Update from the field

Euson and Crystal continue to work in Phnom Penh doing interviews with several NGOs that provide some rehab services, primarily in the cities.

They have met with both the NCDP (National Centre for Disabled People) and Cambodia Trust this week. These organizations are both running very good Community-Based programs for disability awareness and support as well as providing rehabilitation services for persons with disabilities.

In addition to these organizations there is in fact a physiotherapy school or rather a "Technical School of Medical Studies" that has been functioning in Phnom Penh since 1987. This is interesting news to me since the school does not seem to be well known outside of Phnom Penh. The school graduates 12 students per year. The two graduates that have spoken with Euson and Crystal are both working for Rose Charities in Phnom Penh. They work primarily with people who have received free surgeries from Rose Charities and also acid burn victims. There is a good short video on the Rose Charities site.

From the interviews Euson and Crystal have conducted this week it appears that there are some rehab services available in the larger cities. The work is being run by NGOs and carried out by local Cambodians.

A Comment on Angkor Beer?

While in Kep we spent several evenings relaxing and chatting over a glass of the local Angkor Beer. On one of those evenings, just as Euson was reaching for his drink, we were all startled when it erupted in a spontaneous splash! My initial thought was that the effort of a day in the hot sun must have affected Euson's co-ordination, but something about the shocked look on his face made me realize that wasn't the case. The three of us crept forward to peer into the glass to discover a black blob floating in the glass. What the? We broke out into fits of laughter as we realized that Euson had been the victim of a miraculously accurate Tokay Gecko's droppings. Who would have thought a shot from at least 15 feet up would land in the center of a 3 inch diameter cup? Euson did not finish his beer.

Bokor Pictures

I've finally got around to posting some of my Bokor National Park pictures.

Phnom Penh

We are safely back at Kozyna guest house in Phnom Penh. We had a nice send off this morning from Roth, Wooth and Mr Sen who had been our moto drivers and interpreters during our stay. The bus ride from Kep to Phnom Penh was relatively uneventful and I was able to ignore the bumps along the way while watching dubbed Chinese slapstick/action movies.

The water festival is on this weekend so the city is very busy. Our guest house is right in the middle of all the chaos so it will be interesting to see what things look like in the morning. We were told all kinds of horror stories about how crowded it would be but it doesn't really seem too bad all things considered. Still I'm happy our room is at the back of the guest house, away from the street noise.

We spent the afternoon visiting the Tuol Sleng Museum. The museum contains photographs and biographies of some of the hundreds of thousands of people killed during the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia. It is a tragically sad place to visit but I think it is a very valuable place and could certainly use a bit of funding to assist in its upkeep. According to the pamphlet handed out at the door, the government has stopped funding the museum and it is now in danger of falling into dangerous disrepair. They are also concerned that many of the documents and photographs will not be adequately preserved and may not survive to be seen by future generations. I was surprised that there wasn't a stronger effort by international organizations to help fund the museum.

Last Day in Kep

Today is our last day in the Kep community. It is hard to believe that we will be leaving first thing in the morning. We have a couple more meetings scheduled for the afternoon with the Director of the Kep Health department and the Director of Social Affairs. We had a productive meeting with the Director of Social Affairs last week and hope to use this meeting to provide a bit of an update on what we found while doing the visits to individual villages. The clear story is that there are a lot of needs but very few easy answers.

We will miss the peace and serenity of the Kep area. Heading into Phnom Pen just in time for the water festival will be a dramatic change of pace. We've been told that the water festival draws millions of Khmers into the city so we are expecting a very noisy stay. With a bit of luck we might see a few of the racing boats that are the main attraction although we will probably miss the race itself.

Now, we are off to our final feast of local seafood with our translators and colleagues.

Microcredit as a solution for Poverty?

Thanks to N for bringing this New Yorker article on Microcredit to my attention. The article is particularly timely since we have encountered a few situations here where the approach just might work. Some of the people Euson and Crystal have interviewed believe that they just need a small amount of money to get a bike to get to school, or to build a fence so they can raise some livestock etc. That little step might allow them to climb above basic poverty levels.

Bokor National Park

On Sunday we travelled to Bokor National Park. I won't have a chance to post our pictures for a while but there are already some pretty dramatic pictures of the ghost town already on the web here.

The Bokor Hill Station was a French resort and casino until 1970 and the Khmer Rouge take over. Now it at the top of an area of incredible jungle vegetation. The real challenge is getting there. The two hour drive to the top is incredibly rugged. The French had built a good road back in the day, but it is almost entirely washed away. We joined a tour group that packed 10 people into the back of a pick-up truck fitted with crude benches along each side. We only had a rope tied along the middle to hold onto. Believe me, I was holding on to that rope! We were getting bounced around so much it is a miracle nobody went flying off the back.

Today, my back, arms and particularly my backside are extremely sore from all the thrashing around. Seeing the spooky history of Bokor is definately worth it but if I was to go again I might consider bringing my own seat cushion!

Busy, busy

We've been very busy visiting different communities over the last few days. Crystal and Euson have been conducting interviews with some people that the health centers or village leaders have identified as having disabilities. The most dominant trend so far is that these people are having difficulty finding work. They have all reported that it is hard for them to harvest enough food to feed their families and can't travel very far to do any other kind of work.

One example is the family we spoke to today. The father of the family had broken his leg years ago but did not receive proper medical care. The bone did not set correctly and now his leg below the knee is very bowed, making it hard for him to walk or work. The family is very poor so the father is using their only bicycle so that he can move around and get to the salt fields to work for about $1/day. Since the father is using the only bicycle the son can no longer get to school so he has stopped attending. We've been told that a used bike costs about $30 so we would like to see if we can help out that way.

We have encountered many situations where early care would have reduced or eliminated the troubles people have here. It seems that the distance to health centers and the cost of care prevents people from seeking help when they need it. It is impossible not to feel compassion for families struggling to make a living in these conditions. However, everybody we have encountered appears to be very resourceful and they do seem to be finding ways to cope and adapt to any dissability.

We have also benefitted from the warmth and generosity of the families we have spoken with. Our host at one home climbed a tree in their yard and harvested some coconuts so that we could have a refreshing drink of coconut water while we visited. I think it would be hard to beat that kind of hospitality!

Staying in style

If you can afford to spend a bit of time off the beaten path, Kep is a beautiful quiet spot where the local children haven't yet been trained to beg. The seafood is fantastic at the "crab market" restaurants. I don't think it is possible to get any fresher crab-meat anywhere.

Spending time in a tropical paradise provided by the "Veranda Nature Resort" has exceeded my expectations of doing volunteer work in Cambodia. The place is friendly and professionally run. I have only good things to say and would recommend it to anybody planning a trip to the Kep area of Cambodia. We have become particularly fond of their banana flambe! It has become a frequent temptation at meal times. Euson made our server Dallah laugh as he mused "to flambe or not to flambe".

The Mission Day 1

Today was the first official day of business for the CambodiaCAN fact finding mission. Our itinerary was to have a morning meeting with the regional health authority and then spend the afternoon planning our activities for the next few weeks. When we arrived at the offices we discovered that a ceremony had pulled the representatives we were supposed to meet away from the office. So, back to home base at the Kep guest house "Veranda".

Buntheon, has been fantastic giving us lots of background on the area and the people and organizations that make sense for us to visit. The missed meeting in the morning gave us the chance to have a planning session before going back to the health offices for a second try at a meeting. We had a very productive meeting with Buntheon, Kunthy (Centre for Internation Health) and our translators Rot and San (I'm sure I've got the spelling wrong but I'll work on that for another post). We worked out our schedule for the next few weeks and plan to visit a few of the 16 villages that make up the Kep district. Our plans include visiting Village elders, schools, hospitals and a local NGO.

After our meeting we headed out for the health offices for our meeting and.... strike two. It seems a meeting wasn't in the cards today, so we've decided to press on with the visits to Kep villages before we meet with the health authority. I think we will be doing a lot of improvising since it will be hard for us to know everybody's schedules here.

This afternoon Crystal and Euson sat down with Rot and San and discussed how they would present the goals of the project to village elders and other stakeholders. It was important to come up with a clear picture of what rehab can do in the community. We got the impression that rehab is not widely understood or available here.

On the more personal side of things we've had some fantastic meals! We certainly won't be losing any weight over here. The seafood in the beach restaurants at Kep is fantastic! The sightseeing has been great too. I've posted a few pictures to my flickr photostream.

Here at Last

Whew what a long time to spend in the cramped interior of an airplane! Essentially 24 hours of travel later we are in Phnom Penh. Groggy, but exceptionally well fed. Bhuntoon, our contact here picked us up at the airport and delivered us to our guest house. He has been fantastic help already and we've barely even started.

We decided to try and stay up despite our fatigue and have been wandering around the city near the National Museum. We had a fantastic lunch at Friends "The Restaurant". Then turned down something like 1000 offers for cyclo taxi rides to who knows where. Know at four oclock in the afternoon it just might be bedtime.

Tomorrow sounds like it will be a big day since we will be taking the 3 hour journey into Kep and will find out who our interpreters and drivers will be for the next week. I'm not sure how I'm going to like riding on the back of a motorcycle. I'll have to work on my ability to release control. On the other hand it is probably much safer to have somebody driving who is familiar with the total lack of comprehensible traffic rules.

Packing Flurry

Only one more sleep until we leave for Cambodia and the pre-departure planning and packing panic is setting in. I don't think I've got time to get everything done so I may as well start my first blog post!

I'm getting ready to accompany Crystal (my wife) on a vacation / volunteer trip to Kep Cambodia. We're heading over to do some fact finding for what we hope will be an ongoing program to help provide rehab care for those with disabilities in Cambodia. The project is going to focus on the Kep area which is south west of Phnom Pen. Crys and our friend Euson will be travelling as volunteer physiotherapists for CambodiaCan. I'm going as a tourist slash odd-job helper outer.

Well, I've got to get back to packing, but the preview I was able to get through other peoples pictures sure looks interesting: