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