Saturday, April 6, 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013
So the last day of volunteering today... Spent the day at a very remote village doing health checks and teaching hand washing to people who I understand have never seen a Westerner before... Not that you would know it given how warm and friendly they were towards us. Feel we have achieved some good during our time here, if only that some people now know about hand washing! You realise how difficult it is to advise people what to do re their health when they have such limited access to healthcare owing to distance and cost.. Eg diagnosed what was most likely angina in a lady at this village today.. But she has no real access to treatment of any kind owing to the aforementioned health intervention barriers. It would be lovely to be able to set up a mobile health clinic of some kind but there is no possibility of this owing to the "politics" here.
Hugh made balloon animals for some of the kids... Their reaction was just wonderful to see.. They have obviously never seen anything like this before and will probably never do so again so for a few minutes they were transported to that wonderful world of entertainment/magic. These are the memories that will stay with me for many months. Neither had they have seen a bar of soap before so teaching hand washing with this new found wonder was equally entertaining.. Creating bubbles by washing your hands (and yes, we have left supplies to be used in the future!) was greeted with squeals of laughter.
The remote villages are truly lovely places... So peaceful and unlike anything I had come across before. We met a lady who had lived through those terrible Khmer Rouge years... Whilst the village is now peaceful, at the back of your mind is what kind of hell it must have been 30 odd years ago.
So tomorrow we're off to do the Temple tour (no doubt we will be in the company of a zillion Japanese who seem to make up the largest proportion of the tourist population here along with their inevitable cameras... What DO they do with all the photos they take?????)
On Sunday we plan to head off on bicycles down river.. Believe me, riding a bike in Siem Reap is enough to scare the living daylights out of you.. There do not appear to be any road rules ... All the traffic just merges into one continuum and you just follow.. Very nerve wracking.
Well, the sun is over the horizon so time to sign off and watch the geckos playing their territory game along the wall and dodge the resident rat whilst we down a much needed COLD beer!
Hugh made balloon animals for some of the kids... Their reaction was just wonderful to see.. They have obviously never seen anything like this before and will probably never do so again so for a few minutes they were transported to that wonderful world of entertainment/magic. These are the memories that will stay with me for many months. Neither had they have seen a bar of soap before so teaching hand washing with this new found wonder was equally entertaining.. Creating bubbles by washing your hands (and yes, we have left supplies to be used in the future!) was greeted with squeals of laughter.
The remote villages are truly lovely places... So peaceful and unlike anything I had come across before. We met a lady who had lived through those terrible Khmer Rouge years... Whilst the village is now peaceful, at the back of your mind is what kind of hell it must have been 30 odd years ago.
So tomorrow we're off to do the Temple tour (no doubt we will be in the company of a zillion Japanese who seem to make up the largest proportion of the tourist population here along with their inevitable cameras... What DO they do with all the photos they take?????)
On Sunday we plan to head off on bicycles down river.. Believe me, riding a bike in Siem Reap is enough to scare the living daylights out of you.. There do not appear to be any road rules ... All the traffic just merges into one continuum and you just follow.. Very nerve wracking.
Well, the sun is over the horizon so time to sign off and watch the geckos playing their territory game along the wall and dodge the resident rat whilst we down a much needed COLD beer!
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