Judi's Trip to Kampong Cham Province with her NGO

My NGO is an HIV/AIDS support organization. They primarily work inside government-run OI/ART clinics. In this land of acronyms, you'll be forgiven for not knowing that this stands for 'Opportunistic Infections/Antiretroviral Treatment'. They work in two large clinics, one in Phnom Penh and one in Kampong Cham. I accompanied 3 staff members on a field trip to Kampong Cham this week where they were visiting the district hospitals where they'll be opening two new clinics. I think it's easiest to let the pictures tell the story.

We stopped for lunch coming and going at this road-side restaurant where our staff consumed a lot of food by our lunch-time standards. Lots of rice with every meal!!

This was also the place where the young lady with the live spider came to demonstrate her wares. She was selling the deep-fried version, but in the end I bought a few bananas and we agreed that I would go for the spiders 'next time'.

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The next couple of images were taken at the OI/ART clinic at Kampong Cham.

This clinic is truly free, whereas the one in Phnom Penh is not. They charge enough so that the hospital covers its costs. My NGO has been scrambling to find funding from an outside funder (probably something like USAID) to cover these costs since most of the patients can't afford even the small charges. (Like $2 a consultation or $1.50 for a basic lab test.)

A Note: Blogging is a bit challenging when it comes to downloading and placing photos, so if you're interested to see more of my photos from the trip to Kampong Cham, click through here to Picasa where I've added some explanatory captions.

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This little piggy went to market

While driving in the car, I saw this interesting-looking basket on the back of a 'moto'. Turned out to be a basket full of piglets. This created an hilarious conversation in the car about the English and Khmer words for little pigs. I used my bit of Khmer to tell them that I felt like a piglet with all the rice I had been eating.