The final hours on the floating prison!!

Day 3 and my escape back to civilisation is imminent.  Last night I must have had a different camp bed and this one was definitely not as comfortable, so there was a lot of tossing and turning and huffing and puffing going on under my little mosquito tent.

The guys had a busy clinic in the afternoon yesterday with quite a few people turning up, although there was still the consistent theme of stomach ache, diarrhoea, and also rashes and skin irritations.  One little girl was given her first asthma inhaler and had to be shown how to use it.  She was only given one inhaler, so I am not sure what happens when that one runs out! Most of the children have an adult with them, but some turn up on their own, like this little girl.  I watched another teenage girl as she got back on her boat and rowed away from the clinic.  I couldn’t help but wonder what she dreams about, do her dreams just consist of the life she has.  Will she be happy to marry a villager and produce the average 4 children they have in the villages?  Surely not I think?   Surely she must dream of escaping to a better life on land, but then does she even know what the differences are?  She was a pretty little thing, but her eyes looked sad.  The kids here don’t get any proper education.  The building next to the clinic is a school but it is locked up and has not been used for a long time.  No doubt some charity that ran out of funding or people willing to come out here and live the life they would have to when teaching.  The education the children get is all about how to fish and make a living from the lake.  It is all they know so to escape to something else is all but impossible.  

The evening followed the same pattern as the previous night. Dinner around 5.30 and then in bed under my mosquito net by 7 trying to read while listening to the noises around me.  Never a dull moment on the floating village!!

My appetite diminishes with each day.  The poor cook is apparently worrying about how little I am eating, so last night she had sent the boat boy off to the little village shop (they do actually have shops that sell the key supplies) to find some noodles as she thinks perhaps I don’t like rice.  She is right, I am not a big rice fan, but I feel guilty again when I realise she has made an effort just for me.  Not that I had been complaining about the food.  Her cooking is wonderful, but the smells, the lack of running water and the mere look of the lake wipe out my appetite.  When Jon and I discussed in the office the 3 most important things for the volunteers to have to encourage them to keep coming out here I said hygiene would be top of my list.  He disagreed and said it would be food.  Perhaps that is the case for most people, but now I am here it is definitely hygiene!  Although the cook uses bottled water and she is constantly washing up so there is not really a hygiene issue for the food we are eating.  I am sure some of the restaurants I have eaten at in town are worse than this….but still; I can see how much grime there is under my finger nails!!

This morning all I can think of is getting back.  I have to endure another 7 hours of complete boredom on the boat then another 1 ½ hours on the mini bus.  I feel grimy and greasy.  I am dying to wash my hair.  I contemplated doing it in cold water, but then what’s the point as it won’t really clean it.  Although vanity eventually got the better of me and I did smooth it down with cold bottled water.  At least it stopped me looking like scarecrow woman!!  When I got up this morning……just before 6 am, but then I did go to bed at 7am, albeit not to sleep straight  away…. all I could think of was getting back to my hotel.  Breakfast today was noodles and fish; I ate the noodles, but ignored the fish!!  I thought it was a case of breakfast, pack up and go.  My heart sank when after breakfast the guys started to set up the clinic. They do a 2 hour clinic before they leave.  Again I feel so guilty for wanting to rush off to a warm shower and air conditioning.  Of course we should be doing a clinic.  I am sure I would have felt differently if I was one of the medical team, but the boredom and feeling of being trapped is so powerful.  I can’t even do a complete lap of our floating home as there is no decking at the back and there is a log assault course around one side of the building.  I start to type this up but my laptop eventually dies on me…..it has had enough as well!!

I decide to play my voyeur role again!  The clinic is busy.  A few from yesterday have come back complaining the medicine hasn’t worked yet.  Bless them; they think they should be better after one pill.  They are reassured and sent off again.  Later in the clinic there is a great deal of fuss over one small boy.  He has abdominal pain and has been vomiting. He appears to have been brought in by his gran or someone who is unsure of what his recent bowel habits have been.  I guess what Jameil is worrying about quite quickly.  Could it be appendicitis?  The wee boy is clearly distressed and unhappy.  The options are either severe constipation brought on by a high protein low fibre diet or much more serious appendicitis.  All they can do is physical examinations and ask questions, the latter being more difficult than you would think.   The doc wants to know if the pain is coming and going (i.e. peristaltic pain) or constant.  Savann asks if it is coming and going and the wee boy says yes, but as Savann has 5 years experience in these clinics he also asks if the pain is constant…the wee boys says it is.  So we are no further on! I am picking up on Jameil’s anxiety; he has to make a call on what it is.  They are veering towards the severe constipation but Jameil is frustrated when he learns we no longer stock drugs to soften stools.  It is the first time I have seen Jameil look annoyed, but after short moan on why they should stock the medicine, he quickly covers it up.  He knows making the wrong call on this one could have drastic consequences.  If it is appendicitis and we leave him here it will eventually rupture and he will die as there will be no hope of getting him to medical care in time to save his life.  If they decide on appendicitis as the cause we will have to take him with us on the boat.  I have no idea how we will all fit in as I assume at least one adult will come with him, but it will have to be done.  The clinic is almost over so everyone’s attention is now on the small boy.  They eventually decide on some form of medication, a pill, which I think was just a pain killer and some intravenous saline.  The wee boy struggles with the pill and takes several attempts, including some chewing to get it over.  There’s some tears and struggling as they insert the intravenous needle.  Although they only give him a small amount of saline and the needle is soon out again.  Suddenly the wee boys says (in Cambodian of course so I needed translations later), I’ve had medicine so now I am better and jumps up on the wooden bed, all tears gone.  He later jumps on to the floor and demonstrates how he can jump up and down.  The relief on the docs face is clear to see ‘there’s no way a child with appendicitis could jump up and down like that he says, we’re ok, he’s just constipated’.  Worry over and everyone is laughing at the wee boy, who thinks the magic medicine has cured him already.  He skips off to his boat with his gran, clutching some bottled water we have given him to drink. The power of the mind over matter!!

The clinic is now closed for business for another month!!