Cambodia: Resilience

As my ma would say, it's been 'what I call' one of those weeks;

Easter Sunday spent chocolate-less ironically planning BLS training, resurrection of sorts.

Giardia that kept me awake for 3 nights and exhausted various hotel rooms of toilet paper.
No solids (food as well as stools!) for 48 hours broken only by spending $2.50 on a bar of diary
milk from the local garage. I'm holding on to the promise of 5kg average weight loss (from
giardia not cadburys).

Arguments with drunken hotel owners about being put in a $13 room not $6, (NO AC
PLEASE!!) not one I would have imagined 6 months ago. Resulting in me feigning leaving the
hotel while thousands of miles away my entire family patiently wait after their Easter egg hunt
to skype me and wondering what is keeping me.

Bus breaking down for one hour because it had run out of petrol (who would think about petrol
when providing a transport service?), with the nearest toilet not fit for the purpose,
(I am pretty tolerant in the toilet department but this one defies description in this forum).

Ants in my sealed muesli, I mean if they can get into sealed new packaging what chance do
any of us stand once the damn thing is opened? (no really I ask you!) This I think really got me,
I mean, even Muesli isn't sacred! My Cambodian colleagues inform me that I must build little
food moats, excellent somewhere for the Aedes to breed in then give me Dengue.

Various attempts to collect the correct health data for DFID donors resulting in the Hospital
Administration refusing to deal with me anymore, good work Wilson. And I am funded by URC
anyway, now Alanis Morrisette that is bloody ironic.

Failure to fill out an expenses form correctly despite the tutorage of two experienced VSO-ers,
although this I am led to believe is standard procedure - it totals after all only quarter of my
monthly allowance so I will just have to resort to eating the ants!

House flooding with the first big rains - definitely standard round these parts.

Staying in one place for too long in 40+ heat so that I actually slipped on a pool of my own
sweat on my tiled veranda floor - this experience was very special and also explains why I
haven't voided for the last 36 hours!

The Hotel next door realising they were provided free wi-fi so stopping it but replacing it with
late night rave music, excellent exchange.

The cold realisation that the Parcel with all my remaining 'summer' clothes which was posted a
month ago has indeed gone missing and facing the grim reality of having one pair of trousers
and 3 work tops to last me for the next 2 years. You really shouldn't put all your clothes in one
parcel, I see that now, I am learning and growing.

Another month of the rent failing to cover the mortgage due to 'essential' renovations on a flat
I lived in perfectly well only 3 months ago and where I never had ants in my muesli, skidded
on my own sweat and only ever had the occasional flood certainly never tropical storm related.

But I've been informed by another seasoned VSO-er this is the difficult bedding in period that
requires and tests ones resilience.

Yep - this resilience thing certainly requires humour and a lot of grinning and bearing it.

So I did a little internet search to find inspiration or at least some cliches.

I'm off to bed now and will just have to try again tomorrow........

You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces - my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.