Starting work

So time seems to have flown a bit since I started here and I haven’t had much time to email or post (sorry mum!) but I will try and catch up a bit now…

The hospital that I’m working at was originally founded in 1997 by an Italian NGO called Emergency.  It was started to treat victims of war and landmines, so was set up as a surgical trauma hospital. As the war ended and now the amount of landmine injuries has thankfully decreased somewhat, the hospital continued treating trauma patients, the majority of which are from road traffic accidents, in particular motorbike accidents. As it no longer fit the description of what Emergency does and the government didn’t want to take it over the handa foundation took over the hospital in 2012, and that’s who I am working for now.

 The hospital has an ED, an OT which I don’t know much about yet, an ICU, a men’s surgical ward, a women and children’s ward, and a ward for patients with infections. There is also an outpatient medical clinic, a lab and they are currently building an endoscopy unit. For CT scans we send the patients to one of the clinics in the area.

We are also about to open a new wing which will have medical ICU patients and medical patients. As we start to bring medical patients into the hospital we are trying to do some teaching about medical patients and their needs, we are also trying to implement some of the structure and infrastructure and standards of the kind of hospitals that we have come from. This is a very interesting task and there are many challenges involved, not least of all my lack of khmer language skills (although I have my first lesson on Thursday!!).

 I feel funny being respected in this hospital and listened to by nurses with so much more experience than me, simply because I am white and ‘western’. I forgot to tuck my septum piercing away this morning for the first few hours and no one commented… I wonder what people think of me this funny western woman with no idea of khmer language or culture. I am really keen to learn more, to be able to talk to the nurses and patients and get a better feel for who they are and how they work.

So anyway, my role as I am learning, is to work with the existing ICU and the new medical/ICU wards, their NUMs and staff to implement new policy, start talking about nursing education and how we can get that going, try to fill any gaps in education with the staff, and assist the NUM’s to become NUM’s as this is a relatively new role here, as well as trying to create a culture of critical thinking, problem solving, self reflection and improvement and respect for one another.

This is all intensified I guess by the fact that almost everyone we are working with has lived though the khmer rouge, it’s hard to imagine the difference between the three young Australian and American nurses who I’m pretty sure all grew up in comfortable middle class ways and have only a few years each of in hospital clinical experience and our Khmer counterparts whose lives I don’t know much about yet.

I was pretty intimidated by the job when I first heard what it was, and rightfully I feel, I do not have the qualifications or experience to be doing this kind of thing, I know my knowledge is lacking and there is a lot I need to refresh and work on, but I think that the value I have is mainly in the fact that I have worked in well run, high standard, well resourced hospitals with a strong idea of professional nursing, and that experience is what I have to offer and try and teach about at the same time as hopefully learning some skills form the staff, and yea… working together I guess.

I decided to just be positive and do my best, I know many people who could do this job much better than me, but I am here and I am of no expense to the hospital, so I will just do my best! I have decided to just be positive and try things and believe in myself, I have had a lot of lovely feedback from my friends telling me that things like that I have value because I am level headed and listen to people, and so I am listening to them and trying to trust in myself and my ability to hopefully do a half decent job!

Sorry this is so long and scrappy! My head goes slightly at a million miles an hour with these long intermittent pauses, I have also been having fun making new friends, I went to Siem Reap for the weekend and love riding my bike around Battambang, especially on cool days with the wet season rains. It’s lovely staying with Nat, her house is lovely, and I miss and love you guys so much!

X

C

 

Travelling with my sister

So Keda and I actually travelled quite well together! I think we both had our misgivings about how we would go being such different people, but I found, stick us together with our packs and a tatty map and we quite happily bump along together. We both enjoyed Phnom Penh more than we thought we would, and neither of us were particularly smitten with the delights of Siem Reap, (The delights lessened further by suspecting that I might be a bit sick but feeling ok and going out only to realise that no, I need to sit down before I pass out/vomit and having to get some poor tuk tuk driver to drive me home).

Things got harder when we got to Battambang and it finally started to sink in that I am going to be living here for a time, and I had little idea of what I would be doing or if I was capable! Keda says I got more intense, I say she got more annoying :P

It was really lovely having Keda come and see the town and take me out for dinner J and squabble like siblings together, I think we both had a great time and when I put her hungover and bleary onto the bus this morning I realised I will miss her little chattery presence J

 

So here are some pictures of us having fun together :)

Awesome! swimming in the rain in a rooftop pool, look at our happy grins!!

(Words fail me trying to caption this...)

                                                                              

And you can check out Keda's version of events at  Keda's blog

Are you ready for my first Cambodia inspired joke!?

So Keda and I were enjoying the neon delights of Siem Reap's tourist bars last night and young Keda got herself rather inebriated....

This morning upon waking she asked me 'How did I get home last night?' to which I promptly replied,

'Don't worry Keda, I tuk tuk you home'

*Keda would like me to remind you this is a joke - all characters are fictional, all scenes entirely whimsical, any similarity you think this may bear to real-life experiences are ENTIRELY FIGMENTS OF YOUR IMAGINATION!

Free the Bears!

So I may have been a little dubious of the ‘free the bears’ day, thinking it might be some weird tourist focussed “volunteering” with the bears kinda situation, and in a way it was, but in a way I liked, I guess.

We got picked up in the morning by some of the keepers (and their dog Rosie! so nice to play with a puppie) and one other aussie girl and drove out to the sanctuary. It is in 25000ish hectares of protected forest, which also has enclosures run by the government for lots of other animals, monkeys, birds, elephants, lions etc. The bear section is run by the ‘free the bears’ charity which was founded by an Australian woman called Mary who saw something about bear bile farming on TV and decided to do something about it, eventually leading to the organisation today which has a few sanctuary’s across south east asia for bears rescued from bile farms, resteraunts (bear paw soup), dancing bears and those from the exotic pet trade.

                                                   

Currently they can’t re-release the bears as poachers trapped the only bears that they tried to release and one of the bears died of it’s injuries.

The aim of the “volunteer” program seems to be mainly to educate the “volunteers” about what free the bears does and to let us do a few activities related to the bears (like preparing feed balls, and hiding scatterfeed in the bears enclosures for them. It was pretty fun! I liked climbing around the enclosure hiding food and then watching them find it… but I think mainly this post should be cute bear pics so…

                                              delicious bear snacks...

             Keda throwing our newly made snacks to the bears!

                          Bear checking out the snacks :)

                                                      

I also got into a fight with a monkey! we were near the cage of these massive pythons and a friendly monkey came over to say hi, turns out the monkey was a little over friendly and some of the other people ran off screaming... I thought that the monkey would back off, me being much larger and scarier then it but apparently not, so I hissed at feinted towards it and it hissed and feinted towards me until I realised I was trapped between the python cage and a big rock... and the monkey was still hissing and making to attack me (I realise I am probably about to get bitten by said monkey and briefly regret not having got a rabies shot) and then one of the friendly people starts pegging sticks at the monkey until it backs off. My pride took a bit of a knock at loosing a battle of will with a monkey!

 

 

 

 hiding food for the scatterfeed

 

 

The bears finding the food we hid :)

 

And yea, this happened...

Choeng Ek Killing fields and S21 prison

*this could be triggering* – It’s about the Khmer rouge, torture, murder and genocide - I am so sorry if these things have touched your life.

We visited Cheong Ek Killing fields near Phnom Penh, and S21 the torture prison in Phnom Penh. It was an intense experience, and I’m not sure I can really articulate or understand the experience, but I will try to share how I felt.

The Killing fields when we got there were felt peaceful, there were tree’s and grass and butterflies flying around, It was fairly quiet. We got the headsets that tell you about the different parts of the site and walked around the area listening to the audioguide.

It’s so hard for me to imagine in anyway what happened there, especially to relate a site that felt so peaceful to such cruelty and suffering.

 I can’t relate to the experience in any way and I think I am a very experiential person or learner. To imagine what happened I feel like I use a part of my brain that imagines the imagery of a story I read.

Having been lucky enough to never really have had my life or the life of my family, friends, loved one’s threatened, I just cannot understand how horrific it must have felt, and still be for the people who suffered under the Khmer rouge, My sister realised while we were there that the regime occurred within her lifetime, so all of the people her age and older had lived through it. It is so recent still, It almost amazes me to see so many people living their lives in what looks like normality and to know that there must still be such trauma and pain present.

I like to believe that people are good, to give them the benefit of the doubt, despite knowing in my head that people commit awful atrocities against each other, I just can’t reconcile this with the truth that these sort of things happen everywhere and often, and often go unreported/noticed/mourned. I know I am lucky to be so naïve, to never have been faced with what a person can do to another.

How  can humanity encase such beauty, wonder, generosity and love and also such violence hatred, and brutality? And I suspect it’s not even always clear cut the differences, I don’t like to think of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people, I think I have elements of both as do most people I suspect.  Are the people who worked in the Khmer rouge messed up, ill, evil, or were they terrified of what would happen to them if they didn’t obey? In which case who masterminded it? Are there single people to blame like Pol Pot, or Hitler who somehow made millions of people kill, and terrorise millions of others?

 Part of me doesn’t want to understand that brutality in a real sense.

We also visited the torture prison S21.

I don’t think I want to write about it. It was awful, people being absolutely destroyed in every sense of the word. It just makes me question how I see us human beings, I don’t know if I can fit these things into my worldview and still be hopeful and believe in myself and other people.

But does that disrespect the memory and experience of the millions of people throughout the world who have been faced with this sort of violence and terror firsthand?

I have no answers, this is my attempt to share how It felt.

 

 

Leaving the country.

So It felt pretty weird to be able to go so quickly form one life, home, country, culture etc. to the next in just 8 hours, I think especially as I had been so focused and wrapped up in life back home that I had barely thought about the fact that I was soon leaving the country without a return date!

One minute I was hanging out with the people I love and care about, so entrenched in the culture I'v been brought up in and share to varying degree's with the people around me and now I am in a country where I understand so little of the culture, the assumptions I feel I can make at home when I know that I can at least assume a shared country and gone, I don't know how to read peoples behaviour, facial expressions etc. I am a bit in the dark about what's appropriate, or how to be the person I want to be, how to relate to people in a polite respectful way. I think I will have a lot of learning to do. and in the meantime I will do my best with what I do know.

I also feel much more relaxed travelling now then I have in the past, I am not overthinking things so much, just trying to be open and willing to learn and to pick up on things when I can.

We (my sister Keda and I) stayed one night in Singapore with our brother Tim and his wife Jen. It was lovely to be back in Singapore, I love the food! and little India and getting to hang out with Tim and Jen who we don't see much of.

I also love the way that when I land in a new country I notice how it smells different, I loved getting off the plane and smelling Singapore! and the smell of Tim and Jen's place, I love the way smells can evoke such feelings and memories.

It was a perfect stop-over in Singapore, Thanks so much Tim and Jen!!

The next day we flew to Phnom Penh, and headed into the city. I am happy to be here. Have to write more on the next few days later...