Open Head Wound (Warning: Graphic) or Keeping the Pain Inside

I have a knack for creating intriguing blog titles, don't I? I mean, you're reading this. Unfortunately, this one really is about what it suggests. Don't worry, this isn't about my head.

This morning, I woke up with a new scrape. It was nothing big, but it was something that back in my other life, I would have complained about and thought about all day. I didn't really think much about it and just dealt with it as I have been since acclimating to this new life. I was starting to think that I've been much more resilient to pain (and complaining) as the people of this country very much are. Below are two examples (one male, one female) of why the Cambodian people meeuhn kla'hahn (or: are brave).

This morning: I was at the health center fraternizing with the staff having a merry ol' time. The receptionists were chatting away about their favorite soap (opera) while the guy who does administers immunizations was asking if it would be easier if I could give him a visa rather than having to go to Phnom Penh to apply for one. After a long explanation of the process, a police car pulled up: everyone stopped what they were doing. This hasn't happened (at least in the morning hours) in the past 8 1/2 months (since I've been at site). Four policemen step out of the car; they open the car driver's side back door, and out walks a kid (I find out he's 22), dripping blood from somewhere on the top of his head. Half of his face was stained with drying blood with a good portion caked on to his eyebrows. The staff immediately brings him into one of the rooms and lies him down on the bed. One staff member cuts away most of the hair from the wound, which is about an inch 1/2 in diameter. Mind you, there are know electric trimmers. Also to keep in mind, there is hardly any medication for the pain. As she dripped some hydrogen-peroxide into the wound, he shut his eyes tight and said nothing. After she blotted the wound, she began to suture the poor kid up whilst he was cringing, his feet moving back and forth, tightening up. Yet, he didn't make a sound. He's now off at Mongkol Borey Hospital (the best provincial (this one) hospital in the country).

A month ago: Again, I was sitting in the health center on a regular Wednesday morning when one of the midwives came out with a patient, holding her new born baby. What?! When did this happen? I asked her, "When did this woman have her baby?" Her response: "Two minutes ago." No screaming! No sounds at all! I was oblivious to the birth of a new baby. It's hard to believe, but in Cambodia, women silently weep while they give birth.

For a country torn by war and genocide by a group that only left the country 13 years ago, you can tell. It's in ingrained deep into their emotions. It's as if all of the suffering of their past has sucked them dry. They are an emotional people, they just don't show it. When they do, though, it's very, very serious. Just today, right before the 22 year-old guy came to the health center, one of my midwives asked how I was. After I told her I was fine, I asked her how she was. She was not happy, she said. I asked her why, and she told me it was because her father was still very sick. He has been sick for six months, now, and it does not look hopeful. Her eyes were red, and she just stared down at the table trying to hold back the tears.

I don't think I've necessarily learned anything new today, but I've certainly been reminded of a lot.

Keep well and

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

The Rainy Season is Here!

I think it is safe to say that the rainy season has begun. I was a little hesitant to state this a few weeks ago, but it is undeniable, now. It has rained everyday, quite intensely, for the past two weeks. The rice paddies are beginning to turn bright green again, and the weather is cooling off. Finally. Finally, I can wear more clothing to bed without contemplating keeping the windows open at night. I've coincidentally been eating more fish, but I won't officially connect the two, because you know, fish come from the sky. Anyhow, it's beautiful here.

If You Love Cute and Cuddly Dogs, You Might Not Want to Read this Blog Post

Last night, the bankers had a party in the backyard for one of the tellers who was moving to ACLEDA Bank Plc. in Poipet. They had all sorts of food and plenty of beer. Iced beer. There was ice-cold beer, and I didn't have to make it that way by diluting it with ice! It was absolutely delicious, even if Bayon beer is a sub-par lager. After awhile of chatting and one of the new guys stroking my nose and telling me it was beautiful, I decided to eat some beef. "Hey, this beef is delicious," I said. The reply, full of laughter, "Oh no! Garrett. That is special meat." Huh?! What is special me....hmmmmm. I may or may not have eaten dog meat. I also may or may not have liked it... So, for all of you dog loving people out there, I deeply apologize. Though, at the same time, I kind of don't. If you saw what they look like out here, you may or may not agree with me.

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

Safety and Security & Cross Cultural Training Intern

Last year marked the first year that PC/Cambodia had a PCV intern for PST (K4 PST). There were two interns (out-going K2 PCVs). One was the Safety and Security & Cross Cultural (SSCC) Training Intern while the other was the English Teacher and Teacher Training (ETTT) Training Intern. This year, there is one additional intern: Community Health Education (CHE), as the K4 group marked the first year of full-fledged health volunteers. I was selected to be the SSCC Training Intern

What is this position, you might inquire?

During PST, there are a myriad of sessions (there’s that word, “myriad” again) that focus on the cultural norms of Cambodia and how they differ from the United States, i.e. celebrations, clothing, gestures, body language, gifts, what it means to be alone in a room with a person of the opposite sex. That leads me to the second half of the job, Safety and Security, which focuses on what risks are feasible and which ones are not worth taking. When should you head back to your hotel in Phnom Penh? How many people should you be out with? How do you keep safe in your community? Who do you contact in order to make that happen? Should something actually happen to you, what’s the procedure? I’ll be leading sessions alongside our Safety and Security Officer and other Peace Corps staff. The position technically starts on July 7th when the ETTT and CHE interns move to Takeo Province (where training will be) to begin preparing for PST. There are a couple of meetings beforehand, but the Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) will arrive around July 25th, when I will intermittently be in and out of Takeo Province, where training will be held. I would guess that I will be there around 30% of the time. We’ll see how that actually ends up. Because of various (and deep) budget cuts, and my being a currently serving volunteer, my position will be part time. PST lasts from the end of July until the end of September.

Anyhow, I’m very, very excited to be a part of training and work alongside Kristin (CHE) and Greg (ETTT) and the K5 PCTs. I’m anticipating their arrival, and overall, it should be a really fun time.

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

Mid-Service Training (MST)

So, here are couple of things that happened at our (K4’s) Mid-Service Training (MST):

Day 1:

We started off MST by meeting at the Peace Corps (PC) office for a couple of activities in the new Information Resource Center (IRC…there are a lot of acronyms in PC). This was built by and collaborated with our Language Coordinator. It has resources on topics ranging from microenterprise to sustainable health. It only lasted about 10 min, and the time allotted was 4 hours long, so most of us just spent much of our time relaxing in the PCV lounge/library/computer center.

We had lunch served at a different location, the Pre-School Teacher Training Center (PSTTC), for both the K3 and K4 groups. We watched the uncut footage of the PC/Cambodia 50th Anniversary video that was going to be shown at the embassy. It featured six volunteers, their 50th Anniversary projects and them speaking about it in Khmer; the embassy version only featured three of them. After the viewing, we had a PC quiz followed by some ground rules and logistics (including goals and Close of Service (COS) objectives) to go over to begin the sessions of MST. The first actual session was a health slideshow presentation by our Peace Corps Medical Officer (PCMO), Joanne about dangerous snakes. It featured some pretty gnarly pictures of snake bites! After that we all went back to the hotel, changed, and went straight to the U.S. Embassy for the 50th Anniversary party, where they served delicious h’or d’erves (SP!!!) and had many speeches by some ministry people and Jon Darrah (PC/Cambodia Country Director (CD)). It also began to some American National Anthem and Khmer National Anthem singing. Both groups did extraordinarily well, and we look forward to singing again at the 4th of July celebration also at the embassy!

Day 2:

The second day started off with a session that another PCV, Kurt and I facilitated entitled “How to Work with Your Counterparts”. This was actually not a very accurate title, as none of us could possibly be authorities on that subject, considering how diligently we’re all working on figuring out just how to do that! It’s a long process, but it seems like it’s coming along. We decided to curtail our discussion towards what we could recommend to the new K5 Community Health Education (CHE) PCVs coming in July. Following Kurt and I was Population Services International (PSI) who talked about their mobile video units that come into poor villages and do day long projects about specific health topics. One PCV has already been in contact with them and had them come to their site and said it was a success. We all enjoyed the presentation, and I think most of us will be contacting them in the near future. After that session, we talked about monitoring and evaluation (always a thrill), then braked before coming back to learn about teaching large-level classrooms/classroom management with the Senior English Language Fellow (SELF), Joel Wiskin. This is a position that is supported through the embassy but comes from Georgetown (correct me if I’ve got the wrong university). He was very astute and taught us in a very encouraging and entertaining way. Lunch followed, then a session on what the Small Project Assistance (SPA…I told you; there are a lot!) committee is looking for. The SPA grant ranges anywhere from $50-$2000 for projects during our service. Basically, if it’s related to grade-school level students or teaching microenterprise and the community can come up with 25% of the needed funds (including in-kind donations), the SPA committee (funded by US AID) will review it and consider it for approval. After that we had a guest speaker from RACHA (Reproductive and Child Health Association) come and talk about what we already knew from their organization and then learned a bit from another PCV, Helen about working with Village Health Volunteers (VHVs) and the Village Health Support Group (VHSG). Following this we learned about basic first aid from our resident nurse and PCV, Taylor. Taylor’s blunt and sarcastic, so it made for a very entertaining session about basic first aid. i.e. “Okay. So, it’s pretty easy: if they’re breathing, that’s good, right?! Good. Glad we got that. If they’re not? Okay. You probably want to do something about that.”

Day 3:

This was probably the most useful day (I think the others would agree). We started off the session by discussion potential secondary projects we are in the process of executing now or are planning to do in the future. It was a useful bit of time in that we learned about what others were doing at their sites/in their provinces, and it inspired us to consider projects we had not thought about before. Following that, we split up into groups to discuss the many aspects of Pre-Service Training (PST), i.e. what was successful, what wasn’t, and suggestions for the incoming group of trainees. I facilitated the group focusing on cross cultural training. I thought it was very productive, and I look forward to working with PC in implementing those changes we found necessary. It was especially useful as I’ll be the new Safety and Security & Cross Cultural (SSCC) Training Assistant for the K5 PST (I’ll get to that in my next post). After lunch, I left for an hour to do my mid-service Language P???? I??? (LPI…basically a language test to see how far we’ve come since the end of PST). I’m not sure how I did, as I haven’t heard back from our Language Coordinator and Cross Cultural Trainer (LCCC) yet. After that we had five sessions to choose from that ran simultaneously and repeated three times: Chances for Cambodia (an NGO that supports poor young Cambodian girls to further their studies), GIZ Toolkit (a German volunteer organization), SharePoint Information (a Microsoft program we use to share documents and information updates between the staff and PCVs), Volunteerism, and a session on the PC Fellows Program/Applying to Graduate School which was run by our very own PCV, who was the head of all graduate admissions at a very big university back in the states. That was probably the most helpful and interesting. After that, we all filled out our MST evaluation forms, then celebrated before heading back home.

So, let’s see if you were following along:

At the beginning of MST we had an open house for our new IRC before hanging out in the PC lounge. We all went to the PSTTC to begin a general Q&A session about MST and to review our goals and objectives for COS. Afterwards, our PCMO held a session followed by a SS information session. The next day we had two sessions, one of which about working with your counterparts lead by two CHE PCVs before another session by an NGO, PSI. We then learned about classroom management form the SELF from the US. When that session ended, we learned about SPA grants from a group of PCVs. We split up again, and the CHE PCVs learned very interesting information from both RACHA and another PCV on working with VHVs and the VHSG before learning about CPR from our RN PCV. Finally, on the third day, we discussed SSCC during our PST for the K5s PST before they become PCVs. After that, I had my LPI before going to learn about a specific set of skills from GIZ. We then filled out our MST evaluations before going back to the PC lounge at the PC office to relax before going back to our hotel to change and celebrate.

How did you do?

Hope all is well, and I’ll

Talk to you soon,
Garrett

A Laptop Screen Has Been Replaced

So, I replaced my laptop screen. My old one basically looked like a large magnet attacked it. There was about a 3 inch bar of psychedelic color explosions going on. It seemed I had two choices:

1. Replace the laptop screen.

2. Save some money but take the chances of having permanent vision damage.

I went with option #1.

It was pretty swift and easy. The guest house I was staying at is by a street full of computer repair/sale shops. They were able to replace it in a little less than 24 hours. It's a good thing I'm forced to speak Khmer everyday, as they didn't speak any English other than, "What nation you from?" They were pleasant to deal with though.

I'm going to enjoy this spotless screen for the next 37 min before I will inadvertently cause some sort of damage (smudges, fingerprints, lunch) incurs.

Talk to you soon,

Garrett

I Can Barely See What I'm Typing

So, I'm not really quite sure what's going on with my laptop. Everything works fine, minus the staticy, lines of color that exist on the monitor. I'll probably be bringing it in today or tomorrow.

Wish me luck,

Garrett