Where have I been?

Hmmm… more than a month since my last blog posting. Have I stopped doing voluntary work?

Well, no. I am still actively involved with Buddies of Ipoh. But the things that I do are getting more and more routine. Less of those complicated cases I used to get back then. Main thing is probably because my fellow volunteers who attend clinic duties are assigning less clients under me, because I already have a long list of clients.

As for my old clients, either they are doing considerably okay now (okay enough to be independent) or in the case of some of them, they have gone missing from my radar.

And so my routine continues… clinic duty in Ipoh once a fortnight. Clinic duty in Taiping once every 2 months. Home visits when necessary. Monthly board meetings. Making sure the children under our education sponsorship programme get their monthly bus fares/pocket money disbursed on time. Talks/exhibitions when requested.

Once in a while there may something non-routine. Like last Tuesday I was in Penang, invited by USM’s Women’s Development Research Centre (KANITA) as one of the panellists for their International Women’s Day programme, with the theme, “Inspiring Change”.

The other 2 panellists were teachers from Sekolah Kebangsaan Lemoi, Cameron Highlands. It was interesting listening to the challenges they had to face being the first (and so far the only) 2 female teachers at the school, away from all the facilities that we have been taking for granted.

It was an eye-opener for me, and being the “adventurous” type, I would love to one day visit the school.

Hopefully my sharing on what I do as a volunteer with Buddies was also an eye-opener to the audience.

When a child is deprived of treatment…

I was on clinic duty again today. Nowadays I no longer worry about parking at the hospital as I no longer drive my car there. All I have to do is drive to the velodrome, park my car there and get a ride in the shuttle van provided by the hospital for free.

When I got to the hospital, I was told by the nurse that there’d be 2 new cases to be referred to Buddies today.

The first case referred was that of a young guy in his twenties, very skinny and with a CD4 of only 4. He looked like he had given up hope. But he was accompanied by his sister, who seemed very supportive of him and from what I was told, his father and a few other siblings also knew of his condition and they were all supportive as well. Hopefully with the kind of support that he is getting, he will adhere to all his treatments and get better soon.

After I handed over the guy’s file back to the nurses, the staff nurse came to the counselling room to ask me to stay on a wee bit longer if possible although the other new case she had wanted to refer to me wasn’t there yet. The new case was that of a 13 year old girl and the staff nurse thought the family needs the support of Buddies. I was told that the girl’s HIV status had not been disclosed to the family yet.

I waited and waited, nobody was referred. By 12.30 pm I went over to the doctor’s room to see the staff nurse to find out if I should wait any longer. The staff nurse had just got off the phone with the mother of the 13 year old girl. The mother, who had given all sorts of excuses before this (this was the 3rd time the nurse set up an appointment for the girl, she defaulted all 3 times), said she wasn’t feeling well and thus, decided not to bring her daughter for the appointment. When the nurse told her that they needed to inform them of the girl’s ailment, the mother said she already knew what the girl has. By the sound of it, the mother must have known all along that she (the mother) too had been infected by her late husband but simply never bothered to get treatment.

From what the staff nurse told me, the girl’s father had been a patient at the ID clinic before but he too always defaulted his appointments. He died a few years ago. The mother however, never went to the ID clinic to get tested.

Our main concern is, the 13 year old hiv+ girl has a younger sibling aged 5 who has not been tested.

We’re not really sure why the mother didn’t bother to bring her child for treatment. If she wasn’t bothered about her own wellbeing, she should at least give her daughter a chance to get proper treatment. But she could have problems of her own. Being a single mother to 7 children is definitely not easy. Maybe she has financial problems and couldn’t afford the transport to bring her child to the hospital?

My worry is that she may think those with HIV don’t have much hope, and thus, there’s no point getting treatment at the hospital.

For the moment there’s not much I can do. Buddies don’t have the authority to simply go to the homes of PLHIVs without their permission. But I do believe health inspectors have the right to visit them at home if they don’t come for their hospital appointments. From my conversation with the doctor and the staff nurse today, I understand that would be their next course of action.

I told the nurse to just give me a call anytime whenever she needs me to help out with this case.

Phnom Penh: Day 3

For day 3, we decided to visit the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre. As we were budget travellers, and as recommended by the owner of our guesthouse, we decided to take the tuk tuk. From what I’ve been reading online, a tuk tuk would usually take about 1 1/2 hours to get to Phnom Tamao. But ours were rather slow, it took slightly over an hour to get there.

But got there we finally did, bought our tickets, paid for a guide (thank God we did, otherwise we wouldn’t know where to head as the place covered a HUGE area).

We spent about 2 hours at Phnom Tamao, and then another 2 hours on the tuk tuk heading back to Phnom Penh and had late lunch at D’Nyonya. As we were leaving Phnom Penh the next day, after lunch we had a quick souvenir shopping spree at the Central Market.

Later that night, we decided to watch a Cambodian Cultural Show held at the National Museum area.

Immediately after the show, we had dinner at a halal restaurant nearest to the museum, Warung Bali (an Indonesian restaurant).

And that, ended day 3 of our visit to Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh: Day 2

Day 2 started off with ATV/Quad bike activity…

Done with our ATV ride, we went to visit the nearby Killing Fields. A depressing place, but I would still recommend to tourists heading to Phnom Penh.

After lunch at D’Nyonya (street 126 near the Central Market) and prayers back at the guesthouse, we took the tuk tuk to the next destination, the Royal Palace.

Going back to the guesthouse after the visit, we decided to walk slowly along the riverside.

For dinner, this time we decided to try out Mamak’s Corner at Street 114.

And that, ended day 2.

Phnom Penh: Day 1

Remember I managed to grab one of AA’s RM0 seats for my trip to HCMC in 2011? (Of course I still had to pay for the airport and whatever other taxes.) Well, I continue to wait for such offers to come and grab them whenever I can. I do need a break from time to time from work, be it income-generating or voluntary work.

So yes, I managed to grab another one last year, this time to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the trip was just recently from 20th to 23rd January 2014.

I will let the pictures tell most of the story…

We arrived Phnom Penh airport in the morning, and a tuk tuk driver was already waiting outside the airport for us. I had already earlier arranged with the owner of our accommodation to arrange for a tuk tuk to transport us direct to the guesthouse, so we didn’t have to worry about getting lost.

We arrived the guesthouse before 9am…

Since it was still too early for us to check in, we just left our luggage at the guesthouse and off we went on foot to nearby attractions. First up was the National Museum…

…followed by a visit to Wat Phnom…

Lunch was at the nearest halal restaurant to our guesthouse, ie Malaysia Restaurant.

We then checked in to our guesthouse, freshened up, performed our prayers, and then out we went again, this time for a pre-arranged cycling tour of the villages around Silk Islands. We had to board the ferry first to get across the river.

Then we started cycling…

The half way stop was a place where we were shown the process involved in silk weaving.

Before cycling back to the pier, we visited a nearby temple.

We boarded the ferry just in time for sunset. So the cycling package was sort of inclusive of a sunset cruise…

For dinner, we decided to try out D’Nyonya Restaurant.

That ended day 1 in Phnom Penh.