Yeah, I don't think daily updates will happen now that the semester's started. But, I won't let this blog die, mostly because I really like to write.
Don't have time to dig through my journal now, but I promise to follow-up with a better entry than the last one.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Don't read if you're afraid to be shaken
More from the Cambodia journal…seriously heed the above warning.
Tuesday June 19, 10:06 p.m.
Yesterday, we went to the two places in Phnom Penh every visitor sees: Chuoung Ek (The Killing Fields) and the Tuol Sleng S-21 prison. I don’t know if I can describe those. I don’t think it’s possible to really fathom the suffering and death under the Khmer Rouge—2 million in four years—but I saw some of the punctured skulls. I saw clothes and bones and teeth in the ground around the hundreds of mass graves. Standing next to the Tuol Sleng’s torture instruments; around 20,000 people entered this prison, and 7 left alive. The thousands of headshot photos of prisoners in Tuol Sleng—faces staring at me as if their pain were not 30 years ago, but rather, at this very moment. I can’t even begin…
Then today, I also am overwhelmed by a sadness just below the surface. I’m not crying, so I’m not letting it out, but I feel it hard. We learned more about Maryknoll’s Seedling of Hope program from Ed, and then he took us to Chay Chumneas: a government referral hospital for AIDS and TB. I can’t…well, I’ll try to describe.
An open ward full of metal frame beds, possibly with straw mattresses, or just a sheet. All the patients’ belongings under their beds, a few clothes and pots and pans, because they have no safe home to leave things in. Maybe an IV stand. The people were all so incredibly sick, most with both AIDS and TB. A prisoner lay shackled to his bed, skin and bones and a diaper. How much longer does he have?
Maybe worse than the physical horror of the place was the total lack of hospital staff. No nurses or aids to make sure IVs don’t run dry. No one to offer any care. Only the patients’ families—if they have them—are present to care for people. Imagine a six-year-old child taking his mother to use the filthy outdoor latrine at night. What is it like there now, in the dark? What does it feel like to live in that pain and terror?
The pediatric ward was as bad. Nearly all the children in the over-filled ward have HIV and dengue fever—Cambodia’s new plague (the country has the highest burden of dengue in the world right now). I saw a baby—who knows how old?—who was a miniscule skeleton.
Why?
Tuesday June 19, 10:06 p.m.
Yesterday, we went to the two places in Phnom Penh every visitor sees: Chuoung Ek (The Killing Fields) and the Tuol Sleng S-21 prison. I don’t know if I can describe those. I don’t think it’s possible to really fathom the suffering and death under the Khmer Rouge—2 million in four years—but I saw some of the punctured skulls. I saw clothes and bones and teeth in the ground around the hundreds of mass graves. Standing next to the Tuol Sleng’s torture instruments; around 20,000 people entered this prison, and 7 left alive. The thousands of headshot photos of prisoners in Tuol Sleng—faces staring at me as if their pain were not 30 years ago, but rather, at this very moment. I can’t even begin…
Then today, I also am overwhelmed by a sadness just below the surface. I’m not crying, so I’m not letting it out, but I feel it hard. We learned more about Maryknoll’s Seedling of Hope program from Ed, and then he took us to Chay Chumneas: a government referral hospital for AIDS and TB. I can’t…well, I’ll try to describe.
An open ward full of metal frame beds, possibly with straw mattresses, or just a sheet. All the patients’ belongings under their beds, a few clothes and pots and pans, because they have no safe home to leave things in. Maybe an IV stand. The people were all so incredibly sick, most with both AIDS and TB. A prisoner lay shackled to his bed, skin and bones and a diaper. How much longer does he have?
Maybe worse than the physical horror of the place was the total lack of hospital staff. No nurses or aids to make sure IVs don’t run dry. No one to offer any care. Only the patients’ families—if they have them—are present to care for people. Imagine a six-year-old child taking his mother to use the filthy outdoor latrine at night. What is it like there now, in the dark? What does it feel like to live in that pain and terror?
The pediatric ward was as bad. Nearly all the children in the over-filled ward have HIV and dengue fever—Cambodia’s new plague (the country has the highest burden of dengue in the world right now). I saw a baby—who knows how old?—who was a miniscule skeleton.
Why?
Friday, August 17, 2007
By Popular Request: Cambodia
A little more than a week ago, I was halfway around the world. I miss that side of the globe—a lot. When thinking so often of the tiny country of Cambodia and all within it, I’m fortunate to have my precious journal as a memory. College-ruled notebook, I wrote 135 pages and counting…
When I started this blog, I promised myself I wouldn’t make it a personal diary thing. Instead, I wanted to write commentaries on current events and world issues, to learn through my typing fingers. However, several close friends have asked me to tell them all about Cambodia; I want to, but I can’t say everything. Yet I can share some of my experiences and thoughts, meticulously recorded as they happened, though I post chronologically. I suppose this writing is a form of commentary on the world.
Saturday June 16, 10:10 pm
Yesterday morning, I was sitting on the balcony watching the HI “squeakers” start their collection. People pull rented wooden carts around and pick up recyclables to turn in for a few hundred riel—next to nothing, but their only chance for income. Imagine collecting pop can deposits for a living. They use bathtub squeaky toys to announce their presence. One little boy, with an empty cart, motioned to me. I hurried inside to get my single Coke can, but I undershot my throw, so it fell within the apartment gate. I made a sorry face to the boy. He shrugged, smiled, and walked on, squeaking.
Thursday July 26, 6:26 am
I will miss the sounds of Cambodia, the chirping/burping of geckos at night (though the ones on my bedroom walls don’t really chirp). And in the morning, I wake to the squeaks and “HI” calls of the recycling collectors—tiny children and adults, all barefoot and poor. And to the bread man calling “Pang, pang” in his throaty voice, selling baguettes for 500 riel (12.5 cents) from a wicker basket on his bicycle, and to the egg man playing his monotone recording that some haughty foreigners complained about in letters to the editor. Yet I love waking to sounds of people living—trying to live anyway—to draw me to face the day with some generosity, knowing there’s life and hope even in a desperate world.
When I started this blog, I promised myself I wouldn’t make it a personal diary thing. Instead, I wanted to write commentaries on current events and world issues, to learn through my typing fingers. However, several close friends have asked me to tell them all about Cambodia; I want to, but I can’t say everything. Yet I can share some of my experiences and thoughts, meticulously recorded as they happened, though I post chronologically. I suppose this writing is a form of commentary on the world.
Saturday June 16, 10:10 pm
Yesterday morning, I was sitting on the balcony watching the HI “squeakers” start their collection. People pull rented wooden carts around and pick up recyclables to turn in for a few hundred riel—next to nothing, but their only chance for income. Imagine collecting pop can deposits for a living. They use bathtub squeaky toys to announce their presence. One little boy, with an empty cart, motioned to me. I hurried inside to get my single Coke can, but I undershot my throw, so it fell within the apartment gate. I made a sorry face to the boy. He shrugged, smiled, and walked on, squeaking.
Thursday July 26, 6:26 am
I will miss the sounds of Cambodia, the chirping/burping of geckos at night (though the ones on my bedroom walls don’t really chirp). And in the morning, I wake to the squeaks and “HI” calls of the recycling collectors—tiny children and adults, all barefoot and poor. And to the bread man calling “Pang, pang” in his throaty voice, selling baguettes for 500 riel (12.5 cents) from a wicker basket on his bicycle, and to the egg man playing his monotone recording that some haughty foreigners complained about in letters to the editor. Yet I love waking to sounds of people living—trying to live anyway—to draw me to face the day with some generosity, knowing there’s life and hope even in a desperate world.
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