Sylvia's Journal

We spent the weekend partially on the road, a hair-rising trip, and partially relaxing at a lovely lodge near Kaeb (Kep or Kip) Beach on the southern coast of Cambodia very close to the Vietnam border. It was Chinese New Year Weekend and so we saw accidents – these happen here, people say with shrug. I suppose you can say that as long as the victims aren’t related to you. We saw one nasty accident on the way out and one on our return.

Because of the Chinese New Year long weekend all the busses were booked, forcing us to take a pricey but comfortable taxi. “Special price,” meant 10 dollars more than usual.

Three hours after our departure from Phnom Penh we arrived at a lovely little lodge with an infinity pool presided over by a life size Buddha. As it was lunchtime we headed out to the famous crab market with its many restaurants serving up the seafood that was sold right next door, not just crabs.

Our innkeepers had told us their guests rated the restaurant named ‘The Democrat’ very highly and so that is where we sat down for lunch. We were seated by the water front on a rickety pier next to an older American couple (volunteer teachers) who asked us promptly whether we were democrats (they were) and gave us a thumbs up when we replied with a yes. The bamboo walls were decorated with pictures of democratic US presidents. They were quite up to date with Obama’s iconic Change poster gracing the walls.

I spent the afternoon agonizing about how to relax before a busy week. I can’t simply turn a switch, despite Axel’s attempts to find my reset button. I have found during our summer holidays in Maine that it takes me a week to unwind, hence our decision to take two weeks in a row.

On Sunday we visited a green pepper farm and were instructed by a Spanish volunteer how peppers are grown, harvested and processed. It is a very labor intensive process that explained the high cost of green pepper when we buy it in our local store.  The Kampot Pepper is actually an ‘appellation controlee,’ something you don’t see very often in developing countries. I am sure the French had something to do with this. The pepper farm also was full of fruit trees with many kinds I have only eaten but never seen on a tree: rambutan, jackfruit, durrian, mangosteen aside from the more familiar mangos and papayas.

The trip home was less comfortable and 20 dollars cheaper, another hair-rising ride. Whatever state of relaxation I had reached by our departure was gone when we arrived back at the hotel in Phnom Penh.

As I headed into a busy week Axel got ready for another venture and took the bus to Batambang in the northwest, close to the Thai border, a 7 hour bus ride away.

We finished the week of preparatory interviews so I could understand the lay of the wheelchair land here. The puzzle pieces are falling into place. We have been looking through each individual or organization’s window and then crossed these views with those of others, looking through a different window and findings some sort of rationale behind the different views. As I find over and over again, everyone is right. The task is not to convert but to integrate.

Axel arrived in Phnom Penh after a 6 hour bus ride from the north. He had come in 2^nd in a trivia night and won a glass of garlic infused vodka. His seat mate in the bus offered him a mint.

While he was making his way to PP we completed the intermediate level wheelchair provision training, with final presentations, a distribution of posters and equipment that the trainers are not taking home. This included four electric knives (to cut foam) which all blew their fuses within minutes of use because they came from America and could handle only 110 volts. Being inoperable at the moment did not affect these knives being the most coveted items. We had to do a lottery and then each of us offered one of the four grand prizes to the lucky winners under loud cheers. They say they can fix the knives and make them useful again. I hope.

The official closing was delayed because we were waiting for the excellencies, the name given to senior government officials. After having been told they were on their way, we learned later that they would not come. And so the lead trainer from the Philippines and my colleague M installed themselves as minor excellencies on the dais, a gold stain cloth-covered table with a plastic orchid and lily arrangement on top. It was all very formal with an official program and led by a master of ceremonies, even though it was all ‘entre nous.’

We returned home to the hotel, me to find Axel and have a lemongrass martini with him by the pool, the others to change, before heading for a closing dinner cruise on the rivers intersect here at Phnom Penh.

And now it is weekend and I am preparing for both a relaxing weekend and a preparation for the intense week to come. I am not sure how I am going to do that.

I have  completed 3 of the 5 days of preparing for our alignment meeting, plus three evenings for running my ‘night’ jobs as one colleague calls them: being the lead facilitator on a French language virtual leadership course for teams from Ivory Coast, Madagascar, DRC, Senegal and a few other countries, and putting the finishing touches on session designs for the TB-medicines conference that starts on March 1 in Bangkok.

The day job has been relatively light with lots of time spent in tuk-tuks in traffic. I am wearing my mouth mask, as do so many others here, to protect my lungs from the fumes. We interview stakeholders in the provision of wheelchairs. It is one great puzzle to entangle and the notion of a stakeholder meeting is unclear. People are polite. When I ask what they want out of the meeting they say: ‘that you meet your objectives!” I can hear them think ‘dear’ at the end of the sentence. I am sometimes embarrassed to be part of a long line of donor representatives, which I am for all intents and purposes, selling their wares. There was a kind of a stakeholder meeting in December; some attended, some did not; some saw the report, some did not, and no individual or organizational names are attached to the action plan items. Who is responsible I cannot discern. This too was a workshop/meeting organized by externals. These are the only ones that would pay for such a gathering. I would like this meeting to be different, with a focus on energy, passion for the task, collective inspiration and accountability, rather than purely intellectual, focused on producing more plans that don’t make your heart beat faster.

The antidote to cynical thoughts is watching the young kids with cerebral palsy being fitted in their tiny wheelchairs. The ear to ear grins, the sense of liberation that they show brings tears to my eyes. For the first time in their lives, these kids will be able to interact with the world in a seated position. It is hard to imagine what that means: it means better nutrition, better muscle tone, and the learning of social skills. The lives of these kids and their families will never quite be the same, and better for it. Our alignment meeting is to make sure that these kids are followed as they grow, get bigger wheelchairs, get PT. But right now there is no guarantee that this will actually happen. In 6 months they need to be fitted again, but by whom, and where, is the question.

In the meantime Axel is touristing in the north, seeing the Ankor Watt complex, having massages, resting, worrying about snow in Manchester, and eating food that taste good but sometimes upsets the stomach. He will bus down to Phnom Penh on Friday and arrive, hopefully, in time for our dinner cruise on the Mekong to celebrate the end of the level 2 fitting of wheelchair course with the participants.

On Saturday we are taking a break and drive to Kep on the coast for a relaxing 24 hours. After that it is show time.