Just East of Poipet

Written on August 31st, 2010.

So, I live really freakin’ close to Thailand. You can even tell in how much spicier the food is here. I would describe the town in three words: green, dusty, beautiful. Green: because it’s situated between endless rice paddies. Dusty: because it’s situated on National Road 5, the main way into Thailand, so there’s a lot of dirt in between. Beautiful: because this town is awesome.

Three reasons:
one; I asked a man if the shop he was chillin’ at had iced coffee, and he said it didn’t but that a place just across the street (and when I say he said it was just across the street, I mean he just point and said “ughho hkyuhh” if that’s the way you spell that). When I couldn’t find it he had someone run across the busy street and help me do so. When I got to the coffee shop and introduced myself to the woman working there (who by the way got a chair out and made the usual set-up for when it was busy for it was not at all busy, and in fact seemed to be going about her day-to-day chores), it turned out that she was one of the four Village Health Support Group (VHSG) members. To those who don’t know, the VHSG are usually a small collection of people who do not work for the health center that help with village health outreach activities, sometimes just on their own. So now, Pauli, accent on the i, are friends. Maybe I will be able to do some outreach activities with her.
two; the health center that I’ll be working at for the next two years used to be a district hospital, meaning, it’s HUGE! They serve about 2,000 people per month, 3 communes, 27 villages and 21,690 people total. What that means: I’ll be riding my bicycle a lot. There are 12 rooms, 16 staff, vaccines, injections and medicines for TB, Hep B, hib, Tdap, Polio, ?, and ? I couldn’t understand because it was in Khmer. There is an entire communal house-type-thing situated 30 - 40 meter from the main building for people living with Tuberculosis, masks and all. There’s also a small building for outreach activites, one which I was able to observe from outside about malaria. The health center staff are all very, very friendly, and one of them actually speaks pretty okay English. This health center also has a post-natal resting room. This is VERY odd for a health center in Cambodia. In fact, everything I just said is very unlike the rest of the country. Most health centers have maybe 4 rooms with about 6 staff, maybe 7. I feel very spoiled. This place actually does 81 outreach activities quarterly (27/month), a mix between preventative and promotive. It seems the biggest issues in my town are malaria and TB. CRAZY!!!!! I don’t think you, the reader are really getting an accurate representation of Cambodia. Maybe you should read someone else’s blog.
three: my housing situation is pretty bomb. I live with just my host mother in the main house, and in the guest house (yeah, she owns a guest house) lives many of the bank staff who live there during the week, then go back home (to Battambang it seems most of them are from) on the weekends. They are all very friendly and play volleyball, so score. Did I mention that the bank was next door? Did I also mention that the bank is the one that the Peace Corps uses for transferring our monthly allowance. Score, again. P.s. the size of my site is a medium district town.

It seems I have electricity 24/7, so I will be able to Skype more easily with you. It looks like I’ll be buying an internet phone, which costs around $100. Then for about $5/month, I can get unlimited internet usage. It works via USB.

Well, that’s about it,
Garrett