THE

WOOLEN GLUE

ON YOUR LOVE THINGS

BUBBLE COLLECTION

12 PIECES

     Even better were the instructions on the back:

Purposing in Use:

1. To be fixed on an end of the legs of tables of chairs 

to protect from erashing to a delicate floor 

as wood pake floor resin mat, vinyl tile, and other furnitures.

2. To be fixes on the wall in your bathroom or toilet.

for releasing smash from the door opened.

3. To be fixed on all kinds of your things, 

to protect from tracing cracking, and damages.

To Be Carefull:

It should be better if you clean the area with sandpaper

 or something like this full smoothingly, 

before fixed on WOOLEN GLUE.

     I've always wondered how best to release smash from the door opened, and I will definitely clean full smoothingly before I install WOOLEN GLUE on my love things.

     A similar (but far less amusing) item costs $4.99 on Amazon.com. These cost $1.

Have I mentioned that I have an actual job?

     As you may remember, I had a volunteer position as a clinic manager for the first few months we were here, which ended rather badly. After a few weeks of basking in my free time, then another few weeks of wallowing in inertia, another opportunity came along that started as a volunteer position and has turned into an actual paid job.

     My new role is part-time “Health Advisor” for the Assessment Center of World Hope International here in Siem Reap. World Hope does a number of things in a number of countries, but here in Cambodia their work is focused on providing shelter and assessment for young girls who have been victims of sex trafficking and/or sexual assault. The shelter here can house up to a dozen girls age 5-17, who stay for a short time while their needs are assessed and future longer-term plans can be made. Some of them return to their families, and some go on to long-term shelters where they might get vocational training or other opportunities. They have a similar shelter in Phnom Penh that has been operating for six years, and the Siem Reap center has been open for about a year.

     Referrals come from the police, hospitals, government “social workers” and other NGOs, and the girls come from provinces near and far. This first year of operation has been focused on capacity building and training staff, primarily counselors, social workers, and the housemothers who provide care to the girls 24 hours a day in 12-hour shifts. As is the case all over Cambodia, finding qualified staff is a challenge. There aren’t actually any trained Khmer social workers as we define them in the west, as the first school of social work only opened in 2009. The only other Western employee here works extraordinarily hard to train staff and she has a wealth of experience doing similar work in several countries. She will be leaving here in June, and I know I will miss her immensely.

     My role is to go to the shelter twice a week for a couple of hours each time to provide training and education to the housemothers, maintain appropriate medications and first aid supplies, put some systems into place for monitoring health, be available to assess girls who get sick so they can get appropriate care, and generally provide health consultation. They have a Khmer doctor who fills this role in Phnom Penh, but I am the first to do this here, so we’re still defining my role a bit as it evolves. The amazing thing is that I’m being paid $15/hour, which is a small fortune here. (Consider this comparison: a teacher working in a government school makes $30-40 per month for working half days six days per week.) I’m scheduled for only four hours per week, but there will be times when I work more than that – we will do some staff trainings in the coming weeks, and other needs may arise over time.

    

     The health aspect of this job is very basic stuff. Several girls have had the chicken pox over the last couple of weeks, so educating housemothers about what that is, how to treat the fever and itching, and how to recognize if it’s turning into something more serious has been the focus. Any experienced mother in America could do the same thing with no special training, but Cambodian knowledge about basic health issue is so limited that coaching the staff how to recognize a child who doesn’t feel well and how to take their temperature and treat a fever is where we have to start. The housemothers are all very caring and lovely women, some of whom have children themselves and some who do not. A few of them speak some English, but as usual, the language gap presents challenges. I have a friend translating some of the information we’ve discussed into Khmer so we can build a book of health resources for them to refer to. We also have access to the Khmer edition of a wonderful resource book, “Where There Is No Doctor” and some of the future health trainings can make good use of that as well.

     The girls themselves are delightful. Right now, they range in age from 5 – 14 years old. While they’ve experienced trauma of some sort (or several sorts), most of the time you wouldn’t notice anything unusual about them. They attend school and counseling on-site, and in their free time they do arts and crafts and play games. They are engaging and animated and they like to play with my stethoscope. The little ones are always happy for a lap to sit in and some individual attention, the older ones enjoy a good game of badminton, and they all practice their English with me if they know any. If they don’t speak any English, they just chatter at me in Khmer or imitate my English with great amusement. Sometimes I stay for lunch and enjoy the wonderful food prepared by the cooks. Overall, it’s a pretty fine job!

     I do find that it’s sometimes a challenge to remember that my role is limited to health-related issues. All my years of doing VNA work – which is based on a social work model and involves holistic family assessments – means that I want to know more about the girls and their families than is probably necessary. When I learned that the staff have weekly case meetings to discuss each girl, I was desperately wishing I could attend. As I said, we’re still defining my role, and old habits die hard.

   

     I’ve spent a lot of time lately reading materials that will help me learn more about trafficking issues. Not exactly light reading, but very enlightening. I read a long report recently titled “Forensic Medical and Legal Aspects of Child Sexual Abuse Investigations” which outlines some of the challenges very matter-of-factly: While a forensic medical exam is required for every victim of child sexual abuse, there is no one in the country actually trained to perform such an exam. They have a medical form for such investigations, but some of the anatomy is mislabeled or absent. The police, who are responsible for making referrals for such exams, often don’t do so because of budget restraints – they often do their job without pens, paper, phones and gas for their vehicles, so transporting a victim and paying for a medical exam is impossible.  Never mind that some families’ coping mechanism for the shame of their daughter’s rape is to have their daughter marry the perpetrator. There’s a long way to go here, but there are lots of organizations and people working hard on the issue. I will do my best to do my tiny little part.

     For obvious reasons, I can’t include any photos in this entry. The location of the shelter is a closely-guarded secret and protecting the girls’ identities is most important of all. Trust me – they’re beautiful children.