This Is How I...

The past few days I have been spending a bunch of time with my site-mate Emily creating videos of everyday actions that we do in our town that have become so normal that we often think nothing of them. As I approach the one month left mark, I have been trying pondering different ways to represent my full service and remember everything that has become so ordinary, but which are all things that are important to my daily life. Once my routine changes I fear I will forget all of the little things. Whenever someone in the community asks me how much longer until I leave, they tell me not to forget ("gkom plet"), I respond my saying that I couldn't ever, that I don't know how to forget ("awt jeh plet dtay"). In order to make that statement true, I have consciously started to meticulously document everything that makes Cambodia, my host family and friends, co-workers and community unique. While there are some many similarities between people around the world, the unique differences and funny quirks about this little town easily passed by without a blink of an eye if you weren't looking for it on the way to the border or on to Siem Reap, are what make little SSSD (my abbreviation for security purposes) so special to me. There will be more videos to come. But here is a little sneak peek:

For more on our market check out Emily's blog post "In which I show you the wonders of the market..."

Besides the market, I will missing skipping across the street hand-in-hand with my 6-year-old neighbor Sokhane (whom I call my "songsaa" meaning sweetheart) to get him a 25 cent (1000 riel) hair cut from the barber in the corrugated metal shack. And biking north 3 km to visit a permaculture farm called very accurately the Happy Farm - with Sokhane sitting on the back of my bike giggling the whole way. I will miss the rain storms that roll in every afternoon like clockwork during wet season to effectively cool things down for 15 minutes before I start sweating just as vigorously as before. 

But I am not leaving yet. So the mushy posts can be postponed. In the meantime, let me recap most of the past month. 

OTHER HAPPENINGS AT SITE

World Map makers!

Kimsan stopped at Pouk market

 To celebrate the completion of the World Map, Em and I took 14 of the hearty World Map makers on a trip to the West Baray (reservoir about 20 km east of town) for lunch, hammock time and swimming. We all biked out to find that the water was quite low and shallow with quicksand like mud as far as we ventured out. It was quite a different experience than the last few times I have been there, but despite the lack of water, we all had a great time celebrating our success and the world!

blood pressure and temp on a tiny 10 year old

Ee doing check-ups

There is a World Vision office in my town that is funded through partners in Korea. They have targeted many of the villages under my catchment area and sponsor many youngsters for primary school. Every six months or so the staff teams up with the health center staff to conduct health check-ups for those kids enrolled in the program and I get to tag along, weigh and measure height, blood pressure, heart rate and temperature. I love doing outreach like this and spending time with the staff outside of the health center doing meaningful, substantial work.

My host family is being AWESOME. As always. But recent developments include: my host sister has started working at a midwife in the health center 5 km north of our home. She is super busy and I don't see her as much as I would like to, what with 24-hour duty every 3rd day, but she has said that she likes working with the other staff and was only scared of ghosts one night that she stayed over so far. It would have been great to have her work at the closer health center with me for 2 months, but we are well staffed in the midwife department, that is until one of the midwives gives birth to her first child, a boy!, in mid-August (unfortunately I will be gone by then...). Maybe then Ong will help fill in and be able to come home for lunch and spend more time with my host mom who will be very lonely soon because my host dad is away until November! A while back my host dad submitted an application to get more military police training in Vietnam and was selected along with 5 other colleagues. He left on Saturday, with a limited knowledge of Vietnamese, and has already called once to say he arrived. But at least for the next month and a half I think my host mom will be a bit busy as she is studying for her 12th grade exams. Mai ("mom" in Khmer) was about 9 years old when the Khmer Rouge. She completed 5th grade before then and did not return to school to get her 9th grade certificate until the mid to late 80s. At that point, she studied at a vocational school - primary teacher training center (PTTC) - and was certified to teacher 3rd - 6th grades. When the civil war began in the early to mid 90s, Mai was married with two young kids (Ong and Aleak). She continued to teach when it was safe. Now with her kids fully grown, Mai decided to finish high school so that she would be able to get a higher salary and possibly teach higher grades. I am so proud of her and will wish on my lucky stars for her to pass her finals early in August. Such perseverance! ... This family has been so good to me. It will be hard to leave. But we will cross that bridge when we get to it, I guess.

host mom working hard grading in the background while we color :)