Paula was discharged from hospital late last week. She remains in the US to be near the care she needs and because the surgeons don’t want to send her home to a place without running water until her wound, which may need further surgical intervention, is healed. But she is healing and becoming stronger by … More Keeping Up With The Chamericans
I had been in Cambodia about a week when one of the MSF expats announced excitedly that on a bicycle ride that day, she’d cycled through an Islamic village with a mosque and many people dressed in Islamic attire. Islamic people in Cambodia seemed a curious thing to our uninformed minds. Since then I’ve learned … More A Cross Cultural Islamic Experience
Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream ~ Anatole France These words could have been written specifically for Paula. After developing severe, chronic abdominal pain during pregnancy in 2011, her interim years have been a living hell. We met on one of her most wretched days, approximately 16 months ago. She had … More Cambodia In America
My right eyeball became acutely aware that it was aligned with, and traveling at a speed of knots towards, a steel rod hanging perilously from the back of a truck on Cambodia’s National Highway 7. As my face came within arm’s length of the pole pointing menacingly at it, our taxi veered left into a … More Perceptions of Peril
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper ~ WB Yeats The day I met Paula and her family 16 months ago, they were resigned to a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Tears were common at that time and I remember not believing our initial reassurances to her, that … More Magnifying the Magic
They are late and still building momentum but the Monsoons have arrived in South East Asia. With a bit of fluctuation, the Mekong River is rising steadily. Slowly surging out into the delta, rising waters are transforming the lowest level green fields into massive brown lakes. Soon many villages will become submerged in a combination … More Cultural Chasms
All our knowledge has it’s origins in our perceptions Leonardo da Vinci I regularly tell people in Cambodia that I come from a rich country, but that I am not rich. Each time I hear these words from my mouth, I wonder how someone from a poor country who has never experienced societal prosperity, processes … More This Week’s Perceptions
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