After lunch on New Year’s Day we loaded up the Tuk Tuk’s and headed off to our next village. We got to another beautiful structure in another village and got to work. This venue didn’t look to have been used recently so we got to sweeping both the leaves and the red dirt out of the main work space. Sweeping in Cambodia was a bit nostalgic as I thought of the red mud back in good ole Georgia and tubing down the Chattahoochee. As harvest is not during rainy season, the dust gets heavy so we had a lot to sweep. This was about the time we found out that we weren’t going to get our translators. Luckily we already had one day under our belts so we had some tools on how to communicate different positions and some basic words in order to get the locals comfortable. Our Tuk Tuk driver was the same one we had on Day 1 so he was a huge help to start.
As on the first day, we got some patients right away and started working through the locals. There were a couple of differences in day 1 and day 2 as we got a lot more children on this day and the waiting area became very segregated between men on one side of the stairs and women on the other. It was hilarious to watch people get up from both sides when a table would open up and then start conversing back and forth on who was really next. Most of the time they were very gracious and I only made one change to the order as one man had been there a while and kept getting passed over.
Another change was the dramatic injuries we saw on day 2. It seemed like there were more major issue like the man who fell 4 years ago and most of his entire right side went numb. Steph was nervous about working on it if he had something major broken that hadn’t healed but she went through an analysis and did what she could. Lauren mentioned that it might have been a stroke that caused the paralysis and not just a fall. The Chiropractic lessons I had this day were Find the Yes…just keep looking for any issues and find the right place to adjust and don’t question yourself. Once you find the yes, you have your answer. The other piece I asked about was how long it would take to see the effects of the adjustments and Lauren said within the day for most of them. The alignment work would relieve 70% of their pain and be something they would see immediately.
The adjustment of a baby as she lay on her mother was something I never knew happened and would have been scared to death to do. Evelyn and Lauren were rock stars and it drove Evelyn to tears as the first time adjusting a little baby. He (ignore the pink skirt) was a trouper and being laid on his mother kept him super calm for the adjustment.
We did get one translator after a bit which was helpful for some of the people who would keep talking even when we couldn’t understand. Apparently he had taken some clients out the night before for NYE and was quite tired. He was the one that told us Cambodia has definitely changed in this regard as Pub St in downtown Siem Reap was blocked off for walking only and was a crazy party zone for the night.
My day overall was made so bright due to the children and my time with them. My friends jokingly/seriously call me the baby whisperer which has continued even as my family and friends’ kids have gotten older. Apparently this translates to Cambodia as well since as we got through the bulk of the initial rush, I started spending more time with the village kids.
We hadn’t been able to convince all of them to get on the table and Lauren holds firm that the earlier you can work on kids, the better for them. She even explained that she can help to adjust wandering eyes if you can get to the brain stem early enough. So I spent some time, getting to know them through some English they learned in school and some Khmer words I had picked up (they were much better at English than I was at Khmer). We eventually got all of the kids on the tables, which was a huge win for them.
This Grandma was so happy after her treatment and she had the cutest little one that wanted to wave at everyone constantly. And while it was hot, I am not quite sure why my face was glaringly red in this pic!
Some of the kids were having so much fun they decided to start pretending to be Chiropractors (or masseuses depending on how you looked at their technique!)
The last half hour was spent with the kids going around the village and grabbing items and bringing them back to me to either learn the word in English or I would read the English words on the wrappers they brought. They were having so much fun running around and we connected so well. My heart about broke when we headed to the Tuk Tuks and the girl in the shirt with DREAM came up to me and put her arms out for a hug. I pretty much melted and then ended up giving the rest of the kids big hugs as well.
Along with all of the patient excitment, we also got to see our first water buffaloes. They are predominantly used for work in the fields and were constantly being walked down the village streets during out time here.
We never successfully got a team shot during the service hours though this one was close (minus Steph)!
Our drivers were very clever as they always took us a different way to the villages than they took us home to show us more of the countryside. Here is the final shot of the second service day.
