(!)

2011-10-06T23:31:00.002+07:00

A Community of Support Fights HIV in Malawi: http://goo.gl/xH4B5

Investing in Communities to Tackle Poverty

2011-10-01T17:06:00.000+07:00

Friends,

Recent content documenting some of the work being done here in Malawi can now be found on PIH's blog: Investing in Communities to Tackle Poverty

Robbie

Welcome to Neno, and thoughts on why

2011-09-05T23:59:00.000+07:00

“Sir, we tried to wake you many times”

The Ethiopian flight attendant gives me a searing look, then is off to get the microwaveable platter of dry fish and beans that I apparently snoozed through. I am somewhere over the Congo in a small prop plane, surrounded primarily by missionaries earnestly discussing their planned spiritual salvation for the masses in rural Malawi. Apparently my travel sleeping schedule - knocking out for 30 minutes at a time when the mood strikes - is failing me, having slept for two hours through the consternation and interventions of the flight attendant and my fellow travelers. No matter, I tell myself; I am on hour 24 of a single leg of a larger trip that will eventually land me in Neno, Malawi, to volunteer at Partners in Health. Power naps only get you so far.

We soon land by a single story concrete bunker that presides over the dusty single runway, where we are shepherded past both a yellow fever and customs check with a nod and a cursory wave. In minutes I am outside with a PIH staff member and driver, and we are underway across the rugged landscape in a white, reassuringly sturdy Landrover.

We drive for five hours down the spine of Malawi, from Lilongwe in the country’s center, to Neno, tucked away in the southwest next to the Mozambique border. Exhausted, I am content sitting back and gazing out the window at the landscape that blossoms before me. Seeing the regularities of life in the developing world again inspires nostalgia for a place I’ve never seen before. In some ways, things remain the same cross-culturally; there are the small villages springing up beside the road, the occasional roadside markets with traders bearing baskets of traditional food that swarm your vehicle; there are the hopelessly overloaded trucks tenaciously sputtering up a mild incline and the barefoot children waving their feet off the roof of a minibus. The scent of wood-burning fires and livestock, the burning piles of trash, and the ensuing atmospheric haze that allows you to look directly at the sun as it sets. Of course Malawi is distinct and unique in countless ways. My reference point is Cambodia, and it takes some time for churches instead of temples, families in dusty old pick up trucks instead of desperately overloaded 50cc motos, and Chichewa instead of Khmer to feel normal.

As we meander down the country’s main motorway, between looming granite dooms abutting ubiquitous thick jungle, I ponder the same question that filled me with guilt three years ago somewhere over Bangladesh en route to Cambodia. Why do this?

I still don’t have a great answer. What I can say, after two days in Neno, is that there is something profound about what happens on the ground here at PIH on a daily basis. I spent this morning with American and Malawian clinicians and public health experts as they discussed commonsensical ways to improve reporting and how to make visits to the hospital here more comprehensive for vulnerable patients. I listened to local village health workers discussing their efforts to analyze socioeconomic conditions and support families in need with economic assistance. The final meeting of the day, an all-staff get together at the beginning of each month, featured a Malawian presenter discussing the progress of the ART project, a multi pronged initiative that helps manage HIV care and prevention for rural populations. I was struck by the solidarity and momentum of this movement, how local Malawian, with the help of Western colleagues, have taken a stake and meaningful steps in the future of their health, and as a corollary, their country.

I suppose there’s your answer - the ability to empower leadership in communities to bring change that is rooted in solidarity and community ownership. While not as succinct as I would like, it’s certainly the best answer I’ve come up with so far.

One year and...

2010-07-27T10:48:00.002+07:00

One year and 5 months ago, I made my final posting on this blog from Cambodia.

One year and 3 months ago, I returned to the United States, bleary eyed and dazed from what I had just experienced. I expected to return to Cambodia within 12 weeks.

Three days ago, on a stage in Baltimore City, I bid farewell to 120 students from underserved communities in northeast Baltimore whom I had grown close with over the previous year.

What?

What happened to Cambodia? The project I would manage? Continuing to work with students at The Global Child? How did I end up staying in Baltimore for an entire year?

The short answer is that I realized if I’m serious about making a difference, I had a lot to learn about the systems of power at play, and instead of simply flailing amidst these systems I had better find a more structured way to learn about them under an insightful and compassionate mentor. I found this, through a program called Public Allies, an organization called Bridges, and an exceptional man called Rob Paymer.

The long answer is...well, let’s hope I get to that eventually.

Point being that after more than a year of working with my head down, I feel that I’ve earned the luxury of this platform as a tool for self-reflection. I want to use it to reflect on the journey of the past year, and to track my progress on my path for the next one - a path that will, hopefully, lead to admission into medical school.

I’ve also come to terms with something I’ve long suspected but my ego has been reticent to admit; that it doesn’t really matter if anyone reads these things. At least for me, writing in them is far more cathartic than any journal I’ve ever kept (plus journals don’t give you feedback!)

So, as always, thank you to all of those who gave me support during my time in Cambodia. I hope I can help accurately elucidate the lessons learned and chronicle the next year a lot better than I did the last one.

Robbie

Bridges students, counselor Spencer, and myself at Catoctin Mountain Park

untitled

2009-03-01T21:40:00.001+07:00

Here is how to push away the precious tangibles of home, friends, love, familiarity, and comfort for vague repetitively drilled ideas like ‘perspective’ and ‘horizon’:

Here is how to wrap your shaking arms around the trembling body of your loved one and whisper uncertain words of what you hope is perceived as optimism before you pass through airport security:

Here is how you explain that helping people you don’t know and quite frankly aren’t sure will even appreciate your help is more important than spending time with those you love:

Here is precisely how long you hold moist eye contact:

Here is how you step in front of a classroom full of street children sitting in desks and eyeing you suspiciously and chattering to each other about you in their impenetrable native tongue, and convince them you have something important to impart:

Here is how you realize that most NGOs and their putatively selfless leaders have motives that are far less altruistic than they might want you to believe:

Here is how you handle realizing your NGO might be one of them:

Here is how to keep your head low during a shitstorm:

Here is how to rip your hair out in frustration at the ego driven single minded narcissistic omnipresent attitude that gorges on the resources and passion of your students, displayed by the very individuals who purport to be said students’ champions.

Here is how you realize that the NGO sector is not the paradisiacal world of unified objective, humble cooperation, and fierce resolve you had imagined:

Here is how to persevere and refuse to demarcate lines and focus on your children who are what it is all about underneath the complicated hierarchies and official titles and corrupted salaries:

Here is how to grip the bony shoulders of a close friend and look deep into his dulled eyes hours before he is expelled back into the squalid poverty he grew up and will now die in:

Here is how to love your students like your own children:

Here is how to let them go:

Here is how to sit at your desk paralyzed from the all too familiar fear of poverty’s relentless awful undertow dragging your students back under into a world of desperation, the paralysis bringing just that fear closer to realization as your students wave confused hands before your glazed eyes as the plastic hands of the classroom’s clock tick off the first minutes of English class:

Here is how to Overcome:

Here is how to walk to avoid stepping on needles while walking through a mountain of rubbish while visiting the former homes of your students:

Here is how to control your tears:

Here is exactly how hard to hug the skeletal frame of a developmentally challenged student whose mother faced starvation while he was in the womb and apparently stopped growing (the student) at age 8.

Here is how to handle the violent hallucinations that come with the extreme fever and dehydration wrought by severe dysentery:

Here is how to get struck down by illness and hospitalized for a week while realizing your body is just a puny vessel that is made to shit and piss and vomit and will one day wither away and die like the rest of them and how there’s nothing you can do about it:

Here is how to realize you are just a speck of dirt inside a giant’s eye:

Here is what depression feels like while absorbed with that implacable whirlwind of human suffering that ravages your host country, twisting and raging, knocking daily on your students’ lives, threatening to suck them back into the depths of dangerous poverty, their precious fragile hopes and dreams that have been so carefully nurtured by you and co. between its canines, now snapping them with one fatal snap, leaving them to die only after being tortured by desperation and starvation and commodification of their bodies and the ravages of disease:

Here is how to wake up every morning and help others anyways:

Here is how to never lose hope:

Growth

2009-03-01T21:39:00.000+07:00

Recently submitted to Union's Study Abroad Journal:

Working in the NGO sector you hear much discussion regarding the value of vague intangible terms. Broadened horizons. Expanded perspective. Global citizenship. The merits of altruism. Personal growth through sacrifice of the same nature.

These terms are thrown about haphazardly. What are my horizons, and what are they being broadened to encompass? What’s wrong with my current perspective, why the expansion? What exactly am I growing into, personally? Individuals irrefutably return from service work larger in some abstract sense; let’s try to ground these abstractions.

First, it should be stated that the expansion of perspectives etc. ad nauseam hurts, the psycho-spiritual equivalent of some serious growing pains. The most difficult part of these pains, and the very root of the most severe pangs of culture shock, is the realization that certain actions, values, emotions that we imagined as inherently human are merely culture-specific. All the goose-bump stimulating beauty of that perfect combination of musical notes, the careful brushstrokes of a brilliant artist, the beautiful and moving intricacies of a novel, the happiness exuded by a radiant smile, all the things that strike a deep resonant note in your being; this note resonates so strong partly because we feel we’ve stumbled across some universally recognized essence that transcends all barriers between us. It is an essence we take as the root of our humanity, and we expect others to recognize it as such.

We all know the disappointment felt when, after showing a close friend something you find tear jerkingly fantastic, and even after he tries hard to share that transcendence of experience, he can only shrug his shoulders and apologize. Real culture shock is when you’re surrounded by such apparent apathy for what you perceive as the root of our common humanity. Realizing that what you envisioned as distinctly human is not so, rather ensconced within your own culture’s hidden walls, is real culture shock, and the first step in personal experiential growth.

This growth blooms concurrent with the waning of culture shock when you realize that these aspects of our culture that we identify as universally appealing are merely surface level extrapolations of the genuinely universal qualities. Friendship. Compassion. Beauty. Love. Altruism. These are the real qualities that are the essence of humanity, we just mistake our attempts at conveying them for the qualities itself. The song, the novel, the painting, the smile, are all culture-specific vehicles for these qualities that we mistake as the qualities themselves. The qualities are there aplenty; it is the release from our restrictive mode of thinking and the subsequent deeper investigation of what you have heretofore viewed through a lens crafted by personal culture that allows you to recognize that the qualities themselves are indeed ubiquitous.

That’s real growth.

Testament to Education - A Short Autobiography

2009-02-18T21:36:00.004+07:00

Hey guys, I just submitted this piece of writing as part of an application to be a teacher through the Fulbright Fellowship. I'm pretty happy with it, and I thought it could enjoy a larger audience. If the prose seems a bit rigid, and there seems to be an abundance of the 1st person pronoun, well; it's an application for a Fulbright, enough said. Thanks to those who helped with this, and thank you for the kind and helpful comments! -Robbie

Being an important element of an application to teach native German speakers in Austria, it would be logical to state here clearly that it was the radiance of the German language and culture that sparked a boundless intellectual curiosity in me that grows daily. This, I cannot do. It was not the German language that ushered in such intellectual curiosity and delivered my application into your hands. It was one teacher, Rich Schellhas, who imparted to me the great inspiration needed to both appreciate and succeed in my educational pursuits and become a driven teacher.

Rewind to age fifteen. After a satisfactory performance in middle school, I entered the ninth grade at St. Paul’s Upper School, an academy priding itself on its efficient manufacture of Ivy League scholars following their parents’ footsteps to success. Failing to grasp how fortunate I was to have the opportunity of a quality education, I entered an ill-advised period of teenaged rebellion, ignoring the looming precipitous academic threshold: suddenly permanent transcripts, the cold judgmental reality of college entrance exams, and the looming unknown of adulthood.

First quarter, freshman year, my results arrived in an official envelope. The result of the first permanent academic marking period of my life: 1.7 GPA, C- average. Transcript already besmirched. One step from suspension. The school’s academic immune system took swift action; parents were contacted and vague, frightening words were whispered in hushed tones during somber meetings behind heavy doors. The following Monday I was given a stern warning and a new schedule. Honors math was replaced with basic geometry, my much cherished daily free period with Study Skills, and, mysteriously, Advanced Japanese with Introductory German.

7:00 a.m. the following morning found me reciting the peculiarities of the German alphabet with odd fascination as Rich Schellhas, a bright young German teacher, danced around the classroom with an atypical exuberance for anyone rising early to help a troubled student catch up. His clever mnemonics made German’s infamous grammar admittedly fun. His limitless energy and humor made vocabulary lists lively and tangible. A smile crept across my face as Herr Schellhas’s contagious vigor permeated across my rebellious mind. Learning was suddenly a great joy.

That first bleak morning was a bold turning point. Rich’s influence set in motion a metamorphosis that continues to shape my life. From that first class, I blossomed into a sustained period of academic achievement, enjoying the swift current of scholarly pursuit that had previously overwhelmed me. Yet, to say that Rich saved me would be inaccurate. He offered his hand when I was stumbling, and with his help I lifted myself up. He proffered an infinite well of inspiration from which I drew intellectual curiosity that delivered me from disillusionment, allowing me to mature and later convey the same vigor that changes students’ lives. Three years later I graduated with a 3.7 average and was awarded with ‘Most Improved Academic Standing’; four years after that I would graduate from Union College with numerous fellowships and honors accrued, Cum laude, double major, prepping for a teaching fellowship in Cambodia.

My teaching fellowship brings a new set of challenges, and leads me to draw increasingly on those values I learned in Rich’s classroom. My school is a nonprofit specialty school for gifted impoverished street children, where students are given a safe place to live, medical and dental care, three balanced meals a day, and a thorough education. Before entering the school, many of my students were living in a large garbage dump in Phnom Penh. Some had lost families at an early age to HIV or another of the infectious diseases rampant among slum inhabitants. Intact families were often negligent or abusive.

The school is grounded on the conviction that education is a force that can break the cycle of corruption and poverty plaguing the developing world, and the school requires the same conviction from its staff. Teaching children at The Global Child expands my job description into something far more dynamic, encompassing, and challenging than merely a teacher, and it doesn’t end with the closing bell. My colleagues and I are teachers, mentors, confidants, and role models to students who have spent most of their lives without these figures. Whether it’s during a lesson in the classroom or while sharing a meal at the boarding house, the students look to us for guidance and inspiration.

L to R: Chamroun, Sreymum, and Leakena in Practical Science

After an overwhelming day at school, when the hectic boarding home is too frenzied to return to, my student Sophal turns to me for solace. When frustrated with his studies and troubled by the seemingly impossible task of building a happy and sustainable future for himself, Vutha turns to me for advice, guidance, and comfort. They trust me to help deliver them to a better future, and the stakes are too high to let them down.

Marot and Thina, with Soda in foreground

The power of education is absolute. I’ve witnessed it in my own past, and I continue to witness it in the progress of my students. Education provides them an escape from the nightmare of living in abject poverty, from a certain future of collecting rubbish or selling their body to the highest bidder. Every day we confront the dichotomy between the haunting shadow of our students’ past lives and their radiant hopes for the future.

Sophal in computer class

To imagine they were written off to become prostitutes and drug peddlers only underscores my resolve to help them realize their dreams. Now, those who once lived in festering mountains of garbage have a safe place to live, learn, and pursue their own ambitious futures: Sophal, the future businessman, Sopheak, our budding physician. It is no coincidence my students and I are both living and pursuing futures we dreamed of when seemingly destined for failure. It is education that joined us and granted the power to pursue a better future.

Rithyka hard at work

And after especially difficult days, when steps backward outnumber those forward, I lean on my own belief in the value of education. It is in these moments, when the begging mothers and their swollen-bellied toddlers clutching empty milk bottles tug my sleeve particularly hard, when the desperate prostitutes lining the streets claw especially aggressively, when I visit the shantytowns of my students and struggle to remain composed, when the whirlwind of human suffering seems destined to feast on the hope of my students, to snap their will, humanity, and future in its ferocious maw with one cataclysmic fatal snap; it is during these dark moments that Rich’s gift to a troubled fifteen year old student glows particularly bright. Just as he planted the seed of learning in my brain, so do I strive to inspire a thirst for knowledge in my students and help them fight the undertow of poverty that threatens to pull them back into the poisonous milieu. Such is the quintessential value of education; it is a brilliant, infinite, resilient gift that doesn’t elevate, but instead inspires others to elevate themselves in trying times, even empowering others in the process.

Thear

I understand the value of education in a way few others from my cushioned background can. I was once a teenager ungrateful for the opportunities laid out before me. It took one exceptionally skilled educator to wake me to the power of my mind and encourage me to pursue a path of intellectual passion. I have flown across the world and shed the comforts of home for my belief in the value of education. Through this journey I have not only gained a far more intimate understanding of this value, but I have attained the perspective and meaning to extend to others the illuminating gift of education that was shared with me and diverted my own path towards failure.

The Catch-22 of Selflessness: A Call to Service for Human Beings

2009-02-06T12:35:00.001+07:00

An only slightly tangential introduction

Sweaty palms, mustard stained cuticles, garlic bread breathe, gravy marred unhemmed khakis, and the cornucopia of new scents erupting from the suddenly unfamiliar body beneath. Pock marked cheeks, whiteheads and blackheads, creamsicle colored benzoyl peroxide stains on your favorite t-shirt, Differin®, Basiron®, Accutane® and Clearasil®, weekend devastating breakouts, exfoliants and creams and pads. Cataclysmic classroom erections, nocturnal emissions and dirty sheets. Hair erupting in strange, horrifying places. The sudden and swift eradication of cooties, female breasts, trainer bras, a new attractive force that challenged gravity in it’s incessant, inexplicable, tenacious pull. “Mixers”, swaying with locked elbows and clasped slippery hands to Hits From the 90’s. The troubling sexually charged pubescent argot of First, Second, and Third bases, capped by the awe-inspiring act of a Home Run or Grand Slam. Head gear, braces, spacers, expanders, and the latest torturous breakthroughs in dentally applicable metal alloys. Hair gel, body odor, peach fuzz, scraggly facial hair and explosive follicles. The supersession of ordinary logic in the proximity of the opposite sex. Pheromones and the myriad awkward confrontations they induced. Sipping skunked beer in abandoned parking lots while nervously eyeing all remotely feasible exits.

It’s not fair. They were exempt from the horrors of high school. It was us, the normal ones, who suffered the awkwardness, the straight armed dances, the stuttering, the smells, we exposed our skin to the chemical horrors of myriad exfoliants, we donned the cool unfamiliar metal of headgear and its cruel orthodontic cousins, we gelled our hair until it became a prosecutable weapon in some states, sprayed ourselves with Axe® and Tag® and Old Spice®. We endured the awkward boners that always demarcated a disconcerting lump in our trim trousers immediately before rising to answer a question in class or walking down the school chapel’s infinite aisle flanked by walnut benches crowded with probing eyes. We flailed in our vain efforts to impress the opposite sex, for reasons that were muddy at best, we drank the skunked light beer, filled our cheeks with dip, jockeyed for social status in every conceivable way, all of it to no avail.

And they didn’t even have to try; they were a world apart. If you were cool, the incessant jockeying for popularity, the scrutinizing glances from your peers, the worrying about social standing and physical appearance, the fumbling advances on girls; nonexistent. And if your pubescent titillations were anything like mine, you probably wanted to be a world apart from this mess as well, and thus wasted a disturbing amount of time devising ways to join the ranks of the cool to become finally automatically exempt from the awkward horrors of puberty.

Revisit those hormone and pheromone drenched hallways, and now imagine in an attempt to find refuge in the sanctuary of cool, vocally declaring your coolness to the world.

No way. Any high school student, current or former, knows that coolness is not declared. Coolness is emanated; one must show, not tell. Being so overt about the whole issue is the least cool thing you could ever do, and will probably land you head first in the nearest public toilet.

And so the Catch-22 of my high school days: declaring coolness proves just the opposite.

A Segue

New Oxford American Dictionary - Selfless: Adjective. Concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one’s own; unselfish: an act of selfless devotion. Derivatives: Selflessly (adverb) Selflessness (noun). Synonyms: Unselfish, altruistic, self-sacrificing.

Cavalier attitudes towards usage dilutes words. Dilution of words obscures and twists their ordinary meaning. Twisting this meaning opens new pathways but also causes problems, as our once solid foundation of words and meanings shifts and rumbles underneath our feet. This is natural - language is the amoeba of a billion tongues, amorphous and unpredictable, stretching itself outwards, its cilia probing the limits, occasionally engulfing and incorporating stray bits of others.

But, as Thoerau keenly noted, “You never gain something but that you lose something.” Consider words like love or beauty, or soberly ponder the real definition of starving amidst our modern lexical orgy. Yes, languages undoubtedly forge new pathways of expression, yet the corpses left behind are vast and mutilated.

It is the active vivisection of “selfless” that has far reaching implications.

True Selfless is extremely rare, yet, we find the term now a victim of the hapless cleaver of overuse. At every turn, particularly among expat circles in Cambodia, you find individuals masquerading as Truly Selfless Persons.

Remember our nostalgic trip back to high school and the issue of coolness? Declaring yourself as selfless is different from declaring yourself as cool in exactly 3 ways:

No retaliatory swirlies.
It causes serious problems for others instead of yourself.
It actually seems to work for a while, in like bringing attention, praise, and elevated social standing to yourself.

It makes even less sense, however. Declaring yourself as selfless simply directs attention and praise for this very quality inwards, selfishly, thereby directly opposing our above definition. And thus, the Catch-22 of my NGO days: If you claim to be selfish, through overt assertion or subtle insinuation, you have immediately and irrefutably proven yourself to be just the opposite.

So big deal - people are conceited, nothing new. But with TS specifically, a huge number of problems arise.

What’s at stake in paradoxically asserting TS

Something far greater than an exemption from awkward pubescent silliness. It runs deeper. It’s a matter of transcending the inconvenient burdens that make us human: jealousy, hurt, want, lust, selfishness. It is rising above these to become supra human in the eyes of peers. In arriving to the developing world with a wad of cash, you bedazzle the locals into loving you unconditionally with your boundless insinuations of personal greatness and worth. And when you return home with tales of the lives you have changed, not holding back one iota out of humility, not diverting attention to your subjects instead of yourself, you raise yourself up to such supra human status on the shoulders of those you have just three sentences ago claimed to protect. The ego becomes ravenous, the goal mutated from humanitarianism to ensuring the ego continues to grow assured of its TS. The fuel is the ecstasy spawned from knowing and believing deep in your being that you have transcended simple humanity, metamorphosed into a deity in the eyes of others and your own narcissistic inward glare, a fuel that is demanded by the ego in exponentially increasing quantities as time passes.

To be fair, being human is well, kind of shitty sometimes. I don’t like it when I get jealous, or when I’m selfish with my belongings. I don’t like being hurt, or being subject to human error. I want to be more too; we all do. But there is an important distinction between refining and controlling human urges, and sacrificing others for a false ascension to the ranks of the gods.

Why people masquerading as TS is a serious problem - I

Let’s look at this in it’s most malignant setting - a TSP running an NGO. As the intact ego is absolutely vital, TSPs tend to favor extreme exclusivity. Convincing yourself that you are supra human every waking hours takes some serious mental juice, even for the most narcissistic of us, and the introduction of an individual whose skills, innovation, depth of compassion, etc. even remotely challenge our TSP’s would set the facade ablaze in the eyes of everyone, including himself. Out of the question.

And so the gates are sealed shut, and with them the tragedy extends past the repugnant narcissism and begins affecting real people.

Neglecting a spirit of cooperation in approaching the cause you fight for (and upon which have built your entire TSP persona in the first place) places a limit on the potential for effective action. In Cambodia, as in every other country experiencing social problems (i.e. all of them), alleviation of the issues does not stand a chance when approached by one TSP and his cult of followers.

Instead of inclusion, the TSP dumbly plods on, gorging his ego on the worship of his close staff, so close it’s suffocating and honest criticism and debate becomes impossible, the whole organization a twisted feedback loop where anything can make sense if you say it enough times and with enough sparkle in your eyes. Where reaching out to others in a spirit of cooperation would extend your collective philanthropic potential and would in itself be a mandate taken on by being a TSP, it is shunned out of egotistic fear. Where increasing transparency and inviting criticism to improve methodology and expand the umbrella of provided aid, doors are sealed and bolted and the operation sheds all accountability, hiding beneath the facade of humanitarianism.

Asinine. NGOs should not exist to breed dependence on their existence, yet this becomes the motive, bred from a completely un-unselfish desire to feel important. Foreign NGOs are created and exist so that they may visualize a day when they are no longer necessary, the issue alleviated by attacking by addressing its most fundamental problems, or making it domestically sustainable in the hands of citizens. Instigating this radical dependency, pointless inclusivity, and disgusting worship, primarily through masquerading as TS and inflating an already bloated ego, is wrong and has ramifications for those the organization has pledged to protect and aid.

Why people masquerading as TS is a serious problem - II

The second tragedy occurs back on the home front. The bizarre solipsistic “selflessness” of TSPs ostracizes ordinary people from causes that naturally benefit from extended involvement. We’ve all dragged our feet to speeches and slideshows on behalf of NGOs like guilty sinners receiving their annual communion. Why this guilt ridden reluctance?

When you have TSPs galloping around preaching their supra humanity to all who will listen, elevating themselves on the shoulders of humanitarianism, it inspires deep seated and conflicted feelings of inferiority in the audience. We’ve all seen it - the crowds looking up starry eyed but strangely stuck, buying up the TSP routine until they’re emotionally broke, perfectly kind hearted and capable people turning to their neighbor exclaiming “What an incredible person! I’d love to help others like he does, but I just don’t think I have it in me,” when the simple act of turning to your neighbor and saying just that affirms that yet, you really do have it in you to change the world. These speeches and presentations get such a mediocre reputation because they inspire such conflicted feelings of inferiority in the audience, and ignore that there is a huge population of capable individuals listening whose inclusion is vital to solving the overarching social issues of our planet. They’re just turned off by the whole deal because every event they drag their feet to out of self conscious guilt leaves them with a lingering, haunting sense of inadequacy.

A 21st century shocker; we have enough to feel inadequate enough. I don’t even watch television, and at the end of most days I feel fat, ugly, and stupid, my teeth not white enough, my hair not lush enough, my toes of freakish proportions, my skin too dark or too pale (depending on the day) and my nose of horrific inclination towards my left ear. Humanitarianism shouldn’t be another source of inferiority.

The good news for the rest of us

True selflessness is not a requisite quality for doing service work.

It is not necessary to change the world. And you certainly don’t have to transcend humanity to change people’s lives.

(In fact, you shouldn’t want to. These TSPs are typically flying so high that they’re completely out of touch with real issues that do plague their organizations, so that the whole mess ends up imploding after a number of years. When you gain supra human status in your eyes, you also lose something: empathy, and the ability to communicate with ordinary people that matter.)

As long as cultivated guilt just barely wins out over disinclination spurred by feelings of inferiority, efforts to include others, raise money, generate support, and drum up awareness will continue to garner only lukewarm support. It’s not a matter of amplifying guilt towards the audience’s naivete towards important issues, as many TSPs would allege, but rather approaching the issue with a strong emphasis on individual potential. It requires being humble and inclusive. Realizing, emphasizing, and most importantly celebrating the power of the inspired individual. Understanding that people want to help, but denting egos for personal gain isn’t beneficial for anyone except the self. Guilt must be replaced by encouragement for others to strive for their own potential to make a difference.

Concluding words and a confession

Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor by one person. Indifference will fester so long as TSP’s talk down to others for their own conscious. If narcissistic ostracizing of the people we really do need to extinguish our planets’ infernos, TSPs betray the very root of their putative status, and we as a community bound by our humanity suffer despite their supposedly valiant efforts. It is only through the few becoming the many, unabashed inclusion, and setting our egos aside for the good of others will the supernumerary problems that beleaguer our planet be addressed.

And so, in closing, a confession. I am not truly selfless. I am human. Subject to the same human pangs of selfishness, jealousy, envy, turmoil, strife, etc. that afflict all of us Homo sapiens. To put it simply, you and I are not all that different. Trust me on this one.

You, the reader, can do what I and many others do. We were not born in mangers, bitten by radioactive bugs, dispatched by some higher power. We are like you. We have needs, frustrations, vendettas, jealousies, setbacks, weaknesses. We are human.

It doesn’t take flying to Cambodia to help either. Find a local cause to work with; there are countless options. Tutor at risk youth, organize a fundraiser, work the soup kitchen, volunteer at your local hospital. You’ll be surprised to find what you’re capable of (and you’ll find that you really do have it in you). The inspired individual can move worlds.

More importantly - and speaking from experience on this one - I think the experience will bring you newfound and boundless passion in all facets of your life. It will bring you universally applicable perspective. After all, we are human - we can all be a little selfish. By no means does it preclude you from doing amazing things.

And if you’re one of my TSPs, I implore you: stop telling, start showing, and join us. You're just as capable of making this world a better place as anyone else, and there’s pride, not shame, in that knowledge. We need you.

“If you want to be important - wonderful. If you want to be recognized - wonderful. If you want to be great - wonderful. But, recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness.” -MLK

Need some ideas to get started?

Some thoughts on why I haven't posted in months

2009-01-15T21:34:00.001+07:00

Not to suggest I haven’t been writing, or life has been uneventful. Oh no...

I spent time in Phnom Penh visiting families of my students; some of them reasonably comfortable, others living in the shadow of the rubbish mountain, Steung Meanchey. I ventured out into rural Cambodia, where my status as foreigner was sharply accentuated. I danced traditional wedding dances with friends, students, coworkers, and a whole bunch of people I didn’t know. I landed myself in that lovely Thai hospital again, my intestines disintegrating once more, leaving me incapacitated. I explored Singapore, and found it an oddly immaculate little island. I spent some peaceful time deep in the Pacific with family and celebrated Christmas. I watched my position change from “teacher” to something far more ambiguous and enjoyable.

I’ve taken many stabs at writing about these experiences, and my hard drive is littered with fragments. Half completed, because they lack a passion and spark that inspires me when I read it. Lacking of passion and spark because the one issue that has shook me is precisely the one I can’t discuss on a public forum like a blog.

I’m referring to The Global Child. Now that the issues have been resolved and we’re forging forward once again, I can simply say that we had some issues and lost some staff. I witnessed betrayals that shattered lessons I’d learned here and thought as irrefutably correct. We have gone through a bumpy period, and are now watching it recede into comfortable memory, the horizon of our future, again seemingly infinite in possibilities, extending out before our tired eyes. What we experienced was painfully necessary, like relocating a displaced joint or pulling a tooth, fully accompanied by the sigh and fuzzy comfort of knowing that the worst is over.

All the specifics I can give: three staff members have quit, and one student has left by her own choice.

What we’ve lost, we have gained in an influx of kind and talented staff. They have peppered our organization with spark, talent, and compassion. They have bonded with the kids and volunteers, and besides doing an excellent job in their field of expertise, have generally made everyones lives more pleasant. You’ll be hearing more about them as we grow closer to them.

Out with the old and in with the new is the (ironically) old aphorism. Sometimes change isn’t good, it’s just necessary. Fortunately, we’re seeing the requisite changes produce large dividends, in education, in productivity, in happiness, and most importantly, in vision and passion for the mission the organization was founded on.

We are TGC, and we’re moving forward. Thanks for all the support, and for hanging in there.

www.theglobalchild.org

Dispatch from Dean McEvoy

2009-01-01T17:33:00.000+07:00

I know, I know...it's been quite some time. I've been writing my little butt off, but the events that have commanded my thoughts and words these past months are not appropriate for a public forum such as this. For now, here's a note from our dean, the man who chose Jon and I for this task and made all of it possible from the beginning. Cheers to him for this opportunity and coming out to check up on us!

Words by Thomas McEvoy. Photography by Thomas McEvoy and Robbie Flick.

For those family and friends of Jon and Robbie who don't know me, I'm Tom McEvoy who, along with Professor Hal Fried, works with the Minerva Fellows in this inaugural year of the program. Recently, I wrapped up a little over two weeks visiting Fellows in Cape Town and rural Uganda, with a final stop at Seim Reap to see Jon and Robbie, and learn more about their work with The Global Child.

First, I was glad to see that Robbie looked very healthy and seemed back to his old self after a couple of bouts with illness. Jon started off this visit a little queasy, but looked well, improved every day, and we spent four good days together.

Reading class with Sophal

The work at The Global Child is challenging, and Jon and Robbie’s responsibilities extend far beyond teaching. Few could do the work they do—and do it as well as they do it. When Hal and I, along with our selection team, met with candidates last year, there were specific personality traits and characteristics that we were looking for in each applicant: a sense of commitment and responsibility, someone able to work ‘full time and then some’ and to be held to a higher standard than a paid employee,to have an ability to problem solve, and to keep themselves motivated.

It is almost as if we had the Global Child in mind as we developed these standards. Jon and Robbie are being tested, but there is no question that these two guys are not only meeting our requirements---but are setting a torrid pace. Their week does not begin on Monday and end on Friday; thoughts of their students and The Global Child (both the organization and their students) are never very far from their minds. In Jon’s December 6 blog, he reports on the organizational changes The Global Child is experiencing. This is something we could not have prepared them for, and it is the inner character of each that is helping them play a pivotal role in maintaining order in the face of change.

Yet. ‘pivotal role’ does not quite do it in terms of telling the story of Jon, Robbie and the students of The Global Child.

Taking some time out for silliness with Dan and Sokmao. Laugh, but understand how
important these moments are for one's sanity when under stress.

I know few students in U.S. schools whose teachers would get themselves and their students out on a Saturday evening to listen to some live music to expose them to the richness of a mini multi-cultural music fest. Or, who would give up three hours of a Sunday afternoon to swim, play, and stand watch while their students frolicked, flipped, swam, dove, and learned to swim in the warm waters of a nearby pool. It is all very family - like, and the lines between student and teacher are not easily drawn. Attachments form, roles become harder to maintain. On the one hand, I felt this was great. On the other, I could see the potential for an emotional wipe out on the part of the teacher. They are more than teachers, as I found out.

Jon, during a football game with the Green Gecko

Given the needs of the students it is hard to see how any of us could not be drawn deeply into the lives of these kids. They have already had a shaky past and their futures are far less predictable than their counterparts in good suburban schools in the United States. The stakes must seem high for Robbie and Jon, given an everyday interaction with their students that will only last another few months. I think itchy questions are at play as the clock ticks: How much of a difference [ common theme, I found on this trip ] can a Minerva Fellow make in nine months? Do the students really want to learn? Do these kids really appreciate the preparation and patience required to put one’s self in front of a class day after day?

At a traditional Khmer wedding with Leakena

Even for one week’s worth of work, I say yes they do, although the answer can at times be tentative. If we think of two more Fellows picking up where Robbie and Jon leave off in April, then the yes becomes more absolute. I know both Robbie and Jon are making a difference—a profound one. Perhaps the hardest one, as the task begins. Others will follow. Real change will come.

Self-portrait, with Piron's help

In one of the books we have passed on to the Fellows to read, Three Cups of Tea, we learn that it took mountaineer and humanitarian Greg Mortenson ‘more than three years of false steps, injuries, and delays to drive his first school from promise to completion.’ Lasting change takes time. We tend to want to see change happen fast, and when it doesn’t come at the pace that ticks within, we grow antsy.

I believe that Jon and Robbie will never forget The Global Child [and Children] and have been made better by this experience. Their already strong characters are being made even stronger as they navigate choppy waters by the day. I hope they remember their day in the pool splashing, laughing, living and loving—and giving of themselves. It’s a snapshot of them I will always have in my mind. Great job guys. Union, your families and friends would have nothing but pride and joy in their hearts if they were able to see you at work, with your spirits and talents. Happy New Year.

Self-portrait with Primary Class

Disintegration, Beauty, Suffering and Life

2008-09-29T19:39:00.000+07:00

[Warning: This one gets a little dark, and includes explicit language and imagery. Please take note before reading. I'm in no place to administer an age limit; just know that I'm talking about something very painful and real. There is a happy ending, though, I promise! Don't give up...]

Everything is collapsing.

The most tragic part is the futile attempt in attempting a description, the chagrin invited by typing the first feeble, puny, frail characters, hopeless arrangements of lines and curves facing off against a ravenous force that has maliciously unraveled my grip on reality.

Imagine finding oneself on some abandoned infinite beach, and being dispatched with the task to describe each and every particle of sand that fills every the space around your body, a solid moving as a liquid en masse. It is that numbing realization that to convey the intricate individual beauty of each and every particle means giving it to you audience, letting them touch it, feel it against their cheek, the way it runs between their fingers, how its myriad particles glint when held at specific angles to the passing sun. In writing about this, or anything, I’m limited to not only a handful, but an infinitesimally small pinch of substance from this endlessly expanding landscape before my eyes, begging to be described in all its simultaneous bliss and agony. Thus is the nature of reality, a fierce, furious, beautiful rebel against the forces of encapsulation, shrugging off humanity’s miserable, sorry attempts. The world around us, reality, subjective and objective, its tangible and intangible aspects, are a flurry of details that overwhelms the senses and in even existing as part of it we are simply running our small hand through the current of a tremendous river fed by innumerable tributaries, all leading to the infinite expanding ocean of collective human awareness.

Instead of encapsulation we can only attempt to work in harmony with reality, and struggle to paint a complete and compelling picture of our experiences, visions, humilities, fears, shortcomings, and so forth.

So I will try to pick out a few pinches of sand and pass it on to you, the reader, but I do so with a warning, for what I have been struggling to express coherently is so urgent that I don’t believe any amount of revising could ever produce a satisfactory result. What I aim to delve into is an intellectual journey the likes of which I have never experienced before. Its bottomless depths, its titillating, shuddering downward spiral across the fiery red apocalyptic skies of my own consciousness with both engines ablaze and smoking, rocketing me towards the unforgiving ground, the rock bottom of perception of the material world that grows closer and closer, thousands of feet closer with every passing second, mayday call still unanswered, the death force of intellectual gravity sinisterly mocking my feeble attempts at flight and harshly reminding my tattered, petrified brain that all that goes up must, after all, come down.

It all began collapsing around me. The flame retardant walls containing the system of thought upon which I have built my overarching sense of well-being and ethical security began melting.

Cambodia is numbing, and just like the inside of your mouth which you chew to oblivion after a visit to the dentist, this numbness is alike, leaving you blissfully anesthetized as you idly gnaw away on the bloody pulp of your consciousness until the feeling returns in a flurry of pain signifying the return of brutal reality, waking you to discover the dismembered remains of your perception, that while you have been chewing away with idle pleasure reality has splintered open on all sides, and now the layers peel back, excruciatingly, one by terrible one, revealing the incalculable, endless pain and suffering, that exists or remains to be exploited within every individual.

This numbness is spawned from necessity. As you walk the streets of Siem Reap, you are assailed with innumerable offers, requests, demands, pleas. Tuk tuk drivers assault you with offers to visit countless temples, hordes of children try to sell you books while beggars and amputees cling to you with the remaining functioning limbs they have, asking for 2000 riel, one dollar, 5 baht, a coke, a bottle of water, anything to feed my baby because look, sir, here she is, crying in my arms, starving to death and its your fault if she dies, I’m so hungry sir, anything, save, feed me, PLEASE, anything, anything, anything, anything....

You become numb, broke, or insane. Most people choose the blissful emotional void, shooting up with a glorious shot of intellectual anesthetic. You can’t help everyone, so you put up your shield, helping yourself and those you have pledged to serve. The beggars become simply a backdrop, just like the crumbling brick walls of every building, the flickering signs offering massages in poorly worded English, or the swollen river that lolls lazily by the town. You ignore their advances, shrug off the pleas for money, shake your arm loose from the mother clinging on desperately with her child like a shipwrecked survivor to driftwood, parched bottle dangling loosely from the baby’s blistered lips, walk past the hordes of tuk tuk drivers sleeping in their tragically ornate chariots for lack of anywhere else to go. The offers of tuk tuks, motorbike rides, marijuana, cocaine, crack, prostitutes, they and the individuals they thoughtlessly exploit in the name of hedonistic pleasure become simply obstacles to stride over. You reduce these human beings to simple annoyances, something to be surpassed. You ignore them as they are, after all, destined to muddle in the vile scum of humanity’s boundless hedonism, reducing themselves to the lowest possible standards, transmuting their body into a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder for a paltry sum. You pass them by at the corner of every block; the legless beggar crutching himself to table after table of tourists begging for food money, the prostitute swinging down the sidewalk in her sexual swagger, 6 inches of heels and one of makeup, throwing hungry eyes at you like a starved wolf eyeing its quarry. Then the pack of mothers race up to you in a furious panic at the outskirts of town, waving their infants in your face like squirming, wailing votive offerings, the ubiquitous drained plastic bottle in hand, they’re screaming, crying out in vain in the only English word they know, please, please, please, please...

You walk on. Not everyone can be helped, and so you sleep soundly nestled in the false security of an intellectual house of mirrors, each surface rigged to distort the introspective wavelengths of thought and superimpose an unquestionable ethical superiority over the challenges outside your doors over and over again, the reflections marching into the reflections in an infinite parade of disastrous optical illusions that perpetuate unfounded reassurance.

It is an intellectual fortress constructed of sticks and twigs, a ramshackle shelter that barely protects against the eroding cosmic wind of reality. The reality laying siege to the gates need only wait until the mirrors are corrected for outright internal chaos to erupt.

This day arrives, and you wake up comfortable and unassuming. Button up your shirt, wrap the belt around scrawny waist, grab your books, kick start the old moto and you’re underway for another day of teaching.

But one day you arrive in your classroom and you see the faces, eager for learning, yet so eager because they know full well the unfathomable alternative. The realization dawns that their impeccable study habits and devotion to education is not a virtue, but a response to the alternative, the precipice of poverty, a life of difficulty, struggle and suffering, and suddenly basic geometry doesn’t seem so bad.

With this realization comes the spinning, and the faces encircle you in a hopeless blur, faster and faster until they are barely discernible, and suddenly Sophal is the child wrapped in filthy rags with an empty bottle hanging from his toothless mouth, Rithyka the armless beggar on the streets with nowhere to call home and a swollen, disfigured stomach begging for nourishment. Now their gleaming eyes yearn for learning, and they obediently recite the tedious rules of plane geometry, yet they could just as easily be reciting the latest discount for the sale of their unripe bodies They are that close, one miniscule step away from the eternal tragedy of human existence that writhes and squirms uncontrollably like some malevolent, multiplying serpent beyond the walls of the school, modern Lernaean Hydra, innumerable heads sprouting and twisting with every attempt to lop them off.

We are lulled into thinking that we have stumbled upon some happy ending, but this happy ending does not exist, it never has and never will, and as we cling to the fragile ideal of education, expecting it to rocket us to such great heights, it is in fact the harsh alternative that forces education, not the idealistic goals we aspire to. What good is an education if one’s willingness to submit oneself to the perverted desires of the common pedophile with the fattest wallet will always be worth far more?

This is it, right here, the never ending, malevolent whirlwind of human suffering and wrongdoing, compounding, growing, exponentially expanding outwards like the death throes of some perverse supernova of affliction, ejaculating its infinitely condensed mass on and on until an event horizon of torment envelops the students, the Cambodian citizens, every individual living in squalor, eternally extinguishing hope from escaping its infinitely powerful gravitational field of confinement. By sheer willpower, goodwill and luck the students were snatched up into comparative safety, yet the reality of Cambodia still besieges the gates of our school with every passing hour. With every restless thought in the minds of our older students it gains ground, forcing us further and further into a corner with no escape.

Yes, here it is, every last bit of our fucked up world, a vile, putrefying orgy of hedonism where anything is possible with the right amount of money, a place that shames our American pits of debauchery, where hookers start at $5 before the bargaining begins. A place where the wishes of a backwards, deranged 43 year old Spaniard can finally come true in the cherubic form of a 12 year girl; she submits herself to his every perverse whim and desire, every forced grunt and moan and drop of blood a necessary offering to feed starving siblings still unripe for the oldest profession, her young, boney, underdeveloped body the sacrificial lamb, offered up right along with her naivety and innocence, the only things she has ever had and now they’re gone, stolen away and devoured by the voracious appetite for destruction along with the few dollars he paid for her, gone to her pimp, for he too has many mouths to feed, and here she is, left with next to nothing, a few thousand riel, bedraggled, bleeding, corrupted. And this isn’t just a horror story to guilt you, the reader, into donating money to an obscure organization; you must imagine it, really think about this girl, a girl I know, a girl that calls me borng-bproh, brother, who looks up to me and loves me and I love her right back. We shake our heads in despair at the problems of this twisted world, and our fucked up predilection to sweep unflinching, cumbersome reality under the proverbial rug of our collective consciousness, preferring the numbing, deafening blinking lights of our TV programs that hypnotize and turn attention away from what really matters, and what really matters is how a culture that we lift up and praise and transmit to others like some malicious infective virus is capable of producing full grown men with complete knowledge of right and wrong who pay exorbitant sums to travel across the world and have terrible, painful, agonizing sex with 12 year old Cambodian girls.

And there she is, begging your tragically anesthetized consciousness for recognition, crying in a heap of skin and bones on the filthy cum stained mattress, yet he’s back for more, the insatiable satyr of infinite corruption, fucking and groaning and beating and humping and ejaculating, appeasing a ravenous hunger that burns deep and hot, tearing at the seams, melting through the prescribed societal code of ethics and exploding outwards to incinerate those around him past recognition, an unrepentant arsonist of innocence and naiveté. He’s paid his money, and damn right he’s getting his fill, so its back to the forced grunting and moaning and screaming, but its no longer convincing through the choked sobs, the thrusting and plunging and humping far too much for her malnourished body, used to jumping rope with friends instead of receiving the angry fury of his venomous engorged voracious cock. Now the satyr walks out the door, incognito in his pressed suit and tie, but he’s left something behind, the virus coursing through her tiny capillaries to every cubic inch of her body, lying dormant for now, to awaken one day and systematically tear apart her fragile tissues with the same malice, hate and unslakable thirst which so abused her aching, bloodied body, yet the most dangerous is the newfound intellectual values that this strange man’s cavorting has instilled, deadly in that they are far more contagious, the newfound willingness to stoop to any level, for although she lies beaten and abused by this strange man, she lies among her leaking, poisoned bodily fluids several thousand riel richer, and that is something after all, isn’t it?

The most crippling aspect is the petrifying realization that every single human being, not just my students, but my family, my friends, the love of my life, everyone in this sad, aching world is an infinite reservoir of pain, suffering, corruption and perversion. Innocence, purity, naivety, these now transparent qualities are delightfully pillaged in a heartbeat, the qualities we are born with and hold so dear to us. It is intrinsic to living; we are torn screaming from the womb, snipped of our lifeline and expected to understand that in taking that first choking breath of air that defines as an individual sentient organism, we submit ourselves to the horrible potentials of this world, without knowing that it extends far past the sanitized white walls of our mother's hospital room.

I am here to help avert the terrible reality that my students are hurtling towards, however the fear of this reality, just briefly considering the potential of it, is absolutely terrifying. I became useless, every day the compounding petrification sinking me deeper and deeper like a stone tossed in the ocean into sheer befuddlement, in turn bringing less and less to my students and inadvertently ushering in the reality I so feared with every inch of my form. I was panicky, terribly sleep deprived, arguably delusional, brow constantly furrowed, the severity of the endless train of thoughts tearing through my frontal lobes, accelerating towards a crippling critical velocity.

Everything had collapsed.

What jerks you out of these trances is never some grand unifying theory to the grand questions of why, but something very simple, a pure clarion call that usually goes overlooked, and when given the chance to breathe, blossoms in your mind and brings rejuvenating life to your entire being.

It started with a cloud

One of those enormous, billowing monsoon season thunderheads gathers above my head, mushrooming upwards towards the sun and blocking its rays from my tired red eyes, backlighting its wispy limbs in glorious phosphorescence. As I crane my neck upwards to fully enjoy its beauty, I accidentally swerve my moto towards the opposite lane of traffic. Sopheak’s riding behind me, and I feel his knees involuntarily tighten around my waist in fear.

“What’s wrong?” he yells against the wind.

I nod up. The lumbering dark mass continues its exponential expansion, and the road becomes perceptively darker as the sun’s rays struggle to pierce through its moist bulking mass.

We pull over to enjoy the late afternoon sunlight and stretch our legs. Its Sunday, our day of rest, and we have little to do. Sopheak suggests driving to a nearby mountain to watch the sunset. My troubled state and tired eyes could use some natural beauty, so with hopes of catching a spectacular display of nature, we decide to set off on my small moto.

A quick conference at the wood house brings Sopheap, Jon, Soda and Tear along as well, a party of six split between my and Sopheap’s motos.. Tear and Soda, the smaller of the group, hop on the back of my significantly weaker vehicle, and we’re off, with the road and the comforting sound of the 90 cc engine ferrying us off into rural, ancient Cambodia.

Dark clouds coalesce as we gather on our destination. The road empties out, becoming a long, narrow, sun speckled alley, shadowed by tall leafy trees that hang over the road, refracting the golden late afternoon light into beautiful patterns on the tired pavement kissed by my worn tires. The road leads all the way to Angkor Wat and continues onward, zooming past hordes of tourists and tuk tuk drivers. The slow, sweeping, euphoric realization embeds itself in my consciousness that we are no longer Americans or Cambodians or tourists or classifiable by any syllabic word, but six individuals, members of this beautiful surrogate family called The Global Child, on a mission together, appealing to the basic natures of our being in pursuing adventure and happiness in a mysterious, unknown destination, clutching each other close and tight, anxiously leaning forward into the wind, ushered into the unknown by the beautiful packed sound of the engine beneath us.

The road leading to the mountain we originally embarked for is closed. The setting sun and thickening clouds bring premature darkness and threaten to end our journey, yet we press on, and suddenly we are surrounded by stone sculptures thousands of years old, a long line of wide faced warriors with neatly patterned hair, occasionally missing an arm or part of their face, in a long line tugging an enormous serpent that rises up to greet us as we fly past. Now under and through the large imposing stone gate with its welcoming, ancient, heavy wooden doors and now a sanctuary, a wilderness bisected by the narrow asphalt road, serene, leafy, and peaceful. Faster and faster now on our small motos, my tiny gears reaching their limit under the weight, floating around gentle turns, and halfway through banking into a particularly deep one I suddenly feel Soda’s fingernails dig deeper into my sides, and there it is, right up ahead, Bayon Temple, a crumbling, dreamlike stone fortress, dark and looming, fantastically beautiful, radiant, and dreamlike. Lightning arcs across the inky blank sky, backlighting the ancient stone pillars in cool white luminescence. I slow the moto as we approach the next curve, wrapping us around the temple in a slow, lazy circle.

The lightning storm illuminates this ancient relic of millennia past in stunning, breathtaking clarity, and lights a path from my dire intellectual straits, beckoning me to walk along a middle path of recognition, acceptance, and understanding

Yes, the pain in this world is incomprehensible at times, but to dwell on this pain and not recognize the inherent beauty is an exercise in hopeless self-destruction. The beauty is harder to discern, however, because we are culturally unaccustomed to recognizing it in the myriad ways its presented. No one makes movies about a child jumping rope, or a volunteer visiting temples with his students. Child prostitution is a universal, recognized evil that is ubiquitously attacked for its moral transgressions with great vigor. We know that it causes pain, distress, despair, and even the citizens of this ethical netherworld realize the terrible ramifications of their perverted desires. Yet, the life’s omnipresent beauty counteracts this plunge of the ethical altimeter, tirelessly tugging it upwards. It’s terribly easy to overlook, but once we take a step back we can begin to comprehend it. We look so closely for it, in bite sized television programs, relationships, books, art, literature. The purest form of this beauty is so large, so sweeping, so overarching, that we need to take a few steps backward to see it in its entirety.

Some hours later I’m at the wood house, buried in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, which is beginning to seem horribly selfish in light of my recent musings. I often bring a book with me, in order to both pass the time and also direct some attention away from myself and see the kids interacting among themselves in a more natural environment. A small group of the younger children, all of them in my primary class, run outside where I’m seated cross legged on one of the cushioned benches. They begin jumping rope with a jumprope that threatens to unravel with every beat against the red tiled patio. The sound of the rope hitting the tile, the rhythmic dancing of its shadow under the sole tungsten floodlight illuminating the patio lulls me into a deep trance. The kids begin counting in their beautiful native language, each number following the sharp whack of the rope against the burgundy tile. Muoy, bpee, bpie, boon, prahm, prahm-muoy....My eyes glaze over and my mind begins musing over the experiences earlier that day.

Some time passes before I snap up to find Leakena has joined them. Despite being one of the youngest, she is my brightest and most diligent student, and matches her impressive intellect and drive with an endless affinity for mischief. I look on. She is wearing this stunningly beautiful solid orange dress, and in the strange limelight emitted by the single fluorescent bulb, hopping and jumping and laughing, she is incandescent, cherubic, magnificent, her boundless soul exploding outwards into the space between us, laughing and jumping and rocking back and forth, falling over the rope, chasing her friends who she loves with all of her tiny indefatigable heart, her eyes twinkling, smiling, laughing at this crazy world and her place in it, and I realize this is it, the beauty that fights back the seemingly unstoppable tide of pain and suffering, and I find hide behind my flimsy paperback to conceal the tears streaming down my face.

This girl, this little, radiant, mischievous 13 year old girl, has taught me a lesson I have carried with me since. She dragged me back to the world of the laughing and smiling, reconfirmed my role in this life, brought me back from the ethical void that I was teetering on.

This beauty is everywhere. Slow down, take a few breaths and really pay attention to the intricacies of what is happening around you, and there it is, right in front of you where you least expected. It is in the face of a chubby korean child forgetting the words to his choir’s song at the opening of a school. In Sophal’s furrowed brow as he struggles with a geometry problem. In Chamroun’s glowing pride as she shows me around her simple abode. In the caring eyes of Sopheap as he rubs my dirty feet to keep them warm while I’m shivering in bed in the throes of some mysterious illness.

We are sitting on that great, infinite beach of life, and although we can only pick up a few grains, we have a choice. In Cambodia, the grains are coarser, more painful and difficult than back home, but the grains of beauty still exist, and when we pay attention grow and blossom into alabaster pearls, small containers of infinite beauty and happiness. We just need to be observant enough to recognize them amidst this great landscape, pluck them out, cherish them and allow them to flourish into their full beauty while still acknowledging the pain and suffering of those around us.

This is it, right here, kind reader, this is life, sweet, tragic, unpredictable, beautiful life, with its pain, bliss, triumphs, tragedies, but life, unavoidable, undeniable, unspeakably beautiful life, and we must drink it all in, with our bodies, our souls, our eyes, and when its last drop falls from our bodies we can look back with satisfaction and know that we did not shy from the one reality that we ever had the possibility of knowing: sweet, horrible, entrancing, infinite, euphoric life.

Sophal

2008-09-07T21:23:00.000+07:00

Sophal; Hero, hooligan, soccer imp, up and coming rap star, and so much more

Sophal is simply Sophal. He is the student you identify with and sympathize for, even if he never does his homework. He’s the kid who’s absolutely brilliant and makes enormous leaps of insight in every class, despite not doing said homework. And, regardless of these periodical leaps, he unfailingly flunks evaluation after evaluation for trivial reasons that drive you off the wall. After showing him the correct solution to one of his errors, he looked at me as if I were some lesser Neanderthal. “Of course I know that, teacher Robbie!” He is an enigma, sharp as a tack, endlessly inspiring you to laugh, smile, tear your hair out or shed a tear, all at a moments notice. He is Sophal.

Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve grown so close to this child is that I see a bit of myself in him. I identify with him. Its the classroom ADD, the quirkiness, the dangerous ease of underestimating him, the everyday rebellion against any and all authority (myself occasionally included), that reminds me of a much spunkier version of my younger self.

Sophal is always quick to come to my defense, both physically (despite his status as the smallest and youngest student) and socially. When my other students erupt in a communal chirping to each other in hopelessly indistinguishable Khmer, giggling and yelling back and forth, Sophal administers a quick, sharp admonishment, which, although I am not entirely sure what he’s saying, is effective at quelling the uprising.

The most shining example of Sophal’s defensive instincts arose from a peculiar aspect of my classroom.

The whiteboard I use is unique in its faults. Its smudged with myriad streaks of blue, red and black (seemingly) permanent ink, spread across in dull, hapless patterns resembling a failed attempt at designing some psychedelic tapestry, which persists no matter the potency of cleaning supplies I apply to it or the strength with which I try to erase it. This whiteboard is untamed, and laughs at my puny attempts. Cambodia being a humid environment, the bottom of the whiteboard has warped so badly that it is no longer attached to the wall, so while the very middle of it remains flush against the plaster behind it, the edges curl up several inches off the wall, making writing difficult as the board is constantly moving as you apply pressure in an attempt to write. At first, this was merely a pesky annoyance.

One day, while erasing a lesson emphasizing the intricacies of comparative and superlative adjectives, my eraser strayed towards the left edge of the board, pressing it down against the wall behind it slightly. This slight pressure startled undoubtedly the largest spider I have ever seen into jumping out from behind the board onto the wall, several inches away from my face. This thing was gnarly; full, thick, hairy abdomen, long elegant legs, pinchers, eight eyes, and fast as hell. I saw a flash of furry exoskeleton and eight legs, which was enough to engage the flight instinct (I’m a pacifist, what can I say), sending me to the other side of the room with a quick graceful leap and high pitched ungraceful shrill scream. Sophal, who seconds before was diligently writing the comparative and superlative forms of various one syllable adjectives, jumps out of his desk without a moments pause, dives into the corner of the room in a flash and begins scrambling for our hairy adversary. Fear tends to produce ignorance about the object in question; naturally I assume the spider to be capable of seriously injuring Sophal. This assumption further fueled my amazement when, several seconds later, Sophal cries out,

“Teacher Robbie! It ok! I have the spider!!”

He emerges with its abdomen pinched between thumb and forefinger, eight spindly legs firmly outstretched. I look on in wonder as he calmly places it in a plastic container, securely screws on a lid, and proceeds to show me how harmless his new friend is.

The following week, while all the other students tease me endlessly with taunts of “Spider! Spider on your shoulder!” Sophal played it cool. I trusted him as an ally against the significantly more robust Southeast Asian arthropods, and he was right by my side at every class, checking behind the board for any threats. Sure enough, last week, when a small tarantula poked out from behind the board next to my head without me seeing it, Sophal was there without a moments hesitation. This time, not only does he hunt down the spider and capture it, but effectively tames it, and for the rest of the day has his “pet” crawling over his shoulders and face while we practice identifying angles and discuss the literacy rate of South Korea. At the end of the day, he holds the spider out for me to touch, encouraging me to conquer my illogical fear.

Another memory of this child is burned into my memory, albeit an image of him in a somewhat rawer state. The end of the school day here brings a sigh of relief from both staff and students, usually ushered in by torrential downpours.

One day, as the kids play soccer in the courtyard of the wood house (Note; classes take place at the schoolhouse, the students live at the wood house, down the street), dark clouds collect overhead, and thunder begins grumbling from the distance. As I decide to partake in their game, the first few drops of rain begin falling. Within minutes, in typical Cambodian style, this has accelerated into a full monsoon, bending trees, igniting the sky with lightning and dumping rain on our cement playing court, transforming it into an ankle deep pool. The rain is falling so hard it hurts. Features become indistinguishable. Teams break down, and sounds are muffled for the falling rain. Harsh claps of thunder grow closer until the sky above dances with electricity, shedding enough light to momentarily recognize the players. Before long, it is chaos, no longer soccer, having evolved into some awful hybrid of soccer, mud wrestling and cage fighting. Half naked, scrambling, yelling, running, crawling, diving, tackling, laughing, we are closer to some degenerate pack of Mayan ball players than soccer players. Through the dense sheet of rain, I manage to see the opposing team’s goalie has white skin...Ah, that must mean its Jon...I wind up for a mighty kick, but am halted in my tracks as lightning flashes, its phosphorescence illuminating the scene before me. Sophal has climbed up on the metal gate behind Jon, and with both arms outstretched, hands gripping tight the wet metal bars, body arched upwards, dressed in nothing more than a small red speedo, lit by periodic bursts of white lighting, is screaming a primal roar over the chaotic scene of water, electricity and thunder before him, a naked brown imp declaring his unmistakable presence to the world.

Although the sight is authentically and fundamentally human, a scream demanding acknowledgement from the world before him that has often turned its back on this small child, it is undeniably hilarious; little Sophal, weighing in at 20 kilograms at most, morphed into this malevolent soccer devil screaming his mighty war cry against the quarreling barbarians below. While Jon and I roll in the water laughing, Sophal leaps down, juggles the ball around every defender and promptly scores; despite his small size, Sophal is a simply phenomenal soccer player.
Sophal loves rap, and is an incredible dancer. Smey and Sopheap refer to him as “the little monkey”, in a positive way. He is one of the most flexible, acrobatic and agile humans I’ve ever witnessed. After dinner at the wood house, I’ll tie a bandanna around his face, and we’ll dance to several hip hop songs over and over. Jon and I tend to do our white guy thing, while Sophal melts our faces. Naturally, I’ve tried to get him keen on some of the hip-hop I listen to, but after several songs, he latched onto only one and doesn’t seem to be budging.

“You, you got what I neeeeeeeeeed....”

Yes, Sophal, and now the rest of the students at TGC, absolutely dig Biz Markie. Sophal took it up at first, singing the chorus as we danced together between classes. It has gotten to the point where I have to make outlandish deals with my students towards the end of a dull lesson.

“Chamroun!! We need to study geometry now! I promise I’ll sing Biz Markie for EVERYONE after class!”

That usually quiets them down...

Sophal is one of those students who symbolizes the nature of the school and its students. You can see the light go on over his head when he understands something, recognize the spark of understanding in his eyes when we go over a new concept. Even though he makes silly mistakes, leaves answers blanks, has trouble focusing at times, drives you periodically crazy, it is his spark, love for life, ambition, strong sense of right and wrong and brilliance that keep me going at the end of a long day. He is outrageously loyal to his friends and teachers, and I know he’ll be there for the next curious spider who thought they found the perfect home behind my board. Unfailingly, he was there when I fell ill, snoring softly on my floor, periodically waking to check on me, the student transformed into a responsible caretaker watching over and caring for his sick teacher. And when I returned from my trip to the hospital, it was him at the airport, waiting patiently for my return with Jon and Smey.

Sophal is Sophal, my student and guardian, soccer imp and star dancer, but most importantly, a dear and trusted friend.

Thoughts and Reflections, What I Learned, and So Forth

2008-09-07T20:16:00.000+07:00

I’m fortunate to have a robust immune system and a strong stomach, yet I completely underestimated the power of pathogens that Cambodia has to offer the Westerner. I had heard horror stories of the consequences of eating street food, and brushed these aside; after shaky beginnings, my stomach had stabilized by the second week, and I began devouring anything and everything that my students ate. As I rolled around in that hospital bed in my perpetual semi-conscious state, my thoughts gravitated around the array of foods I had consumed in the past week that likely have led to this. A maggot crawling through a salad at a roadside stand sticks out, along with myriad slices of sugar cane doused in (probably unsafe) water that I sucked on like penny candy throughout my classes.

But was it dysentery after all? Our resident volunteer doctor, Jumana, insists it was dengue fever, a virus spread by mosquitos, urging me to get a blood test should I continue to feel fatigued. The first wave of symptoms that hit were something else entirely, she says, than dysentery. Dysentery doesn’t cause extremely high fever, hallucinations, shivering, etc. What it evolved into later, seemed very much like dysentery, but it doesn’t all add up. Was it dengue all along? Or perhaps both, one piggybacking off the other, virus and bacteria joining forces to conquer evolutions (disputably) greatest invention? I’m not sure, but even the chance of it being dengue compelled me to buy a mosquito net and douse myself in bug spray; as many can attest, dengue gets far worse the second time around.

This sickness, whatever it was, hit me hard, physically and mentally. The first few days in the hospital are simply a blur of sleeping, waking, hobbling to the toilet, trying to eat morsels of overtly bland food, smiling weakly at nurses as they change my IV and enjoying daily visits from Dr. Malhotra. Its very difficult when a sickness saps you of everything, including mental abilities. I couldn’t pick up the book I was reading for several days, and when I had the energy to form complex thought patterns again, they were, well, dark. Being laid out on your back inevitably brings critical feelings of hopelessness, vulnerability and weakness, and although I was in very good hands and far from danger, it is a harsh reminder of my own human mortality. I have avoided serious illness and overnight hospital visits my whole life, yet now, there was something about spending days and nights in this enormous complex of the sick and ailing that reminds me that after all, I was born, and I will most certainly, one day, die.

The hospital stay was a wake up call, to employ an overused idiom. At 22, it is easy to feel smug, invulnerable, invincible against all odds, and I have adopted this sort of “fuck you,save your concerns for the weak, they don’t apply to me”, idiotic, backwards, macho mentality that eventually undid me, as it always will to those who adopt it. This humility exacerbated the feelings of mortality explained above; I wasn’t nobly struck down by some evil malevolent force. This was all my own doing. Dysentery, dengue or both, it arose from my own failures to protect myself, against either mosquitos or troublesome bacteria. As these realizations mounted, I solemnly resolved to check my ego indefinitely, lest it ever surge, spill over, and land me in the hospital, or somewhere worse, again

My comfortable, delusional bubble of security, the “oh it only happens to other people” web of utter stupidity, the elitist immunological snobbery, has all been brutally dismantled. No longer will I adopt such a cavalier attitude regarding my own health. I have lot more to do in this life, far more to create, to write, to teach, to inspire, to complete. I can’t go under just yet, or anytime soon. Being foolish enough to bring about a totally preventable death is an incredibly selfish act. The ramifications of mere illness were bad enough for my coworkers (already short staffed), students, family and loved ones. To go off into the void as a result of something I could have easily prevented by wearing insect repellent, or wearing a helmet, or any number of risk mitigating activities, would be, well, senseless and enormously selfish.

Looking back, this ailment wasn’t terribly serious. I am fortunate enough to have the means to be treated professionally; I shudder at thinking of what would’ve happened otherwise.

When I was in Siem Reap, I was in the hands of people who cared about me very deeply, yet did not have all the means to take care of me. In Bangkok, I was in the hands of professionals who don’t know me but have the proper means to cure me. Thankfully, there was only a several hour lapse between these two parties.

I was never in serious danger, I don’t believe, and am fortunate that the illness I contracted was bad enough to teach me a lesson or two, yet not so bad to knock me out indefinitely. As of this writing, exactly a week after my discharge from the hospital, I still feel weak at times, and am still having trouble eating the traditional Khmer food that my students consume at the wood house, yet feel infinitely better and stronger with every day.

There’s a somewhat cheesy saying that I’ve seen emblazoned on countless high school and university sports teams’ t-shirts: “That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” Tacky and overused, yes, but I learned a powerful lesson in humility and mortality from this ordeal that I won’t soon forget. It also revealed the enormous depth of caring possessed by the staff and students at The Global Child. The silly westerner gets sick due to his own supercharged ego, and they unquestionably come his aid, reassure him, comfort him, sleep on his floor, accompany him to the airport. All of this for someone whose cavalier attitude landed them in the hospital, where they can’t perform the job they promised to do, and which the children I’ve resolved to serve need terribly.

After I was released from the hospital, I spent several days in Bangkok gathering supplies with Note for myself and the students. I had planned on spending more time getting my strength back, yet I found myself very seriously missing the staff, the students, the volunteers, the entire establishment. I called Smey the next day, and with overflowing joy was able to tell her, I am coming home, home to Cambodia, home to my friends, and home to the family that is The Global Child.

Thoreau famously wrote, “You never gain something but that you lose something.” This goes both ways. I lost a few days, but what I gained is so tremendous and far reaching, its impossible to quantify, and will be shaping me for years to come.

Endnote: The days in the hospital after I was somewhat functional again were full of reading, thinking and talking to my Nepali neighbor. Unfortunately, a Bangkok hospital gets lonesome soon after you have the energy to realize you’re completely alone. Fortunately, I had the two most important women of my life calling me hourly to talk, reassure me, imbue confidence, and coax me to laugh once more. Also, I had a Thai friend, Note, who was at the hospital every day, bringing me food and drink, sharing stories, and educating me about the Buddhist religion. Smey unfailingly called everyday to remind me that I was missed. I made a quick post and sent out an email when I got sick, and the response in my inbox was overwhelming. Thank you, to everyone who took the time to send some positive words. They helped more than I have the talent to express.

Last but not least; I left my camera at home, but here are some photographs of one my caretakers, Ratha

Compassionate caretaker and also a black belt in karate, here Ratha is sparring with fellow secondary student, Vutha

The Humilities and Advantages of Falling Ill: In transit, Siem Reap to Bumrungrad International Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand

2008-09-07T19:49:00.000+07:00

(Note: this is a continuation of the below story, documenting my falling ill and subsequent visit to a hospital in Thailand)

Ratha doesn’t sleep. As Sophal snores lightly on the tiled floor of my room, Ratha is tense, poised, back against the white stucco wall of my bedroom, long arms draped gracefully over kneecaps topping lanky legs, watching every shallow rise and fall of my chest with intensity. His eyes are wide, fearful, piercing through the dark of my room, eerily glowing in the moonlight filtering through my curtained windows. Twice an hour he dutifully rises, soaks the towels and shirts that cover my body, before resuming his post at the wall opposite me, watching, waiting for any sign that my condition is worsening, ready to jump into immediate action

Delirious dreams drag me from the tangible world of logic and reason and drop me into the aorta of an eerie, bustling megalopolis, yet I’m spontaneously, completely alone, walled in by a sea concrete high-rises, while hundreds of thousands of streets lead infinitely in every direction, packed to the hilt with smiling faces on motos and bikes that pass in a blur, only an infinite march of slightly upturned, knowing, mocking, cheshire cat smiles discernible amidst the mayhem. I wrestle with my quasi-nightmare, throwing sheets and pillows haphazardly around the bed, fighting this invisible force with every iota of strength pulsating in my tired being, until respite comes, jolting me awake and back to the cause and effect physical world around me.

The micro-organisms feasting happily on my intestinal lining finally wreck their full havoc; I hobble into the bathroom for my first brutal encounter with the overwhelming reality of dysentery. My body’s digestive tract has been completely decommissioned; nothing is to be absorbed for quite some time now, and as I haplessly attempt to quench my thirst, it becomes increasingly clear that the fluids which are becoming more and more critical must find another way to my cells.

Dawn creeps into my room, finding me dehydrated and delirious, my torso still on fire and my temperature still hovering at 40 degrees. Ratha’s usual gentle face has distorted into a perpetual grimace, his eyes red from lack of sleep, brow furrowed almost past the point of recognition. Before long the first rays of sun meander across my room and illuminate his tired eyes. Sopheap arrives, and we discuss my situation briefly. The international hospital in Bangkok is one of the best in the world, he says. I nod weakly. Thirty minutes later, we climb onto the back of a tuk-tuk bound for Siem Reap International Airport.

Siem Reap at dawn, seen from the back of a tuk-tuk, is stunning, and I feel slightly revived by the magnificent ride, coupled with the brisk, cool current of fresh air. We arrive at the airport, and I bid a distressing farewell to my companions. Although I know I must leave, it kills me to do so. I stumble into the airport terminal, unsure of what the next few hours of transit will bring.

The flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok is very short; between 35 and 50 minutes. Yet, one is still engaging in international travel, and must deal with the necessary hurdles. Security, immigration, customs, etc. These take time. I arrived at the Siem Reap airport at 7:30 a.m., and would not arrive to the hospital until mid-afternoon.

The Siem Reap airport was built with great expectations that have yet to prove realistic; countless rows of seats are empty, and the cavernous interior harbors only small groups of sunburnt, smiling tourists exuberantly trading stories of their southeast Asian adventures before returning to their western lives. Several of these good natured souls throw a smile or a friendly word towards me, in an attempt to raise some friendly banter between fellow travelers. Prostate on the airport floor, head rocked between my hands, red eyes trained skywards, counting the lazy rotations of the wooden fans overhead in an attempt to trick my brain into ignoring the agonizing contractions of my lower digestive tract, my response is somewhere between snarling and wheezing. As I stumble onto the plane, they all now keep their distance from this strange, diseased interloper in their midst. Every time the line of passengers stops, I collapse onto anything capable of supporting my weight, and as my eyes dance across the floor struggling for clarity and fighting a wave of unconsciousness, a circle widens as passengers inch away, fearful of this terrible and maligned ailment. The plane ride continued in this nature, a strange dance, as my neighbors edged as far away as possible in their seats, eyeing me with great suspicion and muttering among themselves of their now treacherous voyage to Bangkok in my midst.

Of course, dysentery isn’t contagious, so I didn’t feel too bad, not that I was particularly capable of these emotions at the time. By the time we landed, I hadn’t eaten a full meal in over 36 hours, and had not retained water since 5 p.m. the previous day. Imagine; your mouth feels like a bag of cotton balls and every inch of your body screams for the water in the bottle resting in your lap, yet you know you can’t touch a drop of it, lest you submit to a core rocking excursion to the toilet.

This was my internal quandary as we landed. Standing became exponentially difficult, and I leapfrogged my way through the prodigious Bangkok airport, finding an area to lie down for several minutes before being scolded in a flurry of Thai by a security guard, then walking aimlessly until nausea and weakness once more overwhelmed me. I cleared immigration due to the courtesy of a sympathetic Thai immigration officer, cleared custom with my single bag and stumbled into the first taxi I saw. Forty-five minutes later, the impressive heights of Bumrungrad International Hospital towered over me.

Finding a doctor in what is considered one of the best hospitals in the world turned out to be ironically challenging. I’m in Thailand, therefore every hospital worker is speaking English as a second language, with greatly varying degrees of proficiency. I knew I needed an IV and a bed, but I didn’t want to storm into the emergency room and be held up for hours filling out forms in some sanitized hard plastic chair. I entered the first lobby I saw, and in a very matter of fact tone, stated to the receptionist that I was quite sick and needed to see a doctor. Next to her name tag was the inevitable “Trainee” tag. She took one look at my face and sent me scurrying to a different floor, to another trainee, who sent me to a different department in a different building, and so forth. This exasperating game of hospital pong continued until finally I found a more experienced staff member, who realized something was wrong, plopped me into a wheelchair and swept me into an examination room.

Dr. Narendar Malhotra was my savior.

Dark, intelligent eyes are shadowed by the modest white turban that rests upon his head, and a thick beard garbs his chin and cheeks. He speaks softly, comforting me with a quick arabic accent as he pats my shoulder.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you admitted and intravenously hydrate you, then you’ll feel much better.”

He helps me back into my wheelchair and I am whisked away again to another distant wing of this enormous hospital, now into my room for the time being, introduced to the four walls I will know intimately, the clock with the golden hands whose slow march I will count endlessly, calculating angles between hours, minutes and seconds to pass the time as it ticks away. It is my home, and as I am helped into a delightfully soft bed, I begin immediately drifting out of consciousness. A sharp prick wakes me, followed by the unique and indescribable feeling of blood being drawn out of my body. Soon, the nurse switches the fresh vial of blood for one containing a clear substance, injecting it into the IV, down the tube leading into the leftmost vein on the top of my hand, from which it courses wonderfully throughout the rest of my body, bringing beautiful, euphoric, sublime pleasure to every cubic inch of tissue, quickening pulse, dilating pupils and erupting the custard colored walls around me in a phantasmagorical galaxy of technicolored stars. Through fading vision, I see a large bag of fluid connected to the tube, and so begins the gloriously rhythmic mechanical tap-tap-tapping of the IV as it administers dextrose, sodium and glucose dissolved in water to my body at 150 milliliters an hour. The euphoria lends way to fatigue, followed by overwhelming exhausting as my eyelids almost audibly drop over my eyeballs, sending me into blissful, dreamless, sound sleep.

The Humilities and Advantages of Falling Ill

2008-09-05T21:07:00.000+07:00

It all started quite innocuously...

Several abbreviated bouts of dizziness, nausea and general feelings of weakness prompted little concern on my part in the days leading up to Wednesday, August 27. After all, coming from upstate New York, to Siem Reap, Cambodia, during its wet season, is a leap of quantum proportions regarding environmental conditions. When a particularly strong wave of weakness hit me, I attributed it to mild heat exhaustion, dehydration or lack of sleep; the last I expected was a potent amoebic adversary getting comfortable in my lower digestive tract, preparing for the microbiological equivalent of a house party.

Caffeine doesn’t help much against what I was battling, however. After a quick jaunt to the coffee shop, I was able to fool myself into feeling healthy enough for class, but I certainly didn’t have my students tricked. Their eyes, usually bright, laughing and playful, darken with concern, watching my every move as I laboriously pace the classroom explaining the present simple tense. They sense something is up, and as my condition worsens become increasingly distracted. By my afternoon classes, I had to sit down to get through my lessons, and writing on the board became an effort in itself. Their fear grew exponentially; Sophal stopped copying down his lesson at several different points to study my face carefully, now involuntarily bent into a perpetual grimace of discomfort.

By now, my head has begun to ache, my body is on fire and my brain has begun playing devious tricks on me. Turning my chair to the board to write out an example problem, my hand defies my brain’s orders in a peculiar rebellion I’ve never before witnessed. After several failed attempts, I manage to write the letter “4” on the board in front of me. But wait...did that really just happen? My head aches and my short term memory begins faltering like a misfiring engine; numbers, words, whole paragraphs of the book I read just an hour earlier fall out of my consciousness in a downpour that drives me out of the classroom covered in sweat. Sopheap has been begging me all day to go home and rest, leaving him with my classes. Now that this ailment has snuck into my head, I finally relent, turning over my final class to Sopheap and retreating to my apartment, assuming that a several hour rest with a powerful fan would cure what ails me....

Like my few remaining thought processes, this proved to be a delusion. My condition had slowly deteriorated over the course of the day, and I remained just barely capable of taking care of myself; as I step through the door of my apartment, my entire being takes a sharp nosedive. I close the metal grated door of my bedroom and my sense of balance no longer guides me. My next memory is inexplicably lying in bed, covers thrown haphazardly about, fighting a battle of thermal stress. My head was absolutely burning, and felt like some insidious foe was attempting to drive an iron stake through my forehead. That, or like the growing pains of some majestic artiodactyl as it pushes a rod of calcified bone up through the skin of its forehead; the intensity of the pain coupled with my mental state led me to believe that any second the ordeal would resolve itself in a horn sprouting out between my eyes. My extremities were cold, and in sharp contrast to the burning heat of my torso. Despite this heat, my body felt freezing, and as I tried in vain to cool my head off, my body erupted in a flurry of shivers that made breathing all but impossible.

My memory is sparse. I didn’t sleep, yet I dreamed in a strange, unprecedented way; I would call them mild hallucinations. It was as if my brain had been seized by some violent, malevolent, creative force that projected brutal images on the inside of my eyelids whenever they closed over my irises. My time consciousness waned, and hours passed before I realized how bad this was getting. I collapsed at 4:00; by 7:00, I was frail, constrained to my bed and thoroughly frightened. Despite the daunting array of physical symptoms, it was the mental ones that scared me the most, convincing me that some viral infection had bored itself deep into the folds of my brain. I have never been literally thrown onto my back like this before by illness, and I was, in all honesty, completely terrified and alone, without the slightest idea of how I would get out of this.

A flicker of intellect shown through my diseased form, and I reached for the cell phone on the wooden cabinet above my bed.

“Smey-getting worse. Not sure what to do. Any ideas?”

Soon after the SMS was sent, Raeksmey arrived with the TGC medical division. They marched into my room, armed with wet towels, anecdotal medications, words of comfort and enormous hearts, sitting on my bed, keeping me cool, rubbing my fingers and toes to generate warmth, and, most important of all, reassuring me. I suddenly found myself surrounded by Smey, Sopheap, Ratha, Sophal, and others who were constantly, insistently reminding me that they cared for me and everything would be just fine. Covered in moist clothing and towels, with their words of comfort resonating through my troubled mind, I felt my physical condition inevitably worsen, yet my fear dissipated. I was in good hands.

Sometime later, relatively comfortable beneath my blanket of moisture, Jumana, a fellow volunteer and doctor from Israel, came to inspect my condition. My temperature was at a steady 40 degrees, yet my fingers and toes were freezing. After describing my symptoms, she looked at me with great sympathy, and gave her prognosis. Malaria, or possibly Dengue, requiring hospitalization the next morning, unless things got worse during the night. The words of Allan and countless others come to mind.

“If you get sick enough that you need a hospital, forget Cambodia; get on a plane to Bangkok”

It grows late and my medical entourage begins dissipating. Jon arrives; as he had been working in town, he had no clue about my condition. We exchange a few words as my caretakers begin filing out. Sophal and Ratha resolve to stay with me. It is a Khmer custom, fueled by a vivid system of beliefs in the physical manifestations of countless spirits, to stay with the sick overnight and bring gifts to ward off the spirits that brought the illness. Ratha and Sophal settle on my floor, and I settle in for a long night. As Ratha covers my face in a wonderfully dampened towel, I dread the coming night, the thought of entering a Cambodian hospital at midnight, the lack of sleep and inevitable extension of my hallucinations and visions, and even the prospect of boarding a plane the next morning. Yet for now, with Ratha and Sophal watching over me, I am calm, at peace, under the watchful eyes of those who care deeply, resting in the eye of the storm. Tomorrow will come the trials, tribulations, dehydration, fatigue, exhaustion, and ultimate realizations of personal and essential human weakness, vulnerability and mortality. Tonight, I rest, surrounded by those I love.

Posts are on hold...

2008-08-29T15:54:00.000+07:00

Hello everyone,
I apologize for the lack of posting recently; I'm in the middle of a few separate pieces on the students here, however I was unfortunately hit with an illness that landed me in a hospital in Bangkok for several days. I'm in excellent hands and am slowly recovering, and should be back to normal within a few days. They say that there's a silver lining to every cloud, and this one has been overpowering; the support I received from friends, family and the staff at TGC was simply overwhelming, and I will have more to say about this later. It is suffice to say that The Global Child is made up of truly outrageously caring, generous, thoughtful and incredible people. My heart goes out to them for comforting me when I was on my back these past few days.

There will be more later! Just need a few days to regain my bearings.
Much love, and all the best!
-Robbie

Discussions on being here, what it means, and long overdue details

2008-08-17T17:48:00.000+07:00

I’m now faced with a dilemma; to describe this beautiful world I’ve inhabited and found great happiness in, without limiting it or encapsulating the experience. I’ve thought of several ways to introduce and explain what I’ve witnesses thus far, and although chronological order makes sense, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. I’ve been here for two weeks now, and there are many, many things on my mind I would like to express. I’ll tackle it in order of personal priority; I hope it isn’t too random!

In the conversations I’ve had with friends and family from home, the first question is always “Whats it like over there?”. I know you’re just trying to be friendly, but an attempt to answer this question is positively exhausting.

If I were limited to one adjective, I would call Cambodia extremely, spectacularly, sometimes overwhelmingly real. Reality confronts you, knocks you on your back and spits in your face. Siem Reap is admittedly tame compared to places like Phnom Penh, however the reality here is unavoidable, shocking, yet strangely comfortable and satisfying. In my previous post, I analogized the culture shock of arriving to being lost and adrift in some huge, shifting angry ocean. I stick by this, but strangely, its a positively good feeling, which makes me hesitant to use the word “shock” at all. I walk around the streets of this city, conversing freely with tuk tuk drivers, shop-owners, beggars, amputees, vagabond children, absorbing the experience to the capacity of my senses, filling my mind with the patterns I’ve witnessed, fulfilling this peculiar inner hunger, assuaging some inner turmoil that I was previously unaware of. I’m certainly not suggesting that I derive happiness from witnessing the difficult straits that others are in; I see it more as the active acknowledgement of an inclusive collective reality, one that I was ignorant of for some time. Its a rebirth, in a way. Realizing this collective reality is enlightening; realizing it and being an active participant in the progression of this reality brings a dizzying mix of feelings. I would describe it as an emotional flood of elation, with hints of apprehension that force one to look inwards, debating personal capacity to adequately face the challenges that come with they have the capacity to enact the kind of change that is required.

Next, the children at the school. There are 26 of them, and like the “Whats it like over there?”, they vehemently defy encapsulation. They’re loving, playful, mischievous, joyful...the list goes on. They’re so incredible that you forget where they come from. Four years ago, some were living on the streets, others had abusive parents, others didn’t have parents...some were abandoned, others lost their parents to HIV. This painful history is not on the surface for the most part, however they present small idiosyncrasies that momentarily open up their entire dark past and force the realization that these kids really have been saved. First, physical affection is hugely important; hugs, handshakes, playful wrestling, you name it. Second, when all the joking and jostling and so forth is done, they become suddenly serious. They possess an acute awareness for where we are and where we’ll be, and always ask where we’re going, why, and when we’re coming back. The reasons for this are painfully obvious. They are all extremely concerned at all times of our well-being, constantly making sure we’re not hungry or thirsty, too hot or too tired.

As students, they’re everything any teacher could ever hope for. Hard working, appreciative, and sharp as a tack. When I handed out my first homework assignment, each student individually thanked me with a small bow of the head. I was absolutely floored. The students perpetuate an attitude of appreciation for the values of education. They challenge us, they want more, they demand that we don’t slack off and do half our job. They need what we’re offering, they eat it up, challenge it, contemplate it, understand it, and are up the next morning at 8 am in their desks when I walk in, ready to devour more. Its refreshing, yet forces me to look back parts of my life with a tinge of regret. When I was their age, I was lashing out against school, parents, basically anything with a structure that I could attack with my own backwards logic. I see these kids, and they simply radiate appreciation, intelligence and determination. You grow attached to these kids quickly for these reasons. They’re like one enormous family, all living together and helping each other out.

Which brings up a somewhat darker side. Just as you grow attached to them quickly, you become equally defensive of them. You see the world they will inevitably be discharged into, and become terrified for their futures. The school instills these children with a noble system of values and ethics. They’re smart, capable, and driven, yet being released into a world where succeeding means trading in these systems of belief for personal well-being. Yet, you look into their eyes, you see their faces, and the realization beings; these really are the next generation of Cambodians, a generation that just could maybe make an enormous difference. This circles back to a huge daily responsibility that I feel everyday to prepare these children, which at times becomes exhausting. However, everyday ends, finds me tired but undeniably happy. The meaning and value that extends from this work is difficult to describe; its far different than working towards a grade, in that you’re dealing first hand with the lives of these beautiful people. Its a constant responsibility, an obligation to be a positive inspiration and source of wisdom, truth and good.

I’ll keep on this for some time, describing different aspects of life here. I also want to give everyone a sense of the children and staff here, and will do my best to present each one in a unique light.

The ubiquitous moto; most common form of transportation here. The face masks are because it gets real dusty here, but seeing swarms of people clad in them is quite surreal at times.

This is our humble abode. Quaint little cottage at the end of a dirt road. I dig it, very much.

Another view from the porch. I have this terrible addiction to my fisheye lens which I'm sure you will come to realize during the course of my time here.
The room where I'm living. The cottage has two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. No hot water, stove, or A/C, just a bunch of fans that are absolutely vital anytime after 9 am and before 5. We usually keep them on all night to ward away mosquitos.
Neighbors! The little girl was quite amazed when, after taking this photograph, I showed her the photo on my camera's LCD screen. They don't speak any English, but we communicate enough
\Ah yes, we also have monkeys! These guys hang out on the road leading to our cottage. There are also heaps of stray dogs that seem to live in harmony with them. The monkeys are incredibly tame, they hang out and just munch on fruit, don't pay much attention to you.
The ultimate oxymoron?

Arriving

2008-08-17T16:43:00.000+07:00

Our small, prop powered plane skirts below the uniform gray of the impenetrable cloud cover to reveal a landscape swollen with moisture. Footage from New Orleans immediately comes to mind; roads are flooded, fields are flooded, rice paddies, forests...and where is the city, Siem Reap? We descend further, and soon the tiny dots become villagers, mopeds, cars; but no Siem Reap. As the plane wheels grace the runway with a sharp protest of friction, I am left wondering if I boarded the wrong plane.

The culture shock of landing in Bangkok was limited to a number of signs in a beautifully foreign alphabet, and the harshly realized fact that tap water should not be drank (my Thai companion looked at me as if I would soon fall over dead when I informed her I had already drank well over a liter of it; no harm done, however!). Now, walking through the small concrete terminal of the Siem Reap airport, it swells and surges, a tumultuous ocean to navigate, and a challenge to enjoy the navigation of it. I walk out of the airport, and an unfamiliar face rushes up to me, and in a high pitched, good natured tone, broken with small bursts of uncontainable joyous laughter, introduces herself as one of the staff at the Global Child, Smey. She has brought along an older student, who seems as excited to see me as Smey. What proceeded is an interchange that will persist far into the future, I’m afraid.

“What’s your name?”

The answer is indiscernible, a hopelessly complex combination of sounds that my ear has only witnessed in poorly dubbed karate movies. My ears are not conditioned to the beautiful complexity of the Khmer language, and although I indicate comprehension, I’m at a loss for how to refer to him.

If walking through the airport was to be aboard a boat in this ocean of shock, driving to the school and arriving was being thrown overboard into the heart of the ocean. This analogy makes it sound painful and frightening, yet the experience is endlessly fascinating and supremely exciting. As we drive down a potholed road, we are swarmed from all sides by drivers on small personal scooters (motos, as I will know them to be called). Some of these have what look to be chariots in tow (tuk-tuks!), and they swarm and dart before our eyes in a dance whose rules are unfathomable to Western preconceptions. Our winding journey takes us through roundabouts, past ancient crumbling buildings, and under the canopy of trees arching gracefully over the road. We veer off the paved road, past a temple and a line of orange clad monks, and arrive at the end of a bumpy dirt road, before a large house guarded by a heavy iron gate. The Global Child, what will become a home, a place of work, and so much more in the coming months.

Trials in Transit

2008-08-10T16:09:00.001+07:00

(Before I begin, I'd like to thank everyone who left comments. Very thoughtful and helpful! Please keep them coming! Email is robbie.flick@gmail.com)

Somewhere over the Caspian Sea, the plane outdistances the last creeping rays of the sun, passing from golden wisps of billowing cumulus clouds into a grim landscape of dark menacing shapes, where one’s imagination channels malicious life into the floating bodies of vapor passing by the plane window. The Thai lady and her family gently snore to my left, and as the flight attendants do their last round through the cabin before the several hours of darkness before out arrival in Bangkok, my thoughts parallel the surrealistic darkening world before my eyes. Sleep proves elusive, despite a restless night dreading the act of bidding farewell, and as I face insomnia in a cramped airplane cabin, my roving mind sinks deeper into the darkening domain of dusk at 11,000 meters.
Since being accepted in this program, I have been proud of involving myself in such an innovative and charitable experience. My pride certainly hasn’t surged to the point of narcissistic delight, and I don’t believe I allowed myself excessive self indulgent joy in pondering the future I would be taking part in. Yet, regardless, it felt admittedly good to say, yes, I am working with underprivileged children in Cambodia, especially when many fellow graduates were following more materialistic, mundane and traditional paths. In a way, this experience is an act of throwing sand into the eyes of the metaphorical bull, a creature, an imperceptible yet overwhelming force that challenges us to give up passion in the name of a defined career, a 401(k) and a seemingly mundane existence. It is an act of defiance, announcing that we will not submit ourselves to a life void of meaning.

Just as the benefits of involving oneself in such a program are notoriously difficult to quantify, so are the costs to the individual, which have of late become abundantly clear to me. Bidding farewell to my family was difficult; they are quite close to my heart, however a handful of experiences has taught us collectively that this experience will not come between us. However, the next round of goodbyes, to an individual who I have grown incredibly close with proved far more difficult than I could ever imagine.
My last entry discussed a number of questions that I have been challenged with; now, as dusk settles into night, the lights on the wing outside my window begin blinking in a hypnotically rhythmic pattern, and these questions surge upwards into my immediate consciousness, transforming the once pleasant bodies of vapor before my eyes into sinister twisting shapes that challenge my every action.

Why put a group of individuals who I’ve never met before my friends, my family, the people in my life who really matter? Am I intentionally yet aimlessly alienating myself? Taking the act of expressing my individuality to unnecessary lengths? Subconsciously set on destroying my most cherished relationships? And perhaps, most disturbingly, am I just wasting my time?

Darkness now fully envelopes the plane, and the wingtip outside my window is only visible in one second bursts of green and red strobes. Suddenly, above the rolling hills of clouds, stars appear, bright, brilliant, shining. I press my nose against the plane window and crane my neck to view this fantastic new landscape, when a light flashes out of the corner of my vision. Several seconds later, another. And again. Confused, I set my eyes forward, relaxed and determined. Suddenly, a passing thunderhead erupts in blinding luminescence, sending white-blue lightning exploding out into the air in myriad directions, tickling the surrounding clouds and illuminating the full landscape before my eyes. When before I was focused merely on the cloudscape, now the full picture is revealed; a terrestrial landscape of steep mountains, paralleled by the brilliant stars above and bisected by heavy impregnated clouds passing before my eyes, crackling with electricity, each presenting their own phantasmagorical lightning show, bathing this beautiful world in their pale blue light.

My original intentions in joining this program re-emerge, refreshed and bolstered. I am not just a citizen of the United States, but also of this planet. Even if one does not believe in assisting those in need, the personal benefits of teaching abroad are innumerable. There’s a very racist notion that Americans and others from the West have priceless lessons to bring to far flung corners of the world, and that this teaching is a unidirectional relationship with the student. If one embarks on such an experience without opening oneself to the possibility of learning from their surroundings and those they teach, it is hopelessly squandered. Although we doubtlessly have much to teach those in these areas, we have just as much to learn. I plan on keeping an infinitely open mind to the lessons I will encounter.

Costs are just that, and goodbyes are never easy. The act of saying goodbye can be perceived as useful, regardless of how painful. The pain I’ve felt in seeing individuals temporarily fade from my life has instilled an appreciation for these people, and while it certainly isn’t painless, it reinforces my values and appreciation for these beautiful individuals. The moment I accepted this opportunity I knew these events were coming, and although it doesn’t mitigate the pain, it puts the situation in another context, a context of education, an autodidactic experience that has no set beginning or end. Through the pain sparked by a series of difficult farewells, I begin to realize the overwhelmingly obvious fact, the pursuit of which initiated this adventure. I am learning, lessons which cannot be taught in a classroom and which must be experienced and reflected upon. I have a feeling that this experience will bring me closer to those that really matter anyways, and the lessons I learn abroad may teach me to love and appreciate those around me with a greater depth.
My thoughts lightened, I watch the light show unfolding before my eyes until rays from the sun rising over the eastern horizon pierces my tired pupils and the German flight attendants circulate with breakfast. Several hours later, I collect my baggage in Bangkok, board a flight to Siem Reap, and prepare myself for the official beginning. In reality, the beginning has already come, at a time difficult to ascertain, and I am already well on my way.
The words of Bill Murray at the end of “The Life Aquatic” come to mind. At the end of the film, after an enormously taxing personal journey, Murray (a.k.a. Steve Zissou) walks out of his film’s enormously successful premiere and is sitting outside with the nephew of one of his crew, a german boy named Werner. Looking out into the distance, red hat cocked on the back of his head, shiny golden award sitting on the ground next to him, no doubt contemplating the distance he has crossed and pains he’s suffered, he mutters those four vital words that resonate with something deep inside my persona.

“This is an adventure”

Introspection, hopes, fears, anxiety, and thoughts on the act of bidding farewell

2008-07-19T18:21:00.000+07:00

Is there a freedom in being footloose? What does nomadism teach us, if anything? Can these lessons be quantified whatsoever? In traveling, we leave behind comforts, friends, stabilization, time, tools, space, love in search of something far less tangible, the unknown and the knowledge that comes with it. Is this knowledge truly liberating, and if so, is it worth leaving behind these comforts and facing something far less certain? It begs the question of whether we, as humans, are meant for a life of constant movement from place to place, always uprooted and in search of something, the intangible, impalpable, that which cannot be defined and that of whose existence we question and worry over tirelessly and without end. Does travel teach us anything? Do we return to our previous life and its occupants with a greater knowledge of the world around us that empowers and liberates? Or, instead, do we crawl back to a world unknown, learning the painful lesson that every physical place tilts and spins like a whirlpool through time, ever changing as people and events get sucked into the powerful undertow and pulled away from us. Is what we risk even worth it? What does it bring us?

Engaging in service learning inevitably feels good, as many people, in response to your future plans, immediately laud your selflessness and charitable wishes. This fuzzy feeling quickly fades in the face of hard and impenetrable logic used against the essential reasoning behind our actions. In engaging in such a field, we spurn much that is held dear to those we love, putting an idea before these individuals. We neglect not only the comforts of life at home, but the love of family and friends in the name of an idea, and a vague one at that. One of charity and goodwill in a world that seems to be turning increasingly towards the worst. Yet, this is merely an idea; whether our efforts are credited or even realized by those to whom they are aimed is uncertain at best. Furthermore, these individuals are not known to us at all; we must look in the eyes of those we love and unequivocally confirm that we are putting a group of people heretofore unknown to us before them. Daunting, to say the least.

Service learning is a bit selfish in some ways. We realize the need to learn, and this knowledge is accelerated in the face of (personal) realizations of the failings that our universities often exhibit. Yet the learning we now seek is less than structured. We prepare ourselves for the void; no semesters, no homework, no grades, no professors. Our conscious is our advisor, the streets of various cities our classroom, and our journal a replacement for classmates, filling the great need for critical feedback. This type of learning requires a knack for unflinching and even painful retrospection; the ability to look into the past, at our own personal actions, and realize that we made mistakes, stumbled, even fell in our attempts. Yet, this act of retrospection fits into the overarching philosophy of such a mission, that neglecting comforts and looking deeper yields greater returns. This retrospection leads to rebirth, a shedding of old values that we suddenly find irrelevant, or worse, inhibitory. Our consciousness expands, and just like a snake shedding its skin, we must leave behind pieces of ourself with which we once defined ourselves with. Growing pains are called thus for an excellent reason, and painful as they may be, they will serve as milestones in our personal journeys. We will laugh and smile, cry and scream, feel lonely, abandoned, lost, ecstatic, complete, different, troubled, blissful, tranquil yet through it all we will emerge stronger.

We engage in an experience that is inherently transformative. The reason for funding and engagement in such an experience is based on this aspect. We are expected and expect of ourselves to grow upwards and outwards from this into stronger individuals. Yet, despite the apparently ubiquitousness of this knowledge, the unending question that I confront is, “What happens after Cambodia?”. Personally, this is the most frightening aspect of the journey. I understand the trials that I will face abroad and I will face these head-on, throwing myself forth to experience and learn. Coming home is the real challenge to me. I’ve entertained a number of ideas for what comes after this, however, if the true reason for engaging in this program is to become transformed, how can we anticipate where our personal compasses will direct us after its all finished? I’ve made vain, half hearted attempts in gauging my own anticipation, yet these attempts, like all others I’ve made in the past to plan the next several decades of my life, have interminably failed.

This problem faces anyone who desires to plan long term, however this issue is exacerbated by the transformative natures of such a program. How can one know what they will want in a month, a year, five years? Moreover, how can we foresee these desires when we engage in a program that is designed to rattle and change every aspect of our being? Is planning for life after Cambodia useful or an exercise in futility, going against the very nature of the program? Is a period of retrospection and thought required at the terminus of this program, with which we will plan our next movements? Do we need to live only in the present to take full advantage of such a program, without regard for the distant future? I’m not entirely sure what the answer to these questions are.

Regardless of whether or not I can or need to suspend long term planning, I got into this program for a strong belief that lies deep within me. I want to experience what this world of ours has to offer, to throw myself into the heart of these troubled areas and act not only as a helping hand but an ambassador, and if nothing else, leave behind the knowledge that there are people in this world that care. Even if every program I create and pursue, every attempt at education invariably fails, if I succeed in creating this awareness in the minds of others, I would consider my time abroad a success.

Any thoughts, concerns, comments or advice, either publicly or privately, is always greatly encouraged. It is my wish and hope that this space will become a forum for ideas. And please, no matter what, don’t be afraid to be critical of any of my actions, words or beliefs. I welcome such criticism whole heartedly.

Also, in case you’re not aware, there are seven spectacular individuals tackling similar missions across the globe.

Jon Hill will be joining me in Cambodia, working for the Global Child School. Check out his blog here:
http://ublog.union.edu/hillj/

Lara Levine is already on the ground in Cape Town, South Africa:
http://ublog.union.edu/levinel/

Steve Po-Chedley and Rebecca Broadwin will be working for the health clinic Engeye in rural Uganda:
http://pochedley.blogspot.com/
http://ublog.union.edu/broadwir/

Alex Butts and Emily Laing will be working in Mumbai, India. Check them out here:
http://ublog.union.edu/lainge/
http://ublog.union.edu/buttsa/

Last but certainly not least, Dave Shulman will be working for a health clinic in Malawi:
http://ublog.union.edu/shulmand/

One last thing; Jon and I are working for a truly fantastic organization in Siem Reap, Cambodia, called the Global Child School. You'll hear more about them from me undoubtedly, but check out their website for some background information on the school and the kids that attend: http://www.theglobalchild.org/

Until next time!
-Robbie