Phnom Penh - My Life

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Friday, June 15, 2007

Saturday
 
Two hours at the Russian Market. Whew, talk about hot, still air. Hopefully I'll remember to take some photos inside there this next weekend. After the market, a day of shower, rest, shower, rest ...
 
Sunday

12 Girl on moto

Back to the market to get some silk. Ran into two Belgians from the hospital (we're all dripping sweat). Like at home, it's always nice to unexpectedly run into people you know. Back to our room - I went downstairs for a cooking lesson from Juedi - how to make pleeah ta khorn (raw beef salad) and luc lac (fried beef). As I mentioned earlier, she is an excellent cook and is also a good teacher.
 
After lunch, more sleeping, shower, and then I caught a tuk-tuk to the riverfront to have dinner with Chris and his wife. I met Chris on a backpacker message board (where he goes by salaygomez). He and his wife, Siv work for NGOs in the provinces - she in a food program and he in community development. It was a very nice dinner - pizza at (the notorious) Happy Herb's Pizza - but we didn't have the happy kind. Chris and his wife both very interesting - not to mention extraordinary. He is Italian/Albanian with a lifetime spent in the 3rd World and a quiet commitment to One Love. Siv is a

03 Chris and Siv

Chinese/Khmer biologist with life experiences beyond the pale. But then it's fairly common here to meet people who are extra-ordinary.
 
I've met some nice people on/via the internet:
o  Chris - a true old Asia hand
o  Jo - who has a great website on Burma and who helped me so much with Burma.
o  Tao - one of the co-authors of the infectious diseases book.
o  Ken - my WWII Australian pal
And many more.
 
The tuk-tuk driver from our place to the riverfront took me through the amazing throng of people who come every Sunday evening to picnic in front of the royal palace and on the river. When traffic would stop (like about every 50 feet), there would be a press of people up against the tuk-tuk and there we'd be, inches from one another, sometimes touching, smiling at one another (girls giggling, like "Did you ever see anything like that old foreigner in the tuk-tuk?). All the way around, a good scene.
 
Tuesday
 
Pho for breakfast (allllright!) and on to the hospital. I talked some with Jana (say yana), a volunteer NP from Connecticut, who is here with her daughter, Molly, who graduated from Berkeley this year. Then I caught a ride to the hospice to see if I could do something with patients, but when I got there my contact, Mony was not there. So I caught another ride to the Community Resources Center and did some writing for Chhavelith. I hope what I did was what he wanted. When he and I were leaving he stopped to talk with a girl. I thought there was something special about her and the way she was interacting with him and I asked him about her. That's how I learned what follows (he told me part and another man told me part).

10 Hospital ER

 
A true story: back around 1997 there was a man working in HIV/AIDS outreach here in Phnom Penh. He found a woman very sick with AIDS and got her into a public hospital. When he came to the hospital to follow-up on her (follow-up - a man after my own heart) he found her alone in a room with no care, nobody to clean her or feed her. Her 2 year-old daughter was with her, and when the hospital would bring the woman food, the little girl would feed her mother the best she could. The man came back a day or two later and the woman was gone. He went looking for her and found her and her daughter sleeping outside a railroad station. "She was very skinny and small."
 
He took her to Hope, where she and her daughter stayed for a year before the woman died. At that time there were no services for children with HIV, so the man's mother-in-law took the little girl into her home. Shortly after that, Hope started the child on what was then called "highly active antiretroviral treatment" (HAART) and is now called ART. The drugs were very expensive at that time and were paid for by "...an American. He lives in Japan."

07 Entrance to hospital

 
The man's mother-in-law died in 2001 - about a year after he and his wife were married. So a year after getting married, they were given a family of his wife's two siblings and the little girl with HIV, who was 6 or 7 at the time.
 
The man said, "She was a good girl ... respectful ...not the one who always complain ... we always trained her how to independence."
 
"At that time she's not good in school ... because of her sickness" (2001-2002). After 1-2 years she improved and started doing better in school. Her grades improved to "fair and good, never low ... At that time I sent her to drawing school." About a month from now the girl will go to Thailand to receive an award for her art through Japan UNESCO.
 
The girl is now 12 years old and in grade 6. First-line ART is no longer effective and she has started on 2nd line.
 
Cambodia (Hearts of Fire)!

I wonder why. Why did Bunthy's M-I-L see the child? Why did Bunthy and his wife see the child? Why did Chhavelith see the mother and child?

Lunch with Leslie, David, and several other volunteers. After lunch Leslie and I went back to the hospice where I was scheduled to teach from 2-4. Surprise, I was only scheduled to teach from 3-4. Dooh! I went upstairs to see patients for a few minutes and then came back down to talk with Leslie, the Agape social worker and Bounthy, the hospice social worker (the man who adopted the child). Man, I'm moving in high places and I'm not kidding. I pressed Bounthy for details on the adoption ...
 
Praise with elation
Praise every morning
Lovely creation
Of the New Day.
 
Upstairs in hospice there was a very thin young woman, close to death (actually everyone there is very thin). Her brother was sitting beside her bed and they were holding hands. Maybe half the patients had family members there. Some were in chairs (like what we would think of as lawn chairs), some on mats beside the patient beds, and some on the beds with the patients. There are three beds/room (except isolation) and all the rooms have a fan (no aircon).

Many, the hospice nurse said this, but I don't remember the exact context: "Oh my God - I very cry for her!"
 
We had the class on pain management and after class David came over with Jana and Molly for them to see the hospice. Afterwards we all rode in the same van to our respective places. Molly told us she taught at an elementary school (after assisting in a mastectomy that morning) before they came over to hospice, except she didn't really teach - just hung out with 5-6 Cambodian girls, having a good time and sweating (no electricity in the school today). The girls wanted to have a sleepover with Molly.
 
One of the things I'm reflecting on is the mission of Baylor University, where I work. It includes something like this, "to prepare young men and women for worldwide service and leadership." I've always agreed with that mission and thought it important, and now I feel it deep and strong - the incredible importance of such a mission in a world so broken and hurting. From Baylor to Berkeley, on the same road.
 
Dinner, as usual, was David, Leslie, Mony, Samnang (except he only takes rice and tea because of sickness), and me. Tonight we had beef with oyster sauce and Chinese broccoli, a great sour soup with chicken, and rice. After dinner we had dragon fruit and mangosteen - the latter emerging as my favorite fruit. Eating with this family is like a tour (de force) through classic Khmer cuisine. And the fruit! It's an extravaganza and so much better than last time, when we had more oily curry than we wanted and assorted okay street food, except the fresh corn was better than okay.

02 Rice and pork - my obsession continues

Back to our room with David. The three of us together (like Leslie said last December), "piled up like bunnies." Mony (the 10 year old girl, not the hospice nurse) came by to hang out, so now Leslie, David, Mony, and I are sitting in our room with the three of them listening to music and I'm writing this and it's all so good.
 
Praise with elation
Praise every morning
Lovely creation
Of the New Day.
 
Vanida flying in tomorrow from Laos. Good times.