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.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Hiatus
I meant to write several posts in the last several days, but got too busy. A response to Andrew's question about health and human rights (well, I do have to say a yes--a right--to the cancer treatment question). Comments on the media coverage of the XDR-TB patient: they're missing the point. Other musings. Comments on an email a friend sent me about faith and service. Probably nothing very interesting.
Alas for failed good intentions.
However, if anyone does happen to read this blog, it is not defunct, but will not be updated until at least early August. Maybe then I'll have more to say. Or maybe I'll figure out that I have nothing to say. Maybe I'll fail to see the point.
Life, mine at least, is Pachelbel's Canon.
Peace friends.
Alas for failed good intentions.
However, if anyone does happen to read this blog, it is not defunct, but will not be updated until at least early August. Maybe then I'll have more to say. Or maybe I'll figure out that I have nothing to say. Maybe I'll fail to see the point.
Life, mine at least, is Pachelbel's Canon.
Peace friends.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Unwarranted and Undeserved
Yesterday, I fainted in the local hospital. I had been stupid—donated blood on an empty stomach, ate breakfast, and then immediately went for a run in the thickly hot morning. I finished breathing harder than normal and utterly drenched in sweat. Right after showering, I drove to the hospital to pick up a family member from an endoscopic procedure. Standing by the bed, I started to feel lightheaded. I knew I was going to faint, but at the point of that realization, it’s impossible to stop.
So I passed out in a chair. Three nurses jumped to me, and within 45 seconds of coming to, I had an air pipe and smelling salts up my nostrils, a blood pressure cuff on my bicep, a pulse monitor clamped on my finger, and an IV needle jammed in my brachial vein. Within five minutes, I had been loaded into a bed and wheeled to the emergency room. Within 30 minutes, I had recovered from all lightheadness, yet I still waited through an EKG—just in case I had an arrhythmia. I didn’t, of course. I was simply dehydrated from being stupid enough to run immediately after removing a pint of blood.
Both the nurses in the endoscopy unit and the ER were amazingly kind and forgiving of my inconvenient noncompliance. And they followed our nation’s copious medical protocol for such situations. But I didn’t need that care or really deserve it. Dehydration from an unwise run wouldn’t kill me. And it was my fault.
At least 1.6 million children die each year from diarrhea complications. Unlike in my case, the dehydration is not their fault. They can’t choose to avoid the fetid water they drink. There is no other choice. These children deserve care.
I am grateful for the luxurious care that I enjoyed—and the insurance that paid for it, insurance unavailable to nearly one in six in our richest of countries. Reflecting on my healthcare experiences and thinking about the complete lack of healthcare for so many forgotten people makes this conviction difficult to believe: healthcare, just like food and clean water, are basic human rights. More important than any other right is the right to survive. But as Dr. Farmer writes (Pathologies of Power, I think) “If healthcare is a basic human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?”
So I am human. How many are with me? Surely fewer than those denied humanity. Haitians have such a hopeful proverb, “tout moun se moun” (every person is a person). Yet, only 54% of Haitians have access to safe water. They count themselves each as human. Why can’t we?
So I passed out in a chair. Three nurses jumped to me, and within 45 seconds of coming to, I had an air pipe and smelling salts up my nostrils, a blood pressure cuff on my bicep, a pulse monitor clamped on my finger, and an IV needle jammed in my brachial vein. Within five minutes, I had been loaded into a bed and wheeled to the emergency room. Within 30 minutes, I had recovered from all lightheadness, yet I still waited through an EKG—just in case I had an arrhythmia. I didn’t, of course. I was simply dehydrated from being stupid enough to run immediately after removing a pint of blood.
Both the nurses in the endoscopy unit and the ER were amazingly kind and forgiving of my inconvenient noncompliance. And they followed our nation’s copious medical protocol for such situations. But I didn’t need that care or really deserve it. Dehydration from an unwise run wouldn’t kill me. And it was my fault.
At least 1.6 million children die each year from diarrhea complications. Unlike in my case, the dehydration is not their fault. They can’t choose to avoid the fetid water they drink. There is no other choice. These children deserve care.
I am grateful for the luxurious care that I enjoyed—and the insurance that paid for it, insurance unavailable to nearly one in six in our richest of countries. Reflecting on my healthcare experiences and thinking about the complete lack of healthcare for so many forgotten people makes this conviction difficult to believe: healthcare, just like food and clean water, are basic human rights. More important than any other right is the right to survive. But as Dr. Farmer writes (Pathologies of Power, I think) “If healthcare is a basic human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?”
So I am human. How many are with me? Surely fewer than those denied humanity. Haitians have such a hopeful proverb, “tout moun se moun” (every person is a person). Yet, only 54% of Haitians have access to safe water. They count themselves each as human. Why can’t we?
Friday, May 18, 2007
Triple A: "AIDS and Accusation" and Abbott Laboratories
After finally reading "Deus Caritas Est" and former president Jean Bertrand Aristide's "In the Parish of the Poor: Writings From Haiti," I've begun the only book by Dr. Paul Farmer I haven't yet read, "AIDS and Accusation."
My blood still boiling over Abbott Laboratories continued callousness, extreme even with their deplorable track record, extreme even for a corporation, whose business needs admittedly do lend themselves to dispassion. This week, Abbott offered Thailand a "compromise": Aluvia (one of the drugs it was planning to pull) for $1000 per patient per year--fixed price, no lower, and Thailand couldn't continue its compulsory license. As an alternative to the deal, an Indian generic company, with the support of the Clinton Foundation, could make the drug for $695, with the near certainty of a price drop as more generic companies produce the ARV. Thai ministry of health looks like it won't take the deal...good decision, clearly.
In his 2005 preface to this book, originally published in 1992, Dr. Farmer addresses exactly this issue:
"Even if we agree that AIDS care is a right, there are significant challenges. We need to understand that as long as these medications remain commodities on the open market, they will be available only to those who can afford them. Regardless of how low costs go, there will always be those who cannot pay. For those interested in health as a human right, selling ARVS will always pose problems."
And a little later on...:
"...confused debates nonetheless continue to waste precious time. We should brace ourselves for the next great wave of debate, which will undoubtedly focus on what the modern world owes to the destitute sick. If AIDS care becomes a right rather than a commodity, some people believe we will open a Pandora's box. Others, including me, believe that we have no more excuses for ignoring the growing inequality that has left hundreds of millions of people without any hope of surviving preventable and treatable illnesses."
We need to put pressure on the Miles Whites [Abbott CEO] of the world. We need to put pressure on the world. We need to put pressure on ourselves in the world. To not continue to ignore inequality.
My blood still boiling over Abbott Laboratories continued callousness, extreme even with their deplorable track record, extreme even for a corporation, whose business needs admittedly do lend themselves to dispassion. This week, Abbott offered Thailand a "compromise": Aluvia (one of the drugs it was planning to pull) for $1000 per patient per year--fixed price, no lower, and Thailand couldn't continue its compulsory license. As an alternative to the deal, an Indian generic company, with the support of the Clinton Foundation, could make the drug for $695, with the near certainty of a price drop as more generic companies produce the ARV. Thai ministry of health looks like it won't take the deal...good decision, clearly.
In his 2005 preface to this book, originally published in 1992, Dr. Farmer addresses exactly this issue:
"Even if we agree that AIDS care is a right, there are significant challenges. We need to understand that as long as these medications remain commodities on the open market, they will be available only to those who can afford them. Regardless of how low costs go, there will always be those who cannot pay. For those interested in health as a human right, selling ARVS will always pose problems."
And a little later on...:
"...confused debates nonetheless continue to waste precious time. We should brace ourselves for the next great wave of debate, which will undoubtedly focus on what the modern world owes to the destitute sick. If AIDS care becomes a right rather than a commodity, some people believe we will open a Pandora's box. Others, including me, believe that we have no more excuses for ignoring the growing inequality that has left hundreds of millions of people without any hope of surviving preventable and treatable illnesses."
We need to put pressure on the Miles Whites [Abbott CEO] of the world. We need to put pressure on the world. We need to put pressure on ourselves in the world. To not continue to ignore inequality.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Anticipation
I spoke with my site supervisor, a priest, this morning. Hearing his voice made this all more real, though sometimes I still can't believe it. What is this? I guess I should explain my pending hiatus from this blog.
On June 5, I will board Thai Airways for a 17-hour nonstop flight from New York to Bangkok. Through ND's Center for Social Concerns, a friend and I will live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for seven weeks—doing so-called “service learning.” Which basically means we’ll work and learn and discern in the midst of poverty, and hope we can do a little good in the process. My friend and I are in a class of 36 students: we all are soon to depart for places around the world to begin to learn about the real world. The one beyond U.S. borders, the one of the shafted majority, the one of struggle, but also the one of real humanity.
Our particular site placement is with the Maryknoll, the century-old global mission organization. The community of priests, sisters, and lay missioners has built a number of social programs in Phnom Penh. As student short-term volunteers, my friend and I will have the main responsibility of teaching two intermediate English classes at the local public university. So for four weeks, I will teach English to probably 60-70 students my own age. Though a language class, the topic is “Current World Affairs.” Yes, I’m a more than a little intimidated.
But I’ve been fortunate to have so many mentors in my classrooms. My teachers have inspired me and cultivated a love of learning in me. The couple thousand dollars ND donors have paid to send me to Cambodia would probably pay the salary of ten local teachers—who could likely do a better job than I can. Both this realization and a strong desire to share some of the learning excitement I’ve been given will motivate me. I don’t harbor naïve visions of how effective I might be. I’ll just do my best. But if anyone has a neat idea of an activity or something, I’d love to hear it!
Beyond teaching in the morning for four weeks, I’ll get involved somehow with Maryknoll’s HIV/AIDS program. They have adults and children on ARVs (anti-retrovirals). Some 320 children are enrolled in the program: half are orphans and live in Maryknoll-run group homes and the other half live with families. But in a true community health system, workers visit the kids every day to supervise pill ingestion and check on other needs. Maryknoll helps with food, education, and other support. My supervisor spoke just this morning of the need for counsel for the children, and when they’re older, a transition to independence. This life—not death—is the possibility for the 38 million people living with HIV, no longer a death sentence.
This description sounds great from my couch in sunny, pleasant Michigan. But I know an experience doesn’t fit into a 500-word summary on a blog. Any presumption or expectation I might have will probably go flying out the window as soon as we touch down in Phnom Penh. So I’m not expecting movie-like poignancy. My summer will be messy. But I do have one personal hope. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie Crawford remarks, “you can’t know there until you go there.” So I hope beyond all my self-interested hope that I can “go there,” and in going, start to see if I can “stay there.” Can I live in Haiti someday, my dream? I hope so, but I don’t know, so I have to go. To Cambodia, I will simply go.
On June 5, I will board Thai Airways for a 17-hour nonstop flight from New York to Bangkok. Through ND's Center for Social Concerns, a friend and I will live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for seven weeks—doing so-called “service learning.” Which basically means we’ll work and learn and discern in the midst of poverty, and hope we can do a little good in the process. My friend and I are in a class of 36 students: we all are soon to depart for places around the world to begin to learn about the real world. The one beyond U.S. borders, the one of the shafted majority, the one of struggle, but also the one of real humanity.
Our particular site placement is with the Maryknoll, the century-old global mission organization. The community of priests, sisters, and lay missioners has built a number of social programs in Phnom Penh. As student short-term volunteers, my friend and I will have the main responsibility of teaching two intermediate English classes at the local public university. So for four weeks, I will teach English to probably 60-70 students my own age. Though a language class, the topic is “Current World Affairs.” Yes, I’m a more than a little intimidated.
But I’ve been fortunate to have so many mentors in my classrooms. My teachers have inspired me and cultivated a love of learning in me. The couple thousand dollars ND donors have paid to send me to Cambodia would probably pay the salary of ten local teachers—who could likely do a better job than I can. Both this realization and a strong desire to share some of the learning excitement I’ve been given will motivate me. I don’t harbor naïve visions of how effective I might be. I’ll just do my best. But if anyone has a neat idea of an activity or something, I’d love to hear it!
Beyond teaching in the morning for four weeks, I’ll get involved somehow with Maryknoll’s HIV/AIDS program. They have adults and children on ARVs (anti-retrovirals). Some 320 children are enrolled in the program: half are orphans and live in Maryknoll-run group homes and the other half live with families. But in a true community health system, workers visit the kids every day to supervise pill ingestion and check on other needs. Maryknoll helps with food, education, and other support. My supervisor spoke just this morning of the need for counsel for the children, and when they’re older, a transition to independence. This life—not death—is the possibility for the 38 million people living with HIV, no longer a death sentence.
This description sounds great from my couch in sunny, pleasant Michigan. But I know an experience doesn’t fit into a 500-word summary on a blog. Any presumption or expectation I might have will probably go flying out the window as soon as we touch down in Phnom Penh. So I’m not expecting movie-like poignancy. My summer will be messy. But I do have one personal hope. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie Crawford remarks, “you can’t know there until you go there.” So I hope beyond all my self-interested hope that I can “go there,” and in going, start to see if I can “stay there.” Can I live in Haiti someday, my dream? I hope so, but I don’t know, so I have to go. To Cambodia, I will simply go.
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