I have finally uploaded pictures of the kids and the community! My album is on facebook, but anyone can view it with or without a facebook account.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2056497&id=1224690042&l=4315d03f8c
Enjoy and have a great day :)
Monday, September 13, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Home Today?... nope.
A few weeks ago, I was dreading this day. Today is September 12, my 22nd birthday, and the day I should be leaving to go back to the US. Since I'm young, without any commitments, and the happiest I've been in a long time, I am staying in Cambodia until at least mid-December. I don't want to leave this country, the children that I've come to love, or the opportunities here to do something good in a place with such a dark and tragic past. To finance this 3 month extension, I have taken a job as an English tutor for a private company. The job is part time in the afternoons and pays very well for Cambodian standards. My mornings will be spent working with Global Service Corps, but shifting from volunteer to assistant volunteer coordinator. With my experience with this organization in Tanzania, and now having been here for 2 months, I think that I will be able to establish a larger presence for GSC in Phnom Penh and find a variety of work placements for future volunteers. In exchange for my work with GSC, they will continue to provide me with a place to live in the city and a weekly food allowance. The BEST part about this whole set-up is that I now have 12 more weekends that can be spent at Wat Opot with the kids :) Some of what I will be doing involves working with Partners in Compassion, the Wat Opot foundation, to get public health volunteers into the villages looking for and providing a solution for malnutrition, setting up blood pressure clinics, teaching HIV/AIDS awareness classes, and providing home care for community members with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, etc. This is a very exciting opportunity for me and I am beyond happy with the way things have worked out in Cambodia.
My leg is back to normal, no more crutches and very minimal pain. The recovery has been so much easier than anticipated and I'm very lucky for things to have turned out as they did.
Molly and I went out last night and she treated me to a lovely dinner for my birthday and has been spoiling me all day today. We also just got a new volunteer this morning, a professional HIV/AIDS counselor from Oregon who will be a great asset to the program. Tomorrow begins my official GSC duties and I couldn't be more excited. I really hope, however, that these next 3 months go by MUCH slower than the first 2 which seemed to have just melted away.
As I mentioned before, Wat Opot has been really struggling to finance the community. Wayne gets money every month from the US government in Social Security and from being wounded in Vietnam, and literally every cent goes right to the kids. He doesn't own anything for himself and is selflessness in its purest form. For my birthday, please (only if you can) make a small donation to Wat Opot. Their website is on my blog.
Thank you and I hope everyone has a great Sunday :)
My leg is back to normal, no more crutches and very minimal pain. The recovery has been so much easier than anticipated and I'm very lucky for things to have turned out as they did.
Molly and I went out last night and she treated me to a lovely dinner for my birthday and has been spoiling me all day today. We also just got a new volunteer this morning, a professional HIV/AIDS counselor from Oregon who will be a great asset to the program. Tomorrow begins my official GSC duties and I couldn't be more excited. I really hope, however, that these next 3 months go by MUCH slower than the first 2 which seemed to have just melted away.
As I mentioned before, Wat Opot has been really struggling to finance the community. Wayne gets money every month from the US government in Social Security and from being wounded in Vietnam, and literally every cent goes right to the kids. He doesn't own anything for himself and is selflessness in its purest form. For my birthday, please (only if you can) make a small donation to Wat Opot. Their website is on my blog.
Thank you and I hope everyone has a great Sunday :)
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Back to Wat Opot
Last week I spent another incredible week at Wat Opot. Though the days absolutely flew by, I made the most of them. I came into Takeo province on Sunday night before bedtime and got to give out hugs and kisses to giggling, happy little kids. I was so happy to be back with them, and I think some of them might have been just as happy to see me. I spent the first night in the staff house getting to know the newest volunteer, Melinda. Melinda is from Kansas, and has lived all over the world. She recently spent a few months in Nepal working at a Children's Peace Home, but due to Nepali visa restrictions, had to leave the country for a few months. She is spending 3 months before returning to the Peace Home at Wat Opot. With a background in Peace Studies and working all over the world, she will be a great asset to Wat Opot these next few months teaching English, tutoring, and learning about this culture to share with others.
Virak, Rith, and Chai were so excited to have KAT back! Chai immediately climbed into my backpack, which is bigger than him :) Eventually I had to pry him out of it so that I could take it inside and he could go to bed!
This week at Wat Opot, I got a chance to practice nursing again. I administered my first pediatric IV (on the first try!!) to a child who had had a fever for 5 days and was incredibly dehydrated. The boy, Sompoa, was so good and did not complain at all. In Cambodia, and most third world countries, they use a strange kind of IV with no catheter, just the needle. When you first take it out of the packaging, its just a needle with a tube attached to it. It was like nothing I had ever seen and I was honestly very nervous, but I did OK. I thought for sure Sompoa would be in pain and discomfort having a long needle just sitting in his arm for 8 hours, but he didn't say a word. While staying in the hospice with the IV drip, I also had another patient, a smaller boy also with a high fever. Melinda set up her computer so they could watch movies like Finding Nemo and sleep. Another day I was called into the hospice where I found Wayne sitting with a boy from the community. The boy had fallen against a tree and a small branch went into his lower lip straight through to the other side. Being that it was a dirty and odd shaped object, there was a high concern for infection. It was extremely swollen after only about an hour. We cleaned both sides thoroughly and sent him home with antibiotics and peroxide.
During my first visit, I noticed that the kids at Wat Opot all had long and dirty fingernails. They also had a lot of mosquito bites that they scratch and infect. When we scratch mosquito bites with our fingernails, our immune systems kill off any germs that may enter the body, but the little ones with HIV have depressed immune systems and aren't as able to fight off infection. I brought back nail clippers and nail scrub brushes to clean the fingers and toes of the kids and hopefully reduce some of the infections.
I left Wat Opot on Friday to go to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam. The older kids knew that I would be returning on Tuesday morning, as the latest bus on Monday to Takeo would leave after the bus arrived in Phnom Penh from Saigon. The smaller ones were worried when I came outside with my backpack to leave, and one even had me circle in his calendar (which I don't even know where he got it from) when I'd be back. Unfortunately, today is Thursday of the next week and instead of running around with them, I am sitting in my apartment. Since coming to Cambodia, I have been a feast for mosquitoes. They love me and I am covered in bites in various stages of healing. One bite, however, went to an extreme and got really infected. The irony is I just spent two days cutting fingernails of kids to avoid exactly what happened to me. The whole weekend in Vietnam this one bite was getting more and more swollen and red and when I finally got back into Phnom Penh on Monday night, the swelling in my entire leg was so bad that it cut off all circulation to my toes! I couldn't touch anywhere below my knee and walking was very challenging. I got some antibiotics and pain medication at a clinic in Saigon, but nothing was getting better. I went to an international hospital Monday night where I had a minor surgery to clean and suture the site. It brought pain to an entire new level, and the whole time all I could think about was little Sompoa. If he can sit there for 8 hours with a 1 inch needle in his arm, I think I can go through this, I said to myself repeatedly. It was awful, and the daily follow-ups and dressing changes are no walk in the park either. I'm now on crutches with limited mobility, waiting to get better enough to go back to Wat Opot. Until then, I luckily have my wonderful roommate Molly who's being a great nurse :)
This brings me to another important update... this should be my last week in Cambodia, and I should be boarding a flight on Sunday that's headed to DC. I have decided, however, to stay in Cambodia for an undetermined amount of time. There's still so much to be done and I'm not ready to leave. As I told my best friend Alyssa, I'm in no rush to go home and enter the real world when I'm living in the real world right now. I have big plans that I'll share as they develop, but now I'll go rest this bum leg and save my energy for the exciting months to come!
I left my card reader at Wat Opot so I am unable to upload any pictures except the one, but as soon as I get my things back I will definitely share more, even though I feel like I keep saying that over and over!
Thank you for checking in and I hope you have a great week :)
PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SECOND MOTHER, SUSAN ANDERS XOXO
Virak, Rith, and Chai were so excited to have KAT back! Chai immediately climbed into my backpack, which is bigger than him :) Eventually I had to pry him out of it so that I could take it inside and he could go to bed!
This week at Wat Opot, I got a chance to practice nursing again. I administered my first pediatric IV (on the first try!!) to a child who had had a fever for 5 days and was incredibly dehydrated. The boy, Sompoa, was so good and did not complain at all. In Cambodia, and most third world countries, they use a strange kind of IV with no catheter, just the needle. When you first take it out of the packaging, its just a needle with a tube attached to it. It was like nothing I had ever seen and I was honestly very nervous, but I did OK. I thought for sure Sompoa would be in pain and discomfort having a long needle just sitting in his arm for 8 hours, but he didn't say a word. While staying in the hospice with the IV drip, I also had another patient, a smaller boy also with a high fever. Melinda set up her computer so they could watch movies like Finding Nemo and sleep. Another day I was called into the hospice where I found Wayne sitting with a boy from the community. The boy had fallen against a tree and a small branch went into his lower lip straight through to the other side. Being that it was a dirty and odd shaped object, there was a high concern for infection. It was extremely swollen after only about an hour. We cleaned both sides thoroughly and sent him home with antibiotics and peroxide.
During my first visit, I noticed that the kids at Wat Opot all had long and dirty fingernails. They also had a lot of mosquito bites that they scratch and infect. When we scratch mosquito bites with our fingernails, our immune systems kill off any germs that may enter the body, but the little ones with HIV have depressed immune systems and aren't as able to fight off infection. I brought back nail clippers and nail scrub brushes to clean the fingers and toes of the kids and hopefully reduce some of the infections.
I left Wat Opot on Friday to go to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam. The older kids knew that I would be returning on Tuesday morning, as the latest bus on Monday to Takeo would leave after the bus arrived in Phnom Penh from Saigon. The smaller ones were worried when I came outside with my backpack to leave, and one even had me circle in his calendar (which I don't even know where he got it from) when I'd be back. Unfortunately, today is Thursday of the next week and instead of running around with them, I am sitting in my apartment. Since coming to Cambodia, I have been a feast for mosquitoes. They love me and I am covered in bites in various stages of healing. One bite, however, went to an extreme and got really infected. The irony is I just spent two days cutting fingernails of kids to avoid exactly what happened to me. The whole weekend in Vietnam this one bite was getting more and more swollen and red and when I finally got back into Phnom Penh on Monday night, the swelling in my entire leg was so bad that it cut off all circulation to my toes! I couldn't touch anywhere below my knee and walking was very challenging. I got some antibiotics and pain medication at a clinic in Saigon, but nothing was getting better. I went to an international hospital Monday night where I had a minor surgery to clean and suture the site. It brought pain to an entire new level, and the whole time all I could think about was little Sompoa. If he can sit there for 8 hours with a 1 inch needle in his arm, I think I can go through this, I said to myself repeatedly. It was awful, and the daily follow-ups and dressing changes are no walk in the park either. I'm now on crutches with limited mobility, waiting to get better enough to go back to Wat Opot. Until then, I luckily have my wonderful roommate Molly who's being a great nurse :)
This brings me to another important update... this should be my last week in Cambodia, and I should be boarding a flight on Sunday that's headed to DC. I have decided, however, to stay in Cambodia for an undetermined amount of time. There's still so much to be done and I'm not ready to leave. As I told my best friend Alyssa, I'm in no rush to go home and enter the real world when I'm living in the real world right now. I have big plans that I'll share as they develop, but now I'll go rest this bum leg and save my energy for the exciting months to come!
I left my card reader at Wat Opot so I am unable to upload any pictures except the one, but as soon as I get my things back I will definitely share more, even though I feel like I keep saying that over and over!
Thank you for checking in and I hope you have a great week :)
PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SECOND MOTHER, SUSAN ANDERS XOXO
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