Jisoo Lee













On the second day in Cambodia, we visited two slums, Canal Side slum and House Above the Water slum. Before visiting the slums, we first met the One2One team in their office. The office seemed somewhat small to fit many doctors, nurses, and volunteers, but all the team members seemed energetic nonetheless. I was especially inspired by Dr. Anne who was the director of the One2One team. Although it was the first time meeting her, she gave all of us a warm welcome and thanked us for coming to Cambodia to do good things. At this moment when I first met Dr. Anne, I could feel that she was going to be a great help throughout the entire trip in Cambodia.

As we got off our coach to walk to the Canal Side slum, I got a first glimpse of what a slum is like. I have never lived in an environment where transportation was unavailable, but in the slums in Cambodia, vehicles bigger than tuk-tuk could not go through the narrow and unpaved road to the entrance to the slum. This was one of the primary reasons that the medical team used the tuk-tuk to transport their people and luggage such as tables, chairs, and medical devices. Although it would be much more convenient for them to use a small coach to transport the people and luggage, the conditions of the slum and the high maintenance cost made them give up the idea of using such transportation. When we arrived at the first slum, I observed how the One2One team set up the nursing station. Because it was a nursing station but not a medical station, the setup was relatively simple, but setting up the canopy, which required a lot of man force and time, seemed to be a big problem. When the setup was finished, I had a chance to look around the slum and ask one of the slum residents some questions with the assistance of one One2One team member. The Canal Side slum seemed to be in a relatively good condition. The environment was not as bad as I had imagined, and there were even two public toilets that were kept quite clean. After taking a look around the slum, my group had to give a health demonstration on hand washing to the slum residents. There were so many uncertainties regarding this health promotion before coming to Cambodia, so I was worried at first, but it went quite successfully. There were more people than I had expected, the people were very much open to us and listened to what we were saying, and all of them stayed in good order. We had opportunities to interview the residents after the health promotion, which gave us valuable insight into the health situation in the slum.

In the second slum, House Above the Water slum, the medical team went instead of the nursing team. In contrast to the nursing team, the medical team had three stations, the triage, doctor, and the pharmacy. I observed how the pharmacy worked in this slum. It was interesting how pharmacist put a paper showing pictures of a rising sun, a sun high up in the sky, and a setting sun to indicate when the patient should take the medication. It was a consideration for most of the residents who were illiterate. Through this simple act, I could see how much effort the One2One team put into making the medical service more convenient for the residents.

Melody Chung

Besides observing the mobile clinic procedures and interviewing the slum dwellers during the slum visits, the SIGHT teams are also expected to conduct healthcare demonstrations to increase the residents’ awareness towards the importance of keeping hygienic and healthy habits. Our team Saturday was in charge of oral healthcare presentation in the slums. There were so much unknown and uncertainty during our preparation back in Hong Kong. We were unsure about the presentation-site condition and the audience background. I was also very worried about communicating with the locals—both medical team and slum dwellers—due to language, educational and cultural barriers.

Surprisingly, SIGHT team and one2one medical team quickly got along with each other. It was impressive that our team not only observed the mobile clinic operation flow without interfering but also actively offered helps to the medical team.  Moreover during the busy medical preparation for the slum visit, one of the medical team volunteers (Lyla) helpfully offered us some teaching material and the teeth model for our oral healthcare demonstration. Although the material was mostly in Khmer, we were so grateful for her help. Such collaboration reveals that in spite of different nationality and cultural background, we all share the same goals to serve the slum dwellers in every way we can.

The presentation-site condition was lower than our team’s expectation. Our healthcare demonstration was conducted under a tent that was installed temporarily on a narrow passage between the huts—which also serves as the main ‘street’ in the slum. The entire space was so warm, stuffy and crowded with chairs for the audience. We had to occasionally give way to the passing motorbikes during the demonstration. We also had many children running around the stage making noises, peeking into the gifts/welfares we had prepared for the audience. The situation became more chaotic and uncontrollable when more residents showed up and especially we were not able to directly communicate with them in Khmer. Although we had the demonstration flow well planned back in Hong Kong, the demonstration did not effectively involve the audience and convey the healthcare message.  I thought it was a failure.

Such stumble was incomparable with the daily challenges our audience has to struggle through in order to survive. The compassion for them turned our focus on the failures into driving force to put more effort in improving our demonstration to become more interactive and effective. From this experience, we learned that as the presenting team, we need to be flexible and sensible, be considerate to the slum dwellers and slow down our pace to ensure two way communications. Above all, it was impressive that our team collaborated well and was willing to persist through the challenges together.

Visiting the slum was definitely an eye-opening experience for me. I could never understand the slum dwellers’ hardships until I was physically there to observe and listen to them. These residents are trapped in the cycle of poverty. Their priorities are to eat and stay alive; living in a pest-free, clean and healthy environment will be of too high opportunity cost for them. Hence, there are little acts we can do as a team/individual to relieve the strains and bring significant change to their lives. For example, donating a water-filter system can definitely relieve the water crisis in a slum area.

Nonetheless, the problem for a technology-innovation team is: which is the most pressing, worth-solving need that we should tackle in such limited amount of resources in terms of time, funding, skills and knowledge? I really hope by the end of the course, we are able to show our partners a tangible prototype that solves the need and gives them hope.