Today was my last day with B. This morning she stood at the door of the bathroom holding the frame for balance. Her pants were unbuttoned and her shirt was hiked up. I could see her belly button ring. She said, "I am destined to live a miserable, worthless life. I will never be happy." I told her to have hope that things are going to get better. Her head was down. She asked, "What is hope?"
I wish I had told her that its the feeling she has when we drive down 15-501 South with the windows down, singing to the Dixie Chicks' Wide Open Spaces and she opens her arms out, as if taking in all that space in the world for her. But I didn't say anything. I just shook my head.
B's Grandma came to visit. B is one of 18 grandchildren. Her grandma has 11 great grandchildren and a 2 month old great-great granddaughter. It had been a long time since she had visited Brittany. Just before she left B said, "Sometimes in the morning I stand at the top of the stairs and think that if I jumped no one would care." B was yelling with tears in her voice. She cannot cry but her grandmother can. They held hands. Her Grandma told her to look up. She talked about Jesus' suffering and said that He is everywhere. She asked her to keep faith.
When B was in the bathroom her grandmother asked me if she talked like this very often now. I said, "She talks like this everyday." We both shook our heads and said, "Its real hard." Brittany's dad came to take her to see the neuro-psychiatrist. Me and grandma drove home.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
I'm a Real Person
He wonders if his barbie dolls can sweat. He knows they are nice people and they talk to him sometimes. He likes to talk to his barbie dolls. He really just loves talking. Yesterday he said, " I love people. I love world."
I said, "Yes, I love being in the Earth."
"NO NO Elizabeth, not IN the Earth! We are, like, ON the Earth!" He proclaimed.
I had slipped the wrong preposition. I agreed and we proceeded to drive. You cannot control the traffic.
Yesterday there was a quiet moment in the car. We were on our way to his golf practice in Hillsborough. He looked out the window and said, "I love the world. I just love the trees. The trees make me think of dancing. Do you think the trees dance? I dance with the trees."
I said, "Yes, I love being in the Earth."
"NO NO Elizabeth, not IN the Earth! We are, like, ON the Earth!" He proclaimed.
I had slipped the wrong preposition. I agreed and we proceeded to drive. You cannot control the traffic.
Yesterday there was a quiet moment in the car. We were on our way to his golf practice in Hillsborough. He looked out the window and said, "I love the world. I just love the trees. The trees make me think of dancing. Do you think the trees dance? I dance with the trees."
Counting Sheep
She remembers drinking moosetrack milkshakes from Hardees in the hospital. And people crying and touching her. She heard voices. She says it was like the 6th sense. I imagine waking up and not remembering myself as a 17-year-old who would celebrate my 18th birthday in the hospital, 3 months after my accident, and one month after waking up. To be reborn into the world, with part of me gone but part of me left. To come back to the world and say "Hey! Those are my hands, but why do they look so twisted?" She would remember each day, and then forget it the next, and spend those days, in the beginning, wondering if that image of the windshield, and barreling forward into trees, and the rain, and that fucking white mailbox and red fire hydrant twenty feet from Brittany Lane, from her home--wondering if those images were just in a movie she once saw, or if it had been her life.
It was in that moment, on the curve in the road where there is a white mailbox that I pass every day on my way to her house- it was here that she went from being her 5-year old sister's best friend picking her up from bible school, to someone disabled by a terrible car wreck, disabled by the trauma it caused her physically and emotionally. Now her sister is 9. They do not see each other very often. They never talk about the accident. And Brittany can no longer paint her little sister's fingernails red.
This morning when I got to her door and she did not answer I wondered if she was alive. As morbid as it seems to me now, I remember smelling for her. I called her name. She yelled for me to come upstairs. I had never seen her in bed, all curled up. She looked so safe. She didn't say hello. She asked if I would just come and hold her. She can't cry. The tears will never come, the doctors tell her.
I could feel her breathing under her counting sheep sheets. I imagined her dreams. The ones she must have had just after the accident. One sheep jumps. 2 sheep jump. They all fall down.
I tried to tell her I used to have dreams about the scar on my knee. I went through a period as a child when I wished all day that the scar would go away. I can remember having repeated dreams over that scar- dreams and I would wake up and think that it was gone. B said, "That didn't make it go away." I told her that the scar taught me my left from my right. I could remember that the scar was on my right knee because of the r that ends the word scar. She laughed. But I'm talking about a scar- a cut on my knee I got when I was five and playing hide and seek. But she has tremors down her arms, she falls down every day, she burns herself trying to iron, cuts herself shaving, she has crusty milk stains on her tshirts.
The other day was a bad day so she asked me to dance. There was no music playing. We danced to the crunching sounds of the spilt, dry cereal on the kitchen floor.
It was in that moment, on the curve in the road where there is a white mailbox that I pass every day on my way to her house- it was here that she went from being her 5-year old sister's best friend picking her up from bible school, to someone disabled by a terrible car wreck, disabled by the trauma it caused her physically and emotionally. Now her sister is 9. They do not see each other very often. They never talk about the accident. And Brittany can no longer paint her little sister's fingernails red.
This morning when I got to her door and she did not answer I wondered if she was alive. As morbid as it seems to me now, I remember smelling for her. I called her name. She yelled for me to come upstairs. I had never seen her in bed, all curled up. She looked so safe. She didn't say hello. She asked if I would just come and hold her. She can't cry. The tears will never come, the doctors tell her.
I could feel her breathing under her counting sheep sheets. I imagined her dreams. The ones she must have had just after the accident. One sheep jumps. 2 sheep jump. They all fall down.
I tried to tell her I used to have dreams about the scar on my knee. I went through a period as a child when I wished all day that the scar would go away. I can remember having repeated dreams over that scar- dreams and I would wake up and think that it was gone. B said, "That didn't make it go away." I told her that the scar taught me my left from my right. I could remember that the scar was on my right knee because of the r that ends the word scar. She laughed. But I'm talking about a scar- a cut on my knee I got when I was five and playing hide and seek. But she has tremors down her arms, she falls down every day, she burns herself trying to iron, cuts herself shaving, she has crusty milk stains on her tshirts.
The other day was a bad day so she asked me to dance. There was no music playing. We danced to the crunching sounds of the spilt, dry cereal on the kitchen floor.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Pink Clouds
On my drive home this afternoon I saw two cardinals on the highway- two red splashes on a backdrop of summertime green- they raced each other along the highway stream. I thought of a nighttime swim, and the excitement of a new love, and moondancing soaking wet in the sand. Most of the drive was green and gold. Wheat fields and hay, an afternoon glow, and the wind blowing streams of hair across my eyes. I was already thinking of beautiful things, but that darting red made me think especially of love. I was in love right then.
Don't be scared if I tell you I'm in love with you right away. Sometimes I wonder if I fall in love every day. With boys and girls, by a look, a laugh. It always shocks me. Last week it happened with an old black man on a rusted bike. Before that, it was an artist in a rice field in Bali. I can be in love for as little as three minutes, for the length of a dance, or crossing a street when its not my turn. Yesterday, it happened when a three-legged black lab stopped and stared at me, huge glass-eyed, for an eternal second, then quickly loped off.
My windows were down as I passed the cardinals and I hoped to hear them. Sometimes every piece of me wants to feel such excitement, every sense needs that stimulation-not wanting to miss anything that makes me feel alive. But all I heard was the wind. What can be more present, more real than the wind? I felt an actual electrical current. Maybe it was the pink clouds in my rearview mirror, but something seemed on fire.
Don't be scared if I tell you I'm in love with you right away. Sometimes I wonder if I fall in love every day. With boys and girls, by a look, a laugh. It always shocks me. Last week it happened with an old black man on a rusted bike. Before that, it was an artist in a rice field in Bali. I can be in love for as little as three minutes, for the length of a dance, or crossing a street when its not my turn. Yesterday, it happened when a three-legged black lab stopped and stared at me, huge glass-eyed, for an eternal second, then quickly loped off.
My windows were down as I passed the cardinals and I hoped to hear them. Sometimes every piece of me wants to feel such excitement, every sense needs that stimulation-not wanting to miss anything that makes me feel alive. But all I heard was the wind. What can be more present, more real than the wind? I felt an actual electrical current. Maybe it was the pink clouds in my rearview mirror, but something seemed on fire.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Indonesia
A month on Bali, Lombok, Nusa Lembogan, and the Gili Islands
Surfing, Diving, Volcano climbing
I bought booties first, to walk across the reef bottom. I stepped gently, not wanting to break off the life beneath my feet. I thought a lot about the reef while I was surfing. I thought about it growing, I thought about it breaking off into me. Once it snagged my surfboard leash, on a small day at the Gili Islands. I broke off that piece of reef. I can hear it crunching.
There is a lot I haven't written yet about Indonesia. Truthfully, I'm scared to open my journal and reread it and copy it to this blog. I'm scared of missing the ocean, the islands, the travel, and Sarah.
I printed a picture of me doing a handstand on a beach that was white, sliding into clear, turquoise water, a green headland in the background. In the picture my feet reach its peak.
I rest the picture on my desk and I'm not sure why its there. I am tan in the picture and strong from weeks of surfing. I feel alive after feeling so vulnerable on the reef and in the ocean. I am on a beach and no one else is there. I reached the beach by motorbike and it was dangerous and I was scared- driving fast and happy and somehow feeling so right.
Surfing, Diving, Volcano climbing
I bought booties first, to walk across the reef bottom. I stepped gently, not wanting to break off the life beneath my feet. I thought a lot about the reef while I was surfing. I thought about it growing, I thought about it breaking off into me. Once it snagged my surfboard leash, on a small day at the Gili Islands. I broke off that piece of reef. I can hear it crunching.
There is a lot I haven't written yet about Indonesia. Truthfully, I'm scared to open my journal and reread it and copy it to this blog. I'm scared of missing the ocean, the islands, the travel, and Sarah.
I printed a picture of me doing a handstand on a beach that was white, sliding into clear, turquoise water, a green headland in the background. In the picture my feet reach its peak.
I rest the picture on my desk and I'm not sure why its there. I am tan in the picture and strong from weeks of surfing. I feel alive after feeling so vulnerable on the reef and in the ocean. I am on a beach and no one else is there. I reached the beach by motorbike and it was dangerous and I was scared- driving fast and happy and somehow feeling so right.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Moto Blues
On Friday I woke up with a sore throat. I got myself out of bed and started the drive to Korsang. At the corner of Norodom and Mao Tse Tung Blvds., I saw the police in their blue and orange uniforms and looking so cold and sad. I checked my signals and avoided eye contact. They directed me to pull over. They are mean as hell. No one in Phnom Penh has mirrors on their motorbikes, but it was time for them to demand fines. I paid off a dollar to the pocket of a policeman, for my freedom, and for their New Years Celebrations.
When I first started driving the moto I did so with a frightening degree of excitement. Abandonment. I learned how to navigate the streets like the Cambodians- against traffic, on the sidewalks, in and around and infront and between all cars and cyclos and motorbikes, and to the point of barely dodging the most obscure obstacles that were only avoided by astute attention to the peripherals. I prided myself in my steering, in my fearlessness.
But gradually it wore me out. The excitement exited out of my body as I laid in bed each night feeling happy to be alive.
After my run-in with the cops, I resumed my seriousness on the moto, carefully crossing each intersection where a game of chicken ensued. I crossed two streets, asserting to everyone in question that I did not fear them nearly side-swiping me, and that in fact, I was on the main road and they must slow, for their own damn well-being.
Two intersections were crossed in such manner.
Then I got hit by a van. It mustn't have seen me, for it slowed a minute, indicating I should continue on at normal speed. But then it sped up and we collided with just enough force to send my moto to the ground, and me just barely with it. Mostly, I avoided contact with the pavement. Fear and adrenaline forbid my rememberance of the moment. Only my hands hit. I picked up my bike quickly, looked at my body with profound disbelief and pride at its ability to endure. Two men jumped out of the van and much to my surprise, they apologized. I said it was okay and drove off as quickly as possible in order to avoid a scene. Immediately I reached an intersection and saw the much feared police, so naturaly I turned sharply against traffic and continued along the side, careful to avoid head-on collisions.
When I first started driving the moto I did so with a frightening degree of excitement. Abandonment. I learned how to navigate the streets like the Cambodians- against traffic, on the sidewalks, in and around and infront and between all cars and cyclos and motorbikes, and to the point of barely dodging the most obscure obstacles that were only avoided by astute attention to the peripherals. I prided myself in my steering, in my fearlessness.
But gradually it wore me out. The excitement exited out of my body as I laid in bed each night feeling happy to be alive.
After my run-in with the cops, I resumed my seriousness on the moto, carefully crossing each intersection where a game of chicken ensued. I crossed two streets, asserting to everyone in question that I did not fear them nearly side-swiping me, and that in fact, I was on the main road and they must slow, for their own damn well-being.
Two intersections were crossed in such manner.
Then I got hit by a van. It mustn't have seen me, for it slowed a minute, indicating I should continue on at normal speed. But then it sped up and we collided with just enough force to send my moto to the ground, and me just barely with it. Mostly, I avoided contact with the pavement. Fear and adrenaline forbid my rememberance of the moment. Only my hands hit. I picked up my bike quickly, looked at my body with profound disbelief and pride at its ability to endure. Two men jumped out of the van and much to my surprise, they apologized. I said it was okay and drove off as quickly as possible in order to avoid a scene. Immediately I reached an intersection and saw the much feared police, so naturaly I turned sharply against traffic and continued along the side, careful to avoid head-on collisions.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Being Scared
Every story is more complex than we ever hope for it to be. Eve was murdered two weeks ago. And that is devastating. In dealing with a person's death I think its natural to try and create images for every moment that could have passed during that last night. This was especially the case for me, hearing about it on vacation in Thailand, away from fast computers, good news sources and friends. I received a text the night after Eve's death from Erin in Phnom Penh telling me I should check my email: sad news from UNC.
I ran to an internet cafe. It was 10pm and the place was about to close. When I saw Eve's picture on the opening page of UNC's website, it didn't register that she had died. I was used to seeing her picture everywhere.
I imagined my last conversation with her. How rushed I had been! Standing in the Weaver Street parking lot- my backpack was on! I was decked out in my hiking pants. I was leaving that moment for this trip. Kristen drove up, ready to take me to the airport. Eve was also rushed, she always had a million things on her mind and in her hands. But she was so excited to see me. We hadn't seen each other since graduation. I think her excitement was less about seeing me, but more about seeing someone on the other side--the other side of graduation. She wanted to hear about my trip. She was thinking about traveling herself when she finished school. She just wanted to see the world- to see, do, touch all that she could. And she was so excited to talk about what was next.
I didn't have a chance to find out many details about her death that night. Most people knew very little about the circumstances of her death in the beginning anyway. Even now, after learning more, I still try to imagine every second that lead up to it. As I'm pouring a draft at Talking to a Stranger or cleaning an infected cut for a kid in Boeung Trabek, I suddenly stop and can't keep my mind from imagining. It's salsa night at the bar and I see a girl dancing by herself, long hair, laughing with her friends and I imagine Eve in Cuba with Margaret and I'm so sad for her, for Margaret, for everyone.
I imagine the possibilities for Eve that night- did she almost decide to go on to sleep, did she almost get away, did she run, did she try to convince them not to shoot her, where exactly was she shot, what were her last words, and who was she thinking about? Mostly though, I imagine just how deeply sad she was to let go of it all.
I don't know whether to be terrified. Am I supposed to be constantly conscious of every danger, every where? She was killed a block from where I had lived my senior year at Chapel Hill.
This summer when Ginger and I drove to San Francisco together and camped outside in the Grand Canyon, she woke me up, "EB, are you scared?" I said, "No, don't think about it and it'll be fine. I think there are too many people around us for bears anyway." But she wasn't scared of bears. She was scared of a man. So we locked ourselves in her car for the night.
When I found out that Eve had been shot, my immediate thought was that she had been killed by a man. And now I hear all of this uproar about race. A white man may say, "Whats wrong with the black youth of today?" Or, "I suspected that the guy was in a gang." Or, "Of course he was from Durham." And the white men, again, as they have forever in America, fear for their beautiful white daughters.
Does this not get at the root of racial problems between white and blackmen in America- a black guy taking (violently or in matrimony) a white woman.
So we spend our lives protecting our white women from black men. And we punish, consistently, black men for it.
Eve wouldn't want this. She wouldn't want racial tensions to flare as a result of her death. More and more she becomes less of an individual. She is lost to the cause. Is this how it should be? Does she become a martyr for stricter gun laws? For tighter gang regulation? Who can we blame, how can we honor her?
The problem with the black youth in America is a societal problem. And I blame all of us. Who does a black youth turn to when he can't get a job or education or any direction? Some turn to gangs. Everyone wants family, for someone to support them and for someone whom they can support. Its hard to blame someone for joining a gang when they have nothing- no country, no home.
In some ways, this is a race issue. But I think its unfair to call it a problem with African Americans. I think white America has to own up to it. We cannot ignore the way that we've marginalized non-whites since the founding of our country.
Maybe Eve's murder should be the impetus for a different conversation. Instead of asking, "Whats wrong with the black youth?" we could ask, "Whats wrong with patriarchy? Whats wrong with American men? Why is no one surprised that another act of violence was committed by a man?" I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wish it weren't so, but I am scared of men.
I ran to an internet cafe. It was 10pm and the place was about to close. When I saw Eve's picture on the opening page of UNC's website, it didn't register that she had died. I was used to seeing her picture everywhere.
I imagined my last conversation with her. How rushed I had been! Standing in the Weaver Street parking lot- my backpack was on! I was decked out in my hiking pants. I was leaving that moment for this trip. Kristen drove up, ready to take me to the airport. Eve was also rushed, she always had a million things on her mind and in her hands. But she was so excited to see me. We hadn't seen each other since graduation. I think her excitement was less about seeing me, but more about seeing someone on the other side--the other side of graduation. She wanted to hear about my trip. She was thinking about traveling herself when she finished school. She just wanted to see the world- to see, do, touch all that she could. And she was so excited to talk about what was next.
I didn't have a chance to find out many details about her death that night. Most people knew very little about the circumstances of her death in the beginning anyway. Even now, after learning more, I still try to imagine every second that lead up to it. As I'm pouring a draft at Talking to a Stranger or cleaning an infected cut for a kid in Boeung Trabek, I suddenly stop and can't keep my mind from imagining. It's salsa night at the bar and I see a girl dancing by herself, long hair, laughing with her friends and I imagine Eve in Cuba with Margaret and I'm so sad for her, for Margaret, for everyone.
I imagine the possibilities for Eve that night- did she almost decide to go on to sleep, did she almost get away, did she run, did she try to convince them not to shoot her, where exactly was she shot, what were her last words, and who was she thinking about? Mostly though, I imagine just how deeply sad she was to let go of it all.
I don't know whether to be terrified. Am I supposed to be constantly conscious of every danger, every where? She was killed a block from where I had lived my senior year at Chapel Hill.
This summer when Ginger and I drove to San Francisco together and camped outside in the Grand Canyon, she woke me up, "EB, are you scared?" I said, "No, don't think about it and it'll be fine. I think there are too many people around us for bears anyway." But she wasn't scared of bears. She was scared of a man. So we locked ourselves in her car for the night.
When I found out that Eve had been shot, my immediate thought was that she had been killed by a man. And now I hear all of this uproar about race. A white man may say, "Whats wrong with the black youth of today?" Or, "I suspected that the guy was in a gang." Or, "Of course he was from Durham." And the white men, again, as they have forever in America, fear for their beautiful white daughters.
Does this not get at the root of racial problems between white and blackmen in America- a black guy taking (violently or in matrimony) a white woman.
So we spend our lives protecting our white women from black men. And we punish, consistently, black men for it.
Eve wouldn't want this. She wouldn't want racial tensions to flare as a result of her death. More and more she becomes less of an individual. She is lost to the cause. Is this how it should be? Does she become a martyr for stricter gun laws? For tighter gang regulation? Who can we blame, how can we honor her?
The problem with the black youth in America is a societal problem. And I blame all of us. Who does a black youth turn to when he can't get a job or education or any direction? Some turn to gangs. Everyone wants family, for someone to support them and for someone whom they can support. Its hard to blame someone for joining a gang when they have nothing- no country, no home.
In some ways, this is a race issue. But I think its unfair to call it a problem with African Americans. I think white America has to own up to it. We cannot ignore the way that we've marginalized non-whites since the founding of our country.
Maybe Eve's murder should be the impetus for a different conversation. Instead of asking, "Whats wrong with the black youth?" we could ask, "Whats wrong with patriarchy? Whats wrong with American men? Why is no one surprised that another act of violence was committed by a man?" I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wish it weren't so, but I am scared of men.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Another place
If you cross your eyes and pinch your nose, the yellow, blue and faded red plastic trash bags in the Phnom Penh slums make me think of springtime in Chapel Hill.
I went on outreach again this morning. The tuk tuk carried me and 5 guys wearing blue and red Korsang shirts that declared the mission of risk reduction in Khmer. We set out toward Boeung Trabek, an area I've been many times, about 5 minutes from the drop-in center. Most of the drug users who use Korsang's space live in the streets here. Bony was driving and cranking up the music, for everyone, a mix of Khmer love ballads, American hip-hop and the occasional Eric Clapton "Lady in Red."
Crossing the street, a woman with a korma scarf wrapped around her head and with ankles caked in black dirt, waved at the tuk tuk. JB explained that he'd helped deliver her baby 2 months ago. The next day she sold the child for $200.
We turn down one dirt path, just one or two streets off Monivong, the biggest street in Phnom Penh. Teenagers, men and women carve wood doors in the streets. Around every building, drug users congregate. Injection drug users shoot in groups, or at least with partners. Its safer that way, as long as they aren't sharing needles. JB and I start doctoring a knife wound on one of the user's hands. It had gotten infected and was swollen. The teenager showed us at least 5 other stabbing scars on his arms.
As we worked on his wound a mother came up to the group holding a barefoot 2 year-old boy wearing an old t-shirt. A 5-year old tugged at her leg. In the mother's hands were a package of clean needles we had given to her. She began to shoot up. For a second I felt nauseated, like I was feeding her habit, providing her with the means to continue the cycle. But I wonder what will happen to her when she dies of AIDS. Maybe those clean needles will keep her safer longer? Its true, her children might be safer without her. But where would they go? I think they'd die. The children walked towards me. Most young children in Cambodia, I have found, are pretty shy with white people, or so scared that they run. These kids let me hold them and throw them around. The youngest had infections all around his ear. I asked what had happened. Another drug user said the mother puts all kinds of things in the boy's ear when she gets too high.
We drove a little further down the road and stopped to look into a field. The big brother of the community was high, alone. He had recently overdosed but survived. We waved hello and asked if he had seen Aveay. Aveay has been missing for 3 days. So we looked in the bushes for him. JB pointed to the place in the field where he found a young woman who had been gang rapped by 10 men. We then continued on our way.
Several of the drug-users recognize me now. I was nervous they would be scared of me, but they've really welcomed me. One of the younger guys, he must be 18, had a needle in his hand and came up and gave me his firmest handshake and a little smile, saying "Hello Madame!"
At another stop, we cleaned up a guy with an infected finger and scabs all over his legs. As we were working, a drug user I've met at the clinic called me over. She had a needle hanging from her thigh, but she was still conscious. She wanted to practice her English.
I went on outreach again this morning. The tuk tuk carried me and 5 guys wearing blue and red Korsang shirts that declared the mission of risk reduction in Khmer. We set out toward Boeung Trabek, an area I've been many times, about 5 minutes from the drop-in center. Most of the drug users who use Korsang's space live in the streets here. Bony was driving and cranking up the music, for everyone, a mix of Khmer love ballads, American hip-hop and the occasional Eric Clapton "Lady in Red."
Crossing the street, a woman with a korma scarf wrapped around her head and with ankles caked in black dirt, waved at the tuk tuk. JB explained that he'd helped deliver her baby 2 months ago. The next day she sold the child for $200.
We turn down one dirt path, just one or two streets off Monivong, the biggest street in Phnom Penh. Teenagers, men and women carve wood doors in the streets. Around every building, drug users congregate. Injection drug users shoot in groups, or at least with partners. Its safer that way, as long as they aren't sharing needles. JB and I start doctoring a knife wound on one of the user's hands. It had gotten infected and was swollen. The teenager showed us at least 5 other stabbing scars on his arms.
As we worked on his wound a mother came up to the group holding a barefoot 2 year-old boy wearing an old t-shirt. A 5-year old tugged at her leg. In the mother's hands were a package of clean needles we had given to her. She began to shoot up. For a second I felt nauseated, like I was feeding her habit, providing her with the means to continue the cycle. But I wonder what will happen to her when she dies of AIDS. Maybe those clean needles will keep her safer longer? Its true, her children might be safer without her. But where would they go? I think they'd die. The children walked towards me. Most young children in Cambodia, I have found, are pretty shy with white people, or so scared that they run. These kids let me hold them and throw them around. The youngest had infections all around his ear. I asked what had happened. Another drug user said the mother puts all kinds of things in the boy's ear when she gets too high.
We drove a little further down the road and stopped to look into a field. The big brother of the community was high, alone. He had recently overdosed but survived. We waved hello and asked if he had seen Aveay. Aveay has been missing for 3 days. So we looked in the bushes for him. JB pointed to the place in the field where he found a young woman who had been gang rapped by 10 men. We then continued on our way.
Several of the drug-users recognize me now. I was nervous they would be scared of me, but they've really welcomed me. One of the younger guys, he must be 18, had a needle in his hand and came up and gave me his firmest handshake and a little smile, saying "Hello Madame!"
At another stop, we cleaned up a guy with an infected finger and scabs all over his legs. As we were working, a drug user I've met at the clinic called me over. She had a needle hanging from her thigh, but she was still conscious. She wanted to practice her English.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Stories
The stories unravel as I spend days and days at Korsang- looking around, watching them play domino, waiting for sick patients, reading. Everyone gets there before Korsang opens, at 730am, ready for a day of hanging out together. I think more than anything, my role here is to talk to the staff, to get their stories, to be a friend, to understand them as Americans, to pass no judgment and to listen. The staff at Korsang are all former felons granted permanent residency and refuge from the Khmer Rouge in the United States but deported back into Cambodia after they got into trouble- mostly gang and drug related. The drop-in center is just as much a space for the staff as it is for the injection-drug user community of Phnom Penh.
One told me about his two years in prison, how he spent $600-700 on heroin a week, how easy it was to obtain the drug in prison. He said he only hit the drug 3 times a day though. He lived in Greenville, North Carolina for a while and also in Lexington. Apparently there is a beautiful Khmer Temple in the woods outside of Lexington where he spent all of the Cambodian holidays. He was separated from his Cambodian family during the Khmer Rouge (all the kids were sent off to labor camps), and he was sent from Thailand to California when he was ten. When he turned 18 he got a private investigator to track down his family. Most of them were in the states. I asked how often he sees them now and he says its been a while. They move around a lot. His mom might come back to Cambodia one day to visit him, but his dad will never return. He's scared of Cambodia. He was tortured by the Khmer Rouge in a bamboo cage.
Another guy was born and raised in Memphis. He told me about his first love, their daughter and how much he misses her. She's nine years old now. He got deported 4 years ago. The immigration officer came to his door and told him to get his shoes. He was taken away from home and within a week he was shackled and thrown in a van to be carted all around the country picking up other deportees. Yesterday, as I was helping him put together kits with Korsang's address and services, shampoo, toothbrush and condoms and also putting together clean needle packets with sterilized water and alcohol swabs, I told him about Eve. I talked to him about who she was, how I'd known her, and how she'd been killed. He started talking to me about his friend who committed suicide when they were 18. He talked and talked and talked about it, as if it were yesterday. Only later would I learn, in a conversation overheard at my bar, that he had been convicted of murder in the US.
As our conversation finished he spoke about how important it is for him to be able to talk about things and that he can't talk to anybody here. His Khmer isn't that good (he was 3 months when he came to Memphis from the Thai refugee camp) so that also makes it hard. He genuinely thanked me for listening. I asked him about the tatoo on his hand. He wouldnt tell me who it was at first. He hesitated. Then he told me it had been his gang. So I dived in and asked him all about it. This silly white southern girl asking him the size of the gang, if it was an all Asian gang. He perked up when I talked about it. He said they had Lao, Thai, Khmer, and even some black and white guys. I asked him if he missed the. He misses them a lot.
One guy gives me rides all the time and is always getting me to go with him to give blood tests at the hospital. He told me about his gang, Asia Boy. He came to America from a Thai refugee camp when he was ten.
My first day back from Thailand, just after hearing about Eve, I was talking to one guy about her murder. He said, "its always the good ones." I asked if he'd had friends killed. He said "Oh yea" and told me about drug deals gone bad, and murders unsolved. We talked about racism and the inequality in our justice system. He gave great detail about the time he was shot at- the speeding blue car, the squeal of breaks, the cock of the shotgun. He had just enough time to dive behind a trashcan as the guy fired three shots.
He told me that when he was one year old his mother carried him out of the killing fields. His brother had been forced to work with the Khmer Rouge and his sister was so malnourished she went blind every night.
He was the first to be sent back to Cambodia. And his case was the test case: Ma vs. Reno, Ma vs. Ashcroft. He said ten deportees came over with him, the third shipment. They took a leer jet that cost the United States $250,000.
One guy told me he doesn't like it in Cambodia. Hes been here a year and he has money problems and he can't have fun like he used to. He has no relationship and he's sad. I told him it takes time to adjust and asked him how long it took the other guys to adjust? He said he hasn't asked anyone. I told him most of them have grown to love it, but it takes time. I asked another of the guys how long it had taken him to adjust, and he said it took 6 months, maybe longer. They need to talk to each other about these things.
Another guy was pretty bitter. He talked about missing his mom and his son and said that he got dumped in Cambodia, in the second shipment, even though he was a citizen because his dad got citizenship. A lawyer helped him get all of his charges dropped except one from when he was 16 and had been tried as an adult. If you serve a year with an aggravated felony, you get shipped back.
And what am I to do with this information? I listen and we talk and talk. Then Eve is murdered and it all is right in my face. How complicated our lives are. How closely each interaction relates to something much bigger. All the guys I am with all of these days could just as well have been Eve's murderer. Or were they wrongly convicted? Its easy to accuse, blame, prosecute someone who has little protection in America. Did my friend really kill someone? If he did, what were the circumstances? Do the circumstances even matter? Most of all, who is to blame? Maybe we are all to blame.
One told me about his two years in prison, how he spent $600-700 on heroin a week, how easy it was to obtain the drug in prison. He said he only hit the drug 3 times a day though. He lived in Greenville, North Carolina for a while and also in Lexington. Apparently there is a beautiful Khmer Temple in the woods outside of Lexington where he spent all of the Cambodian holidays. He was separated from his Cambodian family during the Khmer Rouge (all the kids were sent off to labor camps), and he was sent from Thailand to California when he was ten. When he turned 18 he got a private investigator to track down his family. Most of them were in the states. I asked how often he sees them now and he says its been a while. They move around a lot. His mom might come back to Cambodia one day to visit him, but his dad will never return. He's scared of Cambodia. He was tortured by the Khmer Rouge in a bamboo cage.
Another guy was born and raised in Memphis. He told me about his first love, their daughter and how much he misses her. She's nine years old now. He got deported 4 years ago. The immigration officer came to his door and told him to get his shoes. He was taken away from home and within a week he was shackled and thrown in a van to be carted all around the country picking up other deportees. Yesterday, as I was helping him put together kits with Korsang's address and services, shampoo, toothbrush and condoms and also putting together clean needle packets with sterilized water and alcohol swabs, I told him about Eve. I talked to him about who she was, how I'd known her, and how she'd been killed. He started talking to me about his friend who committed suicide when they were 18. He talked and talked and talked about it, as if it were yesterday. Only later would I learn, in a conversation overheard at my bar, that he had been convicted of murder in the US.
As our conversation finished he spoke about how important it is for him to be able to talk about things and that he can't talk to anybody here. His Khmer isn't that good (he was 3 months when he came to Memphis from the Thai refugee camp) so that also makes it hard. He genuinely thanked me for listening. I asked him about the tatoo on his hand. He wouldnt tell me who it was at first. He hesitated. Then he told me it had been his gang. So I dived in and asked him all about it. This silly white southern girl asking him the size of the gang, if it was an all Asian gang. He perked up when I talked about it. He said they had Lao, Thai, Khmer, and even some black and white guys. I asked him if he missed the. He misses them a lot.
One guy gives me rides all the time and is always getting me to go with him to give blood tests at the hospital. He told me about his gang, Asia Boy. He came to America from a Thai refugee camp when he was ten.
My first day back from Thailand, just after hearing about Eve, I was talking to one guy about her murder. He said, "its always the good ones." I asked if he'd had friends killed. He said "Oh yea" and told me about drug deals gone bad, and murders unsolved. We talked about racism and the inequality in our justice system. He gave great detail about the time he was shot at- the speeding blue car, the squeal of breaks, the cock of the shotgun. He had just enough time to dive behind a trashcan as the guy fired three shots.
He told me that when he was one year old his mother carried him out of the killing fields. His brother had been forced to work with the Khmer Rouge and his sister was so malnourished she went blind every night.
He was the first to be sent back to Cambodia. And his case was the test case: Ma vs. Reno, Ma vs. Ashcroft. He said ten deportees came over with him, the third shipment. They took a leer jet that cost the United States $250,000.
One guy told me he doesn't like it in Cambodia. Hes been here a year and he has money problems and he can't have fun like he used to. He has no relationship and he's sad. I told him it takes time to adjust and asked him how long it took the other guys to adjust? He said he hasn't asked anyone. I told him most of them have grown to love it, but it takes time. I asked another of the guys how long it had taken him to adjust, and he said it took 6 months, maybe longer. They need to talk to each other about these things.
Another guy was pretty bitter. He talked about missing his mom and his son and said that he got dumped in Cambodia, in the second shipment, even though he was a citizen because his dad got citizenship. A lawyer helped him get all of his charges dropped except one from when he was 16 and had been tried as an adult. If you serve a year with an aggravated felony, you get shipped back.
And what am I to do with this information? I listen and we talk and talk. Then Eve is murdered and it all is right in my face. How complicated our lives are. How closely each interaction relates to something much bigger. All the guys I am with all of these days could just as well have been Eve's murderer. Or were they wrongly convicted? Its easy to accuse, blame, prosecute someone who has little protection in America. Did my friend really kill someone? If he did, what were the circumstances? Do the circumstances even matter? Most of all, who is to blame? Maybe we are all to blame.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Rats
There is a rat that lives on our staircase at night. The stairs are so steep he is hard to see. Often I am right upon the rat before it scurries down the steps and into the street. A few nights ago it stood stoic on the top step and refused to move. Finally Sarah took initiative, forced the rat to move down the steps and we jumped on the handrails, shrieking at midnight as the street sweepers looked up and laughed when the rat ran past them.
On Wednesday I went on Outreach with Shy at Korsang. Twice a day HIV prevention and medical teams are dispatched into the area surrounding Korsang, in the Boeung Trabek neighborhood. They offer medicine, HIV awareness and clean needles. We went to burning house where heroin addicts spend their days and nights barefoot amongst dirty needles. I saw a 15-year old boy, HIV positive, sleeping in the street, infection all around his nose. I watched one man pull blood from a needle in his hand, after fiercely scratching his irritated legs, only to pass out face down in the street before he could shoot up more heroin. Slashes lined his forearm. We talked to one teenager who recently quit taking his ARV treatment medications and shoots 5-6 times a day. He's a garbage collector and makes just enough money for his addiction.
On Wednesday I went on Outreach with Shy at Korsang. Twice a day HIV prevention and medical teams are dispatched into the area surrounding Korsang, in the Boeung Trabek neighborhood. They offer medicine, HIV awareness and clean needles. We went to burning house where heroin addicts spend their days and nights barefoot amongst dirty needles. I saw a 15-year old boy, HIV positive, sleeping in the street, infection all around his nose. I watched one man pull blood from a needle in his hand, after fiercely scratching his irritated legs, only to pass out face down in the street before he could shoot up more heroin. Slashes lined his forearm. We talked to one teenager who recently quit taking his ARV treatment medications and shoots 5-6 times a day. He's a garbage collector and makes just enough money for his addiction.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Settling into the City
I bartended at "Talkin to a Stranger" on Wednesday night. Lisa Fitzgibbon, a folk singer from Australia who has performed with Ani DiFranco and is quite captivating on stage performed that night and there was a good crowd. Between sets a group of kids in KORSANG danced and rapped.
I've been living in Phnom Penh since January 24th and I plan to be here a few more months. This is how the story started for so many westerners who have now been in Phnom Penh for years. Its true, I love the city a little more every day. Now I even have a fondness for the grotesque, phallic Independence monument in the park near my house. I love scooting around on the back of a motorbike and I'm hoping to rent my own soon. I've met people that I really enjoy. I have some routines. Sarah and I run in the park every morning. We go to the market and get fresh produce for dinner. Every afternoon I buy an ice coffee with condensed milk in a bag. We start Khmer lessons next week with a guy named Rawling that Sarah met volunteering with Open Book. This city is complex. A horrific past, but such hopeful people. A lot of people from outside are here to help but a lot of people are here exploiting the need.
I'm volunteering now with two organizations. I am working with Jeanine and Billy's Children's foundation on their home-based care project for families affected by HIV/AIDS. Last week I visited a family of 8 in the Toul Kork slums. In the midst of the gaudiest mansions owned by Cambodian ministers are tin and tarp shacks. I took notes on the family that receives aid each month-their names, income, other organizations helping, ages, gender, school report cards, number of kids who are positive. The files I put together will be used for potential donors.
Today was my first day visiting KORSANG (www.korsangkhmer.org). I met the founder, Holly, at Talkin to a Stranger two weeks ago. I told her that I just finished university and that I'm thinking of nursing school when i get back to the states. She told me about the doctor in her drop-in clinic and said I should come in and check it out. Listening to her talk about her organization I was very impressed.
This local, grassroots organization started in 2004 and now has funding up until 2016through USAID, WHO, and UNICEF. Korsang was developed in light of the HIV pandemic in Cambodia and the reality of limited services to those at the greatest risk for HIV and other drug related risks. Korsang delivers risk reduction education, case management and health related services to injection drug users, sex workers and incarcerated persons. The staff of Korsang, about 30, were granted "permanent status" in the United States as refugees from the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and 80s. Following an agreement in June 2002 between the US and Cambodia, they were handcuffed, shackled and deported back to Cambodia. Most left behind partners and children. They have now been trained in harm reduction philosophy. Harm reduction, sometimes known as risk reduction, is an addiction-care philosophy based on working with users in a compassionate, respectful and non-judgmental way, thereby building solid relationships that can become the basis of further treatment. Harm reduction works to minimize the negative effects of risky behaviors, rather than eliminate them, and recognizes the impacts of issues like poverty, racism, social isolation and past trauma on people.For example, rather than try to persuade users to stop injecting heroin, harm reduction workers might help a person reduce their intake gradually, teach them about safe injecting techniques and suggest services that might stabilize their lives.
Mr. T lived in Denver, North Carolina for many years and he still has one son there who should be 17 or 18. He showed me around KORSANG, introduced me to people. Three men were asleep in the rest area. They come in to rest during the day because they spend the night in the street. There is an area for them to shower. A TV was playing a bad American movie and many Injection Drug Users (IDUs) were doped up watching the television, in and out of sleep. I hoped on the back of Mr. T's motorbike and he was friendly and chatty. He wanted to know why the hell I was in Phnom Penh and he wanted to make sure I understood who he was and what Korsang was doing. He seemed surprised a young goody goody American white girl would want to work with injection drug users. We went through the heroin street and he pointed out all of the dirty needles in the grass alongside of the dirt road. I saw about 5 groups of one or two men asleep in the dust, needles dangling from their veins. One was awake and distracted by our passing moto, he lifted his eyes just enough to catch our dust as he shot heroin into his groin.
After the tour I met Vannda, the doctor. While I was there he treated one addict with an infection on his neck and another who might have to go to the hospital for TB. Just before I left a drug user, Srey Mal, who was trained last week to save people from overdosing, brought in a young guy who had overdosed on opium. Srey Mal gets a stipend for bringing in those who overdose and this was the first life she has saved. Her legs are the size of my arms, but she carried in this guy. I don't know how old she is. Maybe shes 16. They treat street kids as young as 8 with drug problems. Maybe, by making Srey Mal an active agent in change, and showing her another option, she'll recover. Many recovered young drug addicts are now apart of KORMIX, another part of Korsang that trains kids in break dancing and rap. They are pictured above, performing at Talkin' to a Stranger.
I'm going out tomorrow with some of the staff on outreach. They warned me to wear tennis shoes.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Corn Gold
From the rooftop of our Phnom Penh apartment, I can see the strange Picasso shapes of the Psar Kapko market by the lighting of an early morning, through the thorny trunks of the cactus plants lining the edge. Cambodia awakes reluctantly, curled in a ball under the nubby colors of someone else's old sheet.
Nearly every morning I walk down two-flights of stairs from our apartment to browse the market for fresh produce. I pass women and men frying bananas and sweet patotoes or muffins with peppers and capers. The sun is rising and umbrellas protect them from the heat. Some people are shucking corn on mats in the street. Women are pushing out their sugarcane juice carts. Monks robbed in orange and maroon walk barefoot down the street carrying their silver alms bowls. The market is the first to wake up in Phnom Penh. And its excited for the new day, for the prospect of making a dollar to return to a home outside of the city. Crabs crawl on top of each other, trying to reach the top of the blue buckets, to welcome the day in their own manner, to make their escape into the streets. I throw one back into a woman's bucket. Around her head is wrapped the traditional plaid Khmer scarf. Her face is an amalgamation of every agony she has likely endured.
When Pol Pot took over Phnom Penh and declared the date, April 17, 1975 year Zero, his army, the Khmer Rouge, meticulously began organizing the country into a Maoist, peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. The day that the troops stormed through the city, families packed up what they could carry and many walked, some drove, out into the countryside. When those who had driven ran out of gas they started walking. At Khmer Rouge check points, those who understoond the workings of the revolution proclaimed that they were poor barbers or street vendors. The new government was on a mission to execute all of the educated, to stop all art and end all culture. In the four years that the Khmer was in power, thousands of people died of starvation, dehydration and exhaustion. Thousands more were tortured and exectuted, often by children forced to become soldiers and kill or be killed. The population of Cambodia at the time was 7 million and as many as 2 million may have died because of the Khmer Rouge.
This means that no one living today was unscathed. The tuk-tuk and moto drivers on the corner, playing Tinglan and betting money, holler at me in a comical tone as I walk down from my apartment, "You want a moto lady, come on give me a job, you know you want to give me this one job." They laugh with their friends when I acknowledge them and reply, "I'm walking" and they say, "It's too hot to walk!" But I just shake my head and they laugh and I find them so pleasant, so ready to joke and laugh and make light. But many are in their 30s or 40s. And I can't help but wonder who they watched, in their youth, walk away from their huts with 2 guards in black uniforms to forever disappear; I wonder how many mothers holding children they were forced to kill, to kill by busting their skull with a blunt farm tool in order to save bullets for the revolution.
Cambodia is one of the poorest places I've been. Along the riverside, barefoot children plead for food, middle-aged men crawl in the street suffering from the landmine that maimed them, destroyed their chance of making a living on the farm, or as a carpenter, destroyed their families. And I imagine that perhaps their wife has started to commute to the city, to sell a few measley, green tomatoes. Perhaps she's more strapped for money because her child is bloated from malnourishment, close to death with the potential of one small infection; she's at one of the restaurants blaring bad karaoke that sounds like screams and shes stroking the arm of a fat, white-man, pleasing him to make a few dollars to feed their children. It's hard to blame those who beg when there exists little infrastructure from the government to help these people.
But Phnom Penh is starting to thrive again. Only ten years ago, gun fights broke out throughout the city every few minutes, men with AK47s cruised the streets and the guns were on sale for $30 in the Russian Market, alongside kilos of marijuana. A few mercedes, owned by government officials navigated around oxen carts on the only paved road leading to the Independence Monument. Now there is a sense of hope, of intrigue, as English schools pop up all over the city and tvs that are even in the dirt floor living rooms of some of the poorest across the country replay old episodes of FRIENDS and Sienfield. I hate tv more and more.
There is a resurgence of culture and pride as Khmer restaurants line the tourist streets and everyone asks the foreigner, "Have you seen Angkor Wat Temples?" I love being in this atmosphere. I love the woman in the market with the bucket of crabs as she smiles at me with two front teeth protruding out above her bottom lip. I love the kids that run up and grab my hand and say in their best, most formal English, "Good morning, How are you? What is your name? Where do you come from?" The corn that is steamed in movable stands in the park next to my apartmentment is the juiciest, most perfectly gold corn I've ever eaten.
Nearly every morning I walk down two-flights of stairs from our apartment to browse the market for fresh produce. I pass women and men frying bananas and sweet patotoes or muffins with peppers and capers. The sun is rising and umbrellas protect them from the heat. Some people are shucking corn on mats in the street. Women are pushing out their sugarcane juice carts. Monks robbed in orange and maroon walk barefoot down the street carrying their silver alms bowls. The market is the first to wake up in Phnom Penh. And its excited for the new day, for the prospect of making a dollar to return to a home outside of the city. Crabs crawl on top of each other, trying to reach the top of the blue buckets, to welcome the day in their own manner, to make their escape into the streets. I throw one back into a woman's bucket. Around her head is wrapped the traditional plaid Khmer scarf. Her face is an amalgamation of every agony she has likely endured.
When Pol Pot took over Phnom Penh and declared the date, April 17, 1975 year Zero, his army, the Khmer Rouge, meticulously began organizing the country into a Maoist, peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. The day that the troops stormed through the city, families packed up what they could carry and many walked, some drove, out into the countryside. When those who had driven ran out of gas they started walking. At Khmer Rouge check points, those who understoond the workings of the revolution proclaimed that they were poor barbers or street vendors. The new government was on a mission to execute all of the educated, to stop all art and end all culture. In the four years that the Khmer was in power, thousands of people died of starvation, dehydration and exhaustion. Thousands more were tortured and exectuted, often by children forced to become soldiers and kill or be killed. The population of Cambodia at the time was 7 million and as many as 2 million may have died because of the Khmer Rouge.
This means that no one living today was unscathed. The tuk-tuk and moto drivers on the corner, playing Tinglan and betting money, holler at me in a comical tone as I walk down from my apartment, "You want a moto lady, come on give me a job, you know you want to give me this one job." They laugh with their friends when I acknowledge them and reply, "I'm walking" and they say, "It's too hot to walk!" But I just shake my head and they laugh and I find them so pleasant, so ready to joke and laugh and make light. But many are in their 30s or 40s. And I can't help but wonder who they watched, in their youth, walk away from their huts with 2 guards in black uniforms to forever disappear; I wonder how many mothers holding children they were forced to kill, to kill by busting their skull with a blunt farm tool in order to save bullets for the revolution.
Cambodia is one of the poorest places I've been. Along the riverside, barefoot children plead for food, middle-aged men crawl in the street suffering from the landmine that maimed them, destroyed their chance of making a living on the farm, or as a carpenter, destroyed their families. And I imagine that perhaps their wife has started to commute to the city, to sell a few measley, green tomatoes. Perhaps she's more strapped for money because her child is bloated from malnourishment, close to death with the potential of one small infection; she's at one of the restaurants blaring bad karaoke that sounds like screams and shes stroking the arm of a fat, white-man, pleasing him to make a few dollars to feed their children. It's hard to blame those who beg when there exists little infrastructure from the government to help these people.
But Phnom Penh is starting to thrive again. Only ten years ago, gun fights broke out throughout the city every few minutes, men with AK47s cruised the streets and the guns were on sale for $30 in the Russian Market, alongside kilos of marijuana. A few mercedes, owned by government officials navigated around oxen carts on the only paved road leading to the Independence Monument. Now there is a sense of hope, of intrigue, as English schools pop up all over the city and tvs that are even in the dirt floor living rooms of some of the poorest across the country replay old episodes of FRIENDS and Sienfield. I hate tv more and more.
There is a resurgence of culture and pride as Khmer restaurants line the tourist streets and everyone asks the foreigner, "Have you seen Angkor Wat Temples?" I love being in this atmosphere. I love the woman in the market with the bucket of crabs as she smiles at me with two front teeth protruding out above her bottom lip. I love the kids that run up and grab my hand and say in their best, most formal English, "Good morning, How are you? What is your name? Where do you come from?" The corn that is steamed in movable stands in the park next to my apartmentment is the juiciest, most perfectly gold corn I've ever eaten.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Working in Phnom Penh
Sarah and I came to Phnom Penh by bus from Angkor Wat on January 3rd. We stayed at the Top Banana and started looking for jobs, for local haunts, for an apartment, for the feeling of whether we should settle here or keep moving.
During our first week we got our bearings, met Sabina and Isaac and learned how to play Tinglan, the local card game. Isaac is a second year med-student who was adopted as a kid orphaned by the Khmer Rouge and raised in California. He's high-energy, motivated and involved. Through him I'm in touch with a few American nurses. He also got me connected to Billy.
Billy is tanner than the locals and they pick on him and love him. This is what I like most about this man. He has built up a repoire with the locals, unlike most internatioals here. He's unassuming and contemplative, or just quiet, I haven't figured him out yet. He's balding but a black cowboy hat hides the top of his head. Long, black curls protrude from the rim, whipping me in the face as he drives wildly on dirt roads outside of Phnom Penh. I've gone with him twice now out into the slums or to relocation sites outside of the city.
As Phnom Penh becomes gentrified, the ghetto is sometimes burned out by the government and people are forced to leave, planted capriciously in unwanted areas. He works with people affected by HIV/AIDS to build schools, jobs and centers for orphanages and vulnerable children. The man is an enigma, but I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued to work with a grass-roots non-profit, excited for the opportunity to work for people, immediately and directly.
I met two of the families I will work with in my first project here. They are part of a home-based care program that Billy started through the Jeannine and Billy's Children Foundation many years ago. There are six families in the Bora Khela slum. Vena is an 18-year old whose family was helped by JBCF and who is now attending university on a four-year scholarship from an Australian NGO. She will be working with me during the home visits and also be serving as a translator. The first family we went to visit is headed by a grandmother raising four grandchildren orphaned when their parents died of AIDS. Billy provided the family with $150 start-up and now the family is much less vulnerable, running a small gocery stand out of their home. He has put a children's center nearby and hired a teacher who he had found close to death, soon after her husband had died of AIDS. Now she is healthy and her daughter has pink toenails to match her mom.
We took the moto into a different area, down alleys between tin houses, an alley so small that my knees nearly scrapped along. We went to Lekhana's house, another grandmother raising her child's children. She tells Billy that she's not having trouble with her oldest now and points to her yellow and black sarong. He gives her clothes and some money everyday. Everyone is laughing and talking in Khmer, we're sitting on tables and stools near the kitchen, which is dark and covered in flies. The floor is hard-packed mud and swept clean. Billy tells me that one of the children in the family was close to death several years ago. When Billy got her started on ARVs, she began to get stronger and he told her that if she got stronger and stronger still, he would take her somewhere. She wanted to go to the beach. They are laughing about the trip. Billy wanted to go up some hill and Vena couldn't go because of her handicap, unless Billy carried her. They are all picking on the way Billy walked up the hill.
For years Billy has worked with these families, but there is no documentation or files and with funding troubles, its important to be able to present information to potential donors. My job is to build up trust with the families, ask lots of questions and put together a file for each family--with report cards, pictures and medical information.
To get a better sense of Billy's projects, he wanted to show me some other work that HPHAO (Hope for People Living with HIV/AIDS organization) is doing in villages outside of Phnom Penh. I borrowed a helmet from Wendy, the owner of our local bar, and held on tight as Billy took off into the dust. He knows the shortcuts, he navigates and I'm encouraged. So much money gets poured into the throngs of international NGOs in Phnom Penh and often only the internationals reap the benefits, traversing the streets in cushy landrovers. And I imagine that many of these people move from one air-conditioned office to the next and never see what they're proclaiming to help.
I went to a 5-roomed school and the English teacher showed me around, introduced me into classrooms and told me about their days. I threw the little kids into the air and they all grabbed my arms and rubbed at my skin. The older kids practiced their English with me. One girl looked western and the teacher told me her mother sells fried bananas and sweet potatoes in Phnom Penh and her father is a German that shes never met. Most of the kids are barefoot. The youngest kids dont wear pants. But they get breakfast, lunch and a snack, ad thats more than some kids I've seen. Fifty percent of children in Cambodia have stunted growth, which also affects their IQ level.
We visited a second school after lunch where about 20 kids from the village have classes. This is where I saw the hungriest child I've ever seen. And I wondered why he wasn't in the free school. Just after passing the child in the street we passed a half million dollar German orphanage with no children. The resort orphanage is looming, empty and haunting. Why is that man rubbing his belly in Germany feeling satisfied that he built an orphanage, not knowing the place, the country and not realizing that no one is benefiting from his ostentatious orphanage?
During our first week we got our bearings, met Sabina and Isaac and learned how to play Tinglan, the local card game. Isaac is a second year med-student who was adopted as a kid orphaned by the Khmer Rouge and raised in California. He's high-energy, motivated and involved. Through him I'm in touch with a few American nurses. He also got me connected to Billy.
Billy is tanner than the locals and they pick on him and love him. This is what I like most about this man. He has built up a repoire with the locals, unlike most internatioals here. He's unassuming and contemplative, or just quiet, I haven't figured him out yet. He's balding but a black cowboy hat hides the top of his head. Long, black curls protrude from the rim, whipping me in the face as he drives wildly on dirt roads outside of Phnom Penh. I've gone with him twice now out into the slums or to relocation sites outside of the city.
As Phnom Penh becomes gentrified, the ghetto is sometimes burned out by the government and people are forced to leave, planted capriciously in unwanted areas. He works with people affected by HIV/AIDS to build schools, jobs and centers for orphanages and vulnerable children. The man is an enigma, but I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued to work with a grass-roots non-profit, excited for the opportunity to work for people, immediately and directly.
I met two of the families I will work with in my first project here. They are part of a home-based care program that Billy started through the Jeannine and Billy's Children Foundation many years ago. There are six families in the Bora Khela slum. Vena is an 18-year old whose family was helped by JBCF and who is now attending university on a four-year scholarship from an Australian NGO. She will be working with me during the home visits and also be serving as a translator. The first family we went to visit is headed by a grandmother raising four grandchildren orphaned when their parents died of AIDS. Billy provided the family with $150 start-up and now the family is much less vulnerable, running a small gocery stand out of their home. He has put a children's center nearby and hired a teacher who he had found close to death, soon after her husband had died of AIDS. Now she is healthy and her daughter has pink toenails to match her mom.
We took the moto into a different area, down alleys between tin houses, an alley so small that my knees nearly scrapped along. We went to Lekhana's house, another grandmother raising her child's children. She tells Billy that she's not having trouble with her oldest now and points to her yellow and black sarong. He gives her clothes and some money everyday. Everyone is laughing and talking in Khmer, we're sitting on tables and stools near the kitchen, which is dark and covered in flies. The floor is hard-packed mud and swept clean. Billy tells me that one of the children in the family was close to death several years ago. When Billy got her started on ARVs, she began to get stronger and he told her that if she got stronger and stronger still, he would take her somewhere. She wanted to go to the beach. They are laughing about the trip. Billy wanted to go up some hill and Vena couldn't go because of her handicap, unless Billy carried her. They are all picking on the way Billy walked up the hill.
For years Billy has worked with these families, but there is no documentation or files and with funding troubles, its important to be able to present information to potential donors. My job is to build up trust with the families, ask lots of questions and put together a file for each family--with report cards, pictures and medical information.
To get a better sense of Billy's projects, he wanted to show me some other work that HPHAO (Hope for People Living with HIV/AIDS organization) is doing in villages outside of Phnom Penh. I borrowed a helmet from Wendy, the owner of our local bar, and held on tight as Billy took off into the dust. He knows the shortcuts, he navigates and I'm encouraged. So much money gets poured into the throngs of international NGOs in Phnom Penh and often only the internationals reap the benefits, traversing the streets in cushy landrovers. And I imagine that many of these people move from one air-conditioned office to the next and never see what they're proclaiming to help.
I went to a 5-roomed school and the English teacher showed me around, introduced me into classrooms and told me about their days. I threw the little kids into the air and they all grabbed my arms and rubbed at my skin. The older kids practiced their English with me. One girl looked western and the teacher told me her mother sells fried bananas and sweet potatoes in Phnom Penh and her father is a German that shes never met. Most of the kids are barefoot. The youngest kids dont wear pants. But they get breakfast, lunch and a snack, ad thats more than some kids I've seen. Fifty percent of children in Cambodia have stunted growth, which also affects their IQ level.
We visited a second school after lunch where about 20 kids from the village have classes. This is where I saw the hungriest child I've ever seen. And I wondered why he wasn't in the free school. Just after passing the child in the street we passed a half million dollar German orphanage with no children. The resort orphanage is looming, empty and haunting. Why is that man rubbing his belly in Germany feeling satisfied that he built an orphanage, not knowing the place, the country and not realizing that no one is benefiting from his ostentatious orphanage?
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
One day in Burma
On the last day of 2007 we walked into Burma. A government guide met us on the bridge. In the afternoon we walked out with a Burmese monk.
A bridge connected Mae Sot, Thailand to Myawadi, Burma. The difference between the two sides of the river is stark. In Burma there are less paved roads and more dirt. The officials on the Burma side scared me- government, military, repression, injustice, murder. But they smiled and held onto our passports, taking our $20 for one day in Burma. And I felt so guilty giving this government any money, any support. But I wanted to talk to the Burmese, to spend some money in their shops, see how they live. For a while I wasn't sure if I'd get to talk to anybody, to have any sense of the real Burma- A government guide speaking perfect English followed us the first hour that we entered the country. He took us to a beautiful wat where I watched an army officer make an offering and pray to a Buddha shrine around a 600 year old Bodhi Tree. After lunch the guide realized we had no agenda and he left us for his afternoon nap.
Sarah and I walked to a market where they sold powder that makes women's face whiter. Some men also use the powder.
*unfinished
Thailand
At the border town Sarah and I had our first Pad Thai and spicy soup. We also saw our first 7-11. I naturally bought a diet coke. We caught a bus 3 hours to Chiang Rai. We wandered the night bazaar, tasted some Thai sweet pastries, went to the night food market and browsed the fried cockroaches, crickets and silk worms. We ate dinner at Cabbages and Condoms, a restaurant with a campaign to promote safe sex and prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS. The staff was all women wearing skimpy red dresses. And I began to realize more and more that this is a country of many contradictions.
Our first day in Chiang Rai I noticed something I had not seen in the rest of Asia. There were a lot of western men in their 50s-60s wearing shirts buttoned halfway up to expose their grey chest hairs, wandering the streets in weathered tevas revealing gnarly yellow toenails, wearing khaki pants buttoned tight enough and high enough to keep their fat bellies from cascading down onto their laps. Stroking their arms and giggling, Thai girls that couldn’t be older than 16 or 17 accompanied them.
We had lunch in the market-vegetable soup with fat, white noodles, basil and chilies. A Thai man in his 60’s started talking with us at the table and he was so excited to hear that we were from the US. He had lived in New Jersey for 22 years and proceeded to tell us his life story. He is a retired teacher and now likes to do research, especially helping fight malaria with a cheap water bottle contraption he described to us. After lunch we wandered the market with him, asking questions about some of the produce and goodies for sell. He said you can’t eat black dog with beans because your stomach would explode.
After two days in Chiang Rai, we were ready to leave. It was hard to find places to eat for cheap and the town lacked charm. I decided I wanted to spend Christmas in Chiang Mai. We found a room at Gap's House made of dark wood, seperated into two seperate spaces, with a firm mattress and situated in a lovely garden setting. Sarah made me a Christmas tree out of magazines that she taped onto a pyramid-shaped lamp and cut out vegetables from the magazines to use as ornaments. Together, we hung up the ornaments as I played the one Christmas song on my Ipod- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Then I played country music because it makes me think of home. Sarah bought two silk bags to use as stockings.
One night we passed a church with a nativity scene. I approached it to look more closely and get a feel for the season. Its hard to make it feel like Christmas when its hot outside and most people aren't celebrating. Inside the church, a choir was singing hymns in another language and it was so beautiful I had to walk away.The night before Christmas Eve, carolers came by Gap's House and sang a song while I was standing there.
On Sunday, just before Christmas, I walked for 10 hours around the city. I looked at markets and searched for a restaurant to have Christmas Even dinner. I met a monk and we talked about politics and peace. Every Sunday in Chiang Mai there is a market covering so many streets I couldn't follow it all the way to the end. It lasted most of the day. I bought Sarah an indigo batik for Christmas. I had sushi and fried seaweed and many Thai treats. At night the street was filled with light and there were street performances-music and dance.
The day after Christmas, Sarah and I took a cooking course at Thai farm. With a group of about 10 we went to the market and learned about the different kinds of rice and the coconuts. At the farm, our instructor showed us the herbs and vegetables that we would be using-eggplant, bitter eggplant, holy basil, basil, kaffir lime, lemongrass, ginger, chillis, long bean, etc. We cooked green Thai curry with tofu, Tom Yum Soup with prawns, Jasmine rice, stirfried tofu with basil, spring rolls and coconut banana. The food was amazing but I couldn't eat most of it. I was sick for the second time.
Sarah and I were both sick on December 27th, the day we had planned to head south by bus so we spent one more night at Gap's. On December 28th we headed to Sukhothai for 2 nights.
After a 6 hour busride we landed in the ancient 1st capital of the Thai kingdom, founded in 1257. But even before 1257 temples had been built, influenced by the Khmer Empire in the 12th century-a very distinct style that I would see an abundance of in Angkor Wat. We biked around the ancient city- the ground was covered in stupas, standing and sitting stone Buddhas, pink azaleas, moats with 3 walls protecting the city, brick and stucco and burnt, quiet. We found ourselves alone around every corner, grass lawns, palmayra palms and canopy trees, columns and stupas with Sri Lankan influence. In the museum we saw adzeheads and beaded necklases from 6000 BC. The place was old and it felt old because the infrastructure for viewing was so poor and very little restoration has taken place.
(unfinished)
Our first day in Chiang Rai I noticed something I had not seen in the rest of Asia. There were a lot of western men in their 50s-60s wearing shirts buttoned halfway up to expose their grey chest hairs, wandering the streets in weathered tevas revealing gnarly yellow toenails, wearing khaki pants buttoned tight enough and high enough to keep their fat bellies from cascading down onto their laps. Stroking their arms and giggling, Thai girls that couldn’t be older than 16 or 17 accompanied them.
We had lunch in the market-vegetable soup with fat, white noodles, basil and chilies. A Thai man in his 60’s started talking with us at the table and he was so excited to hear that we were from the US. He had lived in New Jersey for 22 years and proceeded to tell us his life story. He is a retired teacher and now likes to do research, especially helping fight malaria with a cheap water bottle contraption he described to us. After lunch we wandered the market with him, asking questions about some of the produce and goodies for sell. He said you can’t eat black dog with beans because your stomach would explode.
After two days in Chiang Rai, we were ready to leave. It was hard to find places to eat for cheap and the town lacked charm. I decided I wanted to spend Christmas in Chiang Mai. We found a room at Gap's House made of dark wood, seperated into two seperate spaces, with a firm mattress and situated in a lovely garden setting. Sarah made me a Christmas tree out of magazines that she taped onto a pyramid-shaped lamp and cut out vegetables from the magazines to use as ornaments. Together, we hung up the ornaments as I played the one Christmas song on my Ipod- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Then I played country music because it makes me think of home. Sarah bought two silk bags to use as stockings.
One night we passed a church with a nativity scene. I approached it to look more closely and get a feel for the season. Its hard to make it feel like Christmas when its hot outside and most people aren't celebrating. Inside the church, a choir was singing hymns in another language and it was so beautiful I had to walk away.The night before Christmas Eve, carolers came by Gap's House and sang a song while I was standing there.
On Sunday, just before Christmas, I walked for 10 hours around the city. I looked at markets and searched for a restaurant to have Christmas Even dinner. I met a monk and we talked about politics and peace. Every Sunday in Chiang Mai there is a market covering so many streets I couldn't follow it all the way to the end. It lasted most of the day. I bought Sarah an indigo batik for Christmas. I had sushi and fried seaweed and many Thai treats. At night the street was filled with light and there were street performances-music and dance.
The day after Christmas, Sarah and I took a cooking course at Thai farm. With a group of about 10 we went to the market and learned about the different kinds of rice and the coconuts. At the farm, our instructor showed us the herbs and vegetables that we would be using-eggplant, bitter eggplant, holy basil, basil, kaffir lime, lemongrass, ginger, chillis, long bean, etc. We cooked green Thai curry with tofu, Tom Yum Soup with prawns, Jasmine rice, stirfried tofu with basil, spring rolls and coconut banana. The food was amazing but I couldn't eat most of it. I was sick for the second time.
Sarah and I were both sick on December 27th, the day we had planned to head south by bus so we spent one more night at Gap's. On December 28th we headed to Sukhothai for 2 nights.
After a 6 hour busride we landed in the ancient 1st capital of the Thai kingdom, founded in 1257. But even before 1257 temples had been built, influenced by the Khmer Empire in the 12th century-a very distinct style that I would see an abundance of in Angkor Wat. We biked around the ancient city- the ground was covered in stupas, standing and sitting stone Buddhas, pink azaleas, moats with 3 walls protecting the city, brick and stucco and burnt, quiet. We found ourselves alone around every corner, grass lawns, palmayra palms and canopy trees, columns and stupas with Sri Lankan influence. In the museum we saw adzeheads and beaded necklases from 6000 BC. The place was old and it felt old because the infrastructure for viewing was so poor and very little restoration has taken place.
(unfinished)
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Luang Prabang, north and then to Thailand
The roads in the north of Laos are less arduous than they used to be, although you still can't get anywhere very quickly. From Muong Ngoi we took a boat and a bus to Luang Prabang. We stayed in the old quarter, on the peninsula bounded by the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers. The town reminds me of Antigua Guatemala, with its old colonial houses and narrow alleys and side streets. We ate a lot here, and we ate well. We wandered the town, entered centuries old wats and sacred Buddhist sites. The city is red and gold and everything beautiful you could want in a city. There are many tourists and side-walk cafes. The night market is lit by soft, white lights, with a white roof. The white is balanced perfectly with a plethora of handmade items- artwork on handmade paper, scarfs, wood carvings and silver jewelry. For Hanakuh I took Sarah to a French Restauarant where they served us chilled, pure water and aubergine dip and good French Wine.
From Luang Prabang Sarah and I traveled on the back of a pickup truck with about 15 other passengers, around precarious winding roads to Luang Nam Tha in the far North. The trip took about 5 hours and we arrived at night, at a newly built bus station, with no information on where were were. This is what is tiring about traveling. Constant disorientation. Eventually we hired a tuk tuk to take us several miles into town. That night we arranged a kayak trip on the Nam Tha river and ate Indian food with bad Daal.
It’s the dry season so the river meandered slowly around the mountain, as if it too was wary of the rubber plantations and slash and burn farming that was occurring in the mountains it had cut. Only a few years ago most of these crops were poppy fields. Sarah and I shared a kayak and we went with an Australia family and two guides. Eventually rubber trees turned back into the forest and we entered into the Na Tha National Park. On the river we stopped at a Lintin Village. Sixteen families live in the village and the people are beautiful. These people came from Cambodia. To thank us for visiting their village (they get a percentage of the profit from our kayak trip), they had handcrafted some ornate purses. Indigo-dyed hands, toothless mothers breastfeeding, children barefoot in oversized tee shirts, chickens and mean dogs. These are no pet dogs. They are scared of people because people eat them, especially black dog. It’s eaten in the winter because it makes you very, very full and it makes your body temperature increase substantially.
After passing through the village we had lunch on a bed of rocks along the side of the river. We ate sticky rice, mustard greens, omelet, fish, and a desert of coconut fried chips over a banana leaf spread. We kayaked further down the river and visited a Khmu village where we saw them making the rice whiskey in a ceramic jar. This is unlike lao lao. It tastes like a very sweet red wine.
We finished the river tour and on the way back we had a flat tire on a bumpy dirt road. Sarah and I took the moment to explore a stream with a jungle canopy, cool water ankle deep. It’s beautiful to find yourself in places you would not have expected to visit.
In the evening we ate sweet potato roasting on a charcoal fire in the town square.
The next day Sarah and I took a bus to Muang Sing for the night. Muang Sing is a small town that borders China and is only two hours from Luang Nam Tha, so we thought we would check it out and try to go into China, even though the border is only open to nationals. Sarah and I rented bikes for a dollar for the day and headed 10km uphill to the Chinese border. It was hot as hill, but we could see the hills of China and it was a beautiful place. Very few people were on this road. Some villagers carried baskets on their heads or bamboo across their shoulders. The scene, when I remember it, was shrouded with a soft and gold light. We passed many sugarcane fields, also formerly poppy fields in an effort to stop opium which has been a huge problem in the Golden Triangle. Sarah and biked through many villages, mostly Akha. We saw a village gate up a hill that is bilt to protect a village fromm evil spirits. We biked back to town at dusk and the light was even soft, blurring the hills and fields together into a smear. We stopped for sunset over a rice field and a hut with a cooking fire, sending smoke into the sunset.
The next afternoon we went back to Luang Nam Tha, but first we took a Tuk Tuk into an Akha Village to celebrate our second New Year of the trip. Everyone was playing darts with colorful air ballons. We played a round and each popped two of the three ballons, winning a sweet orange drink as a prize. A family invited us to eat with them and we walked up the steps into a bamboo hut on stilts. I nearly went week in the knees when I saw the scene, so similar to my last sick New Year. I ate a little rice and refused the lao lao this time. The owner of the “Ethnic Restaurant” in town invited us to the tourism manager’s house. We joined them for a while, refusing to eat the meat. They politely inquired why, and we had a discussion on vegetarianism. We bused back to Luang Nam Tha in the afternoon and slept at Zuela Guesthouse. I ate a whole bag of sweet potatoes. For dinner we had banana flower salad for the very first time, a monumental moment. One of my favorite asian dishes!
Laos was my favorite country. People move at a different pace, and they aren’t too bothered by outsiders. The people are warm, the countryside beautiful, the towns so small. I felt years and miles away from the rest of the world. On December 20th we exited Laos from Huay Xai and crossed the Mekong into Chiang Khong, Thailand.
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