Costa Rica Travel Surf Expat blog for Norm Schriever

They get by with a little help from my friends.

3/28/2015

"Hi Norm. I saw your photos and read your blog about helping the children in Cambodia. I know we've never met, but I'd like to send you some money to give to them, too."

You'd be amazed how often I get Facebook messages or emails along those lines. Hell, I'm still amazed every time someone reaches out to me and wants to give. I mean, since my focus the last couple of years has been on trying to make this world just a tiny bit better through my writing, I've received so much support from my friends it's crazy.

I guess "crazy" is a good word for it, for what else could you call sending your hard-earned dollars all the way across the world to come to the aid of people you've never met in countries you'll never set foot in? And many of you have never even met me, the instigator of this whole experience. Sure, I've broken bread (and drank beer) with many of you, but some are friends of friends, have read my books or blogs, or we don't even remember how we first connected, but we've never had the pleasure to say hi face-to-face. For all you know, I could be squandering your money by dining on escargot with champagne every night, staying at resorts that have 1,000,000 thread-count sheets, and purchasing luxurious hair care products...ok, the hair care product part is off the table, but you know what I mean.

Either way, you're trusting ME with your money because you care so much about perfect strangers in need. You have empathy for those you can't see or touch, and that's a rare and beautiful thing. Believe me, I treasure that trust and try to live up to it every day.

Last week, I posted some photos of a poor hospital I visited here in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, where I went with my friend-in-charity Cowboy Bart to help a young woman who was the victim of an acid attack, and others. Tragically, she passed away in the ICU the very next day, but the photos and blog stirred a handful of you to reach out and PayPal some donations over for me to distribute to others in need.

So back at it, Cowboy Bart and I rode a tuk tuk out to the Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh on a scorching Friday afternoon. I was armed with a pocket full of $10 and $20 bills to give out to people I found in need, with the help of Siman - our Cambodian tuk tuk driver - acting as translator.

In desperately poor Cambodia, there is no free healthcare or any sort of governmental social safety net. Hospitals are archaic, ridiculously understaffed, and they lack even many of the basic resources, medicines, and technology even the most humble hospitals in the United States enjoy. I'm sure you can guess who built the Soviet Friendship Hospital, a monstrous boxy compound with open-air buildings around an overgrown grassy area. When someone gets sick and needs to go to the hospital, usually on a very long journey from far-off provinces on the public bus, their family needs to bring them there. Of course they can't afford a hotel while they wait out the treatment of their loved one, so the whole family moves into the hospital with the patient.

Some of them sleep right outdoors in the bush, hoping for the shade of a palm tree. They cook their food over wood fires and hang their laundry their to dry. Many others share the hospital bed with their loved one, sleep on the floor on bamboo matts or on the bare floor near them, or camp out in the hallways and stairwells, for days, weeks, or even months. If they're lucky, they'll have enough food, though most drink dirty water out of the hose bib and live off of rice and slices of mango. A big 30 lbs. bacg of rice, which costs about $20, can keep a couple people alive for a month if need be.

Bart and Siman led us upstairs to the oncology ward first, to visit a child with a horrible tumor on his eye they were already helping. It was difficult for me to walk into the patient rooms - a jumble of hospital beds and bodies swirled in heat. Rooms that were designed for 2 beds had 7, and rooms meant for 4 beds had 10 or more. The beds were ripped and stained, sheetless unless the families brought their own. People slept in silence except for a few moans of pain and discomfort. There was no air conditioning so people tried not to move and hoped to catch the breeze of a fan.

But they lit up when we walked in, eyes peeled and big smiles for the unheard of occurrence of a Barang (foreigner) coming into the hospital unless they worked for a nonprofit or were part of a medical mission. Bart and Siman visited with the toddler with eye cancer and talked to his mother. Bart remarked that the boy looked much better and the tumor had shrunk significantly. They gave them some money to help pay for food and the treatments they couldn't afford at the hospital.

While they chatted, I walked around the room, saying hello and visiting with the other sick children in the room. Of course I couldn't communicate with them other than bowing and saying "sus-day" - hello in the Khmer (Cambodian) language - or "sok-sa-bay" - wishing them good health. But it's amazing how much you can say just with your eyes and smile and a well-timed thumbs-up.

As I met the other patients and their families in the big white room, I called Siman over to translate at times. No one was alone - everyone had family with them. I noticed that they didn't see it as a burden to help their sick loved ones. A daughters massaged her grandmother's back to ease her pain. Mothers fanned the flies away from their sleeping children. An elderly Khmer woman, nearly skeletal in her only outfit of pajamas, mustered unimaginable strength to tend to her dying husband of all these years.

Their custom is to take a photo of someone handing them the gift, so they started to sit up their sick and sleeping loved ones. But I told them to just let them be - it wasn't necessary for me to be in the photos. Let the children and sick and elderly, who could barely open their eyes to see us, sleep in peace.

In the sick rooms, no one asked me for money, but most received a donation of $10 or $20 - an unexpected gift that would go a long way. I'd visited the money changer earlier to break my $100's from the ATM into smaller bills so it would be easier to give out. These were the donations from my friends - from you.

We went room to room and toured the hospital. One doctor rushed by without questioning us, but other than that we rarely saw anyone who worked there. No one questioned us and we passed through without scrutiny. Khmer people are so proud and routinely endure hardships we can't even imagine, yet never complain. They know that is what there life will be and don't expect otherwise. But they are passionately dedicated to their loved ones and extended families. No one came out and asked for money, but a sick family member's caretaker would join their hands and give a slight bow in the sign of greeting or Buddhist prayer, inviting us to come over and visit. They introduced us to their ailing loved one.

And they are appreciative. The looks of gratitude on their faces will be with me forever. It wasn't just the money, though I know that completely changed their outlook. But there was another commodity, just as important, that were were sharing that day: hope. They knew someone cared about them. Incredibly wealthy and privileged strangers from a far-off heavenly country took the time to come say hello and help them. I've learned that to acknowledge someone as a human being, with respect and equality in your heart, is the biggest gift you can give.

Stomach problems, children with cancerous tumors, accident victims, and so many more that were key diagnosed, who waited patiently sleeping in the halls and floors of the hospital waiting for a glimmer of hope. Folding leather stretchers - discarded donations from war times, and tolling medical trays stood sentry among the silent people, a few syringes, vials, and empty pill boxes the scattered evidence that there was little that could be done.

There were many families and sick people who couldn't get a bed, a room, or even inside the cool hallways of the hospital to stay. They camped outside on the patio, the fiery afternoon sun beating down on them. A ingenious teen girl with a bright smile hung a bedsheets from an IV stand to shield her sister, who had been in a bad motorcycle accident in the province, from the heat.

On our way out, we wandered through many wards of the hospital: those dedicated to those suffering from malnutrition, diarrhea, the ICU, and finally, a pleasant surprise - the neonatal unit. It was shocking that we could just walk in and there were not even glass barriers or germ-free sanitized environments to protect the premature babies. But their mothers stood watch over them, loving for their newborns with visions of angelic perfection that only mothers can see. Each mother called us over with a big smile so she could proudly show off her baby.

My pockets empty, we had made the rounds and it was time to go for the day. The hardest part was that I had money to some people but not to others. But if I had just started passing it out to everyone I encountered, the money wouldn't have last two hospital rooms. So I tried to focus on children and those who looked really hungry or sick in the poorest parts of the hospital.

I was no doctor and I wasn't arrogant enough to think I knew them or their stories just by looking, so it made my heart ache to know that I would leave so many suffering.

But I reminded myself that these people had problems before I arrived and would have problems long after I left. And there were billions more I never could reach, even if I worked tirelessly the rest of my life. But these people weren't thinking of it like that. They weren't expecting anyone to solve their problems. The money I had given them - your donations - had made a huge difference for them today. The hungry would eat. They could pay for medicine. A doctor's visit. A needed bus ticket. Get a bed instead of the floor. Or buy a small fan.

It wasn't fixed; it wasn't right; it still didn't make sense; but it was better. Better. That's a good way of thinking of it. You, my friends, had made things better for these people, and that's a hell of a good thing. And if they could speak to you they would say, "Thank you." And you'd feel it even more than you heard it. Trust me on that.

- Norm :-)

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My reunion with Jenny, Jenna, and Cambodia's CIO orphanage after one year.

3/21/2015

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I actually felt butterflies as my tuk tuk wound through the outskirts of Siem Reap, past local markets, dusty roads, and a wedding tent that took up the whole road and made us detour. It had been a year since I’d seen our beloved Jenny and Jenna and the rest of the children at the Children’s Improvement Organization here in Cambodia. When we pulled into their compound, I was greeted by dozens of little smiling faces and a big hug from Sitha, a wonderful, caring man who founded CIO along with his wife, who everyone calls “Mama.”

Of course Jenny and Jenna were there to greet me with big smiles. Jenny, the younger sister, still had that wonderful smile on her face that lit up the world. And Jenna, more serious and stoic, was had grown a head taller and had turned into quite a strong soccer player. Sitha assured me that the girls had fit in and adjusted wonderfully in the year since they’d been placed in the orphanage and I last visited. They were catching up in school slowly but surely after never attending much before, and always were kind to the other children and extremely helpful. In the mornings, when it was a scramble to wake, feed, and ready 37 children for school, Sitha often didn’t have time to eat as well. But Jenna often came up to him with a plate of rice, reminding him to take care of himself and looking out for her new papa. Jenny and Jenna were still thrilled to see me and hugged me warmly but didn’t cling to my shirt, afraid and nervous to let go, like they did when we first brought them there. That was a great sign to see them so happy but also so strong, confident, and independent.

Sitha brought me into the shade and sat me down on a red plastic chair that one of the children pulled up and we caught up on the year. Things were going well and the children were doing fine, but of course there was nonstop financial pressure. CIO, though one of the best orphanages you’ll find anywhere in the world, isn’t linked to big corporate donors or rich patrons, so each month, they sacrifice and count every penny (or Cambodian Reil) in order to pay their rent and buy food for the children. When prodded, he explained that the lease on the land we stood on was set for renewal in April one month away, and that meant they had to come up with a whopping $1,200 – three months’ rent – all at once. It was hard enough just to pay the rent every month, but $1,200 was truly troubling.

But despite the odds that are stacked against CIO and the children, Sitha and Mama never give up and never exude anything but positivity. Of course they have 35 little reminders why it’s all worth it, from 3 to 19 years old, with them at all times. The afternoon was cooling so Sitha walked me around and gave me a tour of the compound, like I’d received the previous year. But there were definitely improvements; the school room looked great, the colorful library and study center, complete with a few donated computers, was new, and they even had a spirited Khmer (Cambodian) college student, an orphan herself, living with them and teaching the kids English every day as she continued her own studies. There was even a small 1980s television, but the always-thoughtful Sitha explained that the kids were only allowed one hour of television a week on Saturdays. The boys wanted to watch U.S. wrestling, of course, but the girls wanted cartoons, so cartoons it was.

Little girls helped Mama in the kitchen where she prepared about 100 meals a day outdoors on wood and charcoal fires, a task that got her up at 5:30am and off work well past dark.

The soccer field was in full operation, a new volleyball court marked off in the sand, and the separate building with bathrooms was high class for rural Cambodia. There was a whole room with bicycles so the middle and high schoolers could peddle to the school 10 kilometers away every day, as there was no bus. The elementary school kids had an easy 5-minute walk in their blue uniforms and white shirts. The school day was spilt into morning and afternoon sessions in Cambodia with children attending one or the other, so kids were spilling as Sitha and I talked. Each child as they came home walked up to us, bowed and put their hands to their foreheads as is the custom of respect, and said hello and reported they just returned from school in English. Respect, manners, and discipline are integral to the lessons Sitha teaches them, and English is also vital if they hope to get good jobs above manual labor, like working in a hotel or restaurant with tourists for $150 a month or so if they’re lucky.

As Mama cooked and Sitha supervised the children coming home, I wandered over to the garden, a new addition in the year I’d been gone. As they were designing the flowerbeds, the children had a cool idea to build it in the shape of CIO – the orphanage’s initials. The water pump was also near the garden, an old-school red metal handle the children took turns working to get water to wash dishes, do laundry, and also bathe. I was saying hi to the kids there when I felt a biting pain in my foot. Then another one, and more on my other foot, ankles and legs. I looked down to see I was standing right in a nest of fire ants. Those little sons-of-ants (I gotta keep the language clean when writing a blog about kids!) hurt like wasp stings. I brushed and kicked and danced until they were off me, the children laughing with hilarity at my painful antics.

When dinner was ready, the children took out metal folding tables and plastic chairs and set them up on the concrete deck under the main pavilion. Some of them set the tables while others poured drinks into little plastic cups or took out metal cafeteria trays. Mama scooped the food onto each tray. There was white rice, green beans with chopped pork, and Lok Lak, a Khmer treat of beef in sauce, tomato and onion, and egg. I realized it was a feast to celebrate my visit; they couldn’t always eat that well, and many people here lack meat in their daily meals.

Before we dug in, some children were assigned to wave the flies away from the tables. Unfortunately, the orphanage grounds sits near a chicken farm and a crocodile farm if I heard correctly, both attracting swarms of flies that migrate over to their dinner tables. The children sang an adorable song of gratitude and blessings before the meal, which I asked them to repeat so I could video it.

We ate among the sounds of children’s’ laughter, but at the adult table Sitha gave me a sketch on the history and culture of Cambodia. He explained that Siem Reap province, despite being the top tourist destination in the country, was the poorest province in Cambodia (which is saying a lot). In fact, the home to Angkor Watt – one of the wonders of the world and an UNESCO world heritage site – brought in a ton of revenue, but the regular people never saw a penny of it. All of the hotels, bars, and restaurants were owned by rich foreigners or a small number of elite Khmer families and the rights to profit from Angkor Watt had been sold to a Vietnamese tycoon in 2004, in one of the most glaring cases of political corruption for profit I can fathom.

I hugged him and mama, then shook their hands, and then hugged them again. There weren’t words to express enough gratitude for what they were doing for these children.

“You don’t say goodbye, only ‘see you later’” Sitha called out, reminding me of what I wrote about the orphanage in my blog a year earlier.

“Here you go Sitha, this will help,” I said, handing him a stack of crisp $100 bills, enough money to pay the upcoming 3-month lease that was hanging over them. I explained that I wasn’t the generous one; most of it came from donations from sweet, caring friends in the United States who had never even been to Cambodia or seen the kids.

As I left, the children lined up and waved, running behind the tuk tuk. I hoped to visit one more time before I left Cambodia, or maybe it would be another year before I got to see them all again, but I was heartened knowing they were all safe and happy and in great hands.

-Norm :-)

P.S. Drop me an email if you'd like to help the children of C.I.O.

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Visiting a hospital for the poor in Cambodia.

3/20/2015

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Today I took a break from my writing and took a ride out to a hospital for the poor here in Phnom Penh, the capitol city of Cambodia. My U.S. friend Cowboy Bart accompanied, as well as our trusty local tuk tuk driver and translator, Siman. Bart and Siman had visited this hospital several times before, first as a formal mission for Bart’s Kids At Risk Cambodia non-profit to help a little girl with cancer, and then to visit other patients they met. I wanted to help.

We walked in the hospital without as much as a security guard checking our credentials, as there were no guards, or even doors on some areas, just tuk tuk drivers and family lounging around. We also encountered no nurses or hospital staff when we entered, just a few random stretchers and someone’s moto they’d parked inside.

Our first visit was to a young woman that Siman and Bart had visited before. A poor single mother with a baby boy, she was on her moto driving to work one day when a thief grabbed her arm to try and steal her cheap bracelet. That’s an all-too familiar story here, as desperate thieves (“Jao!” is the local word) don’t care who they are hurting when they rip people from their speeding motos for a purse or jewelry. The woman crashed badly and shattered her jaw, and was now staying at this hospital awaiting surgery to have her jaw wired shut.

You could tell she was happy to see us, though she couldn’t smile. But Bart commented that she looked much better and she could whisper a few words of thanks in Khmer to Simon for him to translate and even drink out of a straw now, as she had been living mostly on coconut water she dabbed onto her lips before. The woman had no parents and a family friend was watching after her little boy, but she had no money to eat or feed her child, especially now that she couldn’t work.

We spent about half an hour with her and she never complained about the pain, just that she was lonely with nothing to do all day and no one ever to visit her except her sister once. Our visit further cheered her up when I handed her enough cash to buy plenty of rice to feed her and her son for about a month. As is the Khmer tradition, we took a photo of me handing her the money. Bart and Siman promised to come check on her again next week and we all wished her luck with her upcoming surgery. Before we left, I tried to brighten her mood by putting Bart’s cowboy hat on her head, but quickly remembered making someone with a broken jaw laugh probably isn’t a good thing.

With Siman in the lead, we headed upstairs to see if there was anyone else we could help. Of course there’s never a shortage of people who need assistance here, but my first opportunity was on the stairs. A small woman, who must have been from the provinces she was so dusty and dark from the sun, was carrying a huge sack of rice up the stairs. (Of course there is no elevator in the hospital.) It must have weighed 70 pounds but she cradled it and lugged it up one step at a time. So of course I offered to help and carried it for her. I didn’t know where we were delivering the rice when we got upstairs, but she led me to the door of a supply closet. She knocked and the door peaked open and two women were sitting comfortably in there with two dogs. They held the dogs back by their collars and held their mouths closed so they wouldn’t bark. The smiling woman took the rice sack and thanked me and retreated into the closet, shutting the door before the dogs escaped or drew attention.

It took me a second to process what I’d just seen, but apparently the three women and their two dogs were living in the supply closet, and that rice would probably feed them all for a few weeks in there. One of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen!

We made our way down a long, sunlight corridor with grand open shutters on one side and patient rooms on the other. There were no closing doors, just openings into the rooms. Each one held six or eight beds, further crowded by the families and visitors of the patients. In fact, when a lot of these people were seriously injured and sent to he hospital, their families moved right in with them, the only ones to take care of them because there wasn’t a hospital cafeteria and the few doctors and nurses I saw were running at a fervent pace trying to keep up. So family members congregated in the halls, smoked cigarettes by the windows, came and went with food, lit incense and made offerings to Buddha for good luck, and slept on bamboo matts on the floors.

I was worried about being intrusive or violating the privacy of these patients – the last thing I wanted to do was be a tourist in someone else’s misery – but they all smiled and waved when we poked our heads in the rooms. Their children said hello in English and ran up to us for high fives. Everyone was amazed when I said a few words in Khmer.

We walked by a man who was standing by the window with his wife with the help of a walker. He had a steel rod holding his left leg straight, with 6 steel pins running straight into the bones in his legs through bloody openings in his skin. His leg had been severely broken. His knee cap was removed and he had to keep the steel rod attached for 5 months but he was happy because he would walk again and didn’t have the leg amputated, a practice that’s all too common as a quick default when someone comes in with a serious injury.

Siman led us into the next room where he was talking to a patient’s parents, and indeed, there were three guys with amputated legs among the four patients. One young man was working construction when an errant cable wire ripped his legs completely off well above the knee. But he didn’t seem downtrodden or sad at all; Khmer people are some of the strongest, most enduring people you’ll ever meet.

We talked to everyone for a while, or rather Simon interpreted as we smiled and tried to comfort the patients and families, and then we gave them each a nice donation.

Our next stop was to see Meas Vanny, a young woman who just weeks before suffered a barbaric attack when someone threw acid in her face. Vanny, a beautiful 20-year old woman who worked at a security guard, was suspected of sleeping with someone’s husband. So the jealous wife approached her on the street at 5am one morning and threw a bucket of sulfuric acid on her.

Acid attacks are all too common in Cambodia, where the victims are hideously disfigured and face a life of searing pain. Even worse, they are often ostracized from the public eye or even their own families, and forced to beg or sleep on the street and sift through garbage to live. There have been some highly publicized cases in the past, even a famous singer who was attacked with acid when she started speaking up politically, and several charities exist solely to help acid attack victims. Of course it doesn’t help that you can buy this shit right off the shelf in stores and in recent years they’ve been trying to pass laws to permit the sale of this acid. But mercifully the attacks have been less frequent in recent years. Meas Vanny was the first of 2015.

Bart and Siman had visited her several times before and the beautiful girl was now hairless and seared on almost all of her face, neck and arms. She wasn’t in her room when we went to see her but we ran into her family sitting outside on some benches in the shade. They told us she was in the ICU getting the first of many skin grafts. We went to the ICU and then made a nice donation to the family, who had tears of gratitude in their eyes.

We turned to walk down the hall and out toward the tuk tuk, which Siman had run out to collect for us.

“Goodbye! Goodbye!” we heard as a smiling little boy chased us down the hall. We had just given his father some money and his son tracked us down to thank us. But he didn’t know any other English words except “hello” or “goodbye.” The little boy paused for a moment as he tried to work out how to communicate what he was feeling. Undeterred, he thrust his hands up in the air to make a big heart, his smile expressing more than words ever could, in any language.

What a day. I’m eternally grateful to have met such wonderful, courageous people and I look forward to going back next week to visit and help a few more.

If anyone out there wants to make a humble donation to help feed these hospital patients or contribute to their medical care, drop me an email.

- Norm :-)

Update:

Yesterday - the very next day after we visited the hospital - I heard the news that Meas Vanny passed away, succumbing to her extensive burns and injuries. She never complained or lost her smile, and I'm honored to have known her in this life and helped her family a little. My only consolation is that she's no longer in pain and definitely going to a better place.

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Traditional Khmer martial arts training in Cambodia.

3/9/2015

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I've been lucky enough to study traditional Khmer martial arts, like Bokator, Pradal Serey, and a mixture of other styles and cultures, with my awesome teacher and friend, Kru Rama here in Cambodia. We switched it up the other day with a fun workout in front of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, the capital city. We had a little kid who was watching hold my camera and take some video, and he showed off what he learned later by kicking my butt!

I'm just a beginner to Khmer martial arts and every workout is incredibly humbling, not only athletically but mentally. A lot of it is trying to forget everything I learned with years of boxing training (just for fun), replacing it with the concepts that are about the art of fighting for survival in the streets. But if there's one thing I've been taught, it's all about being in balance, understanding and using the principle forces of nature, and more than anything, respecting other people and ourselves.

-Norm :-)

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An advanced viewing of my documentary: "My Cambodian Microwave" (Subtitle: "Nom, nom, nom.")

3/2/2015

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I'm spending time on enlightening and groundbreaking projects in the arts these days, so please watch my full-feature documentary, "A Cambodian Microwave" subtitled "Nom, nom, nom."

Thank you for your support and please remember me when it's time for award consideration.

@NormSchriever on Twitter and Instragram

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They get by with a little help from my friends.

My reunion with Jenny, Jenna, and Cambodia's CIO orphanage after one year.

Visiting a hospital for the poor in Cambodia.

Traditional Khmer martial arts training in Cambodia.

An advanced viewing of my documentary: "My Cambodian Microwave" (Subtitle: "Nom, nom, nom.")

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