Learning Khmer

Before coming to Cambodia I’d had almost no exposure to any language besides English; I took three years of Spanish and can say ‘halbo un poco.’ I figured most people would speak English here and I was right.

I can survive without speaking a word of Khmer so long as I point a lot.

However, I’m living in a suite in Jim’s private clinic, Chenda. Chenda has four suites for guests and a large room where some of the doctors and nurses sleep. Besides an elderly Australian couple, all of my housemates are Khmer.

After several weeks, sitting in silence as Dr Chuang and Sokney spoke rapidly in another language I realized that I wanted to understand them.

Everyone at Chenda has made an effort to include me. But the surgeons studied in France and speak French better than they speak English. Some of the nurses speak good English but others know only a few words.

And no one speaks English as you and I know it. The Khmer speak with different sound than we do and use a different part of their mouths to make these sounds. Also, the Khmer just insert English words in a Khmer sentence structure.

For example: I would say: “We’re talking about whether we should go to it.”

A Khmer would say. “We talk whether we should go it.”

The first weeks I had to concentrate very hard to understand what people were trying to tell me. By night I was completely exhausted from the effort of communicating.

I practiced speaking the words, but  couldn’t pronounce them very well for the same reasons Khmer have trouble pronouncing English. But, in the evenings I had nothing better to do so I practiced anyway.

One night, two weeks ago, I went on a long walk. I repeated all the words I knew over and over. I tried to make the sounds a Khmer makes. I started to use the back of my tongue to make sounds and it sounded right. I spoke to a motto driver in Khmer and he actually understood.

I was so excited that when I got home to Chenda, I ran upstairs, woke Dr. Theara and began reciting every Khmer word I knew. He laughed at me and told me I was clever and that he needed to go to sleep. I was still excited so I waited for Dr. Chuang to come home to talk to him.

I ran around singing ‘Knyom ban neyou! Knyom ban neyou!”

I can speak! I can speak!

Dr. Chuang laughed to.

“Yes, can!” he said in English.

It was like I’d been living in the dark and I’d gotten a glimpse of daylight. I started practicing Khmer as much as possible, which means I practice a lot. I spend a few hours a day speaking with patients as they wait for treatment.

CSC’s IT manager Rathana teaches me new words and phrases. If I’m speaking to someone and don’t know a word I run to Rathana and write the word in English and he writes it in Khmer. Then I run back and practice more.

Last week I could only say simple sentences. Now I can hold simple conversations. It’s easier to speak than it is to understand what is said to me. But I can understand the gist of what people tell me even without knowing every word.

It feels like I’m learning very slowly because I still can’t say everything I want or understand as well as I’d like. But yesterday, when I met a French man on the street, we discovered we could speak to each other in Khmer easier than in English.

It’s been a good experience to be immersed in another language. Khmer is a relatively simple language compared to English, and I have a lot of respect for the people who come to America and learn. Perhaps they don’t always speak clearly and they don’t use the same sentence structure you use, but I think we have to appreciate that they’re trying to understand.

 

Cambodian Acid Survivors Charity: Learning to read and write

This article was written by CASC project manager, Nora Lindstrom and Kaitlin Johnson.

At the beginning of the year, CASC staff realized that several young women working at Kanya Massage – CASC’s income generating pilot project – were unable to read or write Khmer. Literacy is an enriching life skill, so CASC decided to provide further education to the survivors.

The women were initially apprehensive to go back to school. It can be embarrassing to admit to illiteracy and learning as an adult is a frustrating challenge.

“I was afraid, I thought it would be very difficult” said Sokhom, a survivor employed at Kanya massage.

The women were more enthusiastic about learning to speak English than they were about learning to read and write. They felt that improving their English skills would help them communicate with customers. CASC staff made a deal with the survivors; they would provide English lessons if the women agreed to learn to read and write in Khmer.

CASC’s partner organization, Hagar, helped find a teacher experienced in teaching illiterate adult women.

Classes are now held every weekday between 8 and 10. They are attended by the Kanya Massage staff Sokhom, Rany and Ngeb, as well as CASC’s cleaning lady Sydoeun.

While the lessons are challenging, Rany said she is happy she made the effort.

“I am very lucky to have been given this opportunity, and now I really can read and write,” she said.

The lessons enrich the quality of life of acid burn survivors.

“I still have some way to go, but everything is becoming clearer, brighter, not dark like before,” said Sydoeun

CASC staff found volunteer English teachers to tutor the women. Rajpreet Sandhu spent two weeks teaching every day, starting with a, b, c. Christina Bradlee has now taken over, teaching once a week.

Now, when customers step into Kanya Massage traditional Khmer greeting is accompanied by a friendly ‘Hello! How are you?’ which is usually followed by giggles.

The girls’ only complaint is that once a week is simply not enough.

In the future, CASC hopes to continue literacy and English courses for survivors. As Ngeb says; “Learning English is fun!”

Banteay Meanchey: A Journey into Rural Cambodia

By Annika R Malmberg

CSC volunteer, medical student at University of Washington School of Medicine, former UAA student in the WWAMI program

After five hours of being slammed up and down in a bus seat across miles of bad roads, and feeling envious of the bicycles and ox-carts we passed, our bus finally arrived in Banteay Meanchey to join the US marines and navy corpsmen at their medical mission site in rural Cambodia. 

On first impression, it wasn’t much. No accommodations meant we all had to stay in tents set up by the navy, sleep in cots, and bathe out of buckets of water obtained from the local pump or from the seemingly endless bottles of water supplied by the marines.  Though we were far from any city, we arrived to find 200 Cambodians patiently waiting for us and the western medicine we brought.

That first day was a whirlwind. The navy and marines set up the tents, moved tons of bottled water, and established a clinic and a pharmacy in the district political party’s headquarters. We created walls for each “exam room” out of boxes of bottled water; established a flow of paperwork and patients; and teamed off with one western doc, one Royal Cambodian Armed Forces doc, and one translator to each room. 

During the next 9 days, cases of end stage liver disease with severe ascities, tuberculosis that had never been treated, pneumonia, hernias, cleft lips, scoliosis, parasitic diseases, and dermatologic conditions filtered through the door. Patients with diseases and growths that had gone on for far longer than ever would be found in the West, lined up to be seen in our make-shift clinic.

As the days progressed, the mornings got earlier and earlier. Patients started to come before dawn in order to get into the front of the line. They came in oxcarts pulled by family members, three-wheeled chairs for double amputees, and one in a wheelchair made from a pair of wheels attached to a plastic lawn chair. Four hundred patients in the morning and 400 in the afternoon could only make a temporary dent in the lines of people, who came from further and further away and slept in hammocks by the roadside, patiently waiting to be seen. 

To accommodate this crowd, a small town sprang up around our area of remote Cambodia.  Mobile sandwich and noodle shops came in attached to motorcycles, while fruit stands, and convenience shops sprang up around us.  Our clinic became a place to be treated, a social gathering and a curiosity. Everything that happened inside our clinics (especially the dental clinic) was witnessed by dozens of people staring in at the proceedings.

Though I was curious to see how Western medicine would be received by a population that mostly utilized traditional medicine, I found that they not only accepted, but embraced it.  People came for second opinions, and treated the vitamins and Tylenol they would receive for their minor aches and pains as miracle cures. 

These people taught me about how health care for the masses works in Cambodia.  It is a system based on poverty and beliefs. The poor go to traditional doctors. If they want western medicine, they go to the lay pharmacist – who is anyone with enough money to buy some drugs and open up a store. There they are, invariably, inaccurately treated, because everything is over the counter in Cambodia. Two pills of amoxicillin and some Tylenol seem to be the standard cure from one of these a “pharmacists”.  Those with more money or more severe problems might go to a Khmer physician.

We saw people on all levels of the social scale. Many distrusted the treatments they had received, no matter where they had received them. 

A woman with end stage liver disease came from a second opinion from her traditional healer who had simply burned marks onto her belly to make the pain go away, and loaded her up on herbal remedies. Another brought an ultrasound report in order to get a second opinion of her uterine fibroids that had been diagnosed by a Khmer physician with a recommendation for a hysterectomy. Though all this was a provided insight into the current medical care in Cambodia, it was a joyous old woman who zealously pinched my cheeks that made me realize how grateful these people were.

As the days went by, the patients would double back in an attempt to get more free medications, or advice for different problems. The stories became convoluted; problems that received the most medications became everyone’s favorite ailment. Hundreds of women suddenly had unbearable vaginal discharge and 7 year old kids came in with a convoluted story meant to be acid reflux disease. 

It was the longest and hardest 10 days I have worked in my medical school career due to the journey I took from being a western-trained medical student to becoming a competent Cambodian physician. 

I started out the first few days stressed that I was missing something big, couldn’t have follow-up, and couldn’t order the tests I would normally order in the US. By the last few days I came to accept the many conditions that I couldn’t do anything about, pick up on the people coming in with fake problems, and adequately treat those who had manageable issues. 

Ath, a Cambodian medical student and translator, taught me about different presentations of parasitic diseases, and some physical therapy techniques for our patients with back pain. The chance to utilize the medical knowledge of everyone on the team proved to be an invaluable asset and gave me an education I wasn’t expecting. 

I left with a sense of accomplishment, a new found knowledge of tropical medicine, and an understanding of the healthcare system of another country. 

Ten days in Banteay Meanchey provided me with more education than 3.5 years of following doctors around in the United States ever did. 

Overall, this was truly an educational experience, and for anyone thinking about participating in the medical missions to rural Cambodia, all I can say is that Banteay Meanchey was truly an amazing, and worthwhile ride.

In the Wake of the Khmer Rouge

Everywhere I go in Cambodia, I taste the thick residue of the Khmer Rouge.

The first time I recognized it was at Angkor Wat. Outside the temple, some boys served as my guides. They told me the stories of the engravings and apsaras. The boys paused in front of a hole in one of the stone walls.

“See that? That’s a bullet from the Khmer Rouge,” one of them told me.

A little later they stopped to inform me that the window behind us was a good place to take a picture. As I sat down on the ledge, the younger of the boys explained, that it had not always been there. The Khmer Rouge had cut a window in the temple to place machine guns. The temple had been a stronghold against the Vietnamese.

Inside the temple, I wandered alone for a long time. It was noon and the heat was intense. After awhile I sat down in the shadow of a tower and drank water. A Khmer man saw me there and called “alo,” which is the Khmer’s way of pronouncing “hello.” I called alo back to him. He took it as a sign that he was welcomed to join me, which he mostly was.

The man was in his late twenties and spoke pretty good English. He told me that he was studying history and wanted to become a guide at the temple. Before this he had been a Buddhist monk for ten years. 

I asked him about being a monk. He told me the reason he’d become one.

“After the Khmer Rouge there are no teachers. They all killed. There are some; some teachers volunteer, but in rural they teach the children under trees. Many people turn to the monastery to teach children,” he told me.

The man began to talk about the Khmer Rouge. He had been born in 1980, the year after the regime fell, but his mother and siblings had told him many stories about life during the Khmer Rouge. 

One story was about a 15 year old boy who was a leader in the regime. At night he would tie twenty or thirty people together and lead them into the jungle. He would make the people dig large pits and then would beat them to death with the shovel.

“Why didn’t the people fight the boy and then escape?” I ask the man who introduced himself as Ra.

For a moment I thought he didn’t understand my question because his face looked puzzled.

“The Khmer Rouge were everywhere. Where could the people go? Even if they fight and run away, there is nowhere,” he said.

Some people had tried to run, he told me. Some of them were able to escape into Thailand. But more had been caught and killed.

Pol Pot’s communist dream of equality meant the death of over two million people, Ra said.

“If you pick the rice too slow, you are sent to be killed. If you pick the rice too fast, you are sent to be killed. They wanted everyone the same,” said Ra.

After my visit to Angkor Wat I saw traces of the Khmer Rouge everywhere.

In the capital, Phnom Penh, many buildings and roads bear the neglect of four years abandonment. During the regime, the cities were abandoned, and all the inhabitants were driven like cattle to work in the rice fields. Pol Pot blasted the bridge across the Mekong to Phnom Penh to prevent people from entering the city.

By the fall of the Khmer Rouge, when people entered the city for the first time in four years, the jungle had crept into the streets.

The younger generation of Cambodia never sounds angry when they tell me about the Khmer Rouge. Often they sound ironical or sad.

At Children Surgical Center, whenever the doctors talk to me about the poor medical care of Cambodia, or the lack of leadership, the conversation invariably turns to the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge targeted anyone who was educated, meaning that doctors and leaders were wiped out. Also, the generation who grew up during and immediately after the Khmer Rouge had limited access to education. This means that a whole generation of people is not really qualified for any jobs other than trade work.

There are many brilliant Cambodian tailors, weavers and wood carvers. Their goods flood street markets. However, there are few locals who can confidently work as doctors, lawyers or teachers.

This means many job opportunities for qualified people from neighboring countries. Which is why, when people speak angrily about the Vietnamese immigrants, talk inevitably turns to the Khmer Rouge.

Most of the generation of people who were adults during the regime – the 50 plus – speak French, not English. I’ve met only one old man who spoke English well enough to tell me about his experience.

I was in Kompong Chom, a province north of Phnom Penh, accompanying a military medical mission. For dinner, an expatriate and I went to dinner one of the cleaner restaurants. A spry man with a leathery face came up to us and said alo.

“Are you from America?” he asked, and after listening to our replies he continued. “I’m in the Lonely Planet!”

He whipped out a copy and showed us his name; Vannat.

Vannat talked a lot. At first it was just friendliness, but soon he began to talk about the Khmer Rouge. I don’t know how we started on the topic. But at some point he told me that he had been incorporated into the regime and I told him I would be interested in hearing about his experience. From that point the words bled from him and I don’t think he really had control of them. He just talked in fragmented strings of coherency. When I asked him a question he would look at me in confusion, as if surprised I was there, and continue talking without answering me.

Vannat spoke of working in the fields all day and being rationed only one bowl of rice each day, at lunch time. His wife and he were separated; they saw each other only once a year for only four days. He saw many people die in the fields. He grew very ill. The Khmer Rouge sent him to a hospital, but all the doctors had been killed so no one knew how to take care of the sick. He had diarrhea all the time and his body swelled. He was wearing a ring and the ring cut his swollen finger. The wound got infected. Vannat made a face and wafted his hand over his nose to explain how it stunk.

“But have must to live,” Vannat told me.

He traded a ration of food for two tablets of medicine. Although he was still very sick he left the hospital a month after having arrived.

When he finally fell quiet I thanked him and promised to come back to talk to him again.

The doctors at CSC always ask me why the American government was so eager to stop Saddam Hussein when they didn’t stop Pol Pot who killed millions more. I don’t know, I tell them.

One doctor from Thailand talks with frustration about Cambodians’ unwillingness to assume leadership roles. He says that it’s a result of the Khmer Rouge. I’m not sure if he’s right or just frustrated.

I’m also not sure what the solution is to Cambodian’s problems. The Khmer Rouge destroyed the brightest and most capable of its people for the very reason that they were bright and capable. Besides just that, they destroyed the systems that society relies on. And besides that, they destroyed society’s understanding of these systems.

Cambodia has had to start over. After the Khmer Rouge it was almost literally year 0.

Imagine creating a bureaucracy. Now imagine creating a bureaucracy without capable, educated people. Now imagine trying to introduce a bureaucracy to a people that don’t even understand what a bureaucracy is. It’s impossible.

The only solution is to bring in foreigners. But that means that Cambodia remains impoverished and reliant on foreign aid. The best jobs go to foreigners while locals don’t develop the skills that they need to ever get good jobs. That’s not a sustainable system.

I’m not sure what the solution is to Cambodia’s problem or even if there is one.

Volunteer opportunities in Cambodia!

The Children Surgical Center, provides high quality medical care to impoverished Cambodians free of cost. The hospital is visited each year by dozens of world class surgeons who operate and train local staff.

Several volunteer positions are currently available at CSC

• Nurses: general, scrub and recovery
• Physical therapists
• Occupational Therapists
• Speech Pathologist
• Administrative Staff

Positions typically last 3-6 months. Volunteers live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital city.

CSC is also looking for an accountant to work in Cambodia for 1 to 2 years. This is a paid position.

I can honestly say that working at CSC has been one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. Everyday I see CSC staff actively saving and improving the lives of small children. Practicing in Cambodia means that doctors are exposed to different types of diseases and diseases in later stages than are seen in developed countries. The effects of the work done here is felt immediately, in a way that simply could not exist in America or Europe.

I incourage all interested to contact info@csc.org. Learn more about CSC by reading my blog updates or checking out the website www.csc.org

US millitary launch new humanitarian assistance platform

                     

 Outside the freshly painted Buddhist Pagoda, hundreds of Khmer people gathered. When a Western man walked through the crowd to get inside the pagoda, the people surrounded him and pointed to rashes and tumors, and in their native language, explained their illnesses to him.

Inside the temple, a collaboration of doctors from the Cambodian Royal Armed Force, Children Surgical Center and the US Air force, worked rapidly, in efforts to see as many patients as possible in the course of their four day mission.

The US Air force, organized the medical mission as a new humanitarian assistance platform.

 In Cambodia, affordability and access to medical care are next to nonexistence in rural areas. The medical mission, Pacific Angel United Force, brought primary, eye and dental care to four remote sites in Cambodia.

 Over 65 men and women from the US Air force were involved in the mission.

Each day they helped over 800 patients for free. Many patients had diseases in their latest stages, conditions that are virtually nonexistent in developed countries.

 In the past, humanitarian efforts from the US military have come in the form of disaster relief – such as is currently occurring in Myanmar – or have been offered when forces are performing exercises in countries that need assistance.

 This mission had three goals; to provide humanitarian assistance to a developing nation; to create good will towards the US, and to support the medical infrastructure of Cambodia, said mission leader Major Brad Cogswell.

 “We’re working with NGO’s and the government to improve the public health infrastructure of the country,” he said. “We’re trying to find what the gaps are and fill them.”

 One of the most important things that this mission accomplished was the opportunity for local doctors to learn new techniques and skills from military medics. The training doctors gain increases their ability to help patients.

 But learning went both ways.

 “The Khmer doctors are very efficient with their use of supplies. I think that we learned ways to approach procedures that will help us out. It was a mutual learning experience”, said Cogswell.

 Despite the thousands of Cambodians that were helped from May 25 to 29, when the mission left, a large problem remained. The medical infrastructure that developed countries take for granted – such as the availability of doctors or ambulances – does not exist in Cambodia.

 Even patients seen by the mission, are not saved. They have been treated for immediate, visible problems and symptoms but not for their chronic diseases. In some villages, entire families suffer from chronic arsenic poisoning from drinking contaminated well water.   

While medical missions provide relief for thousands of people, they do not create the sustainable system that Cambodia badly needs.

“How do you encourage a government, any government, to focus on the health care of its people?” said Cogswell. “The dilemma is whether health care is a privilege or a right.”

 

 

Mission brings hope to hospitals and children with cleft

Each year, aproximately 500 children are born with cleft lip and palate in Cambodia. Cleft lip and palate are congenital birth deformities that makes it difficult to eat and even more difficult to be accepted by society. Fortunately, a simple surgery can correct the deformity.

However, many impoverished children through out the Cambodian provinces cannot afford the surgeries. They do not even have the 20 US dollars needed for transportation to hospitals in Phnom Penh.

But this is promised to change in the very near future. Smile Train, an American charity that battles cleft lip and palate globally, is expanding into Cambodia.

Smile train incourages doctors to increase their numbers of cleft patients anually by providing grants of 200 US dollars to surgeons for each cleft sugery they perform.  The majority of the grant covers the cost of the surgery and transportation of patients to hospitals. However, in Cambodia, cleft surgeries cost a mere 120 US dollars, meaning that the extra money can go towards paying incentive to medical teams. Smile Train also provides training to local doctors, meaning that the quality of medical in the country will steadily increase.

May 19 to May 23, Smile Train country manager of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, – Som Chunharas- and staff from the Children Surgical Center traveled to hospitals across Cambodia offering them the chance to become Smile Train partners.

Som visited nine hospitals in provinces across Cambodia. Several hospitals thought that this was a good oportunity for their medical teams to gain experience while providing increased aid to the children of Cambodia.

Provincial director of Kampong Thom, Luoung Khn, thought Smile Train was superior to other aid programs because it gave surgeons the chance to develop sustainable cleft teams.

“They train our surgeons to treat patients instead of sending foreigners in and performing surgeries and leaving,” Luoung said.

Children Surgical Center, in Phnom Penh, is the oldest Smile Train partner in Cambodia. Since 2002, CSC has performed 250 cleft surgeries a year, a total of 1500 surgeries.

Currently, CSC is assisting Smile Trains efforts to expand in Cambodia, providing staff and translators for Som as well as offering to train provincial surgeons.

“It is good for Cambodia as a whole. It gives the country the opportunity to grow strong medical teams,” Som said.

For impoverished Cambodia, nothing is more important.

New Arival

I left Alaska the 15th. I arrived in Phnom Penh – the capital of Cambodia- the 18. It was a long trip.

After I’d gone through customs and received a visa I went outside into the humid Cambodia sun. A Khmer man with large eyes and a wide, white smile held a sign with my name on it. I smiled at him and he ran over to me. The man grabbed my suitcase and took me to a CSC van.

The man introduced himself as Si Tha (see- tah). He told me he would be taking me to the Chenda clinic, which is a partner clinic with CSC.

During the drive we spoke. I was very happy to be off the plane and very smiley. Si Tha is a very smiley man in general. He speaks good English, although sometimes I have to strain to understand his pronunciations. We chatted excitedly – at least I felt that he was excited – for the ride which lasted only about ten minutes but the whole time I kept staring out the window and watching hundreds of motto’s – basically mopeds- and cars drive in and out of each other haphazardly with no real direction or rules. A land cruiser was headed strait towards us before our driver, another Khmer man, swerved deftly out of its way in the last second. When I put on my seat belt Si Tha smiled at my silliness.

Outside, everything was bright and brilliant. Vibrant greenery and tropical flowers covered everything. Along the streets people gathered near fruit stands. Large piles of trash flowed into the road and small children picked through it. A scrawny bitch with teats huge from nursing scavenged along side the children.

A black Lexus pulled in front of us. Si Tha told me that it was a military vehicle.

“Millions of dollars come into Cambodia for aid but mostly the people don’t get it,” he said. “And the government has big houses and new cars. We think it is corruption, but we don’t know.”

After speaking briefly with the surgeon at Chenda, I was redirected to Jim Gollogoly’s house, the doctor who had invited me to come to Cambodia. Although Jim is in China for the week, a medical student named Annika met me at the house.

Annika is a tall athletic women with blonde hair, blue eyes and skin tanned nearly as dark as the Khmers’. She told me that Jim wanted me to leave tomorrow on the Smile Train Mission which would end in Siem Reap, the tourist center of Cambodia.

“You may want to stay an extra day and see the temples and then take the bus back,” Annika suggested.

The Smile Train, she said, was a relief mission for children with cleft lip and palate. The next morning a Thai business man, Som, was coming to Cambodia for PR for the charity. He was going to be traveling throughout the provinces of Cambodia, visiting surgeons and doctors. Jim wanted me to go along and write an article for CSC about the mission. Si Tha was coordinating with Smile Train in Cambodia so he would also be accompanying us.

Annika had brought several maps of Phnom Penh for me to use as well as a book to read. To get around, she suggested using the “toot toots” or mottos. The cost a dollar or two depending on the distance you travel. They were very safe in the day, she said.

I would only stay at Jim’s for a few nights. After that I could choose between staying at Chenda clinic for free or getting a guest house for only a few dollars a night.

She asked me if I was tired and I truthfully answered no, so she asked if I would like to go out for lunch at the Russian Market. Si Tha, who had stood beside Annika smiling agreeably through out the conversation, said goodbye and told me that he would pick me up at 8:30 the next morning.

Annika and I found a toot toot, which is like a motto drawn carriage, and she bartered with him for the price. As we drove all the men and women stared and smiled at me. Motto drivers would turn their heads as they passed to try and meet my eyes. I smiled back.

The Russian Market is a group of shanties gathered closely together to form something that almost has an inside. Inside, Western style knockoffs are sold for a few dollars. I bought a pair of shorts and two nice shirts for 8 dollars and a hat for 2.

Annika found a fruit stand and bought some round dark balls that she cracked open to reveal milky pulp. She offered me one. It was juicy and sweet. The fruit, she said, was the best part of this part of the world.

Annika, 28, was originally from Kodiak. She was the middle child of a family with 6 children and countless pets. After graduating high school, she went to CSU as a premed. She had spent one year at UAA in the WWAMI program, where she had met Dr. Owens and had learned about CSC. Each year, one WWAMI student is chosen to volunteer at CSC. She wasn’t chosen. However, after entering Med. school she had asked if she could come and had been accepted.

Annika has bright, joyful eyes.

We walked past a small girl selling books.

“Never buy from children,” Annika said. Ït keeps them in the streets and they don’t even get the money. There’s probably a pimp right here that will get whatever money she makes.”

Annika turned the girl, who wasn’t wearing a shirt. On her back were several long gashes.

“She’s not wearing a shirt on purpose. Someone probably cut her to make you more likely to buy from her. It’s sick.”

We walk past. I feel sad for the girl but not shocked. We see many children like her through out the day.

After spending the day exploring Phom Penh, we catch a toot toot to take us back to Jim’s house. Annika says goodbye and asks if I will get dinner with her the next day. I agree.

It is now 5 pm. I resolve to go to bed early since I’ll have to wake up by 7 and I don’t have an alarm clock.

Jim’s house is surrounded by high concrete walls and a small court yard. This is typical for upper class Cambodian homes. In front of his door there is a kiddy pool filled with drowned trucks. Jim’s 2 year old son runs out.

Jim’s wife, Kanya, is Thai woman. His son is half British half Thai and as dark as the Khmer. He has a fluid speech that jumbles together all three languages. He enjoys rolling his dump truck into peoples’ legs and taking the wheels of his truck so I will put them back on. When we go on walks he holds his truck up to me so I will grab it also and we hold hands.

Kanya’s niece is also staying at the house, as well as a house keeper. The house keep speaks little English. Kanya’s niece is fluent. The three of us walk to a near by market to by fruit for dinner. Kanya’s niece, a beautiful girl with long dark hair and dark eyes, is 17 or 18. She excitedly has me test several types of fruit. My favorite is mango.

The house keeper cooks dinner and sets it in front of me. She asks if I would like wine. I am embarrassed to be waited on and tell her she doesn’t have to. After dinner I take my own plates to the sink to wash them and she chides me and laughs.

Kanya’s niece is excited again.

“Do you like massage?” she asks.

Ï affirm that. She laughs and told me that she called Kanya’s masseuse who will be over in a few minutes. I get embarrassed again and tell her that its not at all necessary but she giggles and says its no problem, Kanya does it all the time.

Two small Khmer girls arrive within a few minutes. They ask me to sit on a bed. One begins massaging my shoulders while the other puts my feet in a tub of warm water and begins to wash them. I am mortified.

The girls proceed to spend the next hour kneading my muscles and giving me a pedicure and manicure. The house keeper sits beside them. They converse in Khmer. She pays them a few dollars when it is over. I run to my room and grab 4 more and give them both 2. They raise their hands to me as if in prayer and say goodbye.

I say goodnight to the house keeper and fall asleep almost instantly.

The beginnings of an adventure

This trip began almost a year ago. The Northern Light gave me my first story; write a feature about Dr. Jesse Owens, a professor who had won an award. Eager to start, I called Owens and scheduled an interview. He told me it would be easiest if I’d meet him at his house in Palmer. The afternoon before the interview, I googled Owens and found out that besides teaching at UAA, he was also an inventor and did philanthropic work in Cambodia. 

I had just completed Bill Myers’ history of genocide class, in the spring semester of 07.  The Cambodian genocide in particular had both horrified me and peaked my interest.  Shortly after the Vietnam War, a political group called the Khmer Rouge seized control of the country.  The Khmer Rouge, led by the infamous Pol Pot, was a communist group that rejected all ties to the west.  In order to bolster the countries economy, the Khmer Rouge forced Cambodians into slave labor camps where they labored in rice fields.  The regime exectued anyone with ties to the west.  This included all educated people; doctors, teachers, lawyers.  It also included people who wore glasses, or who opposed the regime.  Over a million were killed or allowed to starve to death.   I had a vague, under developed idea of turning the article into a piece focused on the genocide. 

When I arrived at Owen’s house, I quickly jotted down a few prepared questions to ask him and went to the door. His house, among several inoffensive, average houses, was vibrant purple.  The yard was littered with mechanical contraptions. A wheel chair ramp led up to his home and the a dog let out baritone barks from inside. Owens, in a wheel chair, answered the door and introduced both himself and Ferlin, one of the largest dogs I’d ever met.

I felt comfortable with Owens immediately, although it was my first time conducting an interview. He spoke easily and was fascinating to listen to. He told me about how he had taken up inventing after he had been paralyzed as a young man. His inventions were designed to help him regain access to the wilderness. He had had much success in this; with the assistance of his Kilikart he had climbed Mount Killimanjaro. 

As fate had it, the article was very much intwined with the Khmer Rouge. Owens won the award for an invention designed to assist parapelegics in Cambodia. Land mines, a side effect of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian genocide, have disabled thousands of while chemicals, like Agent Orange, are responsible for cripling birth defects. Without proper infrastructure, also a side effect of the Khmer Rouge, the nation is ill equiped to assist these people. They live as parasites, without access to medical attention, food or employment.  Owen’s invention was designed to give poor people in developing nations mobility. 

After the interview, Owens and I discussed at length the genocide and how the Khmer – Cambodians – were recovering as a culture. He invited me to have dinner with his friend Jim Gollogly.  Gollogly runs a surgical clinic in Cambodia, Children Surgical Center. The clinic is an Alaskan NGO based in Cambodia that provides free surgeries to children. I thought the dinner would be a great opportunity to learn more about the country I was becoming inthralled with. 

A week later I met Owens, Gollogly, his wife Kanya and a few of their friends at a house in Wasilla. I listened as they spoke about the challenges Cambodia is facing. They discussed political corruption, the poor population and lack of buerocratic infrastructure.  At the end of supper Gollogly invited me to spend a few months in Cambodia as a volunteer. I excitedly told him I would love to, without any thought of what I would do, how I would get there or what the trip would entail.

And here I am. A year has passed and I’m sitting at a computer in Jim’s house; sweating and tired. I will be working for CSC until July. My job is to produce the litterature that CSC sends to potential contributors and benefactors. Also, I’m publishing articles in English-Cambodian publications. But primarily, I’d like to examine how a dehumanized society recovers and how Cambodia has rebuilt since the Khmer Rouge set the clock back to year 0. 

I will not pretend that this is at all possible in 6 weeks. This trip is only an introduction to Cambodia culture.