Wheelchairs at last!

A few of you have asked about the wheelchairs, and yes I finally got them. And yes, it was as nightmarish as my first attempt, maybe even more so, knowing how corrupt the system was this time. This time I went to the customs office with Mony, the Khmer man who has been acting director of TTLC. I had written a letter on his behalf with all the required information, checked that he had his Khmer ID and the registration documents for TTLC. We handed over the documents and the official took his time going over them. Then he asked "Who is Mony"? I pointed to him and the official said "no he's not, he is Kosal" and showed me his ID card. Sure enough that was his name. Frustrated I explained that he failed to mention his REAL name and he demanded that we go away and re-write the letter (this would be the fourth), with his actual name, his date of birth, his postal address and ID number at the top. Frick! We spent 40 minutes driving around the busy streets of Phnom Penh, ducking and weaving people, bicycles, motos and dogs to find an internet cafe where I could re-type and print the letter. I added the necessary details, and wrote the address shown on Mony's ID card, rather than his current address, just in case the official would complain because it doesn't match. 


So off we trotted back to the customs office. He fluffed around a bit more, stamped each page, told us we had to go downstairs to have someone stamp it again. By the time we got upstairs again it was 4:30, and he said he would give the documents to the right channels and to come back at 11am the next day.


So dutifully at 11am we came back to the office, only to be told that the official was not there and was busy in a meeting. Not knowing whether to wait, our translator explained that it would be best to come back at 2:30pm after lunch break, as it was unlikely we would be able to see him before then. When we came back at 2:30, he eventually arrived at 3pm, saying that he had everything ready that morning and when he came back to the office we were not there. Well perhaps the message could have been passed on to us, so we don't have to guess his every move?! Once the documents were handed back to us, we rushed out to the dry port. Once there, we were informed that I had not yet paid the leg of the shipping from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh. Oh the irony, considering if I had know it would have gone there first I wouldn't have shipped it to Phnom Penh, as Sihanoukville is significantly closer to where I live! So we had to go back to that shipping office and fork out over $200. By this time the port was closed. Another day with no results.


So onto day three, we took a tuk tuk out to the port early in the morning. We were shuffled from office to office for over 2 hours, waiting for databases to be pulled up on computers, admin and processing fees were requested at every stop along the way "you need to pay for the typing", and documents checked over and over. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to the way they operated, we went upstairs to a room on the left, then across to a room on the right, then downstairs to a room on the right, then back upstairs to a room on the left, then right, then left...more money requested $3 here, $10 there. No one used a telephone or email for communication, everything was done face to face and I felt like a piece of driftwood, alone and awash in a sea of excommunication, being pulled on an unpredictable current, destination unknown. 

Eventually, bewildered and very near ready to call it quits and just put it down to a big mistake and count my losses, we were ushered to the  nearly empty warehouse. More fluffing around, showed packages that clearly were not wheelchair shaped as they ummed and ahhed over whether they were the cargo or not. Finally we set eyes upon the actual boxes and the process of storing them on the tuk tuk began. 5 boxes got strapped to the roof and 1 in the actual tuk tuk. Now to work out how to get them them back to Kampot, a 3 hour journey. We managed to fit 4 in a van and 2 in a car. Steve is currently helping me adapt on wheelchair for Sok, a boy I am working with and I hope to give another to a little girl with an intellectual disability. 

Siem Reap Silk Farm and Acoda Orphanage

In early July, Jed and I went to Siem Reap. We caught a bus from Phnom Penh which took about 5 hours. Siem Reap was nothing like any other place in Cambodia I had seen. It was very westernised, jam packed with pubs and cafes and restaurants and massage parlours. There is even a street for westerners called "pub street". There are little laneways leading off pub street with quaint Italian cafes, icecream parlours and garden bars, much like Melbourne. Felt nothing like Cambodia, except for the tell tale tuk tuk drivers bugging you every step ("tuk tuk Miss", or "Sir" sometimes!) and the notorious Dr Fish Massage tanks on every corner! Jed was offered heavy drugs several times, must be his suspect shady facial hair. We soon found the markets; the markets along the riverside selling colourful pants and dresses, mostly from Thailand, silver jewellery, shoes, wooden souvenirs and oil paintings of the temples and the Night Markets, with much of the same, but with slightly higher prices for tourists. 


We discovered a gem of a place, The Blue Pumpkin, a bakery and icecreamery with a upstairs floor with wall to wall couches and folding lap tables, menthol infused cold refresher towels and crisp air conditioning. It was a welcome sanctuary from the outside bustle. 

We found out about a free trip to a silk farm, with Artisans d'Angkor which was an eye opening experience. Here, mulberry trees are grown and the leaves are picked and fed to silk worms which reside in trays in the nursery, where they are fattened up to produce silk. They eat for 26 days continuously and when they are fat enough, they make cocoons, expecting to turn into silk moths. Unfortunately for them, this will not be the case as the cocoons are boiled to kill the pupa and make it easier to extract the thread. 

Coocoon shells in the sun

Raw silk thread being extracted from boiled cocoons

Getting thread straight from the cocoons

Working at the loom on intricate patterns

The raw silk thread is rough and thick, and dyed using natural dyes from herbs, plants and even rusty nails. The silk is thinned further then hand weaved on primitive looms by women who earn less than $90 a month. The work is intricate, repetitive and time consuming. I was fascinated by how these women have the art down so precisely. The silk thread is actually dyed at intervals along the strand, in order to create the pattern when it is woven on the loom. So the colours on the threads all need to line up to reveal the pattern - talk about tedious! I have much admiration and respect for this craft, but also great sadness for the quality of these women's lives, holed up in a warm shed doing back breaking, finger numbing craft for such little pay. As tourists we feast upon purchases of silk scarves in the market, without a thought for the person who crafted it.

Check out all the threads she has to keep track of!

The same evening we visited Acoda Orphanage for a free Apsara dance performance as recommended by Trip Advisor. The children put on a musical dance performance every evening and afterwards tourists are asked to give a  donation for their education. 

TTLC

As you may remember, I was volunteering at TTLC, a therapy centre for children with cerebral palsy. Last February, I had my doubts about the types of methodologies they used which are based on the Doman-Delacato philosophy of cross patterning, however I thought I would go with it for the time being and do my own research. I soon discovered that it is not evidence based practice, has been banned by some paediatric boards and was actually created in the 1960's and not reviewed! The more I read about it, the more my suspicions arose that this was not ethically sound practice and the more I saw at the centre, the more I felt very uncomfortable. 


The straw that broke the camel's back was the day I saw the staff workers neglect to engage with a 4 year old blind girl, except to administer the passive movement of her limbs on a table (the cross patterning), and to push her head first down a wooden slide on a river of talcum powder, in order to induce a "crawling reflex". She was so traumatised, she went from crying and screaming to completely shutting off. It was only when I rocked her in my arms for half an hour that she calmed down. I was torn between the opportunity of modelling care giving and contemporary practice to the Cambodian workers and taking a stronger stand by withdrawing my support altogether. 

Da and Ly play with the new alphabet puzzle I bought

Feeing Sophanna (the 4 year old girl mentioned in previous post) pumpkin soup from Veronica 

 It was numerous lengthy emails back and forth between myself and one of the TTLC directors in America that eventually confirmed my decision. I had been told that I has to do the cross patterning for 2 weeks and then I could very slowly introduce some new treatment techniques, but the Doman Delacato method had to stay. Despite arguing the lack of evidence, providing 6 control trials and articles and citing contemporary neuroscience, there was no room for leeway. It was a heart breaking decision for me as the children are simply gorgeous and I fear for their well being. However I know I couldn't remain in a situation that was going to compromise me professionally, ethically and not to mention psychologically! Thankfully, I have been able to drop in every now and then to check on the kids and have been delighted to see the malnourished children look stronger and healthier. 

Sophanna plays with gloop (corn flour and water) for the first time

Warning: The video below is a bit distressing, but I wanted to share what I witnessed.