As I have mentioned, I am a Community Health Education
Volunteer for the Peace Corps. I was
placed in Kampong Saom in a health center which serves 11 villages and 5 island
villages (I think). My primary work is
focused on educating the Khmer people in one of 5 main areas of health. These areas include Maternal and Child Health,
Hand Washing, Sexual Reproduction, Noncommunicable Diseases, and Nutrition.
I also like to educate on exercising and since it is great
for the health, I take special pleasure in bringing my exercise habits to the
people of my village. Sometimes when they come to the health center they say to me, "you exercise every day!" and I smile and reply, "why yes, yes I do...and let me tell you why..."
I wake up between 6 and 6:30am to the tinny of rain falling on the roof outside. Maybe every three days or so I go downstairs to do laundry. On days that I do not do laundry I try to go back to sleep (like the able-bodied adult that I am) or do some Khmer studying. My boan brohs leave for school around 6:30am and so I am left to my own devices while preparing for the day. Sometime before 8 I get ready to go to work - this consists of me washing my face and maybe bucket showering, smell-testing my clothes, and getting dressed At the health center, I work
almost exclusively in the ANC room (pre-natal care) with pregnant women and
midwives. There I am able to see
pregnant women and talk to them about (among other things) nutrition,
breastfeeding, birth control, vaccinating their children, and sometimes
exercise. If there are no pregnant women
to see, I work in the pharmacy, telling people the types of medicine they are
getting, probably side effects, and a little bit about what not to consume with
the medicine (like alcohol). When there
are no patients left (sometimes around 11am) I teach my health center staff
some English. I am usually at the health
center until about noon.
Some days I go on outreach and am able to visit villages. One Friday I went to work as usual, only to be abducted (willingly) by some NGOs and other health center workers for an outreach to an island village. To get there we drove down my red dirt road to the end where a fishing village resides, climbed into a small wooden boat, and started about a 20 minute journey to the island.
When we got to the island, we hiked about a kilometer up to the community center where most of the members of the village sat waiting for us. After introducing ourselves and doing a bit of explaining (most of it was in rapid Khmer and beyond my language abilities), the people were able to see the doctor, get medication and vaccines, and see me, resident Barang, attempt to remind them that leafy green veggies are ridiculously good for them. The last patients were seen at about 4pm, and so we trekked back to the waterfront and put-putted back to the floating village and my health center.
Back to my regular day: at lunch time I walk back home and usually enjoy a peanut
butter sandwich. Then, along with the
rest of the country, until about 1 I rest or take what I like to call a “safety
nap.” I would explore or try to engage someone else in conversation but alas, the entire community - and I might argue the entire country - naps after lunch..."when in Rome," my friend. After the country-wide nap, I do one of a wide range of activities. Until 3 or so I am usually getting work done involving secondary
projects like camps for kids or education materials. Secondary projects involve a lot of planning,
asking permission, and applying for grants so they usually also require a lot
of phone calls and computer time. At 3 o’clock
I have a Khmer lesson with my teacher where we translate or write in Khmer for
an hour. Every other day or so at 4 I
take a bike ride for exercise from 4pm to 6pm.
On the days in between, I do a little more work until 5pm and then go
for a run until 6pm. When I return to
the house from my exercise I shower, and then eat dinner with my host
family. After dinner we all sit in the
main room (also the only room downstairs) and watch TV or color, or I help
Soktchea with his English homework and Man pulls out some sort of toy to play
with. Earlier this week we were without electricity for a few days and one night culminated in a wicked pillow fight...which I won, of course. At about 8pm after wishing each
other “goodnight and sweet dreams” we all retire to our rooms to fall asleep. And by “retire to our rooms” I mean I go to
mine and the rice mat and mosquito net is set up in the main room for my mother
and brothers to sleep under.
At press time, I still have yet to make contact with the local
high school or local orphanage but I hope to free up my schedule enough to be
able to teach there, or at least have some sort of impact. Because I am busy and used at my health
center, my mornings are consumed with my primary work and my afternoons my by
secondary work.
Secondary projects include outside work. For example, another PCV and I are planning a Camp GO which is essentially an exercise camp for kids which will teach them not only the importance of exercise and nutrition, but also about teamwork. Another project I am currently working on is a science lab book for kids. A few weeks ago I was talking to English teachers who mentioned that their schools had a ton of lab equipment donated to them but which they did not know how to use. I talked with them a little bit and we are putting together a small science/lab book which includes names and photos of the lab equipment as well as how to use it and some small short experiments that they can do in a science class. The great part about these projects is that not only am I bringing knowledge to the people of Cambodia, but exercise and science are two things that I really enjoy and am passionate about.
A few things to mention about my village and Cambodia in general (these are generalizations and naturally you will find exceptions in almost every case...but for the purpose of explaining to Americans, here I go).
-In Cambodia people do not usually stay home for breakfast. The morning is a really busy part of the day and breakfast is generally held outside of the home. Like I have mentioned, rice with meat is a popular choice for any meal and can be gotten pretty much everywhere. Another popular breakfast item is a sort of noodle soup. For reasons completely beyond my understanding, when eating Khmer (or as I like to call it: Khmeating) you use chopsticks for slippery noodle soup, and a spoon and fork for sticky rice and pieces of meat. Anyway, my host mother is a sort of breakfast spot and so people come and eat noodle soup at my house for about 1500R (about $.30). I usually eat a granola bar that my mother has sent from America because at home (America) breakfast is my absolute favorite meal of the day and the memory of it tides me over until lunchtime. Also, though I am a morning person, chopsticks at 6am is too much.
-For dinner, people are at home and eat with the family. This is a pretty important part of Khmer culture. Also, Khmer people count how much you eat by how many bowls of rice you eat. So my family gives me a bowl of rice and then there are bowls of a vegetable/meat concoction sitting in front of me to eat with the rice, and even if I eat a whole bowl of the tasty non-rice part of the meal, they still say I eat only a little because I've eaten maybe a grain of rice with each spoonful of delicious pork-and-pineapple. Many times my 11 year old brother will eat 3 bowls of rice and maybe half a bowl of a meat/vegetable surprise, but will say that he ate a lot and I ate a little if I have eaten only half a bowl of rice but a whole bowl of the other stuff. Let me assure you, the first words I learned in Khmer were "I'm full" and "I'm not hungry". This was after I learned that "breakfast", "lunch", and "dinner", were all known as "hope bye" or "eat rice". My family doesn't tell me it's "dinnertime," they tell me it's time to "eat rice".
-People are not outside after dark. In the city this is a little different - people are out after dark in touristy areas, and use tuk tuks to get around. In the village this is because there is literally nothing to do. There are no clubs, no coffee shops to hang out at, nothing to do and so people are at home hanging out with their families or doing whatever it is they do within the confines of the walls of their house. Remember when I was coming back from the dentist and wandering along my road in the dark? That was a completely new experience for me because I've never been outside of my family's house when the sun has gone down. It may never happen again.
On an unrelated note,
my first birthday in Cambodia passed without a hitch! Some PCVs came to Phnom
Penh to celebrate January birthdays and overall I can see that 24 looks to be
extremely promising. I was also featured in fellow K6 PCV Kirk Acevedo's blog, 60X27 - you can access my page on his site through that link (the only thing is he got my birthday wrong...but who's perfect?). Kirk put together his blog with the thought of showing the web-world all about not just his experience, but the experience of our whole group. You can check out some other PCV Cambodia K6 views and life happenings if you want to explore his blog (I highly recommend it). He is also an incredible photographer! Thanks Kirk!
Happy Birthday to me! (It's January 19th, for future reference. I'll be here for one more birthday...and you can access the "snail mail" page to the right. Just saying.)
Xo-Amanda
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