{"id":176,"date":"2010-01-15T05:26:58","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T05:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/friendsinthefield.wordpress.com\/?p=176"},"modified":"2010-01-15T05:26:58","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T05:26:58","slug":"my-first-day-at-friends-ill-never-forget-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/my-first-day-at-friends-ill-never-forget-it\/","title":{"rendered":"My first day at Friends. I\u2019ll never forget it."},"content":{"rendered":"

A story from Ghislain, Phnom Penh.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friends is turning 15\u2026 while I\u2019ve only been working here for 2 years. That doesn\u2019t make me the best person to tell you all the stories but I still feel like it\u2019s a good time to look back at my first days here. Like all of us in the team, I started with an orientation period. That\u2019s a full week on the field with the social workers, going through our projects to try to get a feel of the situation of the people we work with \u2013 as well as an understanding of how Friends works. I remember this week as sometimes exciting, sometimes difficult, very emotional, and always interesting. I wasn\u2019t expecting the street children of Phnom Penh to have an easy life, but you can\u2019t really understand what it\u2019s like before you actually see it. I experienced it the hard way. That was my first day with Friends, in the field:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I was with the outreach team, being driven on a motorcycle through the streets of Phnom Penh. They meet the street children and youth to provide them social counseling, life skills education, basic medical services, and to tell them about the other services that they can access. That\u2019s the basics of how we work: we start where the children are, dealing with their daily problems and needs.<\/p>\n

At about 10am, we receive a phone call. A young girl who was supported by Friends died the night before. Her name was Sokha* and she was 20.<\/p>\n

A few years ago Sokha had left her province where she was staying at her uncle\u2019s home. He was an alcoholic and was sometimes violent. She thought she\u2019d find a job in Phnom Penh. She worked as a scavenger and had a couple of other small jobs. Probably not the life she was dreaming of when she came. She started using drugs, sniffing glue at first but later on using harder substances such as methamphetamines and even heroin. She spent her last few weeks in a hospital. She\u00a0had AIDS.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m sitting on the social worker\u2019s motorcycle, trying to understand what\u2019s happening while we\u2019re driving to the pagoda. When we arrive there are only 2 people standing next to Sokha\u2019s body: her best friend and her husband. Sokha got married a couple of months ago. Quickly a few more Friends staff members arrive. At least these people won\u2019t be alone facing this, and Friends is also financially supporting them to give Sokha a decent ceremony. We\u2019re about 10 of us walking around her body while the Achar (Buddhist priest) is chanting prayers. She looks beautiful and I\u2019m thinking that she probably hasn\u2019t been that peaceful for a long time. The contrast with the face of her friend, distorted by tears and grief, is shocking.\u00a0 We\u2019re in March, it\u2019s very hot and there\u2019s no wind at all. I find it hard to breathe. Later on the chanting stops and Sokha\u2019s husband pushes her body into the crematorium, lights it on fire and closes the door. He looks surprisingly calm.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later everybody\u2019s gone. The only visible sign of what just took place it the thick dark smoke coming out of the chimney.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about lunch time and we drive back to the center.<\/p>\n

I really was not sure about sharing that. I\u2019ve seen so many positive and inspiring stories since. But that\u2019s how it started for me and I still remember Sokha and her serene face. Unfortunately I guess it\u2019s part of our work \u2013 but it also part of what keeps us going.<\/p>\n

*Her name has been changed for this story.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A story from Ghislain, Phnom Penh. Friends is turning 15\u2026 while I\u2019ve only been working here for 2 years. That doesn\u2019t make me the best person to tell you all the stories but I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[44,68,107,626,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/friends-international.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}