It is official

Our K3 group swore in yesterday making us all official Peace Corps Volunteers. Tomorrow we all leave for permanent site to begin our 2 year service. I will write more when I am able to collect my thoughts!

I don't think I have mentioned yet...

People here chew with their mouths open, smack their lips on purpose, and are capable of slurping solid foods (which I did not previously know was possible). For those of you who have always told me I needed some sort of desensitization therapy for my issue, I am here to say you are wrong. Two months in and I am still occasionally tempted to rupture my own ear drums during meal times.

Some days are tougher than others...

I try and keep this thing upbeat for anyone who is reading it, but every once in a while I think it is important to write about some of the harsher realities of this place I am living. Today we spent the day visiting organizations working with people living with HIV in Battambang. The morning got off to an amusing start as we sat in on an education session for married couples on preventing HIV transmission. The educator showed cartoon drawings of different scenarios which may or may not lead to the transmission of HIV. People here don't really discuss anything sexual, so it was somewhat amusing to watch how awkward they got, and how hard they laughed at some of the pictures. This is also disconcerting as Cambodia, among other Southeast Asian countries, has a high rate of HIV and other STI's. We tend to take for granted the knowledge that is made available to us in our culture about the risks associated with sexual activity and how to protect ourselves.

The second stop we made was to visit a rural support group for people who are living with HIV. The aim was to provide a safe environment for people to discuss their health and any challenges they are facing. We were greeted warmly by a group who eagerly answered our questions.

Later in the day we met with two NGOs who work as advocates for individuals with HIV to ensure that they are being treated fairly by health care providers and receiving the resources they need to get through day to day life. At the end of the visit they took us on what we thought would be a tour of the Battambang referral hospital. What it ended up being was a visit to the hospital wing where HIV+ patients essentially go to die. I don't think I can really describe what we saw except to say the way they were described to us; "she is 19, her parents are dead, she has HIV and a brain tumor"..."she took the medicine but had an allergic reaction"..."he was taking the medication, but then he gave up." What they all had in common was HIV and not a lot of time left. At hospitals here the family is responsible for caring for the patient making it blatantly obvious who either hasn't got family or has been abandoned by their family. There was such a huge disparity between the people we had seen earlier in the day, people who were living and fighting, and these people who we witnessed in abject suffering. It was a difficult reality to face and I am still sorting out my own thoughts about it. The only thing I can say for sure now is that in a lot of ways it was a grounding reminder of why I am here. There is need everywhere and if at the end of two years all I can say is that I built relationships with and participated in the lives of some of those people...maybe that is enough.

The Magical Mystery Tour Part 1

The last several days have been spent on what we are now referrring to as the Magical Mystery tour. Myself and the 10 other health volunteers along with several members of Peace Corps staff are on an 8 day trip around Cambodia to see the what's what and who's who of Cambodian healthcare. We have been incredibly busy but the trip has been a lot of fun, a lot of information, and a lot of unexpected. I would like to focus this entry on Cambodian transportation. We began the trip on Tuesday the 8th of September on a 24 seater bus. Our first day was spent in and around Phnom Penh visting various organizations working with water sanitation and hygeine. Wednesday night we left Phnom Penh for Kampong Chnang (I think...) where we spent the night. Thursday was an epic day. We got up early thursday morning and borded our trusted form of Cambodian transportation, the bus. The bus took us to a random restaurant/shack in the middle of "East Jesus Nowhere" as one of my fellow volunteers would say. The group waited there in the pouring rain for a "train" to take us to our final destination; a village even further into "East Jesus Nowhere." There was a small bit of shock when we realized, after about 20 minutes, that we were not waiting for the "train" to arrive, we were in fact waiting for the "train" to be put together. This form of transportation,known as "the bamboo train" is little more than a peice of plywood and a tarp with a motor. All 22 or so of us piled on the train in our ponchos (still in the pouring rain) and it took off along the barely visible tracks (they were largely underwater and covered in various forms of vegetation). We were all having a pretty jolly time of it, going over bridges, dodging water buffalo and the sort, when our "driver" brought the whole thing to a rather abrupt stop. Naturally inquiries were made is to why we would stop the "train" in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain about halfway to our destination. As it turns out a TRAIN was coming. Like a real one. A real big one. So, we had afew minutes to get 20+ people off the "train," take it apart, and move the "train" and people through a small creek to a location that would permit us to not "eat the big train for breakfast." When we finally arrived at our destination we packed 22 people into a pickup truck (a small one) and set off for our days activities. The Bamboo train is my new favorite method of transportation. We spent the afternoon sitting on on sessions aimed to provide mothers of malnourished infants with the information and tools necessary to care for their children and prevent avoidable illnesses. My favorite part of this was actually making sand drawings with a group of children in the back of one of the education sessions. We then took the bamboo train back, a far less eventful trip. As we boarded the bus there was a sense of release as we all crashed after a long day looking forward to nothing more than an easy ride to our next hotel. But, alas this is not how things go in Cambodia. Our trusty bus made it about 45 minutes before it decided it didn't want to work anymore. At this point we were about an hour and a half from our final destination and it was already getting dark. So what did we do? We had a technical session with our LCFs on the side of the road about Cambodian Holidays. I mean why waist time? Eventually we abandoned our bus on the side of the road and hopped one that passed us in route to Pursat. Needless to say, we all slept really well that night.

Khmer Dance Aerobics

I set off shortly after my last entry to meet my new host family in Battambang. After a 6 hour bus ride full of Khmer Dance videos and stand up comedy (ie: pure torture) I arrived in the small district town where I will live for my 2 year service. At first glance the town is nothing special. It consists of one main road with various restaurants, shops, homes, a market, hospital, and school. Pretty standard. The real selling point was once I met my host family.

They are fantastic. Most host parents are in their late 50's-early 60's and have 4 children all of whom are married with their own children. The youngest daughter and her husband and 3 year old live with us, but all of the kids hang out there in the evenings. The family owns a restaurant (a rather nice one) that the kids run. There were a few things that really sold me on them:

1) In the evenings my host mother, sisters, and neighbors get together and do Khmer dance aerobics in the front yard. To truly understand how great this is you have to know two things, first Khmer people do not really exercise and second khmer dance generally involves nothing by flashy hand movements. Put this combination together with sweet glorified pajamas and a boom box blasting Hotel California and you have MAGIC.

2) I was sitting under the covered area next to the house with my host brother-in-law on my first night when out of the blue he reached over and slapped my ankle. This was weird since it was out of the blue slapping, since we didn't really know each other, and because men here do not touch women that are not their wives or family. I was confused until I looked down and realized that he had slapped a mosquito that was biting my ankle. It's nice to see that they very literally have my back.

3) In the morning I went to the family restaurant and they brought out my favorite breakfast without me even having to order.


More later.