there is a cow outside my window who every half hour or so lets out this ungodly sound from deep within her belly. it pretty much sums up how im feeling at the moment.. ive been sick since friday night...its now sunday morning. it started with a fever that made my body super hot but my feet freezing. the frozen feet made my legs cramp up and the rest of me feel absolutely miserable. that went on all night until i managed to get up at five and ask steve to find some pain killers.
saturday morning we had to move out of our bedroom and into a bungalow since our room was reserved for someone else. i managed to crawl out of bed and into the shower...just in time for the diarreah to hit. ill spare you the details since it aint pretty. since then ive been here in a bungalow...thankfully with toilet and shower..spending my time either in bed or on the toilet. this is the best ive felt since it all started and im still in total agony unless im doped up on painkillers. even writing this is using up more energy that i can actually muster right now.
steve is keeping the kids away as much as he can but every so often i get a very chatty visitor who wants to 'help' by either drinking the sprite that supposedly settles sore tummies...or by applying lots of powder in my armpits. i can cope for a couple of minutes but then very quickly i need the silence again.
according to the locals the thing to eat when you are sick is a rice soup called 'bobor'. im pretty sure it was invented by the khmer rouge. its a bowl of whiteish, hot water. if you drag your spoon deep enough you will find some rice at the bottom. thats it. not even salt! so in order to please the cambodian gastro gods ive eaten some this morning... and hoping to be rewarded shortly.
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it is now wednesday night...and im happy to report that im feeling well again. honestly...that bug really hit hard. usually im over it within 24 hours. thankfully steve was able to look after the clan and i could just hide away in our room. (mental note, be extra nice to steve this week!)
we leave 'mango trees guest house' tomorrow. weve been here about 11 days or so. longer than we expected...but its been really good. perfect place to hang out while the chicken pox did their work. weirdly enough ocea didnt catch them as well so we still have that to look forward to.
the best thing about staying in one place long enough is that you can really get to know the different characters. get a feel for what the place is really like. it suits me more than being on the go constantly. not that its really realistic to be on the go when you have little ones tagging along anyways.
the two people that stand out from our time here are Abed and Ani. Abed is from Pakistan. he is best friends with the owners of this place. so he is the current overseer. really he doesnt do much at all. but he is such a likeable character. he would be the ideal uncle. he spends ages with the kids. playing little games. happy to 'eat' the little objects that the girls have 'cooked' in their 'cafe' for him. he loves to go hunting for frogs with Time and tells her he is going to cook them for her dinner. he is very softly spoken and has a real twinkle in his eye. steve and i have really enjoyed getting to know him and he has lots of stories about being an engineer in pakistan, afghanistan and laos. im pretty excited because in about an hour steve and i are going downstairs to share a meal with Abed and his wife. its ramadan so dinner has to be pretty late.
Ani is a local girl who works here. Shes 21. super sweet. her english is basic but still so much better than the rest of the workers so that has helped forge a bit of a friendship. we were talking tonight and she seems really keen to work for us if we move down to kampot. at the moment she works six days a week. very long hours. she makes $80 a month. most of it goes to her family. a little bit for her. she laughed when i asked if she had been able to save any of it. ani says that if she works for us she would really like to learn english....and learn to swim.
while i was spending time on the toilet this week steve went along to a playgroup that i had found out about. he came back really excited. kampot is a really small town...and there are hardly any foreign kids here since there are no english speaking schools. as it turns out though a few babies were born last year and there are now a handful of toddlers. so a little playgroup was set up by an aussie chick. i went along today and sure enough. its a really nice group. its located at a place called 'epic arts'. this english couple run a NGO that teaches dance and drama to disabled cambodians. they have a little cafe in town that generates a bit of money....(despite the fact that i cant possibly see how anyone could make money in such a quiet town like kampot).
making connections like these make it easier to imagine living here. it distracts from the lack of hygiene and poverty that is constantly making me glance back at my comfort zone. steve is so keen to make this our home. he loves it. happy as a bird. its got everything he wants and more. at the first sound of thunder he will exclaim: "is this the best country in the world or WHAT??" things that he used to mock. like riding a bike thats not going down a hill, is all of a sudden deemed acceptable. india hardly gets a mention these days. he's already got a very long mental list of hills to climb. old buildings to explore. and fishing equipment needed to provide daily meals.
like ive said before...i have so many opposing thoughts and feelings. im realising that we probably need to find a place to call our own pretty soon. being on the road makes it too hard to avoid gluten. no matter how hard we try...its just not possible to keep Time away from the stuff... so even based on that its pretty crucial we find somewhere to live that means we can cook our own food. BUT...just the thought of entering into domestic captivity again makes my soul hyperventilate.
i headed off this morning to the market to see what its like and what sort of stuff i would be able to buy from there. in order to get anywhere from this guest house you have to travel along a dirt road i have come to call the 'uterus' road. at the end of every tuktuk ride i automatically look down on the floor and check if my uterus is lying there. the road is just so freaking bumpy!! well.. thankfully i managed to keep it intact this morning...and got to the market in one piece. because it had rained last night the market was incredibly muddy. i had to continually watch my feet so that i didnt slip..although i did come close a number of times. i was the only white person there. people seemed intersted but not pushy in any way. i tried to look around as much as i could and tried to picture myself getting our daily supplies. if you ever run out of bananas or miniature shrimps...this is where you need to go.
i need to finish up since the battery is about to die. tomorrow we head back to Phnom Penh. the girls are so excited to see their friends at Narin again. im interested to see what the city looks like now that i have been out in the country for two weeks. at this stage im assuming we are heading back down here to live. hopefully we can squeeze in one more adventure before we do. but who knows...everyday brings new stories and ideas....
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