a few updates

Today, the mosquitoes were attacking as usual at lunch, but my mom decided to do something about it. She said something about hitting the mosquitoes and I thought “Brilliant! She’s getting the mosquito racket.” She comes back with a can of raid and proceeds to spray under the table and over my legs with it. Aiming at the flying dexterous mosquitoes. I end up eating less than usual because I’m eager to go wash all the poison off my legs. Later she comes with the racket. Unfortunately, She drove the mosquitoes away already with the poison on my legs.

During girl’s leadership class today I found out one of my students went to Siem Reap City. I asked, “Is she coming back tomorrow?” They replied, “No, she’s not coming back until the 20^th. They sent her to work at a carwash so she can pay the tuition for her English classes next year.” I was very sad.

I've devoted a lot of time to my Girls' Class. Starting wayyy back before even April when we began writing the grant for the Camp GLOW(Girls Leading our World) in September. I've spent so much time with these girls that they still understand me when I completely butcher words in khmer and they no longer retain any resemblance to the actual spoken language. I've worried and sweat and I'm pretty sure my back is broken from all the hours I've spent hunched over a computer or a desk working on grants, logistics, lesson planning, evaluating, and translating. And hearing about this one girl possibly not being able to come because she has to work at a car wash?! It just makes me really want to cry. Life is so so hard for them. Just living is hard. Yesterday I wrote an email to my friends complaining about how hungry I was and how having giardia was horrible and I could barely do any work for the past week. Well I'm also super lucky to have PC pay for a nice home for me. Have a host mom that cares enough to make me three meals a day. Have a medical officer that gives me the right drugs, in the right doses, and holds my hand as I act like a total baby. I have an awesome boyfriend that will just talk to me on the phone when I feel bad and I have the freedom to go to a foriegn country and be a volunteer there. If I were a typical person from my village I would be suffering from giardia for two unbearable weeks. Google it. It's pretty bad and I'm sure you couldn't even imagine it. I would be hungry ALL the time. I would have to get up before dawn to go into the rice fields whether its a blazing 100 degrees or whether its monsooning. When I got home I would have to take care of my younger siblings and make the rice and cook the dinner. Then hopefully I'll have enough light to study and do my homework. In a few hours I'll be hungry again, but I can't eat cause there's no food left and I have giardia.If I'm lucky, my parents will let me take 3 hours from the middle of my day to bike down an impassable mud road in order to go to the free classes that strange foriegn lady teaches. Unfortunately, tomorrow I may be sent to Siem Reap or Thailand to work in a garment factory/ car wash/ gas station/ live in servant at someone's home.

My life in numbers.

Because everyone likes numbers:

36 hours it has rained in the last 3 days. I am not talking about drizzle. Full on monsoon rain.

16 number of mosquito bites I received last night at dinner. Dinner only lasts about 30 minutes.

31 more days until I celebrate my second birthday in Cambodia.

2 packets of instant noodles I had for dinner last night. My host mom cooked it for me as a nutritious meal with veggies.

15+/- 3 girls in my girls' health and leadership club

5 more days until I get to see NANDINI AND NGA in Thailand. EPIC.

.5 more days until Kurt bikes the 30 k to my site so that my host mom will cook us a more delicious than usual lunch.

4 episodes of Band of Brothers I intend to watch today

2 days spent trying to teach kids in my English class how to play pictionary like cut throat americans. Fail.

70 cents is the cost of GPRS internet on my iphone per day. Luckily, I get it free upgrade to 3G and perhaps not so legally tether it to my comp.

2 dogs that like to chase me every morning on my run.

1 set of sheets I haven't washed in a month because It's really hard to find a dry place around here.

1 time my host mom woke me up in the middle of the night (2am) because she was scared our (concrete) house would fall down due to hurricane like winds. She then made me evacuate to the small wooden shack in front of my (concrete) house.

8-10 hours is my average nights sleep.

3 nights is how long I can go with 6hrs of sleep a night before I collapse and become completely useless as a human being. Remember that time when I used to get up for crew/yoga, go to class, study, and then go party at night? Those days are clearly over.

1 year is about how long I've been here and potentially about how long I have left!

Can I get diarrhea from this?

So, funny anecdote. This summer I've been super busy cause I started teaching summer classes. Basically, I go to work as usual in the mornings but on top of that I teach 2-3 hours a day four times a week. I would teach more than that, but I also make the curriculum, write out all the lesson plans, and have to work to translate them into khmer. This takes about every ounce of free time I have, not to mention trying to juggle 2 and soon maybe 3 conferences we are currently planning. But anyway, one of my classes is English usage and one is a girls' empowerment class/ health class. This past week a few students were missing because grade 9 was doing testing. So I decided I'd just do some typical health lessons, nothing too fancy. One of the most common illnesses in Camobodia is diarrhea. A lot of babies actually dies from it because they become dehydrated and also sometimes there's a cholera outbreak. So we were doing the lesson, having a lot of fun talking about eating poop. For those of you that don't know, most cases of diarrhea here are from eating poop or something call the oral-fecal cycle. Someone has diarrhea and doesn't wash they're hands or they poop and flys touch it. Here, the cows poop everywhere too so it's impossible to not have poop in your food from flys and other bugs. Usually it doesnt make a difference, especially if you have a fully developed immune system and a full complement of good bacteria in your intestines combating bad bacteria. However, sometimes its not enough or you're a tiny baby with a tiny immune system. Then you get diarrhea and let me tell you folks, it's not fun to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes. Yes, that happens... a lot. anyway, this lesson was going as usual until one student raises her hand and asks me a question I had never imagined hearing. The question was, " What if a dog eats poop and then I want to eat the dog. Will I get diarrhea because the dog ate poop?" My answer: "No, you should be fine as long as you cook the dog well. If we cook our food well it will kill all the bad bacteria." Typical day in Cambodia or any other dog eating country. Trust me, after you meet the dogs here you'll want to eat them too.

fun facts

Things people hold in their hands while driving a moto or riding a bike:
-knives (yes, more than one)
-a saw
-a small hand axe
-a baby
-the hand of someone on a parallel moto, bike, and/or tuk tuk
-their moto helmet

Today, a drunk school director (from another school) attended my English class. He was recently in a moto accident and his wife wanted him to stop drinking to prevent future accidents. You draw your own conclusions.He said he is too busy to study English normally because of work. I think he's too busy because of all the stitches he's getting at the health center.

I had a dream that I had hair on my legs. I know unreal, right?

I have a mosquito racket, it's shaped like a tennis raquet, and it electrocutes mosquitoes. I kill at least 5 mosquitoes a day. And yet there are still more every time I come back.

06/23/2011

I'm teaching myself about economics through some textbooks I finagled from Asia Foundation. Don't worry, if I figure this stuff out maybe some Cambodian students can eventually benefit. But, I've gone through chapter 1 and so far it just seems like a bunch of jargon used to talk about a bunch of theoretical graphs that use fake data that doesn't seem to really explain much about the world that I didn't already know, but maybe the "how to get actual useful data" part is coming soon. Of course, I decided to start with macro so maybe its my fault and really i just want to understand what people are talking about. I don't think these tools will particularly change how I analyze the world but it'll go far in helping me understand all the talking going on by people that make policy decisions.

I have noticed the amount of redundancy between fields and the subtle differences in definitions or practice. For example, there's something called the "Other-things-equal" assumption which most scientists just call holding things constant...I don't really understand the name either since the other factors are not equal. They are just constant. Do we really need to name this assumption a misleading name? Really I don't think it needs a name at all.

I think syntax and wording is the most frustrating aspect of any science because we insist on using an inexact system to explain things in exact terms. I think the field of learning and memory in neuroscience is a prime example of how syntax and wording holds the field back. Depending on the researcher, the definition of working memory changes. Depending on the researcher, the term working memory may never even be used, but instead is replaced by a number of other terms. This is a result of scientists trying to use words to define, what is currently, an abstract concept. The problem with this is that you then have to use an inexact term to conduct stringent experiments and assign specific cause and effects and exact facts to this term.The intrinsic vagueness in the term then creates debate when trying to explain the results. And then if you crossover fields you get the same concepts with different terms and slightly different interpretations. Even the "scientific method" was different in the Economics book. Typically, in a science class you learn that you ask a question first. That is usually step one in the scientific method. Apparently in economics you make observations and you jump straight to the hypothesis. Sort of skips the whole scientific curiosity/inquiry part of things.

I've noticed that lately I think about things much more critically than before. And yet I think I'm also much more of an idealist/optimist than before. I'm not sure how this paradox came about, but I definitely believe in an ideal and I believe the ideal can happen. At the same time, I think it's important to constantly assess and change in order to reach this ideal. A realistic optimist. Hopefully, someone that gets things done.

06/20/2011

So, the UNICEF well that was outside my Health Center, which I'm pretty sure is less than a decade old, broke. It was a nice handpump well, meaning that it broke your back everytime you wanted any water.Now, a health center with no water is sort of a problem. Things are not very clean when you have no water. So today I show up at work and the whole pump part of the structure has been removed. Instead, they built one of those bucket/pulley systems out of a few logs. It looked like it came out of a movie. I actually haven't seen that in Cambodia yet. But, the actual well wasn't built yet. Instead they brought in about 6 giant meter high concrete rings that would presumably be put under ground for the well. Except, they had 4 extra rings and the well was already well above ground. Plus, there's a large broken PCV pipe in the middle of it that used to be attached to the pump. I looked into the well this morning and there was a practically naked guy standing in about a meter deep and handing buckets of dirt to a guy above him. I didn't realize this was how people dug wells...I don't think it's how people are supposed to dig wells. They hit water pretty soon, mostly cause its the middle of rainy season and water is everywhere. I'm pretty sure that in a few months this well is gonna dry up. Really, all they needed to do was fix the pump since UNICEF had built a deep well that regularly got water during dry season.

My town has a chronic water problem since none of our wells are dry season wells. Most people, including me, get all their bathing and cooking water from the pond. I drink filtered rain water, but other people drink straight from the pond. For some reason people keep building shallow wells when it clearly doesn't work and sometimes they build deep wells but during rainy season so they have no idea if they'll get water during dry season. Usually they don't. Plus, just building deep wells could lead to arsenic poisoning which is typically a problem nearer rivers. So much time and money could be saved if they just hired an expert one time to do an assessment. Just once, get someone that actually knows what they're doing to do the job they've been trained to do.

On a lighter note, crabs keep their crab babies near their gills. I found that out today.Though I'm not entirely convinced they were crab babies and not just crab parasites.Also, crabs come in purple!
I live with this really cute 3 year old and she's really getting good at talking.I think living with kids has really made me interested in Child Development. I only studied it a bit in college. Compared to how long behavior change and knowledge learning takes in adults, children are geniuses. Every one of them is a genius. I've compared coming to Cambodia to being a kid again, but everytime I see a baby trying to figure out the world I am just amazed. They have to figure out our spoken language, our physical gestures, our arbitrary societal
rules, and they do it with such speed and cuteness. I think I would go into pediatrics just for the chance to see this in action all the time, though maybe pediatric neurology. I just hate saying that because it seems so elite and specialist and I know general practice is where the need is. I'm sure a small population of well-off Americans desperately need pediatric neurologists and those that are not well-off probably have
bigger concerns like malnutrition, which may eventually lead to a need for a neurologist they will never be able to afford.

Two funny things and one sad thing.

1. A few days ago I was running (for exercise) and I saw a water buffalo make a break for freedom. Water buffaloes are pretty massive. This farmer was leading two waterbuffalo down a slight incline and one of the water buffalo used its massive inertia to break free. Up until then I don't think I've ever seen a grown water buffalo do more than walk slowly. But this guy sprinted across the field. He made it about 500 meters before he stopped. Either he thought he had gone far enough or he got tired. I think the latter is likely since they don't move much on a regular basis. A sedentary lifestyle will not get you very far.

2. Today, this child was the last patient of the day. The kid was clearly malnourished and the entire time he was passed out, being held by his mom. He was sleeping, but the kind of sleep where you can tell he's tired cause he probably hasn't eaten much in a while. On his head was a large rash that ranged from his ear lobe to the top of his shaved head. There was scabbing where he had scratched and also some kind of crust that the mom may have applied as a traditional cure. I saw her waiting to get meds so I try to chit chat a litte. Always awkward. Typical conversation questions here are things that you would never ask in America, sometimes it's actually illegal. So I asked, what village are you from, what's wrong with your kid? I still remember how awkward it was the first time I had to ask those questions. It just seems sort of wrong to make chit chat when there's a starving child in front of you and no one seems to be doing anything about it. The midwife comes out and asks her how she got here. She rode on the back of a vehicle. By vehicle I mean an engine attached to a metal cart, literally. She begged them for a free ride and they let her off at the Wat. Then she walked to the HC carrying her kid. To get back she has to beg someone else for a ride. The midwife gave her 1000 riel, the equivalent of 25 cents. It costs maybe 5000 Riel, about 1.25 to get back. Plus, she didn't have the health insurance so she paid 1500R for the meds already. I was on my way out so I walked with her back to town, we were going the same way. Along the way I asked her about her family. She was pregnant with her 3rd child. From what I could understand she begs for a living, at least right now she does because one of the temples is having a festival that attracts a lot of people. On the walk, I gave her 5000R. I gave it to her because I knew she needed it. Because in the end the only thing that will solve her problems is more money. Education, health insurance, other schemes will not do anything if she doesn't have more money. It sort of just seems so futile to try to fix things when no one can even really touch the biggest issue. When we parted she reached out for my hand and wished me good fortune and to meet again. I don't know if she held my hand because I gave her money or if it was because I walked with her. I always hope for the latter but I don't blame her for the former. It's a bit ironic that her trip to the HC made her almost as much money as she would make working in the rice fields all day.

3. So, I've been teaching in the villages these past few weeks and as an icebreaker I have everyone go around and tell me their names, favorite vegetable, and whether they prefer cats or dogs. I was in a village last week when halfway through the activity a woman replied that she doesn't know if she likes cats or dogs cause she's never eaten a cat before. The villagers had thought I was asking if they preferred dog meat or cat meat since the previous question was about vegetables. I had to clarify that the question was whether you loved dogs more or cats more. I could see that everyone thought this was a much more appropriate question.