A Lot of Firsts, Two Months In

So the last time I mentioned my work, it was primarily around teaching English at the free school I’m living in. I’m really lucky that the English school opportunity was right there because it allowed me to get involved right away, and build some great relationships before my other work potentially kicked in. I knew going in that it would take some time to meet some people and get more involved in the trafficking work I wanted to help in and learn more about. And as I mentioned earlier, I was also completely OK if nothing panned out due to the sensitive nature of working with people taken out of trafficking along with my limited time commitment, my gender, and my lack of speaking Khmer. But in the meantime, I would keep grinding away to see if my skills/experiences could help anyone in that area, either working directly with victims or maybe helping more in the periphery.

Here’s a good lesson on letting things breathe a bit. Michael introduced me to the director of an aftercare home for girls who have been trafficked and/or sexually abused. It was really great chatting with her, and I told her I was interested in helping in any way that was needed. My only tangible skill I could initially offer her was first aid training, which my friend Sapna back in the states trained me on so that I would have a skill that was very much needed in Cambodia. The director of the aftercare home already knew, Sapna, so I was pretty excited to have that be a vehicle into working more directly with the home. I made my offer and the director told me that the sensitive nature of some of the first aid topics required them to have a female provide this training. I very much understood where she was coming from, but was also bummed because I thought that would be my “in” and the opportunity ended before it began.

But, hey, I wanted to learn about their work, even if I wouldn’t be able to get as involved as I wanted to, so I asked to grab coffee with the director to learn about their programs and approach. And as a last ditch effort, to offer up some other skills that might be useful. Meeting her was really insightful, and somewhere in the course of the two hours, despite my dodgy physical exterior, she said my background in teaching/tutoring would be helpful and wanted me to work with the 19 girls in the program on English, sports, and Music (some of the girls want to learn ukulele, which means we’ll all be learning a new instrument). I’ll be tutoring them 4-5 days/week, and I’ve already met a few really awesome girls. One who knows how to play slide and has offered to braid my hair – connect however you can, right? And another one who no matter how much I tell her I want other kids to provide answers during English tutoring, can’t help but scream out the answer anyway, and then give me a mock-embarrassed look as if she didn’t know she shouldn’t have J. Additionally my background working at the Gates Foundation lent itself well to helping her with a proposal to possibly extend their program to also provide vocational training.

First of all, how awesome is it that not only do I get to help out a great organization that provides aftercare for girls impacted by trafficking/sexual abuse, but that I get to actually interact with the girls, learn more about their stories, and hopefully make a positive impact on them. Secondly, most of my career has been on the grant-GIVING side of the philanthropic world, both at Gates and at One Day’s Wages, so it was and continues to be a really educational process for me to work on a proposal from the grant-RECEIVING side of things. IW folks, I’m already thinking about outcomes, measurement, and sustainability – I’ll have some lessons learned to share when I’m back J.

My interaction with the director went from excitement/expectancy to disappointment but understanding, and finally to elation and a little nervousness. I know I really wanted to get involved in this way, but I am very aware of the many reasons why it wouldn’t have worked out, so I’m going to remind myself daily that this opportunity is a real blessing and nothing to take for granted.

So on top of that development, a few more exciting and uber-nerve-wracking things have happened, that similar to working at the aftercare home, are more inline with what I was hoping to get more involved with. Sapna, the doctor I was working with in the states, and who connected with me with Michael (my guardian angel) in the first place, was able to come out to Cambodia over the past couple of weeks. I’m not going to dive into all the things that make her great, but she basically travels the world helping sick people, as well as people who want to help sick people. Before coming out here, she was in Africa and North Korea, and she’ll be headed to India and the Philippines next. Everywhere she goes, she leaves a big and tangible impact, some of which I was able to witness and be a part of during her stay.

Over the past handful of years, Sapna has been working with and training med students, so every time she comes back, the students want to meet up with her and learn, as well as put on medical clinics so they can get real life experience while helping people in the provinces that have less access to regular health care. The clinics are pretty much now completely organized and run by the med students, and even though Sapna will defer and say it’s all them, I will brag on her behalf and say that her influence on them has been immense, and you can see it whenever they’re around her.

Organizing meds for our medical clinic.

Going through dozens of free glasses that look like they belong to Sally Jesse Raphael.

Either because they were really desperate or wanted a good laugh, they invited me to help out with one of their clinics in the Prey Veng province, a few hours drive outside of Phnom Penh. It really was a cool experience seeing the med students set up shop and treat more than 200 people in the village we visited. I was happy to be the lowly pound-kilogram converter (since our scales were from America) when they were taking vitals, but then it got really busy and they asked me (ME!) to help take vitals so we could triage them a little faster. Again, desperation/hilarity. But hey, I did OK, and by “I”, what I mean is that I luckily had the one machine that automatically checked pulse and blood pressure. The other non-doctor helping out, Clair, wasn’t so lucky and actually had to learn to manually check vitals, but she did so great!

Villagers waiting to see the med students.

First aid training as they wait.

Claire taking vitals for the first time ever!

Our makeshift pharmacy.

Just trying to be useful.

With Sapna back, I also got to visit a KTV (karaoke) and provide some medical help for the women working there. So the way a lot of the KTVs and beer gardens work in Cambodia is that the women that men choose to sing/drink with can also be paid for sex, either directly at the location or taken somewhere else. So a lot of these women we were seeing had STDs that needed diagnosing and treatments for. Overt sex for money is prohibited in Cambodia, but a lot of these places that everyone knows provides sex for money are looked past as an open secret. I wasn’t able to help much, so I just observed and man is it really heartbreaking to sit there hearing their stories and not really feel like you can do much other than pray. Most of the women are really young, late teens to early 20s, and through the short discussions, you could tell through their looks or the way they talked about their job that many of them didn’t want to be working that vocation. But when pressed with what they would want to do instead, they didn’t know. I can imagine how hard it is to think of an alternative when all you’ve known is that work, and the money you’re making is a lot better than most other jobs you could get. The best we could do in situations where girls say they wanted to get out is to grab their phone number, and pass it on to an organization that provides vocational training, which would give these women another option. But again, wanting a change and actually feeling safe/secure enough to make that change are two different things. The goal is to get one or two of the med students to continue visiting the KTVs to treat these women and to continue the dialogue to help them choose a different path if they want to get out.

Michael and Sapna talking to one of the KTV girls.

The last thing I was able to do for the first time is the one thing I actually trained on before coming out here – first aid. Even though doing first aid at the aftercare home wasn’t an option because I’m a guy, Sapna asked the staff at the hotel she was staying at if they wanted a refresher in first aid, so that I could have some real world experience before hopefully doing it more over the next few months. You know how there are a lot of things in your life you know you should do, but you’d rather organize your dad’s stamp collection instead? That was me and this first aid training. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because no matter how ready you feel for something, there’s a certain pressure that comes with doing it in front of the person who trained you on it (i.e. Sapna) because you know you can’t miss a thing. What didn’t help was that I saw her do the same training a couple days earlier and she was so naturally gifted at it that I was like, there’s no way I can do it like that.

The first aid all-star tag-team that is Sapna & Michael!

The night before the first aid training, I was nervous like I hadn’t been since preparing for client meetings as a consultant. Again, not rational, and I know Sapna would be really encouraging, supportive, and gracious, but that didn’t stop me from putting pressure on myself to perform. There’s that episode of The Simpsons where Bart prays for snow so that he can get out of taking a test. I felt that way with this training, even though it’s been literally the only thing I had been preparing for since the summer. The rational side my brain (the smaller side), knew that it wouldn’t be a big deal, that it would be over like that, and that doing it in front of Sapna would be the best way for me make sure I did it right. The bigger, irrational side of my brain said that I’d be a nervous wreck, would make a bunch of mistakes, and that I was hungry for pizza. Most things in my life are like this – a combination or irrational fear, rationale perspective of the objective weight/importance of the worry, and junk food.

And like most things, it turned out OK, like that small part of my brain already told me. I taught five topics: burns, fire safety, bleeding, wound care, and choking. After the first topic, I got into a bit of a groove and it went pretty swimmingly from there. Sapna and Jen (her sister-in-law who was also helping with clinics) said I did well, and all of the hotel stuff seemed engaged and interested. It was cool to look back and think of the first meeting I had with Sapna where she was introducing these first aid topics to me to the various nights I spent taking notes and making highlights at Ba Bar eating pho by myself, and seeing that culminate in a 2-hour session 4-months later and half a world away. If there’s anything that consulting has taught me, it’s that a lot of not important things that seem really urgent will cause me to experience the fear of God, but will generally turn out OK and make me think, “That wasn’t such a big deal.” And the more I experience that progression, the more I can try to talk myself off the ledge before even getting there, but it’s called irrational for a reason. Also, pizza.

Just like one of my favorite movie scenes.

Stop, drop, and roll.

Best caption contest.

Trust me, that drawing is definitely anatomically correct.

As an aside, it was so nice having Sapna and Jen here for a couple of weeks. From a non-selfish standpoint, I was really happy to participate in Sapna’s ministries and work and learn about the various ways she helps the people in Cambodia. From a selfish standpoint, it was really nice to just have a couple of people from Seattle to chat with and eat burgers with (we ate so many burgers…). I forgot how quickly time goes by when you’re having interesting/in-depth/random/food-centric discussions. I learned so much more about Sapna during our two weeks together than the entire few months we were meeting before I left. I remember when I was first talking to Sapna about coming out to Cambodia, my assumption was that she would be here most of the time, if not the entire time, but when I learned she wouldn’t be joining until a couple of months in, and for only a couple/few weeks, I was thinking it might be a little more difficult than I thought. It’s been a really good way for me to dive head first being on my own with Michael and the boys, and I wouldn’t change that, but this time with Sapna and Jen was just really, really good.

Grabbing dinner at the night market.

So yea, from day one out here to now, it’s been special seeing these cool opportunities present themselves that I’m able to fit into and contribute to. And even if none of this stuff worked out how it did, I wouldn’t think of that as a failure. I’m lucky I’ve been taught by a lot of wonderful people in my life that I can only do what I can, where I am, with what I have. And if I have a heart to do something, then I should pursue that as hard as I can, regardless of the difficulty or fear (this was a good lesson taught by my friend Lauren, in the context of dating no less!). But I also know that that that doesn’t guarantee my best-laid plans will work out. It just means I’m not selling myself or the people I want to help short with a lack of effort. And to my pizza-riddled brain, that’s all I can ask for.