Poop

Most of my friends who post about poop on any social media network have recently had a child and are dealing with more poop than they know what to do with. Well, I have not had a baby, but Cambodia has made sure that I am experiencing poop in ways I have never dealt with before.

1. The first full weekend we were here I experienced my first bout of diarrhea. Likely caused by some food that I had eaten the day before. It lasted about 36 hours, which meant I missed the first day of data collection for Mother's Heart because I needed to be near a toilet!
2. The end of our second week I went to Siem Reap Province to see the Temples of Ankgor. We took a night bus, arriving at 5:30 am and spent about eight hours trekking around the temples in the heat of the day. As the day progress I was feeling increasingly worse, and almost vomited while we were in the last temple. I made it back to the hotel feeling overheated and not right in my tummy. I took a shower to cool down and then it began. I started projectile vomiting, like there was a monster inside me trying to get out. I imagine the scene would have been appropriate in a Men in Black movie or something of the like. Next the diarrhea creeped up on me, and I was in bed for the next 30 hours, while my travel mates continued to explore Siem Reap and enjoy the pool at the hotel. I was happy to have a clean bathroom and a comfortable bed to spend my sick time. I was really nervous about the night bus back, but somehow my system knew I couldn't handle anymore. However, Christie developed the same symptoms half way into the ride, and spent two hours on the floor in the bus bathroom vomiting. We decided it must have been a viral infection, because we ate similar things before I got sick, so not the food.
3. The infamous Shitty Canal. This is not the actual name of this canal of human excrement, but was passed along to us by Katrina, who said one of her English friends calls it this. So "Shitty Canal" must be said with a proper English accent. This canal is basically filled with sewage water, I am not sure how it gets there, if it is stagnant or moving, I have never been near one long enough to make many observations, and I don't really care to. There are many shitty canals throughout the city, and they all smell something near death. The best is when it smells like you are near a shitty canal and there is not one in site to escape from. My favorite experience with a shitty canal occurred with one that is large enough to be considered a shitty river. We were on our way out to start interviews in the factory district and were, of course, in a traffic jam on the bridge crossing the shitty river. 

   

   This photo was taken from the tuk tuk in the area we were performing interviews. If it were an aerial view you would see the shitty canal we were driving along (it is no fun to drive ALONG side one, we usually simply cross one via a bridge and that is plenty of exposure), but the photo does show shitty water, coming out of the pipe in the wall into the shitty canal.

4. The bathroom connected to the room that I am living in, smelled like something curled up and died in the drain. There are also several parasite looking bugs that like to swim up from the drain anytime there is water one the floor. There happens to be water on the floor frequently because the bathroom is a toilet, sink, and shower head. There is no segregation between the three, when you shower, the entire bathroom gets wet. I was in search of a sandbag or something heavy to cover the drain, to try to prevent the smell of sewage water from coming up, but was unsuccessful. Last week the smell intensified, it was a sour sewage smell (similar to the shitty canal) and was strong enough it was creeping out of the bathroom into my bedroom despite the door being closed at all times. I had a baggy but couldn't find anything heavy to put into it to seal off the drain, then the lightbulb turned on, I have water. Since covering the drain with a baggy filled with water at all times, except when showering the bathroom smells normal, even pleasant with the air freshener.
5. There are many unpleasant smells in this city, sometimes identifiable, but often not. Malaika and I came up with a rule last week that we live by here in Phnom Penh. When you smell something that is pleasant, like food cooking, a flower, or some other sweet something, you must enjoy it for the one whiff you got that was nice. This rule stands because every time we have taken a second large whiff of the sweet something (because we so enjoy the smell of something pleasant), it instead becomes a large inhale of the smell of death (garbage, human excrement, etc...). So, we enjoy the pleasant smell for the one whiff we got. We named this the Double Whiff Rule and has been added to our survival tips for Cambodia.