Chapter 1, Daily Routine: Morning

As I have said before, it was my grand plan originally to blog at the end of each day. Since our days ran from about 6am to 10pm with 9-11 hours of that seeing patients, combined with jet lag, I felt like I stumbled around half conscious for two weeks. Oh, the exhaustion! Then, on top of that, if the internet connection in that hotel had a name it would be Now You See It, Now You Don’t, so most nights the only attempt I made to record the events of each day were just to scribble a few words in my note pad.

Also, some of this is written in present tense (I did write some while I was there, just in Word) and after that will be in past tense (like right now, I am on the plane, over the Pacific, reflecting back) so just bear with me.

I have been struggling with how to tell this story in a way that does it justice and is also entertaining, as well as properly preserving all those memories for myself. So while I may get pretty wordy and your eyes will cross and glaze over, I don’t want to forget a thing, so I am just going to share it all. There is just so much to say…I feel like I could write a book. So I have decided to do just that. Not really write a book and get all Barnes & Noble, but with titles and chapters from beginning to end.

I’ll quit talking about how I am going to tell the story now and just tell it.

We worked in a small town deep in the heard of Cambodia called Sisophon in the province of Banteay Meanchay. It is poor, dirty and there is not one touristy thing about it, but brims with activity everyday. It is exactly what I wanted to experience: Real Cambodia.

My day usually starts off between 4 and 5 am. I am still not quite adjusted to the difference in time, so I just go with it and let my day start extra early. First I shower. The bathrooms here are really quite interesting. They are just all one room. No stall or tub, just a shower, a toilet, and a sink all in one small tiled room. What the heck! It works! After that, I go down to the lobby, or as I like to call it, my office, where I first pray for internet connection, read emails (sorry for the lack of responses, everyone!) write, and go through pictures.

At 6:00 am each morning, we meet in the lobby to go for a walk. Sometimes there’s just a few of us, or sometimes it’s the whole team. On this particular day, it was, from left to right: Mary Kay (the other hygienist), Dr. Franklin Young, Bot, Ratha, Jim, Jork and Tola.


Our team leader, Dr. Franklin Young, is great to have along on these walks. He is Cambodian and since his native language is Khmar, he can speak to the locals and answer all of our incessant questions, but at the same time has not lived there for 31 years, so he is just as much a curious tourist as we are. Aside from that, he’s just an interesting man to talk to. He is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge and met his wife in a Thai refugee camp. I am ashamed to say I knew very little about the Khmer Rouge before doing my homework prior to this trip. I’d heard the term The Killing Fields, but I never really knew who was killing or why, and I remember in the early eighties Cambodian refugees that immigrated to America were called Boat People, but that’s about it.

It is hard for me to hear him tell stories about those days. “They work us so hard and barely give us any food. I so skinny, I look like skeleton!“ He says, laughing. Today I told him I fight tears when he tells us the stories. He says, “I cry so much about Khmer Rouge, I have no tears left.“ When he immigrated to America, he changed his name from Fay Yang to Franklin Young. Franklin, because well, he just really liked it, and Young because it is sort of an American version of Yang. The man radiates kindness. He is always laughing and smiling. Even when he is not smiling…he’s still smiling. He does this nod thing and says “yeah yeah” whenever you talk to him. He has two teenage girls, and when he talks about him he says “They good kids. Everyone always say to me teenage girls hard to raise. But I never see that.” He is a caring and compassionate dentist and it is obvious that he loves everyone of these orphans that we treat. This is Franklin:


One of our favorite walks is to the local market. He took this picture after buying us this fruit called Jack fruit (insisting we’d be safe to eat it). It had the texture of pineapple but tasted like banana.


We'd get stared at a lot when we'd walk through the market. I suspected some of these people had never seen Caucasians before. I experienced this a lot...considering I am a woman who is taller and more sturdier built than most Cambodians. And since it is January, I am especially pasty these days. I began to feel like quite a spectacle. When this would happen I'd put my palms together up by my face, bend forward in a little bow, and say Suorsdie! (hello). My goodness how they would laugh!!


This is Tola. His English is pretty limited so it was hard to get to know him. At 29, Tola is the oldest student in his class. I got the scoop from Ratha. He said Tola had a different degree (and I assume career) before going to dental school. "In what?" I asked Ratha. "Decoration", he replied. I thought, awesome, he's a party planner. What Ratha was trying to explain was that Tola was an interior decorator.


I think these were ducks.


These were rats:


This little boy was eating one of the rats. I could hear him crunching the bones.


Jim


Lots of sad images, such as this one, everywhere you turned.


Our favorite part of these morning walks was watching the sun come up and the city come alive with activity. You can see the temple silhouette there in the distance.


You'd see this often too...children taking care of babies.


This is near the other market in town.




On one of our walks, Jim, Ratha and I broke off from the group and walked down to the river behind the temple. We were just standing there quietly looking at these homes when Ratha told us that this way the type of house he lived in before going to the orphanage.




Here he is explaining to Jim how he'd catch fish by sticking his hands in the water like this and patiently waiting for them to swim within his grasp.


On one of our walks we realized we were going to be late for breakfast and leaving for clinic, so we caught a ride back to the hotel.


This picture was taken on our last day before heading to Siem Reap. When Dale saw this he was laughing at their method of feeding their cows.


Back at the hotel we'd meet the rest of the team for breakfast. The buffet is the same everyday: Porridge (I like), fried rice, noodle stir fry, salted goose egg (I didn’t like), pickled turnip, fish jerkey, fried eggs and toast. They do serve coffee here, but tea comes to your table automatically. The coffee puts hair on your chest. Or if you choose, you could use it to paint your walls black (it would only take one coat). They serve it with condensed milk. I love it.