My First Trip To Cambodia

After working with Kenro on the Angkor Hospital For Children project the last two years, I finally had a chance to visit Cambodia for the first time. My five days were filled with meeting after meeting, however I did get to see many aspects of life in Cambodia.Many have voiced concern on the future of our project, especially after the political turmoil in July. As every Cambodian person confirmed, it seems that the political situation has been stabilized and will not affect our activities. As a matter of fact, it has ironically been working to our advantage so far. When we started leveling the ground for the hospital site, hotel developments around the Angkor monuments were raising the price of labor and materials far beyond our original estimates. Now that many international investments are on hold, local labor is available for our comparatively small budget project. Hopefully, the upcoming elections next year will go smoothly.

I was struck with awe within the Angkor monuments. Ta Prom temple, familiar from Kenro's photographs, was actually covered with velvet like green moss (I never knew from B/W photos!) The space, deprived of noisemade by humans, gave me such a peaceful feeling. "How nice to see Angkor almost free of other tourists!" I thought until we were surrounded by loads of children trying to sell souvenirs. There was nobody else in sight for them to approach. The conflict in Phnom Penh was damaging the children's income, and every other tourist business in Cambodia.In between all the sales talks, the children's sincere and wonderful smiles kept me going.

During our many hospital visits, we noticed there were few doctors in the big facilities. We learned that doctors run private clinics for half of the day because they don't earn enough from hospital jobs to support their families. I witnessed a very disturbing situation in an emergency room. A child covered with blood was carried in by family members and laid unconscious on a bed. No doctor or nurse came to help him. Not knowing what was going on, we wondered why this child was not receiving immediate treatment. After five minutes, a woman who was obviously the boy's mother came in crying with a bundle of money in her hand and then finally a doctor or nurse in a white robe came in with an intravenous drip infusion. Without an advance payment, a life can not even be saved.

I also heard about a person who was carried to an emergency room with a severe injury. There were no doctors available anywhere in the hospital and he had to pay every guardsmen $50 to go find one. Since he offered $100 to any doctor who would treat him, five doctors rushed to the hospital. It is not difficult to imagine that this sort of situation happens quite often.

My visit to Cambodia left me with a feeling of immediacy -what we are trying to achieve is so urgent and important for the people of Cambodia. I hope in the future Kenro can lead a group tour to Cambodia so that we all can share this feeling.