Irony

Erin here. So Cambodia. I can't believe you have come and gone. It seems like yesterday when I was planning my trip, planning what to do about my daughter, what about my work here at home? Well, I'm home. Funny how things didn't fall apart while I was gone. Things are actually amazing. Work is amazing, in the 6+ years I have been on staff here at Buckhead Church, this is the first Easter weekend that I have not been extremely anxious and ~ Ill admit ~ stressed out!
Funny huh? God is good like that. He has a sense of humor and he is always listening.

Remember what I wrote a few posts ago, that I was afraid to go and really see people who had been trafficked? I talk about it here at home and fight it and all that goes with that, but going to a place where I will actually see it made me think of what it might be like for someone who supports AIDS research but then is actually given the opportunity to sit next to someone while they are given the news they have the disease or to sit next to someone with the disease while they are in the hospital?














Well, God showed up in Cambodia in that exact scene. And the person who needed to see the sick with AIDS was me. I have never been in the presence of someone that sick. Someone who is struggling to breath, to eat, or to drink even a tiny bit of water. Someone who is so frail and weak that you cannot imagine how they have any strength at all.

One of the amazing things that CHO does is provide nursing care and food for some of the patients at a government hospital in Poipet. Because we wanted to get a holistic picture of what CHO does, this hospital was on the top of our list of places to visit our first morning on the ground. The hospital, as you can see from below, is not providing the kind of care that these patients deserve. Right now the patients with AIDS and the patients with Tuberculosis SHARE a room! The hospital is a concrete building with no air conditioning, open windows, no sanitation and very very little medical supplies.





























There were 5 women here with AIDS and 2 with TB. The TB patients do wear masks over their faces but seriously they still SHARE a room with women who are extremely sick with AIDS.

Most of the patients here don't have family. Most of them are ostracized from their family and only have the nurses here to care for them. The woman pictured below is an exception. The woman in the green skirt and orange top has her husband to care for her. He was there while we were there, rubbing her arms and legs and caressing her hair. He too has AIDS, but he is healthier than she is so he cares for her. It was a very touching scene, the nurse says he comes often.