Somebody call an ambulance!

Last night, Ben and I were cooking dinner. It was particularly exciting because we had splurged on some "steaks", and were also gonna do some mashed potatoes and saute'd carrots and onions. Now, when I say "steak" imagine a piece of beef about an inch think and 7 inches long and maybe two inches wide. Normally, such a piece of beef would feed a family of four Cambodians, but we fat, greedy Americans eat about four times that much in a sitting. Ok, so Ben was cooking the $4 beef strips - strips is more accurate - and potatos, and I was taking down the Christmas tree and cleaning the kitchen, when we heard this moaning/crying like a little kid who had his toy stolen. Then...commotion could be heard outside on top of the crying. I waited about three minutes for it to subside and finally realized that it wasn't going away.

I put the broom down and went outside on the walkway. Looking down I saw a crowd of about 40 people gathered very closely around a moto, parked on the sidewalk. On top was a woman who looked about like she was gonna give birth. Two women behind her were holding her, trying to keep her still as she swayed back and forth in pain. One man was holding her right leg up. Women were fanning and patting her face. People in the cirlce were hollaring and laughing and carrying on. Others were running back and forth like something was on fire. I really couldn't figure it out.

I didn't know what to do. I wanted to run down and see what was going on. I mean, I am a teacher here... But sometimes it seems that the Cambodians should be left alone. I mean, they function just fine as a nation without my supervision. I have no first aid here beyond bandaids and ibprofen, so barring a faith-healing I don't have much to offer. I probably should rectify this. Anyway, I didn't see any blood, so I left it alone.

Well, later that night my friend Young Hoon came over to do some language exchange. He was thirty minutes late, he said, because he had been tending to that woman. Young Hoon said she strained her ankle. I think he meant "sprained", but I can't be sure. I went down with him to the bottom floor common area where she was sitting awkwardly on a couch with about 20 people mulling around her and the same two girls holding her from behind. She was sobbing uncontrollably and her right leg was convulsing. It was really weird. I've had sprains before, and they don't make your leg convulse. Anywho, we waded through the crowd - mostly of gawking, slightly amused men - and when I finally looked at her leg/ankle I couldn't see anything. There was no mark, no scrape, no swelling, no redness of any sort. It was strange. Young Hoon said he had given her some "pain killer."

The guys standing around this girl presented one of the goofiest scenes I've ever witnessed. In America, if this happened, guys would be jumping hurdles and lighting fires to make sure this girl was taken care of. They would have carried her on their back to a doctor or built a stretcher or SOMETHING. Not these guys. If I took a snap shot of them standing around this girl and turned it into a Farside cartoon, it would read like this: "Hey Bob! Check this out. Let's poke it with a stick and see what happens..."

Anyway, the women in the crowd collectively decided that she should be brought up to her room on the 4th floor. I start thinking, Ok. I can easily scoop her up in my arms and... Too late... A guy came over, half laughing, and crouched down in front of her. She put her arms around his neck, and in one far-too-swift motion he reached behind and grabbed her under her knees and stood up, she screamed bloody murder, the men all laughed, and the guy took off up the stairs like it was a piggy-back race.

We chased the guy up the stairs to the girl's dorm room, where she was quickly deposited on a mattress on the floor. The 10 or so girls in the room were buzzing around screaming "give her air! turn on the fan! rub her back!" It was sheer madness. A couple guys came up to the door to continue their gawking and snickering. Young Hoon was giving suggestions in Korean, to which the Cambodians were replying in a severly mangled form of his language. Then the girls finally turned on us, demanding we leave. I was more than happy to oblige.

I've never in my life seen anything like it, and I still don't know what happened. I have to revert to my favorite metaphore - Asian circus - to describe the evening. My only conclusion is as follows: I hope I'm never incapacitated in this country while I'm without fellow Americans. I think my friend Maly's family are the only Cambodians here I trust to get me to proper health care. Back in 2002, I passed out once. They were with me and made sure I was ok. Here on campus, I'm not so sure I'd make it out alive.