In order to illustrate that life here isn’t always completely smooth, I’ve decided to write an entry about this past week. Most of the time, being here is about exciting adventures, picking up knowledge about regional history, and experiencing interesting events on a regular basis, but sometimes, it does just feel like I’m far from the comforts of home. Being sick this past week was one of those times.
First of all, the unexpected heat of this December is pretty unbearable. Our apartment gets particularly hot because we have to keep all of the back windows closed at night since they don’t have screens. That means there’s no circulation of air, and for some reason, our apartment just seems to bake. Inside or outside of the apartment, though, it’s stiflingly hot right now. A lot of Cambodians, including most of the residents who live around us, cook their fish by simply laying the fillets in shallow, woven trays and putting them out on the sidewalk to bake in the sun. To be honest, the fish never really look that appealing to me, as the skin slowly shrivels up in the heat, but I have no doubt that a day’s worth of sun and heat right now would do more than enough to make up for the lack of an oven. The whole expression about it being so hot that you could fry an egg never seemed so true. In fact, I bet you could fry an egg, sauté some vegetables, bake a loaf of bread, and make a whole brunch of it. Anyway, to sum up, it’s really hot.
But in addition to the heat, on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I wasn’t feeling so great while lesson planning in the morning or during my afternoon classes. My stomach didn’t feel quite right. I figured I had just eaten something a little bit off, so I tried to stick with mild foods and get as much rest as possible. After dinner on Wednesday evening with Mel and some other visitors who were in town, though, I knew that I definitely couldn’t join them in going out afterwards. I needed to get home.
For the rest of the night, I couldn’t sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. All of a sudden, the fact that I’m on the second floor of the apartment and the bathroom’s on the first seemed like the most inconvenient setup. The stairs took forever to navigate. It was still just as hot in the apartment, but now I also had a fever, had to run to the bathroom n a regular basis, and couldn’t manage to get more than a few gulps of water down before it started to make me feel sick.
In any circumstance, food poisoning is miserable, but being so far from home made it feel even worse. All of a sudden, an unknown sickness like this led to worries about what, out of such a wide range of possibilities, it could be. Fortunately, at home, I can feel confident that if I’m sick, it’ll pass or that I can go to the doctor and be treated. But here, there’s a greater concern that results from the ambiguity and the unknown. What is it really that’s causing me to feel this way? Is it something I should be seriously worried about, or is it something that will be miserable while I have it but will pass within a short while? What doctors are available to see me? And how good are the doctors anyway?
It was during this past week when I realize how far away Phnom Penh can feel from home, even if it doesn’t always feel that far on a regular basis. Time zone differences can make communicating with home more difficult. Things that are normally minor inconveniences but also make you feel like you’re far away and in another country can become big frustrations. The internet here is almost as slow as dial-up and too slow to make Skype calls from my apartment. Additionally, it has the annoying habit of sometimes cutting out halfway through an email. The electricity sometimes just goes out, making the apartment fan-less and even hotter. Cell phones run out of credit right as you’re trying to get in touch with a doctor to get test results back.
The occasional trips out to get something were no better. It felt surreal to be harassed as much by moto and tuk-tuk drivers about rides when I felt so awful and didn’t feel like dealing with them, although obviously there’s no way they would have know how sick I felt. It’s strange to be sick because everyone else acts the same, but I didn’t feel the same and didn’t see my surroundings in the same way. Things that normally add to the “flavor of life” here, like the chaotic traffic and the people pushing food carts right in front of me, didn’t seem distinctively of Phnom Penh or wonderfully local in flavor; they just seemed intrusive and hard to deal with. Unlike at home, it’s hard to just stay in the house or get into a car and not really have to socialize, even if the extent of the socializing is saying “no thank you” to offers as I walked down the street. Even in the apartment, we always hear the commotion from the street in front and the conversations from the alley in back.
But after the fact, I also realized how much I appreciate Phnom Penh’s development and connection with the global world. There are Western doctors here. Someone can do me a favor and run to get Gatorade for me from the Western grocery store. And at the end of the day, while Phnom Penh’s no hub, it doesn’t take long to get to an airport with flights to Bangkok, Singapore, or Hong Kong. I couldn’t imagine, for example, being in the Cambodian countryside or even being on my own in a place like Jishou if I felt like this.
Anyway, though, Brendan’s not around right now and wasn’t while I was sick either. It turns out, by coincidence, that we actually won’t spend a night in the apartment together for about a month. It started when he took a week-long trip to Siem Reap with his sister at the end of November and into the beginning of December. He then got back the day before my Dad came into town (okay, one day overlap), at which point I spent the week either in the hotel with my Dad or in Vietnam. I then returned from Vietnam the day Brendan left for a two and a half week holiday break back in the US. And here I am, half way through his trip to the US. Anyway, it’s hard not having someone around, especially when you’re used to relying on eating out for all of your meals but don’t feel like leaving the apartment. Luckily, Mel was down from Siem Reap to do some research at the National Archives here, so she stocked me up on food before I started feeling really sick and before she headed back North.
At the same time, when you’re sick, sometimes all you want is to have your own space, so it was a mixed blessing. The thing is that, as I was up sick all of Wednesday night, I knew that Liep was coming to clean the house bright and early on Thursday morning. I would be in bed, and I knew that the last thing that I wanted was to be squeezing and chatted at in Khmer throughout the morning. On a good day, it’s friendly talk, even if I rarely actually pick up the Khmer sentences she’s trying to teach me. The mornings that she’s here usually involve a lot of charades, and she loves asking me how I am every time I walk by her. Before she leaves, she always says good-bye numerous times. I think it’s become our joke. Anyway, most of the time, I love having Liep around, but on days when I’m tired or not feeling well, it can feel like I’m entertaining a guest and can never concentrate for long periods of time on whatever I’m doing. Plus, she does the laundry in our bathroom.
Luckily, after a few initial attempts that went nowhere, Liep realized that I wasn’t feeling well, partially by the fact that I was still in bed late in the morning and obviously not going to the university. All of a sudden, she told me to turn on my back and started giving me a shoulder massage. Normally, when a friend gives you a shoulder massage, it lasts for about five minutes, but Liep actually gave a legitimate massage for about half an hour, and I was half asleep when she told me that she had something that would make me feel better and would be right back. The massage didn’t necessarily help my stomach in particular, but it did make me feel better overall.
She soon returned with a bottle of something from her own apartment, which she was determined to apply all over my body. It ended up being something similar to Tiger Balm, but it was irrelevant what it was. There would be no discussion. I had no choice. She had decided that it would make me feel better, so that’s what was going to happen. In my half asleep, partially fevery, extremely hot stage, I can remember her rubbing it on my neck, my legs, and then lifting my shirt to rub it on my back and on my stomach. By the time she was done, I was tingling all over and sweating even more than I had before, but I felt better just knowing that Liep had gone out of her way to try to help me out. She proceeded to tuck me in under the sheets, adjust the fan so that it was aiming directly at me, and let me sleep for the rest of the morning. I was touched by her inclination to take care of me, and I appreciated her helping me out.
Luckily, it turned out to be a 36ish hour stomach bug, and I’m feeling completely back to normal. As a treat and to help in the recovery, I checked into Le Royal after the first day of really feeling sick, so I’ve been able to recuperate with air-conditioning, a comfy bed, quiet, and people around in case I need anything. I feel like I’m in a different world, but it’s certainly making it easier to feel better.