A Day in the Life

I like my job. It's about the least sexy job in counter-trafficking or development in general, but I enjoy it a lot. Because it's not a sexy job, I often don't talk about what it entails. So in an attempt to share what I do on a day-to-day basis, here is a day in my life in pictures. Because my moto has been finicky these days, I took a tuktuk around to my appointments yesterday and whipped my iPhone out to capture the day (very carefully, so as to not get my phone snatched, an unfortunate but common occurrence these days in Phnom Penh).

After kissing Sam and Charlie goodbye, I hopped in a tuktuk to head up to the north end of the city for my first meeting. I went over the brand new overpass on the way! This cuts down transit times significantly for people commuting from the north to downtown. Don't get me wrong, though, it's still far, around 40 minutes one-way from my place.

As we entered Toul Kork, where I had my meeting, I suffered minor culture shock at the gated communities and manicured lawns. I love living in Toul Tompong, but green space and huge villas are not something our neighbourhood is known for.

I got to the cafe where I had my meeting, and got stood up, due to a scheduling mix up... on their part, not mine. People are perpetually busy and missing meetings happens. So instead, I worked on other things for the morning. I am consulting for Chab Dai's Charter project, an organisational development and capacity building project mainly for our local, grassroots members. I am currently drafting a proposal on the project's second phase around engaging organisations in peer mentoring and support. It ended up being a very productive morning!

At lunchtime I hopped back in a tuktuk back to my end of the city. My tuktuk driver took some interesting "short-cuts" through parts of the city I had never seen, past ubiquitous construction sites that pepper the city...

...and past pagodas, alleyways, and abandoned train tracks.

And I went to lunch with a friend who is transitioning to consultancy work and wanted to pick my brain about the consulting world in Cambodia and at a couple specific NGOs. We chatted about negotiating terms and the pros and cons of being a consultant, and wandered into dreaming about starting businesses here. It was a great chat! And great food. All around a great lunch.

Meanwhile, Charlie had picked up Sam at school and brought her home for lunch and naptime. I got home to relieve him so he could go back to work for the afternoon. Sam slept while I set up to work at home.

We don't have an office, and my pregnancy ankles needed some reprieve, so I set up on my bed. I switched modes from Chab Dai work to World Vision work for the afternoon.

I'm just starting a study with World Vision's Child Protection Unit on how to provide care and services for child survivors of sex trafficking in the community (as opposed to institutional care). I'll be interviewing experts, foster families, and children to map out best practices and existing services. Right now I'm writing the literature review in order to inform interview questions and see how we can adapt learning from other parts of the world and similar sectors to this new initiative.

In the late afternoon (Sam naps and then plays alone in her bedroom for quite a while each day) Sam came out and was ready to play, so we changed into our bathing suits and chased each other around the balcony with a spray bottle. It was awesome!

Then we dried off, snuggled for a bit, and went downstairs, where Sam "cleaned" while we waited for Charlie to get home from work. 

Supper, family time, and early to bed for me and Squeege. And that was my day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I am thankful for our Canadian Phnom Penh family! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving party at a local restaurant, with amazing food (I seriously wanted to sink my face into the pumpkin pie), good company, laughter, and lots of toddlers running around. What a blessing to be able to celebrate a home holiday with these great friends. Here are some pics of the events.

The beautifully set table and people arriving

Charlie and some good friends

Julia and some good friends 

Sam at the craft table making her pumpkin collage, wearing her turkey hat

Another "craft" the kids worked on

The group, so many awesome Canadians here in Phnom Penh!

What's in your backpack?

As part of our home group's series on Pilgrimage, Charlie and I led our meeting yesterday on the "Journey of Simplicity." There is so much that can be done on the topic and we took a while to settle on which part of "simplicity" we were going to focus on.

Part of what we focused on was to go back to our core selves and think about what is that makes up what we truly "need." Charlie read a chapter from A Way: The Story of a Long Walk, a wonderful book written by my own incredibly talented sister, Jenna Smith, called "The Backpack." And we used the idea of a backpack as a metaphor for reflecting on and discussing what we carry in our life/faith journey's backpack. Things that weight us down, things we would prefer to discard, things we absolutely need and help along the way.

It's such a good book! You should read it!

We talked a lot about relationships, family, God, faith - all good and necessary things in our backpacks. But we also talked about hurts and past mistakes that we continue to carry with us. One big one was grief and mourning. Grief is a natural part of life, but we agreed that living overseas, ongoing grief is a big part of our lives and much closer to the surface. We are constantly having to say goodbye to dear friends, friends who become more like family in this context, and it is an ongoing struggle to hold those relationships with open hands.

We also talked about deferred mourning, for family members, such as grandparents, who pass away "back home," and if we're unable to travel home for the funeral, it often doesn't really become real until we go home and they are no longer there. I have experienced this a little with the passing of grandmother at the end of last year. I know she's gone, but I sometimes catch myself thinking about seeing her when we go home at Christmas. 

We carry these things with us, and all the emotions that go along with them. The battle of feeling torn between two worlds, the relationships that are so encouraging but sometimes come with expectations we may not be ready to meet, the past mistakes that, although forgiven, still weigh on us many years later. 

So, what's in your backpack? What do you need to carry with you in order to ease the journey? What do you wish you could discard from the backpack and leave behind?