It's True...

After some epic floods, delightfully strange dishes, touristy trips, and sad goodbyes, I arrived back in Canada a few days ago. I'm in Calgary now for debrief, presentations, and an intern retreat before my internship officially draws to a close.

While it is, in many respects, nice to be back--no sweating, food doesn't melt, and communication is easy--it was really difficult to leave Cambodia. I made some great friends there and I felt like I was just beginning to know enough about the language, people, and culture to do my job effectively. But I know that I'm always welcome back at AOC, and I hope I will see everyone there again.

My last week was very busy as our flights were unexpectedly changed and I had a lot of work to finish in two days less than I expected. However, the good folks at AOC managed to fit in a wonderful goodbye party, including assorted meat-on-a-stick, little goodbye speeches, a collective prayer, and a lovely card and gift. To my surprise, many of my friends from staff were waiting at the airport on Wednesday to see me off.

Here are a few shots from the last month, for your enjoyment:

Cambodia, it's been a blast. Farewell...for now.

Pile on!

After a week of catching up with friends and family and seeing my brother safely (and happily) wed, it was strange to pack up my things and come back to Cambodia. My two worlds briefly collided, leaving me uncomfortably wedged between them. I realized how many things I take for granted in Canada (speaking in English, biking on nice roads and not getting hit, showering in hot water, drinking water straight from a tap, not being called “barang” everywhere I go…), but I was also struck by how attached I have grown to Cambodia and how difficult it will be to leave at the end of my internship. I had only been gone for 9 days, but upon my return I was eager to catch up with staff, the family I’m staying with, and the other interns. 

There is a beauty and simplicity to life in Cambodia that I love, yet I am also shocked by the blatancy of disparity here. As a foreigner/”rich person,” I have access to world within the city that most Cambodians will never know; even as I write this, I am guiltily partaking in a western-priced coffee and free wifi at an air-conditioned café. Last weekend I took advantage of a seat sale to meet Andrea, Jeff, and Danielle in Bangkok. I will never forget the look of astonishment on my Cambodian friend’s face when she asked where I was going after work and I told her “knyom dau Thai!” She is the same age as me, believes in the same God, also just finished her science degree, and is working at the same organization; but while I was born into a life of relative wealth and opportunity, she had to fight to get to where she is now. While I explore as much of Cambodia and its surroundings as I can on weekends, she works a second job and has never left the country. 

…So I continue to struggle with those difficult questions, but I am still having a wonderful time. And our weekend together in Bangkok was refreshing and fun, despite my guilty conscience! We were tourists for the weekend, visiting markets, eating delicious street food, riding a boat through winding canals, and looking at big shiny Buddhas. We had a few interesting experiences as well, including being scammed into visiting a silk shop and having an exfoliating massage performed on our feet by fish. Here’s proof of the latter. They really liked my feet.

…And back in my regular life, I’ve been working with the staff at AOC to make health promotions more interactive and engaging. Our last health promotion was a big success, with villagers actively participating and even writing down and presenting their ideas (a concept that is normal to us, but very intimidating to most of them). 

 We found that children could be very distracting during health meetings, so we decided to run a separate children’s program where the kids learn a little bit about hygiene and have to practice hand-washing before they get a snack. It went really well but finished before the adult programming was over…so I was in charge of the kids for the last half-hour or so. 

Childcare is easy for a barang in Cambodia because the children are so intrigued by pale skin and horrendous accents that they do everything you say. They happily sat in a well-behaved, giggly huddle around me and answered my simple questions: what is your name? How many brothers and sisters do you have? How old are you? What games do you like to play? Etc. 

But then one of the children noticed my camera, and it was all over. Next thing I knew, they were all clambering for me to take their pictures and show them on the screen. If this movie loads, you can get a feel for the attention I receive from children:

They were insane. Here’s what my friends on staff found when they came back at the end of the adult program:

While not feeling guilty or being piled on by Cambodian children, I’m staying busy: helping to collect and organize monitoring data, doing some nitrate/nitrite testing of filtered water, and writing a project proposal for a new water/sanitation project in northern Cambodia. It’s difficult to believe that I will be back in Canada for debriefing six weeks from today…and I’m doing my best to make the most of the time I have left.

Deforestation: clearing the way for good?

See post on King's environmental blog.

For your viewing pleasure

Well, I'm on my way to Edmonton for Reuben's wedding...so while I am sitting in the Vancouver airport with spectacularly fast internet at my disposal, I will share some of the events that transpired over the last month. It was a very busy, and highly amusing, month...so summarizing it will be no easy task. I think I will do this in pictoral form with captions. Enjoy!

Photo 1: While Lydia was still here, we decided to see what we would look like in traditional Khmer costumes. Here's the result...and yes, that is really me under all of those layers of sequins and makeup. It was also an excellent test of my Khmer skills, as I have not yet had reason to learn phrases such as "close your lips" or "remove your shirt." The staff at the photo studio were remarkably patient.

Photo 2: In Lvea Em, our latrine program was launched in a new village with a big health promotion. Here, 24 family representatives proudly show off their new swag. They were given the tools and training to construct the pit and base of their latrine, and are responsible for doing all of the construction and finding their own materials for the superstructure (bamboo, metal, wood, etc.). The project is a big success, and it has been a lot of fun to visit communities where villagers proudly show us their unique latrine designs.

Photo 3: my parents came to visit for a weekend, on their way between conferences in southeast Asia! We (Jeff, Andrea, and I) took them to the coast for a few days. It was rainy, but a lot of fun. Jeff was quite taken by their awesomeness, so you can read a more eloquent description of my parents and our trip on his blog. But here's proof that I saw them: a creepy stalker-style picture!

Photo 4: We've been visiting a lot of biosand filters, some of which are being faithfully used and some of which are not. After a disheartening day of visiting homes that are not using it properly (we targeted these homes so that we could try to solve the problems as soon as possible), it was so refreshing to come across a BSF being used and cleaned regularly, and with a gorgeous paint job and an ingenious mesh covering to keep out bugs and debris from the dirty water. Cute, eh?

Photo 5: Here's my bike, sadly pondering the condition of our street. I should probably stop posting about the weather, but it continues to amaze me. After only half an hour of rain, the house I'm staying in was an island. My bathroom was shin-deep in greenish-brown water. Biking to work after a flood is a very strange sensation because with both feet under water, it feels sort of like treading water in swimming lessons. As I pedal, I have taken to singing this little poem: "Hookworm, I do not like you; if you don't enter me, I won't enter you!" I think it may have worked so far, but only time will tell. Sometimes I regret taking microbiology in university.

Photo 6: We visited a national park last weekend. This is getting long, so I'll just say it involved a lot of confusion, a monkey on a chain, consuming a whole chicken, and Jeff half-naked. Weird.

Photo 7: I took a trip to the northern province of Stung Treng with AOC staff and a prayer team from Hong Kong. It was an amusing trip, with the goal of investigating an area we may work in next year. I got to ride on the worst road yet (that is saying a lot), passing a car that was literally buried in the road with no evident hope of extraction. It was a wonderful chance to get to know some of the staff better, and I thoroughly enjoyed the death-defying moto ride as well. Here are the commune leaders showing us their water resources.

To conclude...Photo 8: Look who I met in my bathroom yesterday! So cool. It's bigger than my fist.

Ok, fine.

I've been pestered for a new blog post for a while now, so I'm going to try. The problem is that the longer I wait, the more there is to write about! But some of you are very persistent, so I'll give you a brief summary of the events that transpired since my last post.

Two weekends ago, we (Andrea, Jeff, Jen, and I) went to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary. This is the most bizarre zoo I've ever been to, for several reasons.
1. 18-year-old boys with coconuts strapped to their bikes follow you around. Every time they throw a coconut to an animal (ie. a bear), you have to pay for it after watching the animal consume the fruit.
2. Some of the wildlife (namely about a million monkeys) are not caged.
3. Those animals that are caged seem a little bit too close for comfort.

4. There is no female leopard yet, so the male leopards are a little bit too intimate. The management is looking for a female, so maybe there's hope.

5. When you get hungry and stop for lunch, the only option is a whole chicken (fried, grilled, or roasted--your choice). It was tasty, but a bit difficult to eat.
As strange as the zoo was, it seemed to be well-managed, and probably a better alternative than the animals' previous lives. Most of them have been rescued from poachers. One of the monkeys apparently used to smoke.

Then there was work. Last week, among other things, we held a meeting with the Village Development Committee members, a group of village volunteers responsible for overseeing the construction, installation, and monitoring of BSF filters. They shared how they monitor, the problems they encounter, and the requests they had for AOC.

The interns from the Philippines came to visit (well, for work...but we got to see them!). We took Lydia and Danielle out for some tarantulas. They seemed to enjoy them, as the picture below illustrates. We discovered that they faithfully follow our blogs (perhaps excessively), so I feel obliged to include them here. I imagine they will make excited hang-waving gestures and squeal while reading their names. Yes girls, you are famous! Come again soon!

 
Last weekend, Lydia, Andrea, Nicolette, and I headed to Battambang (a northern province) for 24 hours of fun. Said fun involved a ride on the bamboo train--an illegal, but very exciting, platform that races along the track until it meets another one coming the opposite direction. The platform with the least people gets taken off the track, and then put back on when the other platform has passed. Here's ours (minus the driver). We shared our platform with a Dutch guy, and his accent made me think fondly of home and biochem class.

 

Our time in Battambang also included aerobics with hundreds of Khmer people along the river, a trip to a temple with a beautiful view, some awesome fruit bats, and the killing caves. A pretty good weekend! The bats were a highlight for me--I've never seen bats that big, and they were just hanging out on the trees!

And work this week was busy, with a big health promotion meeting that I taught part of (with translation), and some home visits. Here's one boy showing me how he uses the BSF to get clean water:

 

...And a shot from our health promotion:

A-howie! (That's all)...for now.

From Victorious Christian Living to a Spider on my Boob

As the title of this post suggests, I’ve had an interesting week! Last Friday, I got to teach the final lesson in a training series for a group of church leaders from villages in Lvae Em district. After I got over the rather pompous-sounding topic title (“Victorious Christian Living!”) and some of the hilarious analogies suggested in the curriculum, it was a fun challenge. It was my first attempt to speak with a translator for a long chunk of time, and it was a great learning experience. Here we are playing a quick ice-breaker game before I began the lesson:

After the lesson was over, I hopped on my bike to pick up my bag before heading out for the weekend. But my commute took a bit longer than expected because I ran into this on the way home:

Ah, Cambodia! Gotta love wading through thigh-high, debris-filled, murky water! Trying to decide whether biking or walking through it was a better alternative, I hiked up my 40 cent raincoat, and balked (that’s bike + walk + a synonym for cringing—clever, eh?) my way through.

Once I had gotten my bag, I met up with Andrea, Jeff, and Jenn (a Samaritan’s Purse visitor from Niger), and we headed down to Kampot for the weekend. On Saturday, we took a tour up Bokor Mountain. This consisted of bouncing along in the back of a pickup truck, then getting out and hiking the rest of the way through the forest—a really fun hike. A guy with a gun led the way in case we ran into any loggers or tigers. Both sounded rather fearsome, but all we encountered were butterflies.

The top of Bokor was really cool—literally! There was a rolling, foggy mist that made the climate bearable and made the abandoned casino and church appear very mysterious. 

We stopped in the coastal town of Kep on Sunday morning to eat some delectable crab on our way back to Phnom Penh.

I left at 4 am the next morning for the northern province of Steung Treng with a group from AOC. We went to meet with NGOs and government officials there to discuss options for a new water and sanitation project. I learned a lot on the trip, and enjoyed seeing more of Cambodia on the 7 hour drive there.  On the way back, we stopped to see one of the most endangered species in the world: a dolphin that inhabits a small stretch of the Mekong. At a pit-stop later in the day, I was accosted by a bunch of women trying to sell me food at exorbitant prices. After one of them put some spectacular spiders on me, I gave in and bought bananas.

As promised...

Picture Time!

Villagers attending a health promotion meeting.

Hanging out in the back of a pickup truck speeding over a bumpy road.

Aw...sa-at!

It's been pretty muddy in Lvay Em. Enough said. Mom and dad, thanks for the sandals. They work remarkably better than the flip flops most people wear here.

The roads are a bit dicey, to say the least. Especially this week, when it rained a lot. Channeth and I have only fallen off our moto twice so far! Here she is (left) making her way across a particularly tricky spot. I opted to walk to give her a bit more stability.

And perhaps my favorite mode of transport so far is this little ferry, which we took to get from one village to another because the roads were too mucky.

So that's all for now. Congrats to Miriam on her grad--sorry I wasn't there, but check the messages on your machine!

Month-in Musings

In honor of the one-month anniversary of my arrival in Cambodia, I thought I’d share a few of the things I’m beginning to get used to:

1. SWEAT. I have become much more accepting of sweat—both my own and others’. While it feels and smells kind of gross, it serves a practical purpose for which I’m very thankful. And mopping up buckets (literally) of sweat is a great reminder to drink more.

2. HEAT (closely related to number 1). Rather than seeking out air conditioning, I now tend to avoid it in favor of fans. The shock of foggy glasses and instant sweat as I walk out of an air-conditioned building is soooo not worth the brief reprise I enjoyed while inside.

3. HOURS. I am (slowly) beginning to get used to two-hour lunch breaks. Office hours are 8-5 with a two-hour break…which is more than enough time for staff to cook, eat, and nap together. I’ve also shifted my schedule forward a few hours—I’m really excited if I’m still awake at 10 pm, or if I manage to sleep past about 5:30 or 6:00. The roosters, cement workers, temples, babies, birds, and other beasts begin to stir as soon as there’s a hint of daylight. And it gets dark as soon as 7 pm, so in the village everyone goes to bed incredibly early.

4. LANGUAGE. Until I learn enough Khmer to respond and defend myself properly, people will talk about me while I am standing there. The language barrier is the most frustrating aspect of my time in Cambodia—whether buying food in the market, playing bowl with AOC staff, or attending a village meeting, I always feel a bit out of the loop. I can pick up enough words to know the general subject of a conversation, but I miss most of the details. But this provides fantastic motivation to learn fast!

5. NAMES. I am no longer Naomi. With Khmer people, it’s usually “OWE-me,” or “Naaah-OWE-me” if I’m really lucky. I’ve also acquired a plethora of nicknames from the wonderful family I’m staying with in Phnom Penh. Among these is “Ruby-booby,” which really seems to have stuck. Do I ever regret revealing the nickname I used to use to tease my brother!

6. BEAUTY. The people are beautiful. The lush green vegetation is beautiful. The fruit tastes heavenly. One of my favourite Khmer words is “sa-at.” Guess what it means!

7. CHANGING PLANS. Plans change on a regular basis, and are always affected by the weather—especially as the rainy season takes hold. I’m here to work on a bioSand water project, but just got to spend the last two days helping a dental outreach team in a nearby village. It was a great experience. I am now pretty skilled at hand-mixing tooth fillings, and I know all the Khmer words for "open big," "where does it hurt," "close," etc. One of my favorite memories so far was the ride back—hunched in the back of a pickup truck in crazy traffic and a spectacular downpour. I have never been so drenched in my life! When I got home, I thought I had acquired a wicked sandal tan...but it washed off in the shower.

8. RAIN. As I just alluded to, the rainy season has officially begun. I am already skilled in wading through knee-deep puddles, and have learned to keep my wallet and camera in a large ziploc even on the sunniest-looking day. Apparently the district we work in (which has awful roads) will gradually become more and more difficult to travel in. I already think they are border-line impossible, and I say a little prayer every time I hop on the back of a moto. By August or September, we will need small boats to visit some of our community leaders. No joke. I'm pretty excited for that!

Yep…Cambodia’s an awesome place! I have a few pictures I'd love to share, but I'm not willing to wait the several hours it would take to upload them. Expect a pictoral post next time I have fast internet!

Three Cambodias

Over the last three weeks, I have experienced what seemed to be three completely different Cambodias.

The first Cambodia: Phnom Penh. This crazy city I am calling home is a bustling centre of jarring juxtapositions: orange-clad monks skirting speeding scooters; gated buildings looming over open street vendors; scents of Kentucky-Fried Chicken blasting out of air-conditioned buildings to mingle with the fish oil, deep-fried bananas, dust, and sweat in the humid homes next door.

The second Cambodia: the urban slum. Just over a week ago, I had the opportunity to visit one of Samaritan’s Purse Cambodia’s project sites in a community on the fringe of Phnom Penh. This area was settled several years ago by people displaced from their urban homes due to the lack of effective land rights legislation. I was shocked by the amount of litter strewn between houses—and my visit followed an extensive clean-up effort in the community!

This community has received so many hand-outs from so many NGOs since its inception that there is very little sense of community ownership or responsibility; the people expect solutions to be given to them. However, there are some who really do want to change their community for the better. Some of these were parents of children in a childhood nutrition program run by SP, which we got a chance to observe. This involves not simply handing out food, but teaching about proper nutrition and how to obtain the nutrients needed for healthy childhood development once NGOs pull out of the community. Here is one little boy getting measured to determine whether the nutrition program is helping him to grow.

The third Cambodia: the rural village. This week I was able to spend my first two days in the district where AOC works. I will spend 2-3 days there each week, traveling to and from Phnom Penh on the back of a motorcycle—which should get increasingly interesting as the rainy season progresses. 

 Crossing the Mekong to reach Lvae Em

Compared to the urban slum, this district is remarkably clean; it is obviously a poor area, but is well cared for and has many leaders who are eager to make a difference. AOC works to train local community leaders, who then organize the bioSand water filter construction and monitoring, small home churches, and other initiatives.

Playing a game of bowl behind the AOC staff house on one of our many breaks

Where to begin?

So much has happened that I can’t believe it’s only been a week and a half since we got here! I certainly won’t bore you with all the details, but here’s what we’ve been up to:

We spent a few days as tourists in Phnom Penh, eating lots of good food (including tarantulas!), and visiting the royal palace and other attractions. We spent two mornings at Toul Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields. Together with Vietnam’s War Remnant Museum, these somber sites were a chilling reminder of the horrendous costs of human hatred. It was heartbreaking to realize the extent of the devastation that arose from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the war in Vietnam; the impacts of these events are still evident today. 

 Skulls piled in a memorial at the Killing Fields

But why was I in Vietnam, you ask? When we came to Cambodia, we were unable to obtain NGO visas. So, unfortunately (or not!), we HAD to take a weekend border-run trip to Ho Chi Minh City. It was certainly a hardship, but I managed to eat lots of good Vietnamese food to make up for it! 

 For Miriam: look who I ate in Vietnam!

We’ve also been struggling to learn Khmer, with three hours of language training every day. The language has sounds that I didn’t know mouths could produce! We’ve been practicing on children at a school near the language centre, and have gotten used to people laughing at us as we slowly, painstakingly, produce the approximately correct sounds to ask them how they are doing or how they got to school.

Today’s language class was particularly exciting, as Andrea and I got to ride an elephant! I felt kind of bad for the 50-year-old pachyderm (the only one in Phmom Penh, apparently)…but it was fun to lurch around the temple on his back.

 Yes. It is pooping.

Jim reap leer!

Learning to ride a bike

They say once you learn, you never forget.

As my former roommates will vouch, I’m an avid biker and generally do all my errands by bike. Biking in Edmonton, however, is a far cry from biking in Phnom Penh! Within a few hours of arriving here on Friday morning, Jeff, Andrea and I were all proud owners of spiffy new (used) single-speed bikes. We spent the last three days visiting the Russian Market, supermarkets, restaurants, and church by bike—all without getting run over, thanks to our patient guides Steve and Jodi Chee!

 Me and Bad Boy Veloil (named for the awesome stickers on the frame).

I may be a decent biker in Edmonton, but I’ve had to learn anew in Phnom Penh. Few people follow the actual rules of the road, yet there are unspoken rules that keep everything running surprisingly smoothly. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1.       Lane markings are merely guidelines.

2.       The bigger you are, the further left you ride on the road. This means cars, then tuk-tuks, then motos, then bikes. But all of the above can weave from side to side at will.

3.       As a biker, you want to stay pretty close to the right...but you have to leave a bit of space for vehicles that decide to go the wrong way.

4.       One-way? Nonsense! Go whichever way you like!

5.       Right of way goes to whoever is willing to go farthest into the intersection and force those going in other directions to wait or weave around them.

6.       Biking in 40+, very humid weather can make you very sweaty, so don’t forget to stop for fresh sugar cane juice!

With these guidelines in mind, Bad Boy Veloil and I plan to cruise the city in safety and style over the next five months! I’ll let you know where our adventures take us next.

 Jeff surveys Phnom Penh's traffic from his new bicycle.

I'm Off!

Wow, time has flown! And tomorrow I'm flying--off to Cambodia to begin all sorts of crazy adventures! We've had two wonderful, if a little overwhelming, weeks of training in Calgary, and I am now well-versed on the wonders of diarrheal diseases. Last week we stayed in a church in Millarville while we learned how to construct the bioSand water filter, latrines, and tippy taps. We even got to experience a real cowboy church, which was phenomenal! Then we topped it off with a weekend retreat at Camp Evergreen.

Tomorrow evening I fly to Phnom Penh (via Vancouver and Taipei) with Andrea and Jeff, two other water interns. We'll be working separately, but it's awesome that we can make the journey together and will be able to connect every now and then while we're there.

Stay tuned for more updates as my adventures unfold! And to learn more about the Household Water Project I'm working on, check out Samaritan's Purse's website!

 

Water interns 2010--chilling out after constructing our very first filters! (Photo by Carolina Sanchez).