Sick in the pagoda.

I live in a pagoda now with a host of Buddhist monks.

Visiting the small city of Kompong Cham, I came across a volunteering opportunity and committed two weeks of my time; ten days left at this point. Based on the discovery of my university degree, a monk named Ven. Vandong ("Ven" meaning "Venerable," a title bestowed upon monks), asked me to help him write a project proposal for the organization he has founded, BSDA (Buddhism and Social Development Association). BSDA has provided free education and cultural development for over 1,000 children in Cambodia. Most of them are extremely poor, while there are many who have no parents, or have been pulled off the streets of Kompong Cham, from begging, child slavery, or maybe worse. With over half the population of Cambodia under the age of 18, this organization is truly fighting for life, just as much as it is fighting for change.

The particular proposal I will be working on, concerns improving the lives of the impoverished and underprivileged communities in Cambodia by raising awareness of social accountability in local government. Hopefully, the people of Cambodia can establish for themselves a more active role in governmental policy.

For the length of my volunteering, I will live with the monks.

I sleep on a wooden bed, I eat after they do, I study English with them, I sit with them in my room, and I watch an 80's, Chinese language, over-the-top, Kung-fu movie with them. Many of the monks are in their mid-twenties.

Their kindness is overwhelming. It has proved itself from the beginning, but recently, when I was sick.

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My stomach was bloated -- swollen past normality. Three times I threw up, but it remained the same with nausea rolling in my belly. Muscle twitches and tiny cramps strained random tendons. In this weakness, my body's state seems to be the only concern in this world; I think of little other than its improvement.

This is reprove for the frailty of man; the selfishness that binds me, and how sickness rules the human state.

In this time, I missed my family immensely. My mother's care is like none other. My father's willingness to tuck me in a blanket or make tea to soothe my throat and stomach-- never ending. Knowing that I am missed in my half-a-world-a-way absence increases my longing.

In this sickness, its as if all my doubts and misunderstandings of a culture not my own, all my personal insecurity, fell into a single moment. They fell into a single pile. I wanted the familiarity of a worn, plaid blanket of navy blue and crimson, and a pair of brown pillows my father stitched -- made for comfort, not for style. I wanted to nibble saltine crackers and to sip 7-Up; not be offered rice porridge and hard-boiled eggs. I wanted a bathroom with a toilet to sit on and paper to use; not a squatter with a dipper and water at my side. I wanted familiarity. I did not want to give a spoonful of food resistant contemplation. I only wanted second nature. But necessity always leads to action.

My sickness surged on.

In the morning I made a third trip to expel contents of my stomach. I rushed to the bathroom, thinking of the toilet near the floor, but finding it in use, I darted out a side door and convulsed in yellow.

A monk came by and said to me, "Are you alright my friend? Do you need my help?"

"I think I'm alright," I replied, my nose dripping.

My body shook again. In a arched crunch my back and abs tensed. I stopped for a breath.

"Here, do you need me to do this?" He began to rub my back and massage it in gentle taps.

"Thank you," I said while in a squat, hunched over a ledge, at the top of a cement flight of stairs. "Thank you so much."

"There," he told me with a smile, finishing his act of care.

I rinsed my face in the bathroom and walked back to my room, trying to contemplate what I had just felt. I was stopped multiple times along the way, with smiles.

"Did you eat yet?"
"What is wrong"
"Do you want to take a bath?"
"If you need it, the bathroom is just around the corner."

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My sickness lasted for three days and two nights.

In this time, visits from monks never stopped. They never stopped inquiring on how I was, nor asking me if I had eaten yet. I went to a doctor, was given pills. I had a traditional Khmer treatment applied to my stomach -- crushed herbal leaves with oil. I can now eat again, and even though the day after left me in slight fear, the taste of Cambodian food will draw me back in. It already has; out of necessity and desire.

This was not quite home, but looking back, a lesson in kindness and a bed that Someone great prepared for me.