year less a day: Day 103 to 104 - Fri Feb 13 and Sat Feb 14

We arrive in Phnom Penh with a few vague plans – we don’t do anything in particular. The days are a mix of this and that.

The city is still hot, and after so many days elsewhere, we really notice the smells of the city, especially the sewers. I’m careful to breathe with my mouth closed, even in the middle of a conversation, so as not to inhale while talking. I hate getting a mouthful of hot sewer smell. It’s almost transcends smell and attains heft and texture.

We go to a blind massage clinic which is not located where the map suggests it will be and we circle the area for a while before finding it. Our masseuses speak impeccable English, mine with a curiously southern-US accent with just a hint of Russian. She's Cambodian, and switches easily back and forth between English and Khmer which, with its b’s and p’s and ng’s, always sounds to me like drops of water hitting a small drum.

Valentines Day comes and goes – on Day 104, CNN plays above the front desk and displays a list of Valentine’s Day top movie rentals. Number 1: The Notebook. Number 2: Sid and Nancy. No word as to how often those two are rented at the same time.

The city is the same, but the prices from just 3 weeks ago have gone up again – everywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent. As with everywhere else in the country, prices are in US dollars, small change is given in Cambodian riel. Every time we eat we get less and less back in return. We talk and walk and figure out our next move. We’ve enjoyed our time here, but we feel like it’s not right to leave without first trading our time or some part of ourselves. We decide that we can at least get organized enough to give blood before leaving.

A poster at the hostel offers a number to call for blood donations at a nearby hospital. On Day 105 the organizer, Isaac, meets us at our hostel around 9:30 am. He’s American, and has been working in Cambodia for several years.

We talk on the walk over to the hospital and he fills us in on blood donations and financial aid in Cambodia. Dengue is a hemorrhagic fever which is very common in Cambodia, with children being especially affected. The kids who catch dengue fever need blood transfusions. “At 3AM, you have 100 kids lined up at the hospital needing blood,” he says. “Their parents bring them from the provinces. Some don’t come to get better. Some fade and don’t make it.”

He works to increase the blood donations at the Kantha Bopha clinic and does various things to help the hospital. “I run a mobile clinic. We have doctors come in from abroad for a few weeks and do a bunch of surgeries,” he says and smiles. “Then they can go home and feel good about it.”

The things he says sound very cynical once they’re written down, but in person he comes across as matter of fact rather than bitter. He’s been in Cambodia for years and is very clear in his opinion on the situation. “Cambodia plays the “poor” angle. It’s not poor. It just got 10 billion dollars in aid. The country is not hurting for cash but the money isn’t going where it belongs.”

Cambodians are generally skeptical about the work he does. “You must be making a lot of money off of this,” they say to him a lot. He earns money through work but not from the tourists. “One guesthouse used to ask me ‘why are you doing this, what do you get out of it? You must be making money off of it.’ She didn’t like me coming and taking guests to donate blood, until one day her kid started hemorrhaging, bleeding from the nose. Then she finally got it.”

Kickbacks abound in Cambodia. Taxi drivers are often paid by tourists to take a tour of orphanages. The orphanage gives a tour, then shows the tourist where it’s possible buy food as a donation. The drivers get a cut - if someone donates six bags of rice, the driver gets to take home one. Drivers approach Isaac sometimes and offer to include the clinic on their tours.

“We could do a tour and start with the blood clinic,” they tell him. For this additional stop, the driver says they would raise the price to 15 dollars for a trip. Isaac says he turns down the offers. “They’re donating and you’re going to charge them twice the regular amount?”

When we arrive at the clinic, another girl is already there, resting up after her donation. Isaac checks to see if she feels queasy - it’s her first time donating blood. “I hate needles,” she says. “I only recently stopped crying at the sight of needles.”

In Canada, blood services checks your iron level by putting a drop or two of your blood into a solution – if it drops below a certain line, you can donate. Here, they take samples of our blood and put it into a kind of manual centrifuge. Pierre’s blood makes the cut, but mine doesn’t so only he’ll be donating today. Afterwards, he hands Pierre a small white bag and a t-shirt. He insists on giving me one as well, although I don’t donate.

Isaac personally invests a lot in getting tourists to help out. Each donation comes with a free t-shirt and free gift bag, as well as the offer of free tours or even free accommodation. “I have people come and crash on my couch – they’re welcome to stay as long as they like.”

True to form, the four of us hang out for a while after the clinic. We head to Evergreen – a coffee shop/clothes store located in an old colonial house a short ride from the clinic. There’s a small orange-tiled pool in the center of the yard, surrounded by lounge chairs.

He introduces us to his kids, which he mentioned to us briefly at the clinic. “I figured why not come to Cambodia, do some work, settle in, adopt a few kids. It’s all good.” His kids paddle in the pool with their yellow arm floaties. They love the water and are as comfortable treading around in it as they are sitting on the grass to play with toys. Love, the two year old boy, kicks around the pool in little circles and doesn’t get out until it’s time to leave, content to amuse himself. Hope, who looks to be around three, is much more active. She’s in and out of the pool, treading laps towards her dad as he talks to her, walking from one end of the pool to the other. They swim with Cambodian kavras (scarves) tied around them like sarongs. Their faces are very serious – they are friendly but don’t waste many smiles on strangers. They’re quiet – we don’t hear them say anything, but they laugh with their dad. Their gentle lopsided grins are the legacy of reconstructed palates.

When Isaac has to head off to rugby practice, we dress the kids and head our separate ways. We check our grab bag to see what we want to bring on the plane with us. Inside is:
- a bag of white sugar (about 1.5 cups)
- a can of condensed milk
- a ramen noodle package
- a box of veggie-flavoured crackers
- a bottle of water
- a set of vitamins and iron pills for Pierre to take for 3 days after his donation

We give the sugar, milk and noodles to a woman we pass along the way. When we get back to the hostel, our tuk tuk is waiting.