This has definitely been one of those months … I close my eyes, I pray real hard, I open my eyes … “I’m still here,� I think to myself. I keep hoping that time will speed up, it feels like we’ve been here forever and the days just get longer. I know I won’t get this time back, but let’s be honest, sometimes you don’t want to relive certain times in your life … Cambodia is one of those times. I wish I could sugarcoat my experience this month and pretend I enjoy it, but to be honest, this month has left me broken, confused, frustrated, and exhausted.
I’m drained…Physically … Emotionally … Spiritually … I guess some of what I am going through could be considered humorous from an outsider’s perspective, at least physically. Let me share a few things with you about my time in Cambodia:
His name is Henry … He’s the spider that has taken up residence in the top of the mosquito net that I share with Adrea. We let him stay though in hopes that he eats the mosquitos that still get inside our fortress.
Mosquitos … they barely touched me in Africa or anywhere else, but the Cambodian mosquitos eat me alive, I can’t go anywhere without Hydrocortisone Cream.
Her name is Liza … she’s the gecko lizard who ran across my leg the other day … enough said.
Cows … The rest of the world doesn’t believe in keeping cows in pens, especially Cambodia. They roam everywhere, which means I am constantly playing a game of dodge the cow. Literally, I try to stay as far from them as possible, because in Rwanda I was almost attacked by a cow.
His name is Mr.Peepers … He’s a rat and he lives with us. Oh and down in the coffee shop where we eat there are many, many mice and rats, including at least one that is the size of a small cat.
The deflating sleeping pad incident … My sleeping pad was used like a pool float yesterday as we tried to submerge it in nasty pond water to find the leak … then as we took it to the squattie shower area to try and find the hole again to no avail … so now I will still have to just keep re-inflating the stupid thing until the hole gets big enough that we can find it and patch it up.
The water situation … when we’re out of water or the water just looks too gross in the squattie shower area, we walk ten minutes down the road to bathe in a rice paddy while a bunch of naked children and youth swim. Oh and I managed to cut my tow while trying to get out and soap up … I just try not to think about infection here.
We have a generator … when it works and when it’s turned on we have water and light and power to charge our electronics, but there’s a downside … every breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the coffee shop we can’t hear ourselves think because two TV’s showing two different things blare at nearly the loudest volume … information overload, I think so!
This is only a glimpse of what it’s like to live here, and honestly I am done with it. This past Sunday and Monday were the hardest days for me on the Race so far. I’m not in a place to share exactly what happened yet, but it definitely made a hard month so much harder. I am trying to find the energy and the will to want to be in Cambodia these last few days, but I know that these next five days will probably go just as slow, if not slower than any other day…
TO BE CONTINUED … Check out Part 2 here!
