To Cambodia and Beyond

As I look ahead to flying to Los Angeles on Friday, it's hard to keep my mind focused on being here in Thailand. It's become a struggle to live as the inevitable Thailand tourist/traveler combo, eager and brimming with excitement to tackle each day's sights and Lonely Planet checklists. In many ways, the tourist culture of this country makes me cringe. I'm ready for something new, and this time I think the newness will be in going back to where this trip started.

My last few weeks have taken me from Bangkok to Cambodia and now finally up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Eric and I have spent this week hanging out and talking about the last few months and what lies ahead of us as we both return back to the United States within the next few weeks. But before I get into that, I'll do my best to fill you in on what has happened since Nepal and brought us to this point.

As my flight landed in Bangkok from Calcutta, I felt like I stepped back into the modern world. I was taken back for a bit by the efficient transportation systems, the cleanliness and the order and pace in which people were living their lives. After a few days of getting somewhat oriented with the city, I caught a bus out to the Cambodian border, heading towards a final week of experiences as a traveler before I would come back to Thailand to meet Eric and focus more on coming home.

My first destination in Cambodia was the capitol city of Phnom Penh, which I decided to reach through Siem Reap, stopping for the night and then finishing the trip the following morning. Getting to Siem Reap was quite an adventure, pushing through a shady tourist ticket that passed us off from one to another, always to a vehicle of less quality than the previous one. The final 8 hour leg of the journey was spent in the back of a pickup truck filled with 20 western tourists, including a set of disgruntled German doctors irritated about the rip-off tickets. After a long trip of swerving to avoid meter-deep potholes, we pulled into the town around 11pm, coated in a thick layer of brown road dust.

The next day's bus journey was much more pleasant. I arrived in Phnom Penh and connected with my friend and former EMU biology professor, Doug Graber-Neufeld, who is working with MCC. I was brought to the MCC guesthouse, introduced the rest of the staff and enjoyed some time to relax and recover from the long trip south.

The next few days in Phnom Penh were spent hanging out with MCC and Doug's family during the Water Festival holiday (Bon Om Tuk) and visiting the Tuol Sleng museum and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, both reminders of the tragedy of the Cambodian genocide.

The Water Festival is one of the largest in the Cambodian culture, celebrating the reversal of the Tonle Sap river with the finality of the monsoon rains. One of the festivities for this holiday is a large scale race with over 390 long, skinny and furiously rowed boats down the river while the banks are backed with spectators. One evening Doug, Cristina and I went down to the river to observe the final trials at dusk as the celebration turned into a fireworks show with authentic floating 'parade floats' coming up the river. The combination of all of this in a town fair-like atmosphere was quite impressive.

The genocide in Cambodia is one that is not generally known to the rest of the world. During the late 70's, the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot were responsible for a total of somewhere between 1-2 million deaths, killing up to a quarter of the country's population. The deaths were often caused by extensively brutal torture or crude objects such as shovels and blunt bamboo sticks carefully aimed at a person's neck. These murders were intended to be the means of purifying the communist ideals within the country's population. This process especially targeted those who were the greatest threat to the sustaining the oppressive system, those who were educated and had culturally diverse background.

Doug and I visited the Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh one day, which was a high school before the takeover of the city. Under Pol Pot, it became known as the S-21 prison where 'spies' were taken and tortured into giving 'confessions.' If this process didn't kill the prisoners, they were taken to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek, a short pickup truck's ride away, where a mass grave with a total of 8985 bodies has been discovered. Only a few prisoners from S-21 survived the horrific process.

When I emailed Doug about coming to Cambodia a few months ago, he invited me to run a half marathon with him at Angkor Wat, which conveniently happened to be during the very time that fit my schedule to visit. And my response to his invitation was my usual, "Why not?... Sounds like fun." So after Phnom Penh, Doug's family, myself, and the Groff family made our way back to Siem Reap to visit the Temples of Angkor and run the big race.

The Temples of Angkor are Cambodia's largest tourist attraction. I won't go into a lot of the details here about their history, as you can find some of it in Eric's previous blog on Southeast Asia. I spent one day on a bicycle exploring the temple complex, impressed by the breadth of the place and the huge trees which seemed to be taking over some of the temples. This day also gave me a good opportunity to scope out the race course and get my bearings for what was ahead of me.

It's difficult to really train for something like this while you are traveling and not in a routine. I did my best in Kathmandu and Bangkok to get out and run, but dodging unpredictable traffic pattens and breathing city smog made an afternoon run not as attractive of an activity as it would be on a back country road in Virginia. But I did a little preparation, not nearly as much as I had originally planned to, but yet enough to give it a try when the time came.

The race was 21k of beautiful roads creating a loop around the Temples of Angkor, starting and finishing right at the entrance to Angkor Wat, the most famous and massive temple of the complex. A lot of the runners were ex-pats either working for Cambodian NGOs or tourists passing through, but there were also a handful of locals in the mix. Overall, the race went well and was a lot of fun, and I finished an exact minute ahead of my goal time of two hours, pushing through a few semi-painful kilometers at the end.

So after a day of sore legs and spending a final afternoon with the Graber-Neufelds, I took the long bus ride back to Bangkok the following morning. Luckily, I was able to hitchhike in from the border with two journalists, one from Kentucky and the other from Perth, cutting a few hours off the journey. The next morning Eric and I met in that touristy Khao San road, once again together after nearly four months apart.

We spent a day or so recovering from our respective journeys (Eric had just come up from Indonesia), and then caught an overnight bus to Chiang Mai. We've passed our days here with a lot of conversations at the same Japanese restaurant, testing the palatability of the locally fried insects, and contemplating whether we have the energy to make the tourist trek up to visit the long-neck hill tribe (So far all we could muster up was the effort to buy a photograph of two long-neck children). Naturally our conversations have turned towards what is ahead more than exploring touristy Thailand to the point of exhaustion.

So I hope conclusions are not what you had in mind from my final blog post before flying to the United States, because if they are to come, it will be at a later time. Last night I brainstormed up a list of things that I am excited about in relation to returning to America, so that may give a few insights into some of our conversations this week.

(in no particular order)

Things I am looking forward to in the US:

- Not carrying my passport and money belt at all times
- Toilets that really flush
- Water that I can trust to drink
- Not carrying toilet paper
- Speaking American English
- Deeper Conversations
- Not primarily communicating through written media (Internet, email, etc.)
- Wearing more than two shirts
- Mom's home cooking, especially the desserts
- My bicycle
- Catching up with old friends
- Machine washing my clothes for the first time in five months
- High Speed Internet and my own computer & my new pirated software from Bangkok
- Intelligent humor
- Seeing how much junk I've sent home over the last year
- Sleeping in the same bed for more than a few days
- Regular exercise
- A dirty Chanellos pie with Josh Miller
- Breyers Coffee Ice Cream
- The portions of Truck Stop Dinners
- Catching up on the music and movies from the past 14 months
- Listening to my music
- Seasons and the lack of humidity in winter
- Graduate School and where ever that is
- Continuing the vision of this trip through practical applications

The next time I write I'll be in California ready to make the long and final road trip to PA. My plan is to arrive back at home sometime during the week before Christmas.

If you were lucky enough to click here, we wanted to let you know that we finally updated our stats page for the first time since this past summer. Check it out.

Tsunamis for Peace?

In my previous journal entry for this site, I painted a somewhat bleak picture of the rebuilding process in Banda Aceh. Relief work is a challenging, time-consuming process, and in most situations the needs far outnumber the available resources. At various points during the last month, I felt that my efforts were small and insignificant in the broader scope of things. Can I really feel good about building one house, while thousands of other families remain homeless... and probably will remain so for many more months?

It is inevitable that these kinds of questions will arise. Several years ago, while working at a mental health care facility in PA, I found myself battling a similar attitude. Like disaster relief, in the field of mental health there are very few "quick fixes." For every sucess story, there are countless other examples of patients who despite months and months of intense therapy, still fail to show any significant signs of improvement. When the same client is admitted onto the unit for the 5th time in a month, who wouldn't doubt whether their carefully invested time and energy is really making a difference? It is no coincidence that on my particular unit in the hospital, the rate of employee turnover was under one year...

There are many ways that people chose to deal with these feelings of hopelessness and discouragement. Some of my coworkers chose to drown them in the bottle after work. A few days ago, I was listening to a UN-sponsored radio program for NGO volunteers in Banda Aceh. This exact topic was being discussed, and several callers talked about the importance of getting a massage and manicure every few days, or treating themselves to a weekend of relaxation on the beach. It is true, people in demanding circumstances such as these need to make self-care a priority, or risk falling into an unhealthy state themselves. Yet there are positives to be found even in the most devastating of circumstances. Sometimes it feels a bit like looking for the proverbial "needle in a haystack" and the easiest option is to simply pronounce the entire endeavour useless. But the rewards are always there, even if we can't see them right away, or they develop where we least expect them. Now an example.

For the past 30 years, the province of Aceh has been the scene of a relentless and brutal conflict. Occupying one of the furthermost corners of the 18,000-island Indonesian archipelago, Aceh was never part of the Dutch colonial empire. When independence was declared in 1949, Aceh was lumped together with the rest of the Indonesian empire, much to the regret of many of the local people. In 1976, the Free Aceh Movement (G.A.M.) was born, and chose to pursue their seperatist ideals in a militant uprising against the Indonesian state. Of course Indonesia, unwilling to see a province with high deposits of natural gas and other resources become independent, launched a massive counter-attack.

The guerrila-style tactics used by G.A.M rebels and the intimidating campaigns of the military left many civilians caught in the middle. In 2002, a failed peace attempt between the two sides resulted in all-out martial law being imposed on the province. All foreign journalists and tourists were denied entry into Aceh, and troops by the thousands poured in. Details are sketchy about what really happened during those years of military isolation, but it is estimated that over 17,000 people lost their lives. And there seemed to be no solution in sight.

Then in late 2004, the tsunami hit. Within days, the province was opened to the world. Foreign representatives, journalists, and aid workers poured into the already troubled region. A temporary cease-fire was soon announced, and both sides made committments to allow much-needed aid to reach the survivors. Finally in August, with the assistance of a Monitoring Team from the E.U., a peace deal was signed which has resulted in thousands of troops leaving the province, and periodic collections of weapons from G.A.M rebels.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether peace will last in the region. Many international observers, however, remain optimistic. The present conditions in this particular area of conflict are ideal for establishing a lasting peace. First, the presence of the international press and aid workers has created an atmosphere of transparency and openess that has never been seen before in the region, and will mostly likely last for a substantial amount of time. In addition, the devastation caused by the tsunami has placed a necessary priority on rebuilding and aid work, and the government has been focusing much of its energy in those areas. And finally, the overwhelming majority of the population simply want peace. The past year has brought so much unexpected trauma and suffering, and the thought of struggling through even more turmoil because of an unneccessary conflict is the last thing the people want. While at one point the G.A.M. rebels received overwhelming support within the province, it seems that the tsunami disaster has brought a fresh perspective to many of Aceh's citizens. Tired of the suffering, they are ready for a change.

Am I suggesting that the tsunami was a good thing? Not exactly. It remains a most unfortunate and sorrowing incident that destroyed the lives of thousands. There is no escaping that aweful reality. However, there comes a point where one must begin to look for positives. We can spend the rest of our lives pleading the "why" question before God, but still receive no answers. In these situations, the problem lies not in God's inability to answer, but in our limited perspective. Even in an endless field of despair, there are always seeds of change and new life, waiting patiently for the right circumstances with which to emerge. Sometimes we catch glimpses of them, at other times we just have faith that they are there.

As we all know, the world around us is changing at a sometimes dizzying pace. Political agendas, natural disasters, and an explosion of technology across the planet are affecting even the remotest corners of the globe. Several weeks ago a devastating earthquake hit Pakistani-administered Kashmir, another isolated region of intense violence and conflict. Because of the destruction of many homes in the region, citizens are now at risk of freezing in the cold Himalayan winter. The situation has turned desperate, and it seems that even the bitter rivalry between the Pakistani and Indian governments is being put aside for the moment. Just yesterday, the governments cooperated for the second time in briefly opening up the border, so that family members on either side could visit relatives stranded just across the U.N. Line of Control. And in the past week, both goverments have made cautious appeals for a lasting peace. As was the case in Aceh, it seems that unfortunate circumstances are now opening doors of opportunity that had previously been closed for decades.

On Saturday evening, I said goodbye to my group of friends at Frontiers. It has been a most fulfilling month, complete with all the challenges and joys that come with living together in close community. And full of lots of internal processing about service work and our role in emulating Christ's example within the global community. On the same day that I left Banda Aceh, two of the Frontiers staff members were leaving for Pakistan, where they plan to assist another group of volunteers in trekking to some remote mountain villages to distribute emergency shelters. Had I not already bought flight tickets home in a few weeks (and depleted my budget for the trip!), I probably would have accepted their invitation to join them...

In the past two days I have spent more hours on a bus than off a bus. But just this morning I finally arrived back in Bangkok, where I intend to meet Dave at a guesthouse on Khao San in a few minutes. It has been four months since we've traveled together, and I think we are both looking forward to concluding this trip in the way that we started it. We have talked about going north to Chang Mai, but we'll see what happens. After Dave flies home on 2 Dec, I plan to make a brief visit to Laos before my return on 17 Dec.

Goodbye to Nepal

Since returning from the Everest Trek, I honestly haven't been too busy. My first goal was to recover and relax a little, starting out in the town of Pokhara, just south of the Annapurna mountain range and to the west of Kathmandu. I was still undecided at this point whether to try to fit in another trek, and after a few days relaxing out by the lake in Pokhara, I made my final decision not to try it, as it would have been an intense hike to fit into my schedule.

In Pokhara I coincidentally ended up at the same hotel as Nir, and Israeli friend I had hiked with in the Everest region. We spent a week in Pokhara reading, relaxing and just hanging out around town. I often went for an afternoon run up around the north end of the lake, out of the tourist region of the town. Looking back, it's probably best that I didn't begin a trek in the Annapurnas because a big snowstorm would have stranded me along with the 400 other trekkers for a few days near Manang. The same storm also took the lives of 17 French climbers and Sherpa porters attempting one of the peaks in the region.

I returned to Kathmandu and decided to hang around until my Uncle Galen would be passing through on a trip at the beginning of November. I hadn't seen a familiar face during the last 3 months and the thought of getting to spend some time with a family member was a wonderful treat. So I decided to wait there until he arrived, then head off to Calcutta overland.

While in Kathmandu, I spent a lot of time (again) doing nothing to adventurous, continuing with the running and reading and meeting new friends. I happened to meet four other friends for the Everest trek during this time including Pat, Matt & Tim who had recently came back from a tour in Tibet. After three months of a vegetarian diet, I decided to start eating a little meat again when we went to the Everest Steak house one night, where the menu offers huge steaks for about $3!

I also had the privilege of getting to know some of the local shop owners in Thamel, especially one family who ran one near my hotel. Nepal has a festival about every other week, and one evening they invited me a night of dancing out in the courtyard between their houses. During this festival the streets were decorated with "Christmas" lights and everyone was excited about the events going on around them... I felt honored to be at the party, meeting more local families and neighborhood leaders.

As the time approached to connect with Galen, I met Steve from Conestoga, PA, who was spending some time in Nepal helping out local church efforts. We spent a few days together, both happy to meet someone new and to talk some American English. On Saturday morning we went to a Nepali church in the Kathmandu valley and had the opportunity to meet some more local people.

I spent a wonderful evening with Galen and his friend Steve from India and then headed off the next day for Calcutta by land. I was mainly going to Calcutta to save money on a flight to Bangkok, but I also had a personal interest in seeing the city that my parents had visited for the Mennonite World Conference in 1997. I knew the overland route might be painful, but the rewards would make it the right decision.

So on Sunday night, I began my last long haul of this year-long journey. I left Kathmandu on an overnight bus, arriving at the border early morning. The bus was a little behind schedule (which is not usual) and I almost missed the train to Calcutta. Luckily I met a female traveler from Hong Kong who was able to go in the shorter women's line and buy us two tickets. I usually take second class sleeper cars, but today they were full, meaning the only way to get to Calcutta without waiting 24 hour for the next train was to sit on hard, wooden benches for the next 20.

All in all, it was definitely worth it, costing me only $7 to make the entire 36-hour journey from Kathmandu to Calcutta to save $100 on a flight and getting a quick glimpse of a new city. I've spent the last two days here walking around, struck by the many colonial remnants of the British presence here and the sporadic churches and missionary schools, which didn't seem at this density in the places I had traveled through in northern India. I also had a brief visit to Mother Theresa's orphanage, which was a highlight of my time here.

Tomorrow I will fly to Bangkok and after spending a few days there, head over for Cambodia where I will connect with some friends and run the half marathon on November 20th. And then in two more weeks after that I'll fly to LAX.

Living Like a Refugee

On the morning of 26 December 2004, the biggest earthquake in 40 years struck unexpectedly off the coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The shifting of tectonic plates miles beneath the ocean?s surface triggered a massive displacement of water, and a series of giant waves began to spread rapidly across the Indian Ocean. Within a half hour, the tsunami?s 20-50 foot waves completely engulfed the coastal areas of northern Sumatra. As millions of people around the world were wrapping up Christmas celebrations with family and friends, this unexpected series of events left 232,000 people dead and many more without food, water, and shelter.

At the time, I was enjoying a relaxing evening at the home of a missionary couple in Cusco, Peru. Internet reports were still sketchy, but it seemed that this disaster would have a substantial long-term impact on that part of the world. Although Indonesia was not in my travel plans at the time, over the course of the next months I kept considering the possibility of visiting the affected areas, and volunteering for a longer period of time.

Exactly 10 months after the tsunami hit, I arrived in Aceh (pronounced ?ahh-chey?). Although coastlines across the region were affected, the northern capital city of Banda Aceh was by far dealt the hardest blow. On my first afternoon here, I spent several hours walking around the neighborhood where I would be working. Once a fairly wealthy area of town, nearly every house was now reduced to rubble. In many cases, only the foundations remain, which serve as a convenient, cleared area for residents to pitch their UN-issued refugee tents. Others, unwilling to give up so easily, are still living amidst their half-destroyed walls, with scraps of tin placed overhead to keep the rain out. And still others had long since left the area, the constant reminder of their loss too much to bear.

Walking around that day, the burden of what I was seeing was almost too much. I had only arrived a few hours earlier, but had already heard a handful of heartbreaking stories from the welcoming residents. A young teenager who had been swept away by the wave, miraculously survived by clinging to a tree, and returned to his home to find the rest of his family dead. Another middle-aged man who saw the wave coming, managed to find safety, and now lives in a make-shift shelter with his one remaining family member, a 6 yr old son. This is a city where 90,000 people lost their lives, so everyone has a story. And those that did manage to survive often found that they had lost everything else. All within several hours on an otherwise normal Sunday morning.

After a disaster of such magnitude, it is clear that the people of Banda Aceh needed (and still need) outside help. But what is the best way to help people in situations like this? Where do you begin? In what has been described as one of the most massive relief efforts of the century, supplies began to pour in and various NGO?s from around the world began to converge on the province of Aceh. Each with its own area of expertise, they quickly began to provide clean drinking water, distribute food, set up temporary shelters, etc. Although the aid that was provided was absolutely essential, the process was unfortunately fraught with miscommunication, corruption, and insensitivity to the local community. Not doubt the coordination required for such an effort is immensely challenging. Yet many Acehnese still talk sadly about the crates of donated relief supplies that remain at ports in Jakarta and Medan, stalled indefinitely by political bureaucracy and mismanagement.

After communication with several different groups involved with relief work in Aceh, I was connected with a Korean agency called Frontiers. It is a small, Christian organization that focuses on peacebuilding, particularly in areas of natural disaster. One of the projects that they are working on currently is the construction of a ?Peace House? for orphans and the handicapped of the community. Our team of volunteers consists of around a dozen people, from Indonesia, East Timor, Korea, Germany, and the United States (myself). Like the other organizations offering assistance here, it is a far from perfect program. Communication is often challenging, the vision feels at times vague, and progress is painstakingly slow. But overall it feels like a good fit.

Frontiers takes a different approach to relief work than many other NGO?s. Based on a biblical example, they make it a priority to live in community with the people they are serving. For our work in Aceh, this means living in similar conditions to those that have lost everything from the tsunami. At night, we sleep on wooden platforms in a cramped UN refugee tent, slapping persistently at mosquitos. Meals are prepared over a small portable stove and quickly devoured while sitting in a circle on the floor. Like our neighbors, we retrieve drinking water from the large orange tanks provided by the government of Kuwait. And after a hot day of work, water is drawn from the well and an awkward bucket bath follows. The conditions are definitely challenging. Meanwhile, looking down the street I can see a caravan of shiny black SUV?s, each representing different international relief organizations, returning to their nice offices in the suburbs.

In only two weeks of being here, I can already notice the benefits of such an approach. While locals refer to some of the other NGO?s with a certain degree of contempt and suspicion, it seems that our name is widely respected within the community. The people here don?t need internationals to come and flaunt their wealth, reminding them yet again of what they don?t have. They don?t need shortsighted visions for rebuilding, that throw money around and then within a few weeks are gone. What the locals here desire is solidarity; people who are willing to come live with them, listen to them, and work with them. Relief work is more than providing emergency supplies and meeting immediate needs. It is a long, painstaking process.

In the past year, I have had the opportunity to meet a variety of missionaries, service workers, and other internationals living in communities around the world. In conversations with these committed individuals, several themes have begun to emerge. In most situations, I find that what is lacking within mission and service organizations around the world is not financial resources, or more opportunities for locations to serve. We life in a suffering world with countless needs, and certainly it takes money to fund the ambitious programs that are needed. But the vast majority of the time, the missing ingredient is quite simply found in the human resources department. It?s easy to find people able to open a checkbook. What?s not so common are people who are willing to make other forms of sacrifice, particularly when they involve a longer term commitment.

In many ways this seems an appropriate way to wrap up the trip. I will not say that living in these conditions has been particularly easy, particularly at first. Yet during the past year, I have witnessed people in many countries living their entire lives under similar circumstances, and it is only fitting that I should experience it as well. To be completely honest, with each passing day I find the conditions of life here a little easier to handle. Gradually, life is reduced to the things that are truely important, and I'm finding that the list is much smaller than I once thought. Food, shelter, relationships, faith... Beyond the basics, contentment becomes entirely a state of mind.

Progress on the orphange is slowly coming along. Last week we had a ribbon-cutting cermony for the new toilets, and our current focus is on the wooden paneling that covers the interior. Taking it one step at a time, I am constantly reminded of the need to focus on the process, as opposed to structural perfection or approaching deadlines. Without a doubt, there are easier ways to build a house, and living conditions that are far more comfortable. But I remain grateful for the challenges of this experience, and the learning opportunities that it has provided.

My current plan is to spend approximately two more weeks here in Banda Aceh, and then take a ferry to Malaysia and back up to Thailand. Around the end of the month, it looks as though my path will cross with Dave's again, and we hope to spend a week or so together before his flight back to the U.S. It will be good to swap stories, reflect on the adventures of the past year, and support each other in anticipation of the return home. Which believe it or not, is now little more than a month away...