Back in Asia - New Journey in Cambodia ប្រទេសកម្ពុជា
After spending most of my time last year in Africa (Kenya and Madagascar), my new journey begins in Cambodia. Finally, I am back in a continent which I have more familiarity with. Everything in the surroundings naturally feels a little less foreign to me; the Asian faces I see and rice/noodles-based meals I eat everyday have somehow put me closer back towards my comfort zone.
Although that said, Cambodia still presents quite a few challenges, shocks, and novelty to me. From the moment I stepped outside of the airport, the humid and hot climate instantly reminded me of the fact that I was still far away from being completely comfortable within this new environment (in both a figurative and literal sense). Yet, training my body to acclimate is far less challenging than what my ears and brain need to conquer. Khmer, the language of Cambodia, sets itself apart from all the languages I had previously learned and surrounded by. The completely different sets of sound waves entered my ears seemed to be in no way comprehensible, let alone the Khmer script that just looked like random scribbles to me. It was indeed baffling, and to an extent frustrating, to be bombarded by such a foreign language, especially considering how satisfied I was with my progress of learning and speaking French just a few weeks ago. But given the fact that I will be here for the next ten months, I guess I just have to start climbing the language learning curve despite it seems to be a steep one this time.
Khmer scripts looking like scribbles; Me getting focused at the scribbles; Slowly climbing the learning curve
As exciting as it is to be in a new country, I feel even more so to make a career pivot into the field of public health and community development. Having focused on ecology and environmental conservation all through my studies and early career, I am now getting my foot in the door of this new field of work where I hope to learn what local communities lack and need. The program I am working with is called EMBRACE (Enhance Mother, Newborn and Child Health in Remote Areas through Health Care and Community Engagement), which is a Canadian Government funded four-year program aiming to reduce maternal-child mortality in rural regions of Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Rwanda. By working alongside this program’s implementation organization – ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency), I have the opportunity to travel to 150+ villages in the remote parts of Northern Cambodia. In the following ten months, I will be responsible for documenting how various interventions for maternal and child health take place on the ground and subsequently analyzing and sharing the information I gathered among different project sites.
ADRA office in Rovieng
I had spent my first week at the ADRA Cambodia country office in Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) for the orientation program and after that I was immediately deployed in the field office in Rovieng (Northern Cambodia). Thus far (as of the time of writing my first official week has just ended), I have visited various local communities to observe training and engagement activities in the field. Although all the activities were in Khmer, it was still very intriguing for me to be sitting right within the communities, seeing things as simple as villagers getting together to learn and exchange. Indeed I have already been exposed to many eye-opening events and of course I expect many more to come. In the following few weeks, I will write and share more about the amazing things done by people working quietly yet diligently so please stay tuned.
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A sneak peek of day-to-day activities happening on the ground
To wrap up this introductory blog post, I would like to express my gratitude to ADRA and Youth Challenge International (YCI) for granting me this wonderful opportunity. I am very excited for whatever lies ahead in the following 10 months and I look forward to continuing the documentation of my work and life experience and sharing the good (and hopefully only sometimes bad) memories along this journey:)