We started the day at the Glorious Hotel and Spa in Kampong Thom, where we all enjoyed a big buffet breakfast. Well, everyone else had a big breakfast, I had watermelon and dry coco pops; gotta love being vegan overseas! Luckily for us the vans were already packed up with all the pharmacy goods, so all we had to do was gather our bags and pack into the vans to head back to Phnom Penh.
One of the vans spent the three-hour journey as a karaoke band, smashing out hit, after hit with Socheat’s karaoke machine. We had a quick lunch close by before making our way to Steng Menchay with Mr Rith as our trusted #1 tuk tuk driver!
The clinic was expected to be short and sweet, but the flow of patients never slowed. Heidi and Bryony were ecstatic that they could fill their hug tanks with baby cuddles; both making sure that they were never not holding a bubba. Rachael and Nicole worked tirelessly together. One patient they saw was an eighty-year-old man who was very poor and very unwell, running a high temperature and had a poor airway as he was suffering from TB. He was also almost completely deaf which made their consult difficult, but they gave him some pain relief, and while it doesn’t cure him, his smile and gratitude made their very upsetting case a little better and well worth the heartache.
I sat with Caz so that I could be her runner as she has been working solo the last two clinics. She provided care for a whopping eighty-three people all by herself! We had one darling lady who was seventy-three and had Parkinson’s disease. She said her shakes started three years ago and she didn’t know why. It made my heart so sad when Caz had to tell her that there was no cure for that.
The clinic finished when we started to run out of medications and such, so we quickly packed up and left. As we were leaving though, a very old and frail couple came to see us and we gave them what we could, but many were upset that we couldn’t do more for them. I wish we could just wave a wand and help everyone.
As soon as we sat down in the tuk tuk to leave, the regular afternoon rain clouds that had silently been brewing, decided to say hello, and the skies opened. Mum, Caz, myself and our three translators got driven in the zipped up tuk tuk, which becomes a bit like a portable sauna when it’s all closed up. Rain was quickly filling up the potholes in the roads, and Mr Rith didn’t always miss them, with mysteriously muddy water sloshing up and narrowly missing our legs.
Later on, Mr Rith took us to see his people and his home. We took them a 50kg bag of rice which Mr Rith organised into smaller bags for the other families, as well as scabies soaps and toothbrushes. Mum thought it would be a good idea for us to all see where and how people live, so we can understand who it is that we are helping. It’s hard to grasp the kind of lives they live because we only see them in the clinics and not their homes. I felt really upset to see Mr Rith’s street and their homes, he is such a sweet and gentle man and it’s so difficult to see how poor they all truly are.
We then made our way to Jars of Clay for a big dinner with Socheat and her lovely family, as well as Sorphany and Sibimol, which is always fun. Cynthia, Socheat’s youngest daughter enjoyed a nutritious meal of pancakes which we all envied. It was a relatively early night for us, and I prayed for a sleep where I wouldn’t be woken up by mum’s lovely snoring (I wasn’t)!
I’m so grateful to finally be in this beautiful country to see why my family loves it so much; I completely understand now. It is a truly incredible experience.
Chloe 😊