Health trip so far

I am writing from Battambang Town in Battambang Province. It's been a busy, tiring and fascinating few days. I’ll talk a little about what we did in terms of NGO’s and adventures. I’ll also discuss the expectations of being a health volunteer a little more. Feel free to skim the NGO stuff if it doesn’t interest you; I posted it because I think the work they do is a cool thing to share.

We left Takeo Province on Wednesday to go to Phnom Penh for a night. The highlight of the first night in Phnom Penh was eating delicious Indian food.

The next day, we visited Resource Development International (RDI), an NGO that works with communities to provide clean water and other sustainable practices. They are a foreign NGO, but most of their production costs for producing water filters are covered by sales. Their sales also cover their marketing, which is how they explain the importance of clean water. They do this through a variety of medias, including a Khmer Sesame Street! The reason they sell the water purifiers is so the people who buy them take ownership of them in terms of taking care of the filters and using them (an interesting concept as opposed to giving the filters away).

RDI relies on donations to conduct research about clean water and other innovative development efforts, like a non-smelling (or less smelly) pig for people to raise and eat. Donations also pay for some of the foreign staff. RDI also works with foreign universities and has students come to Cambodia to work with the Cambodian staff to conduct research projects. This helps the universities and builds capacity for RDI. One of the universities they work with a lot is UNC. A lot of the furniture I saw had UNC written on it.

The next day, in Kampong Chong Province, we shadowed IRD, another NGO that works on caring for infants. We saw the NGO staffers lecture people, and do one-on-one sessions within the community. What was cool about their work was that they operated within the village framework by working alongside community leaders. We saw a session on making a nutritious porridge for young children, saw a counseling session, and saw someone in the village make soap to kill scabies and lice (it is hard to get this soap normally for Cambodians and lice and scabies are quite common).

An exciting thing about this day was taking the bamboo train for 45 minutes to and from the site where the NGO works. Don't let the word "bamboo train" fool you; this journey was far from glamorous. The bamboo train consists of a board, which may have a mat, and a motor going on a train track. About 22 people were packed on this board.

The fun part: it was pouring rain on the way there. In addition, for some reason there is only one track for both directions that trains go in. So, every time a bigger train approached, or a bamboo train that was bigger than us (usually because of lots of logs), we had to get off the train, pick up the plank and then take the wheels off the track. This happened three times on the way there in the rain, but only once on the way back when it was not raining.

The next day, in another province, Pursat, we learned more about the health system in Cambodia. From this trip, I've learned a lot more about my role as a health volunteer in Cambodia. My job will be to teach people about health. I will do this by talking to people in the community, particularly around the health center, to see how I can teach people about health. To make my work sustainable, I will hopefully have volunteers from my village to work with me.

Basically, my job is to make friends, see what they need and how I can help. Some Volunteers who have been here for a year came and spoke to us, and said to just talk to a lot of people. Cambodian society is built around relationships, so I will need strong relationships to do my work.

Lots of the stuff I will teach is pretty simple, like the importance of washing your hands. Supposedly, something like 60% of childhood illnesses in Cambodia could be prevented by hand-washing (maybe adult illnesses too, I don’t have the statistic in front of me)

To practice, this week we are doing a community project in our training village. My friend Philip and I will be talking about the importance of washing hands (We will instruct in Khmer). Our project will be part of a bigger project conducted by all the Trainees. Other Health Trainees will be doing other presentations, and the Community Development Trainees will be organizing a school clean up, a talent show and other activities.

Another interesting part of the trip was visiting a social enterprise called DVD. They do data entry, but they recruit and train their staff from disadvantaged groups in Cambodia, such as people who have been trafficked, have disabilities, or are poor. The data entry is a profitable business, including clients like Harvard, Tufts, US government municipalities and a Dutch newspaper. The non-profit side is the training and outreach they perform. Pretty cool, huh?

That’s all for now. With a little luck, this will be my last blog post without pictures. Next week, when we go to swear-in in Phnom Penh, I will bring my lap top and post pictures. That is, assuming that the internet works.

Interesting fact of the day: When we go to swear-in, we become Volunteers as opposed to Trainees. The oath we say is the same oath that the US Vice-President says. Pretty cool, depending on what VP you think of.