Sick, Sick, Sick

Animals we have seen:

Pets: Ducks, cats, dogs, doves, roosters,

Wild: Water Buffalo- SO MANY. Secretly I wish they were elephants.

Tiff-ism: “If we see elephants, you better restrain me.” I want two elephants. My Asian one (that I will be getting in Cambodia, along with children) is named Edgar. My African elephant is named Po.

Other useful Khmer: Chang ban tuok don’: I like coconut water.

Tuok: water. Don’: coconut.

So I’ve come to this realization lately that I am cursed with something called instant karma. Here is the most prime example. The last blog was me saying Oh silly Daddy, I am so careful! Well. Let me tell you. I am victim number three to fall ill. Christina fell ill a few hours later. The only common thread between all four of us is having eaten hotel food the night before. None of us have had the same meal, and other people have eaten there and not gotten sick. So I woke up today like well I’m not feeling fantastic, but today is going to be the most useful for the project and research we are doing. WELL. Let me tell you.

We get to DC-Cam to find out that Him Huy does not want to speak to our group til almost noon, and he lives two hours away. So we go to Tuol Sleng prison instead. During the car ride, I start feeling absolutely lousy because the humidity is out of control on this particular day. Now I will digress from my sickness to write about S-21/ Tuol Sleng.

Tuol Sleng is a former high school that was converted into the biggest prison during the Khmer Rouge regime. Fourteen t

housand people died here. Only seven survived. SEVEN. CHoeung Ek was the killing site where these prisoners were taken. Look at that child’s face. WHAT could he possibly have been guilty of? 

The KR at S-21 carefully documented each person to enter. Each prisoner was tortured so gruesomely, water-boarded, electrocuted, forced to

eat feces, suffocated with a plastic bag. Then forced to write a confession divulging names of people they associated with, who were in turn brought to this prison This system was a wildfire of names that were carefully documented. At DC-Cam, we have seen this forced confessions that are complete with thumb prints of the prisoners. Then the names the prisoner gave were made into a list. Next to each of the names it would say “already under KR control” “deceased” “needs to be found, etc”. EACH NAME. This is the most documented, blatantly intentional, paranoia-induced genocide. 

At S-21, the entire high school is now a memorial where you can walk each of the floors, see the former torture rooms, see the shackles. Then there are rooms upon rooms upon rooms of pictures of the faces who came into S-21. THose who lived through the torture were taken to Choeung Ek blindfolded, where they dug their own graves and were executed. Have I mentioned that the US supported this regime as a way of opposing the Vietnamese? JIMMY CARTER knew all of this was happening, and still gave this regime billions of dollars. This group of people that committed a genocide against their own people.

So throughout this walk, I feel wretched. I make more than a few journeys to the bathroom because I am emptying my guts out. Then Kru Kosal (Professor Kosal) hears from one of the girls about my condition, so his brother drove me home to the hotel, bless his soul. Apparently during all this madness, Him Huy has decided to cancel his interview with us. So this is frustrating, but my guilt went away about being sick at that point.

So then Kru decides that we are going to go to the Vietnam border to interview people. That’s where I am writing this from on Word Doc because there is no internet in this sketchy place. Well at noon, it started monsooning like total madness. It is how I remember the monsoons in Japan. If it had been Ohio, there would have been mega tornado sirens. It never rains like this in California. This mega storm wakes me up from the sleep I had briefly fallen into.

Then I hear that around two we are going to leave and I say that I am not going. By this time Christina had fallen ill too. We spent a good hour and a half on the beds in her and Laurens room taking turns praying to the porcelain god in their bathroom. But through all of this, I am “chipper” (a suggested nickname for me here) and am feeling fine with the exception of this stomach that is kicking my ass. So, I finally decide what other chance am I going to have to go to Vietnam border. Professor was so excited to hear I was coming that he was jumping up and down. It was adorable. He swore the highway was one of the best in Cambodia (in comparison to what I now wonder) and that it was less than two hours. All lies. We finally left at 3:30. It is now 8:30 p.m. We’ve maybe been at this hotel half an hour. Although, I think the word “hotel” is extremely generous. Fact: whatever illness I have is not being helped by this place.

So what elapsed in those five hours. I don’t think I can begin to tell you except for being in excruciating amounts of pain. Lauren, bless her soul, gave me a massage most of the way because it helped get my mind off the deathly illness I felt. Real descriptive example: I was cold today in the car. COLD. I have yet to be cold in the last five days. There was no reason to be cold except for the crazy fever I was burning.

So somewhere in this car ride, once we got off the unpaved road we were on for forty minutes(so much for great shape), we got on a ferry. All of us had to pee desperately, but when we got to the bathroom on the boat it was the most revolting bathroom I have ever seen. Literally top five worst. And of course everyone else on the ferry is just laughing at the  “Barang” white girls shrieking. Literally it was a sink with a hole just as high. The sink was filled with all of the peoples secretions that did not quite make it the hole. I was the first to make the journey before I ran away screaming. Alexis didn’t believe me until she looked for herself. We put on quite the show. SO an hour and a half after this ferry ride, one girl decides she can no longer hold it. We pull over in a shanty town, use the bathroom in the back of this house. But first we have to go slip and sliding through the mud  because it had poured all day. I ruined my rainbows. They are crusty and black. They were hemp and cream. They are the only shoes I brought on this journey. Oops.

I have no words for that bathroom. It was not as bad as the ferry, but put it this way: four girls opted to use nature instead, next to a pig sty. Literally.

After that, it was only another forty minutes to this “hotel” in this “city”. The ceilings are beautiful, but I am pretty sure this is one of the more disgusting places I have been in my recent life. I don’t think this would make the triple A book in the states. Motel 6 looks like a Ritz comparatively. But I am sick enough that any place to lay down is great. We are all spraying the beds  with 100 Deet. I think my face may be peeling off in the morning. I also think this will exacerbate my illness. But it beats malaria I guess. Also, the blankets… What blankets? That’s right, folks. A bottom sheet. No top sheet. Some tiny little blanket folded on the edge of the bed. This blanket is foul. I’m pretty sure I’ve contracted HIV of the foot today.

All in all, staying at the hotel would have been a wiser choice. But I just had to have the FULL Cambodian experience. I’ve experienced more today than words can describe. No American hotel will ever be unworthy after this. Daddy, you may take note of this.

NEW DISCOVERY: After being sick again in this bathroom, I washed my hands obviously. WELL, there are no pipes connected to the sink. The whole bathroom is the shower, much like a cruise ship (although this bathroom is tip top disgusting). Thus the sink just runs down the tile into the drain on the floor. Who needs pipes anyways? If this was not enough, Jessica went to leave for dinner about fifteen minutes ago, turned on our bedroom lights to find that they burned out. So we have the disgusting bathroom’s light to guide us. Jealous? I’m sure you all are as you read this from the comforts of your air-conditioned homes with running, drinkable water. Pray for me. For my health to return.

So its been 24 hours since I wrote that last post. And lets just say, if I had known how things were going to go for me, I would never have gotten in that bus for the “must do, must see” 30 hour adventure.

After I closed the computer last night, I was absolutely freezing. FREEZING. In Cambodia. I had the fan on, not the AC. It was 29 celcius in the room (mid eighties in Fahrenheit) with mad humidity. I was under two covers and my towel and shivering. Needless to say I was killing one heck of a fever. Jessica got back from dinner about 11. I re awoke about 1 am, and was sick until about 6:30 this morning. I am dehydrated and a psychotic mess. I made it all day without being sick, but that was a miracle. Really and truly. I fell asleep in the van today at some point, had a FANTASTIC dream about vegas. Woke up sweating and nauseous still in the parked van. That was phenomenal.

Seven of ten of us have now gotten sick. Go figure I am one of two people who seem to have gotten the bug that lasts more than 24 hours. I am curled up in a ball on my bed back in Phnom Penh writing this. 

The survivor we interviewed today was just heart breaking. My only regret is that I was in too much physical pain to fully engulf his heart ache. He lost all four children to the Khmer Rouge. 

Four kids, four years. All died.

The gathering center of this town was also the site of a mass grave, as you can see in the picture. Like i’ve said before, the country is just speckled with these reminders that a genocide was in their recent past.

We saw the Vietnam border. It's basically a bunch of casinos that were imitating Vegas casinos, including one that looked like the Bellagio but was instead called “Vegas”. 

The drive home was quite uneventful. Mostly just a bunch of exhausted girls. 

Nastasia (pronounced Gnaw-staw-see-awww) and I are going to be eating baby food until our stomachs recoop. Jealous? I though so.