Git ‘er there

Flying into Phnom Penh at 1am (local time)

 

Make shift sleeping quarters in Phnom Penh

Current reading: Monuments Men (WW II corps who saved the art treasures that Hitler was threatening and how they found the ones he had hidden.  It is a movie with John Goodman and a bunch of other great actors

Thought for the day:  It is not wise to try and remove a broken light bulb from a lamp that is still plugged into the current.  Gives the  heart a bit of a restart even if you weren’t in need on

I will eventually figure out how to get pictures in without duplicating them.  For now, these are the only two that document anything about my indescribable travels that I have in fact tried to describe here.

With my very best interests at heart, MSF (Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders) hurtled me from Texas to Kampong Cham, Cambodia and on to my particular work site in Tboung Khmum (pronounced roughly like Taboom Kaboom with a really slack jaw.) “Hurtling” someone is very different than “sending” and you will understand this better as you read.

I left TX mid-morning Jan 30 and landed in NY late at night. Delivered by shuttle for a night in Chelsea Comfort Inn. Shuttle filled with interesting group…mostly die-hard Superbowl fans. Found a grocery store open a block away and bought late-night supper..prosciutto, brie, pear a baguette and a fine bottle of Carminiere. Meetings started right away in the early morning and finished late afternoon. Sent by subway to Doctor for additional shot I needed to carry to the assignment so I could get it in a month. Took the wrong subway and got off at a more wrong stop and had to walk very far to get to the office late. Refrigeration needed for shot. New bag with ice pack to add to “luggage.” Back to hotel to finish off last nights meal. Feet tired, body exhausted, mind on Grade 1 Overload. (I have learned that there are many grades of overload and G1 is relatively harmless.In this one, I need to seriously limit social interactions or acknowledge that the blank stare I offer as someone speaks is not intended for “offense” – just nothing inside my head that is on any of the burners!) Very brisk walking past many restaurants on my return, but no heart for stopping. Needed a bed more then sitting in another small space even if good food was being brought to me for a high price. No per diem covers what I would want to eat in downtown Manhattan. Crazy football fans cluttering up the streets anyway with all their enthusiasm spilling out to unsuspecting passers by.

Next morning, up for 9am taxi to airport and the serious stuff starts. Flight from NY to Seoul, Korea is only 15 hours rather than the 19 hours I thought I was signed up for. BUT the flight from Seoul to Phnom Penh was almost 6 hours instead of 3. The airport time in between was just enough to push the lesser woman over the edge. I arrive in Phnom Penh 2 hours late but cab driver has decided to wait. Yay cab driver. Customs has long lines but at 2am everyone is pretty subdued. Cab ride is uneventful. Streets are pretty empty at 2 am. The new night watchman at MSF is there for his first night on the job. He has no key for the huge padlock on the guest room door and no money on his phone so he can call any of the numbers I have for MSF to get someone to come over. I suspect he does not want to do this anyway since it will make him look poorly on the new job. I am so far beyond caring!!! I tell him I will work it out and find that a small kitchen on the 2d floor has a sliding door I can close. I take the cushions off the outdoor porch furniture, line them up on the shiny tile floor and thank god for ambien. I find a carton of milk in the refrigerator and drink it. While they fed us huge meals on the plane (relatively speaking), I am strangely hungry. Also I have been directed to the bathroom that is on the ground floor in the far back reaches of the office. It has a mandi! This is a porcelain squat toilet (level with the floor – treads for your feet on either side of about a foot deep hole.) Nest to it is a basin of water with a dipper for butt wash and flush force. Manually tossed onto butt, pish and a second one for the flush. Don’t work too hard on the image. It is not pretty. Oh, I am feeling special.The staff arrives at 8am but I have already been up since 4am pondering many things. I get to have about 5 minutes (extensive orientation is obviously moot) each with 3 of the leadership people in Phnom Penh and I am off again with assurance that I will be brought back in a month so they can tell me what I really am doing. I have since been told that going back for this grand orientation is a promise of mythic proportions and is so unlikely to happen, that I should let it go already. Just one ore thing I can take off the To Do list.

Two hours drive in a Toyota truck/land-roverish vehicle. Much very dusty road construction but the air condition is on. And Voila! I am home and lunch is on the table. I get to eat and I am off to the office to begin my orientation with my first sets of meetings in my new role. My body is physically present, my feet are swollen and my brain cells are wilted and desperately wondering where all the synaptic connections have gone. Personally I believe, all the connectors are somewhere in NY still scrambling to find me and catch up. I just wish they would hurry the hell up. Finally I have to leave the 3d meeting when I realize it is going to continue for at least another hour or 2 and I have heard nothing in the first hour I have been there. I also may fall off my chair and my mantra has been ”Please god, do not let me fall down, fall asleep or fall apart in any inappropriate places!” I feel that all three pleas are about to go south in a bad way. I walk out the gate and start for home and realize I do not know where home is. I go back and the young man at the gate points and describes something that involves a “straight” and a “left” and vaguely where that is supposed to happen. I only make one wrong-ish turn but a small shop owners daughter speaks some English, knows where the MSF guest house is and directs me the final 2 blocks.

I forget to sign up for meals and just don’t care. A Thai visitor offers me some of his veggie omlette that has been tenderly prepared. He applies a lovely cilantro garni and I wolf it down as politely as possible. No one else is home and I am long asleep when they do arrive.

There are no photos to share this exhilarating flow of time. And my words, however drawn out in your estimation, are in fact, only the tip of the iceberg! I can say however that as I write, I am re-entering the land of the living and in spite of my direst nightmares, I may actually make it! And I will let you know if and how the rest unfolds.