Someone call the AP, Hell has frozen over...

...or at least Cambodia seems to have done so. I actually found myself thinking "it's a bit brisk today..." before catching myself and making the sign of the cross. It's NEVER cold here. Ever. On top of that everything has been smelling like America the past few days. I rolled down my window in Phnom Penh and thought that the city smelled like the Cerritos Mall. Just so you get the full picture, Phnom Penh is a third world city with little or open and above ground sewage systems. Obviously I have a brain tumor or something.

That brown lumpy mass on the table? Yeah, that's all my doing.

Just to clear things up, the “cheeses” referred to in my last post was in fact the area of the body commonly known as the chest. So Madrina, I hope that Mason isn’t pulling out people’s chests. That would be painful.

So at the moment I just want to say this: I love being a volunteer and love living in Cambodia. It’s a wonderful country and I am so incredibly blessed to have been placed here. I know that a lot of times when I talk to many of you it seems like I am harassed, beleaguered, and very put out by Cambodia. This is mainly because I use my phone cards to vent (Cambodia defies logic and hey, it’s dang hard to live here). This being said, I do love this country. Just today I went to the computer store because my computer chord was damaged. When I went back in to pay for the repairs I admired the necklace the service clerk was wearing. It was a golden gourd pendant on a woven chord (I collect gourd jewelry-don’t ask). After asking her where she got the pendant, I complimented her on her chord necklace and asked where she had bought that. She couldn’t remember where she got it but she promptly unhooked it, removed the pendant, and gave the woven chord to me. Just like that. I have to say I wasn’t surprised she did it. It was a true representation of Cambodian culture: the utterly open friendliness and generosity. The whole experience was a wonderful reminder of how lucky I am to being such a beautiful culture, as well as how much I have to live up to as a volunteer here because I know that I will never be able to give back as much as the Cambodian people and culture have given me.

So this week has been rather eventful. At the beginning of the week my computer chord sparked then caught on fire. Luckily being raised by a pack of wolves colloquially known as the Kibler family enabled me to respond to any impending danger with a cool calm intellect and lightning fast reflexes. In other words, I screamed words that are less than lady like and whipped the flaming appliance around till sheer wind force put it out. In a surprising move, I was actually able to get my chord fixed at a shop in Phnom Penh. All you stateside cannot appreciate how amazing this fact is but trust me, it is, and I’ve been telling every volunteer I come across and we both revel in the blessing that is my fixed computer chord.

On top of all of that I have multiple ailments going on from having a cold to having an infected mosquito bite ON MY FACE. I wish to add that those are the more socially appropriate ones, there are others that I don’t care to publish on the internet.

The other night it was pouring harder than any other time I can remember in Cambodia. Granted, we are in monsoon season but this was insane. It sounded like my house was under a waterfall. The sheer roar of the water cut right through my ear plugs. Despite this, it wasn’t the noise that woke me up. What woke me up was the fact that it was raining on me in my bed. Cambodian houses are not hermetically sealed like American ones. My windows have shutters and bars, no glass, and the roofs are not flush against the walls of the house (nor are they usually hole-free). This all leads to when it a) rains hard enough or b) rains with strong enough wind, the water starts pouring into the house. My response was to flail about in search of my ipod and cell phone, shove said electronics under a box, and scoot down so I could pull my covers over my head. True Peace Corps Volunteer grit there, folks. Realistically it came down to moving versus staying where I was and getting sodden, and I was too lazy to move at one in the morning.

Yesterday was momentous: it marked the first day I made food for my Cambodian family, or at all in Cambodia for that matter. Technically I used the recipe for no bake cookies but they ended up being a chocolate-y peanut buttery oatmeal-y dipping sauce that was 75% sugar. My family was deeply impressed by my culinary prowess. The resulting “food” was not by any means savory looking but it was chocolate-y. Fun fact (actually not fun at all for me) for all you people who aren’t in a first world country: a Hershey bar here costs three dollars. THREE DOLLARS. Which is exactly why I am requesting that my mother stuff my Christmas package as full of chocolate oranges as possible. Or put the word out to anyone with a heart: SEND ME CHOCOLATE. Preferably chocolate oranges. Remember: I am a poor volunteer and that I deserve mercy. Especially in the form of gifts.

Show me exactly where the pain in your cheese is.

Spent yesterday at a temporary health clinic set up by Esther, the Korean missionary who lives in the next village over. She had a mission team visiting from her church in America which included several doctors so we trekked out to Pray Kcheeay (a village that is, unbelievably, more rural than Ang Sdok) to dole out free medical care to villagers who most likely had never received any medical care in their lives.

In a true case of “it’s a small world”, Esther’s home church is located in Irvine and I rode past in on the bus everyday my senior year at UCI.

One of the members of the mission team had a daughter who served in Peace Corps Africa about ten years ago and she kept giving me hugs and telling me “what a good girl I was” and “what a good job I was doing”. In America that would have made me feel a bit like a dog being praised for properly doing its business outside of the house, but PC has lowered my standards so I just basked in the attention.

At the clinic there were several stations:

Barber

Acupuncturist

ENT (ear, nose, and throat)

Optometrist

Dentist

Pediatrician

Internist

I ended up dealing with crowd control since I had no discernible useful skills or knowledge and I spoke the language. If anyone has ever been to Cambodia, or even some other South East Asian country, they would have a concept of the Khmer grasp of “waiting patiently and/or in an orderly manner”.

It was utter chaos.

The way the system was supposed to work is this.

1. Villagers show up

2. Villagers go to registration table to list symptoms

3. Villagers wait to hear their number called by me and hand me their paper so that I can direct them to the proper station

4. Villagers wait (if need be) at said station for their turn

5. Villagers receive free, top of the line health care

6. Villagers go home

Obviously this system was dreamed up by someone from a country where people wait in lines. I however, have spent the last year in a country where I once yanked a fully grown man out of line by his shirt when he was the tenth person to cut in front of me. That being said, I was dubious at the success of the system without some kind of electric fencing to keep order.

The most difficult station was the dental station. If there was some sort of Newsweek list for countries with the poorest oral hygiene Cambodia would be a strong contender for some of the top spots. Baby teeth are thought to be disposable and as traditional Khmer cooking generally involves at least two cups of sugar per dish (including vegetables), this leads to many cavities in children which are left untreated, causing the baby teeth to rot up past the gum line. Adult oral hygiene fares little better.

The point of all this is that there was a lot of bloody, screaming action at the dental station. All the hooplah drew a crowd of gawkers that took a great amount of morbid joy in watching the jerking and squealing of whatever patient happened to be in the chair. The creepiest onlookers just stood there silently with these pleased, happy smiles on their faces. Seeing as the dentist was trying to give shots and extract teeth, having a crowd breathing down his neck (they were literally five inches behind him) was not the safest situation.

All of this ended up with me trying to shoo people back to the designated waiting area (which by the way, there’s not a word for in Khmer because they don’t have them in Cambodia). Many of these people were old aunties and grandmothers who outlasted the Khmer Rogue and didn’t take too kindly to some foreigner trying to ruin their fun. When said shooing was attempted I was informed of this fact and promptly wacked. Now I know Peace Corps is all about cultural understanding but I was hot, had a sore throat from yelling numbers, and didn’t really want to contribute to some poor dental patient having the wrong tooth pulled or getting a Novocain shot to the eyeball. While I fantasized about poking one specifically obstinate auntie, I basically ended up herding them like cats for hours on end.

One of the highlights of my day was the attempts of the Khmer students who spoke some English working at the registration table to write down symptoms. Some of my favorites include:

Pains in cheeses (there were many problems with people’s cheeses)

Stroke patience

Itchy but (with one “t”- so he had a very itchy conjunction)

One of the less favorite parts of my day was people coming up to me and showing me their ailments (I’ve never seen so many ailing cheeses in my life). This especially applies to people coming up to me and showing me their falling out/decaying teeth. I am weird about teeth, even talking about dental issues makes me cringe and make faces. Seeing them black and cracked and falling out made me want to dry heave.

Listening to: Super Junior (Korean Pop Music)

Reading: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Eating: Grilled Dragoon and Beef with Rice