Here's the straggler, eating an ice cream sandwich (yes, that's ice cream in a baguette) during a visit to my house.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
The Friends
I've decided to put up pictures of my provincial buddies. These are the people who keep me sane when I'm frustrated; who when I visit welcome me and try to share some of their lives with me; who get me a car to Phnom Penh when I have dengue. I'm sure some Peace Corps regulation forbids publishing their names so I'll just say this: here we are lounging in an undisclosed luxurious location, preparing to drink some wine.
Here's the straggler, eating an ice cream sandwich (yes, that's ice cream in a baguette) during a visit to my house.
Here's the straggler, eating an ice cream sandwich (yes, that's ice cream in a baguette) during a visit to my house.
The Enemy
Tell the army to stand down: I have discovered the enemy, and it is not terrorism. It is not even fear. It is laundry.
Some Volunteers have developed a very zen attitutde towards laundry since their arrival in Cambodia, preferring to let it flow into the rhythms of their days and enjoying the quiet monotony of scrubbing and rinsing. I have resisted this calmness and continue to regard my laundry heap, when I cannot avoid looking at it, with an attitude of suspicion and dread. Perhaps this is due to my overwhelming incompetence at the task. Either I use too much soap and am unable to rinse it out properly, in which case my clothes dry crustily on the line. Or else I dry the clothes on the dirty part of the bamboo pole (as opposed to the elusive clean part of the bamboo pole), leaving streaks of dirt along the backs (although I have discovered that hangers do a great deal to alleviate this problem). Or else I wash on a day when it rains unpredictably, in which case nothing dries and everything (especially jeans) acquires a faint mildewy smell.
The process of doing laundry is nearly as old as the existence of cloth itself here. You fill your tub with soap (how much? I am never sure), clean-ish water, and your clothes. You crouch over the tub and scrub the armpits, collar, and hems of everything with a handheld brush until you are sure, sure, that they must be clean by now, right? After 5 minutes of vigorous scrubbing? And yet....is that brown sweat-and-dust spot on the back of the collar still there? Augh! Maybe no one will see it.... You give up and dump out the wash-water and vigorously rinse the clothes (twice) in fresh-ish water, and then you hang everything out to dry, like so, and hope uselessly that it won't rain that afternoon.
And I think it is safe to say that even those Volunteers who enjoy doing laundry still loathe washing towels. Towels are designed to be absorbent; but that means that they absorb every speck of dust and every grain of detergent in the wash-water. I am never sure which one wins out. Some people have stopped washing towels altogether, but I carry on, hoping, someday, to use such a large overabundance of soap as to overwhelm the other muck and come up with a gleaming white towel. I'll let you know how that goes....
Some Volunteers have developed a very zen attitutde towards laundry since their arrival in Cambodia, preferring to let it flow into the rhythms of their days and enjoying the quiet monotony of scrubbing and rinsing. I have resisted this calmness and continue to regard my laundry heap, when I cannot avoid looking at it, with an attitude of suspicion and dread. Perhaps this is due to my overwhelming incompetence at the task. Either I use too much soap and am unable to rinse it out properly, in which case my clothes dry crustily on the line. Or else I dry the clothes on the dirty part of the bamboo pole (as opposed to the elusive clean part of the bamboo pole), leaving streaks of dirt along the backs (although I have discovered that hangers do a great deal to alleviate this problem). Or else I wash on a day when it rains unpredictably, in which case nothing dries and everything (especially jeans) acquires a faint mildewy smell.
The process of doing laundry is nearly as old as the existence of cloth itself here. You fill your tub with soap (how much? I am never sure), clean-ish water, and your clothes. You crouch over the tub and scrub the armpits, collar, and hems of everything with a handheld brush until you are sure, sure, that they must be clean by now, right? After 5 minutes of vigorous scrubbing? And yet....is that brown sweat-and-dust spot on the back of the collar still there? Augh! Maybe no one will see it.... You give up and dump out the wash-water and vigorously rinse the clothes (twice) in fresh-ish water, and then you hang everything out to dry, like so, and hope uselessly that it won't rain that afternoon.
And I think it is safe to say that even those Volunteers who enjoy doing laundry still loathe washing towels. Towels are designed to be absorbent; but that means that they absorb every speck of dust and every grain of detergent in the wash-water. I am never sure which one wins out. Some people have stopped washing towels altogether, but I carry on, hoping, someday, to use such a large overabundance of soap as to overwhelm the other muck and come up with a gleaming white towel. I'll let you know how that goes....
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Actually, You Do Hafta Go Home
Due to my remarkably fever-free state the last few days, I'm being sent home. Things I will miss about my stay in Phnom Penh: air conditioning, internet access, a refrigerator, and Scrubs (yes, they have Scrubs here! And My Name Is Earl!).
Things I won't miss: the same damn story on CNN 15,000 times every day. The commercial for Seoul, South Korea, whose audio goes a little something like this: "Seoul. Renew your soul. Seoul. Soul of Asia." (Read it out loud to realize how annoying it is.) In fact, I never want to hear either the word "soul" or the word "Seoul" ever again. I will also not miss any of the coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Guess what year it is people? 2007. That's right. The damn Olympics are a FULL YEAR AWAY. Until they begin, do not mention their existence. Nobody cares. People in Beijing are sick of your cameras. The pollution in Beijing is sick of your cameras. Just leave it alone. The last thing I won't miss about Phnom Penh is, when I first step my big toe out of the apartment building, every moto driver in a 5-k radius shouts out "Lady! Motodop?" The moto drivers in my hometown have learned from my constant annoyed refusals that their persistence will never, ever in a million years pay off. There is no time to teach all the moto drivers in Phnom Penh that Peace Corps Volunteers can't ride motos, so my beleaguered-sounding "No!" must be employed every. Single. Time.
Ah well. At least the dengue's gone.
Things I won't miss: the same damn story on CNN 15,000 times every day. The commercial for Seoul, South Korea, whose audio goes a little something like this: "Seoul. Renew your soul. Seoul. Soul of Asia." (Read it out loud to realize how annoying it is.) In fact, I never want to hear either the word "soul" or the word "Seoul" ever again. I will also not miss any of the coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Guess what year it is people? 2007. That's right. The damn Olympics are a FULL YEAR AWAY. Until they begin, do not mention their existence. Nobody cares. People in Beijing are sick of your cameras. The pollution in Beijing is sick of your cameras. Just leave it alone. The last thing I won't miss about Phnom Penh is, when I first step my big toe out of the apartment building, every moto driver in a 5-k radius shouts out "Lady! Motodop?" The moto drivers in my hometown have learned from my constant annoyed refusals that their persistence will never, ever in a million years pay off. There is no time to teach all the moto drivers in Phnom Penh that Peace Corps Volunteers can't ride motos, so my beleaguered-sounding "No!" must be employed every. Single. Time.
Ah well. At least the dengue's gone.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
D-*-N-G-U-* F-*-V-*-R
OK kids, time to buy a vowel. May I recommend the "E"? That's right, I've got a tropical disease to call my very own. Sweet, sweet dengue fever.
When I first came down with a headache last week, I attributed it to heat exhaustion, which I've already had once here in Cambodia (that's a whole other fun story). So I did what you're supposed to do for heat exhaustion, which is drink enough water to drown a horse. But later that night, as I shivered in my bed while wearing my muu-muu, 2 sarongs, a t-shirt, and a long-sleeved shirt in 78-degree weather, I began to suspect that heat exhaustion was not the culprit.
Despite my pounding head, aching body, queasy stomach, and high fever, I climbed into a car bound for Phnom Penh the next day. The doctors did some blood testing, even though it's nearly impossible to tell anything by Day 2 of a fever, especially as malaria, typhoid, and dengue look very similar. What we did figure out was that I didn't have malaria, which is alleged to be even worse than dengue (how anything could be worse, I shudder to imagine).
This situation has continued for the past six days. The only new development was a stomach that bucked and promised to relieve itself of its contents at the sight, smell, or mention of food. Only yesterday were the doctors able to confirm that I do, indeed, have dengue.
All this medical turmoil means I have gotten to have some new experiences: I'd never been hooked up to an IV before, and now I've been stuck to two! Also, I'd never had an ultrasound before, but they decided to test me for an enlarged spleen and liver (?), so now I know what pregnant women the world over go through (and damn, is that gel cold).
Now I'm in the "full-body rash" part of the disease. Which everyone assures me means that I'm on the road to recovery. It had better, because I can suffer no more indignities. The Peace Corps doctor is constantly demanding urine samples and threatening to MedEvac me to Bangkok if I don't eat more. The worst part is that my Khmer friends keep texting me and asking if I've eaten rice porridge yet, as they seem to think this will be very helpful. Even on good days, rice porridge isn't all that appealing. But when your fever's running at a good 102, the last thing you want to put in your stomach is hot rice soup. I have to delete these messages right away, lest the idea of the rice porridge causes my stomach to revolt.
So here's my hard-earned advice, and it shouldn't be too hard to follow if you live in the US (except the South): don't get dengue. It's a miserable, horrible disease. I can't imagine how rural Cambodian children survive this without air conditioning and the relatively modern medical care available in Phnom Penh (there are no hospitals up to Western standard here but there are some Western-standard clinics). I know many Cambodian children suffer through it at home and go to local clinics only to get an IV when their symptoms get very bad.
There is a serious dengue epidemic throughout Southeast Asia this year, in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia. Because dengue mosquitoes are day biters, mosquito nets are of no use in fighting the disease. No vaccine has been developed yet. Dengue is here, and it's hard to avoid.
LEST THIS DISCOURAGE ANYONE FROM VISITING ME, however, let me remind you that I was here for 6 months before contracting it. And if you visit in the dry season (November to April), there aren't as many mosquitoes and your chances of catching anything go down. Also, the good news is, dengue doesn't kill you. I'm sitting here typing, and all it took was 6 days of my best blanket impression.
When I first came down with a headache last week, I attributed it to heat exhaustion, which I've already had once here in Cambodia (that's a whole other fun story). So I did what you're supposed to do for heat exhaustion, which is drink enough water to drown a horse. But later that night, as I shivered in my bed while wearing my muu-muu, 2 sarongs, a t-shirt, and a long-sleeved shirt in 78-degree weather, I began to suspect that heat exhaustion was not the culprit.
Despite my pounding head, aching body, queasy stomach, and high fever, I climbed into a car bound for Phnom Penh the next day. The doctors did some blood testing, even though it's nearly impossible to tell anything by Day 2 of a fever, especially as malaria, typhoid, and dengue look very similar. What we did figure out was that I didn't have malaria, which is alleged to be even worse than dengue (how anything could be worse, I shudder to imagine).
This situation has continued for the past six days. The only new development was a stomach that bucked and promised to relieve itself of its contents at the sight, smell, or mention of food. Only yesterday were the doctors able to confirm that I do, indeed, have dengue.
All this medical turmoil means I have gotten to have some new experiences: I'd never been hooked up to an IV before, and now I've been stuck to two! Also, I'd never had an ultrasound before, but they decided to test me for an enlarged spleen and liver (?), so now I know what pregnant women the world over go through (and damn, is that gel cold).
Now I'm in the "full-body rash" part of the disease. Which everyone assures me means that I'm on the road to recovery. It had better, because I can suffer no more indignities. The Peace Corps doctor is constantly demanding urine samples and threatening to MedEvac me to Bangkok if I don't eat more. The worst part is that my Khmer friends keep texting me and asking if I've eaten rice porridge yet, as they seem to think this will be very helpful. Even on good days, rice porridge isn't all that appealing. But when your fever's running at a good 102, the last thing you want to put in your stomach is hot rice soup. I have to delete these messages right away, lest the idea of the rice porridge causes my stomach to revolt.
So here's my hard-earned advice, and it shouldn't be too hard to follow if you live in the US (except the South): don't get dengue. It's a miserable, horrible disease. I can't imagine how rural Cambodian children survive this without air conditioning and the relatively modern medical care available in Phnom Penh (there are no hospitals up to Western standard here but there are some Western-standard clinics). I know many Cambodian children suffer through it at home and go to local clinics only to get an IV when their symptoms get very bad.
There is a serious dengue epidemic throughout Southeast Asia this year, in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia. Because dengue mosquitoes are day biters, mosquito nets are of no use in fighting the disease. No vaccine has been developed yet. Dengue is here, and it's hard to avoid.
LEST THIS DISCOURAGE ANYONE FROM VISITING ME, however, let me remind you that I was here for 6 months before contracting it. And if you visit in the dry season (November to April), there aren't as many mosquitoes and your chances of catching anything go down. Also, the good news is, dengue doesn't kill you. I'm sitting here typing, and all it took was 6 days of my best blanket impression.
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