When I left
Battambang it was sweltering, the unbroken cycle of sweltering days and muggy
hot nights, a times, took the last of our patience and left us irritable ,
bored and unsatisfied.
Towards the end of
the hot season I headed back to Australian winter for a month, for the most
part savouring hot showers, great food, company of family and friends, and
beanies, scarves boots and jumpers.
I returned to the
comparative cool of the start of rainy season, the wonderful time when the
roads turn into treacherous collections of cavernous potholes, all hidden by
muddy water, when you can’t walk anywhere without acquiring a stylish spray of
mud up the back of your legs or pants, and of course, where the river swells
up, tumultuous and fast flowing, claiming, rubbish, tree’s, electrical wires, anything
else that comes close to the muddy edge.
The relative cool
is a relief, the breezes and cooler morning are more than welcomed by my
usually sweat sticky skin, but each big storm I fear for a repeat of last years’
tragedies, our hospital emergency department overfull as tree’s come down on
families, the usually dangerous roads, exacerbated by the rain, killing and
maiming people, and the malevolent shifting of mines still hidden in the land,
moved with each season.
It is nice to be
back, and it feels weird to be preparing to leave to go and make a life in
Australia, in a new town, a new community, for an unknown period of time. It’s
hard to say goodbye, to tell people I’m leaving, compounded by the fact that
this is an option I have, that a lot of others don’t.
I don’t want to
think about leaving forever, not cycling into the hospital grounds and being
handed a paper towel (and occasionally a hilareous anecdote, or request for a
kangaroo) by the guards at the gate, not joking and working with staff at the
hospital, not wandering into the ward, not speaking our workplace mix of
khmenglish, gestures and so many jokes, not getting coffee and spending lazy
hot Saturdays at kinyei, not hanging by the river in the afternoons, not
learning more khmer, not seeing the hospital evolve and change, not working
with the team we have for the goals we’ve made, not having moto adventures on
the weekend, returning home at dusk, dirty sunburnt and exhausted.
So instead I think of when I could return and
placate myself with those possibilities, and start to pack
