I think I am struggling with this concept the most.
I have had difficulties opening packaging on the food items I buy ( why do we need so much plastic and cartons around our food?) and also using the televisions remote controls (there seem to be so many more buttons).
I found myself in London once more with masses of unsmiling people rushing around, with so many shops fill of shoe and clothes that I found impossible to think they will all get worn.
The paperfilling, the need to cross your I’s and dot your T’s. The frustration of waiting around for Criminal Records Checks where they screen your past address but need to do this for every employment so that although I get cleared for agency nursing, one month later they’ll submit it again for my permanent job that will have to start in March because they wait and refuse to acknowledge the earlier one.
The frustration when my Hep B results submitted to my agency were not an official lab results form therefore my G.P. must be lying !
I have given so many personal details to so many people to prove that I am who I am that I am –with all that info out there in so many different places identity fraud must be so easy, so if you meet a 33yr old Suzie Newson in the street DOB 17/06/77 that don’t look like me, act like me or speak like me then you know what happened and if you meet 2………
But the hardest is to leave behind a culture, language and people that you grow to love because it is different and it is unique. The country was raw and basic and that’s what made the people so beautiful, such hard challenging lives and they keep smiling, they keep laughing and they keep going. Their children although some malnourished, some sick, most lacking in educational opportunities, were always up for a smile, a laugh, a game, a “hello barang”.
I miss my colleagues, they showed me patience, resilience and understanding. They showed me how grey and murky things are til you accept a culture/ an individual, look at the basics and put yourself in their position and realized you would behave a lot worse. I gained the ability to really look at a situation and rationalize that if someone is trying to keep their family secure, healthy and kids educated then a little corruption is not as bad as it first seems, especially when your surviving in an unfair autocratic machine. However when you are walking around with a gold bracelet worth 1000US, you drive a Lexus and you expect to be treated like royalty because you have your fingers in more money than anyone else – I hope it all goes terribly wrong for you.
The journey on the political and work front was amazing – I used to think that all nurses should know when to do routine observations, give out medicine and treat people nicely, I thought it was easy, a natural part of being a nurse/midwife but I took my education and training for granted.
Try having an education system that basically teaches you to read or write, very little conceptual education i.e. how to interpret graphs, how to think out side the square when you are taught by rote. Then your accepted into a nursing school where the teachers are given curriculums from well meaning NGO’s, all in English or all the text books are (they struggle on teaching what their limited knowledge in their own language), your facilities are run down, not enough equipment to practice procedures or you have equipment but have not been taught effectively how to use it. On placement you learn how to make money from your job because you are paid 30US a month and cannot survive on that. If your one of the selected few, because of who you know, you’ll attend workshops put on by development agencies. Great money for attending, good lunches but some bits are in English – or trying to build on principles your education has not managed to teach you so your missing most the concepts. Then you go back to your province and you won’t try to implement what you learnt because you struggled to understand much. If you did pick up something it was only in Theory and there is no one to help you implement this new idea, so you don’t bother. Why should you bother – if you wait long enough hopefully some development agency will fund you for doing just one concept of your job. That’s money guaranteed or until they decide that the concept is no longer important then you’ll just work out what area they think is important next and do that. Keep that money coming in, food on the table…..
My thoughts and my heart go out to the nurses and midwives caught up in the Cambodian Health System and I admire the ones that do manage to do their job to the best of their capacity.
So on reflection readjusting to my privledged life back in the UK is not really a challenge, infact it’s too easy to slip back into old habits and romanticize about the time in Cambodia. I want to stay with at least one foot there to ground my perception of the world but feel like it is already slipping away very quickly………….but one lesson learnt that I will always retain is that when you have had such a quality access to the good life and won in terms of the lottery of countries to be born in, it’s not to be wasted or taken for granted and your in a grand position to extend a hand to those less fortunate.
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