So while all of that was going on, Interlashional, Jarnah-face, "emily-with-a-T", and I wandered around looking, listening, and experiencing the event. Ryan had much more to worry about than we did, because they threw him to the lions of management, and asked him to make sure the media was all worked out. This seems ok, but if you consider the fact that they had multi-lingual, simultaneous translation, and were not sure which audio to feed into the stationary video camera, then you being to see why our dear friend might have been slightly stressed. The best part is that all the tech guys spoke only khmer. Ha! Neissan Beshrati ended up manning the stationary video-camera, which was fitting on so many levels. You see, prior to the conference, Neissan had some tasks and assignments as a volunteer, which he executed perfectly, and managed to complete before the conference started. He raved and ranted about his delegatory ability, and was excited to spend his time simply enjoying the conference. Little did he know, his name had been penciled in as cameraman all along. :)
We listened to the talks, noted and quoted, and looked around for interesting stories. I became involved in a great one myself: you see, some of the malaysians decided to buy some deep-fried bugs. They brought them over to the conference, and half-offered, half-dared people they met to eat them. Also, many of us were making a quick trip outside the gates of the compound to buy sweet, sweet sugar-cane juice from the local street-vendors. Now, I'm personally not sure which street food, or combination of street-foods caused the sickness, but sickness happened. Both Temily and I (and I think Ryan) got some serious stomach bugs. Temily got it the worst, but 3/4 of the media people were out on the second day of the conference, because of reckless eating. Of course, all it took was a few trips to the porcelain throne for us to recover (except temily), and life was back on track. While we were gone, some continued to draw inspiration and wisdom from the words of the speakers, while others found it a suitable time to engage in extremely deep meditation sessions.
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| From Cambodge |
So deep.
Either way, the conference was soon over, and that's when I engaged in some serious writing and compiling. We had managed to find some svet interviewers in other languages, so all I had to do was collect their work, and get ready to type. Luckily again, temily decided that it would be her job to type up the interviews, so all I was left with was the beautification of notes into happy little sentences. This went well, and my assistant continued to assist throughout. Let's be honest, I did very little actual work work. Still, I felt like I got something accomplished, and BWNS was happy, so overall it was a success.
I had to tell work that I would be absent on monday because there was no late-night bus from Battambang back. So Sunday morning I just told them the truth "I have to write a report for a conference". They took it pretty well, considering I basically just asked for a day off with no real medical condition/family emergency to back it up. What did I do on sunday? Why, eat chocolate-covered-banana-pancakes of course! I also got to see the Battambang Baha'i centre and had time to chat with some friends. I caught the bus home at 2:30PM, and somehow managed to sit beside the one Khmer guy with excellent conversational English! So good. We started talking about the Khmer rouge - he was 13-15 while everything was tense, and he recounted tales of people being conscripted in the morning, armed in the afternoon, and returning to fight at night! He also said that the 'government' and the Khmer rouge would do the same thing. He was happy because somehow, all of his family survived. Then we talked about the Baha'i faith for a bit, and he told me he knew a bah'i in Battambang. Turns out, he took English lessons from a guy named June Libertad (whom I know) and he was now working as an English teacher!So my new English teacher friend and I exchanged numbers and promised to be friends forever...I even shared my chocolate wafers with him.
Wait wait wait!
I'm forgetting one of the funnest stories. Rewind to the sunday night: Everyone's back at their hotels, it's about 11 or 11:30PM. I get a call. It's Prema telling me that someone's bleeding at the Kehmera Hotel, and she needs me to get over there and check it out. ME? Why? Not only do I know nothing about Battambang, I also have no transport, AND sketchy-at-best first-aid skills! Nonetheless, she sounded frantic, so I made my way down there on a moto, and proceeded to investigate the situation. The youths from Thailand had been out for an evening swim in the hotel pool, and one of them had taken a vigorous dive, which eventually led the clipping of his chin on a slope at the bottom of the pool. Lucky for him, they were traveling with a nurse, who cleaned up the wound, got a cold compress, and told him to hold his skin together. He was going to need a few stitches. I was relieved to find no pressing emergency, but confused when my transport was refused. They really wanted to take him in a car! I manged to convince them that he could survive the moto-ride to the 24hr clinic, and off we went. The guys name was Warren..I think? He was pretty relaxed about the whole thing, and was like "yeah, when my mom gets here she'll be like 'again!?'" Apparently he's pretty accident-prone.
We made it to a sketch clinic, where the doctor spoke no english, and we spoke no khmer, but, by exemplary use of non-verbal communication, and the obvious gash on his chin, we were able to get he doctor to stitch him up. I stayed in the operating room long enough to make sure he pulled out the right medical implements, and then we waited outside.The young doctor came through for us, and stitched Warren up well. in only a few hours of knowing each other, he'd decided to grow a chinstrap just like mine!
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| From Cambodge |
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