Mission accomplished. One of our primary goals on this
around-the-world journey was to have Isaac and Avi see how dramatically people
need assistance and for them to give that helping hand. In addition, for us to
develop an identity as a family that shares the many gifts we have received.
Our month in Siem Reap, Cambodia was the heart of our trip
in many ways. Central to this was the incredible nature of the Cambodian
people. Given what they have been through, I expected them to appear
post-traumatic. Instead, their energetic presence was the most open, generous,
happy and gentle I have ever felt in a country.
We stayed at Golden Village Guesthouse; as I told the
matriarch Gui on our departure, “Golden Village is so beautiful to my eyes, and
even more beautiful to my heart.” Beautiful landscaping, a balcony for yoga, a young
man Piset who was so helpful every day without hesitation, two key women Huy
Eng and Sokhom whose radiant smiles and calm presence sweetened our days, and Huy
Eng’s parents Gui and Tu who gifted us interesting things to eat and were so
energetically present and kind.
New Hope Cambodia was the perfect volunteer experience for
us. Almost all of the volunteers stay at Golden Village Guesthouse making for a
wonderful community feeling. We rode our bicycles 25 minutes to New Hope, which
started out 4 years ago as a single-room school, founded by a calm and powerful
Khmer man Kem Sour and an unstoppable, kind Australian Kerry. Now, they have a new
three story school building serving 650 students, teaching them English which
is necessary for most decent jobs, and also skills such as sewing, computers,
farming and fish farming. There is a new restaurant building where they teach
cooking and other restaurant work. They have an outreach program that goes out
into the community to assess family’s needs and creatively offers whatever
assistance they need. 180 families are sponsored by donors and receive 20-50
kilos of rice monthly plus several other food items. The new health clinic has
two Khmer doctors and several nurses; they see up to 100 patients a day with
very limited resources including a small pharmacy. The people seen cannot
afford to buy any medicine so they are limited to what we can give them from
the pharmacy. Everything New Hope offers is completely free.
Isaac, Avi and Veronica taught English in the school to
children from age 9 to 18. Isaac also helped teach them how to use computers. Avi
also helped with math. On our last day there, there was a wonderful opening
celebration for the new clinic building, attended by New Hope Cambodia staff,
students and donors as well as provincial government leaders. At Kerry’s
request, Veronica went into all the classrooms with Avi to teach the children the
school song to sing at the opening. She also developed a landscape design for
the new buildings.
I spent about half of my time in the clinic working with the
wonderful Khmer doctor Dr. Lay. She just graduated from medical school and does
not have as thorough an education as American medical school grads. She does
have, however, a great desire to learn more and I much enjoyed working with and
teaching her. I spent the other half of my time making home (thatch hut)
visits. It was amazing to be in many people’s homes. Hunger was present in many
of the homes. Everyone is thin although most are not obviously malnourished.
About half of the homes have someone missing limb(s) from landmine accidents. I
worked with a few special cases: a man with confusion due to AIDS and
tuberculosis meningitis (missing one leg) and a woman (double leg amputee, in
her case from diabetes) with severe respiratory distress which was hard to sort
out but proved to be due to heart failure precipitated by kidney failure caused
by diabetes. I spent the most time with a woman with an untreatable advanced
facial tumor that was the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my medical
work (don’t worry, I’m NOT posting that photo). She had undertreated pain (on
no narcotics when I met her) yet maintained the most calm presence; I told her
she was like Buddha. With her, the focus was pain management, end-of-life planning,
and the complicated issue of how to overdose… Saying goodbye to our Golden Village Guesthouse and New Hope
Cambodia family was sad and full of much heart-warming mutual appreciation.
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