Alive and... almost TOO well?

One of the common sentiments I get mailed/emailed quite frequently is to “take care”, “be safe”, or “stay healthy”. I suppose that such comments could refer to any number of different levels of being that I can experience here. One is certainly a deeper level of mental health. Some of my deeper (AKA rambling) entries and emails to folks have embodied the various stops along to journey of mental fulfillment in such a new stage of my life. Overall this is going well, as each day may bring a new challenge but accomplishment as well.

However, there is also the more obvious view of the request to “please be well” which of course refers to my physical health. I can confidently say (I’m knocking on wood…) that I have rarely felt better. For one thing, my general health is great and it is only improving. Definitely due in part to the food: the diet here is far healthier than in the United States. There is more fruit and vegetables, and obviously no fast food. The food is salty, but I sweat such a comical amount that it is of no consequence; I could probably eat a brick of sodium and barely notice. I am also much more aware of my portions. This is partially due to the fact that meals here are eaten in smaller bowls of personal rice which you then add to by taking food a spoonful at a time from communal dishes in the center of the table. I really like this system both for the social feel of it, and that rather than having a plate with massive portions that you gorge yourself on you just measure everything you are taking as you do it. And being huge and white, I often monitor myself even further in not overeating. Though that is sometimes dangerous to overdo because if I don’t eat enough my family thinks I don’t like the cooking. Which is quite ridiculous considering my host mother is a crazy-good cook and makes hands-down the best food I’ve had here. Any snacking I do is typically either mangos, or rice with bananas boiled inside palm leaves (these are called ansom jaet… and let me tell you, they are sort of like small, sticky windows into Nirvana. I am convinced my leaving in two years will cause a massive crash in this market.). If there is one thing I have difficulty with here it is the lack of lean sources of protein. Here the meat is good and I don’t really mind about the closeness of the slaughterhouse (literally… my dad is one of the local butchers) but they don’t let a bit of it go to waste so I try to stick to fish and some of the leaner pork.

TANGENT: vegetarianism is cool, and I did it myself for several months and may do it again at some point. But I have nothing but respect for the way these people eat meat. They life with their animals and take care of them until their time has come, and do everything themselves… and waste nothing. Not to mention their animals roam free and are protected from predators and generally have a pretty decent life, you know, for a duck or cow or whatever said beastie might be. A lot more than can be said about featherless chickens grown in test tubes in many countries, and I find there is quiet dignity to it.

Also, I have been exercising like mad man. This has various causes and effects for me. For one, it has helped to pass the time. You can NOT sleep past 6 where I am, and I am basically up at 5 every day. Also while the middle of the day is brutally hot, things like yoga/calisthenics are pretty fun if in some sort of shade… and I’m sweating a river, so why not. Free time is something that you have in a lifestyle such as this (though it is notable that I don’t have a family/house to upkeep/farm to tend, so that helps). Also, its an amazing outlet for stress. I always have known this from playing sports, but seriously, now I’m an endorphine addict. When I was sick last week and couldn’t run I was a moody, bratty kid and not in the mood to be messed with, haha. Exercise is also just a necessity of my transportation here. Being forbidden to ride motos and having been given several examples of how you can’t rely on taxis at all, all my motion around this fine country is basically walking, running and biking. A few weeks ago I discovered I am capable of covering the 25 miles of “road” from my house to the district town by bike. I would say I “mastered the ride” (my most recent one was 1 hour 50 minutes, which is faster than my co-teacher gets there on his moto) but frankly it depends a lot on the weather. I got cocky one time and it rained… yeah, a 3ish hour ride and 15 kilometers of inch deep mud kicked the pride directly out of me.

And as for the tropical illnesses, I have been blissfully avoidant of them. Though as I told my medical officer, I’ve been sort of waiting for a malaria/dengue/food poisoning triple hammer to fall directly on my head every time I think “I haven’t been really sick recently”. Karma did actually sort of get to me slightly last week. With symptoms I won’t go into, I talked to my medical officer about being sick and she sent me to Svay Rieng Provincial Town to get some tests run. It turns out I had amoebic dysentery, a name which practically shouts “a good time for all”. And it is. My doctor said I probably got them when I was sick during training, and they have been preparing for a military coup of my digestive tract since then. The local lab tech was pretty straight forward, and told me “you have some of these bacteria, some of these bacteria, and you have a lot of amoebas” (well, actually he told me I had a lot of ‘trichomonas enforme mobiles’ because the results were in French. What was it like having a medical conversation over bodily functions between a Cambodian and an American in French, you might ask? Oodles of fun, that’s what it was like). My medical officer congratulated me particularly on the phrase “a lot of amoebas” because, apparently, when a Cambodian says “a lot of amoebas” that means basically “all the amoebas in the known universe.” But as Emily told me “I always thought amoebas were the cutest of the intestinal parasites” and I tend to agree that they beat out blood flukes and hook worms on the cute meter. And they were all mine! I named all the boys “Mobi” and all the girls “Les” from their French name, and to be honest it was kind of bittersweet to nuke my little buddies with meds earlier this week… but I take comfort from the fact that I’m sure they are in the great Petri dish in the sky.

...what was I talking about… oh, right, health. Yes, I feel good. And assuming the water buffalo don’t choose to stampede, I’m not worried about the local wildlife. The snakes in the area are all nonpoisonous from what I’ve seen (my neighbor caught a 4 foot one with his hands the other day, one of the coolest things I’ve seen someone do, you could practically smell raw testosterone in the air). Also scorpions are supposedly painful but aren’t dangerous, and I’ve been bit by basically every other bug and it seems to not do too much. Just today a jumping spider bit me for basically no reason while I was playing guitar. Poor little guy, maybe the fact I have arm and leg hair confused him.

And between working out for probably 2 hours everyday, drastically changing my diet, living near the equator, rarely using motorized transport, being under wild shifts of stress and mood, and of course the microscopic dance party in my abdomen, I’ve lost a lot of weight. I found a scale for the first time in almost 4 months at a local NGO the other day and I’m down about 35 pounds. It’s like things were before my body found out what college was!

So worry not about my health, good friends! In the words of my fellow volunteer, the illustrious Conor Cronin, we are going to be quite “svelte” by Close of Service.