Cambodia: Recap

Dear photography lovers, dental patients, dental team, and friends,

Thank you! Thank you!  Thank you! Thank you for holding down the fort to allow me to travel thousands of miles to bring smiles to children in Cambodia!  Without your support, this would not have been possible!  A huge thank you to the teams at Burning Tree Family Dentistry and Creekside Dental for holding down the fort!

Cambodia was, and is, a distant place!  It is the only place in the world where Khmer is spoken, and so it feels like a place unto itself.  Not only that, but it's a kingdom - not a democracy.  Couple that with the buddhist religion that is everywhere, and you have a land that truly feels as foreign as it possibly could!

The people were as sweet as could be, though.  They truly are a people with their hands at heart's center.  They meet you with hands at heart's center.  They thank you with hands at heart's center.  And, they couldn't be more grateful for the dental care!  For many, this was their first dental cleaning.  The average 12 year old had half of their teeth ruined.

Our clinic conditions were primitive.  Notice our "trays" for our tools, and the sophisticated sterilization techniques we had.  Chuck was in charge of the sterilization, aka boiling, process!  

Cambodians will eat just about anything, and they pride themselves very highly on that fact.  The markets are full of bowls of tarantulas and waterbugs to buy and eat.  The culture is also highly dependent on rice, and they use the presses below to make rice milk.  The one thing Cambodians WILL NOT eat is elephant.  They believe it to be sacred and hold it prized above almost anything else!

Of course, it would take hours to recount all of the experiences we had in Cambodia.  It was an honor to serve them and help bring a few more smiles to that piece of the globe.  Thank you for sharing in our journey and seeing a piece of Cambodia with us!

Smiles,
Cary

Packing Up

All hands were on deck as we cleaned up a few days ago.  We couldn't believe that it was already time to pack everything up.  This trip could not have happened without the help of EVERYONE on the team!  We have been preparing since August for this trip, and day by day, we got better working together.  It was a strange feeling to pack it all down and move on.

The life expectancy here is age 55 for males and age 62 for females.  50% of Cambodians are between the ages of 18 and 34 due to genocide in the past.  The Cambodian health system mimics their social system, where the upper class gets anything they want, but the lower class gets nothing. We were able to give that lower class a piece of healthcare they rarely have access to.

After we were all packed up, we visited a local dentist office, Room Chang Dental.  We found out this is the largest dental office in Asia!  They have 30 dentists, 100 employees, and 9 floors to their facility!   The office was a great chance to see a fully-operating dental office in Cambodia, though.  Everyone had to take off street shoes to go in.  Dr. Tith showed us around.  He is an amazing doctor, and was miraculously spared by Khmer Rouge Soldiers when he was a boy.  He's here now changing lives through dentistry.

Educating Families For Healthier Teeth

My insights and experiences are vast...but my time and our bandwidth is short for now.  I have hundreds more photos that I want to share now but our internet is very unstable here.  I'm excited to get back to my high speed and download all of the pictures that are capturing our time here.


















Our dental care is very needed here. (Creekside and Burning Tree Team:  you will laugh at the disorganization of supplies compared to our offices!)  The sugar cane, that is so popular here, causes so much of the dental misery.  Many young children suck on it and eat on it constantly.  By age 5, many, if not the majority have black teeth.  Their mouths are almost entirely ruined due to rampant decay and fracture.  This results in a lot of pain and also a lot of infection.  We're hoping that education to the moms and families (through our translators, of course), can change the course of their health and teeth.


Looking out of our clinic, you see the shack dwellers going about their day with various activities.  They harvest from the plants just outside of this window for food.  The Khmer people are a people with a depth of disposition I have never seen.  They are a strong blend of genuine and long-suffering strength.  There is no middle class here due to genocide.  As you travel through Cambodia, you see a huge chasm between the elite and poor, making it truly "foreign" culture.