Goodbye to a little trooper

I lost a friend today.

She was a tiny little person who had an enormous impact on me - and I want her to be remembered.

I met Sreyleak on a stinking hot day at Hope for Cambodian Children Orphanage (HfCC) in Battambang, Cambodia. It was my second day as a volunteer, which meant I was basically walking around, trying to work out how to join the furious current of daily life here - and make myself useful.

Luckily, day two fell on Khmer New Year and I was able to sit back and watch the festivities, while kids of varying sizes (and hygiene levels) treated my sweaty limbs like a jungle-gym. One of the house mothers approached and sat down, carrying what I thought was an infant in her arms. As I looked closer I discovered that she held a small child, with a body that was rigid with cerebral palsy, writhing with discomfort in the heat. The little girls face contorted as she struggled for breath and as her jaw clenched, I saw broken baby teeth.

I watched my friend, an osteo, perform an impromptu examination of her and struggle to swallow his emotions. It nearly broke my heart and I left that evening feeling useless. What could I possibly to do? (You see, at this stage I was still naively thinking about how I felt, what I could do, how I would contribute - the usual echoes of modern-day narcissism).

The next day I watched as my friend assessed the four special needs children, Sreyleak the little girl included. Again, the scene was heart wrenching and I walked outside feeling totally pathetic. How arrogant was I - thinking I could come and a make a difference with nothing more than good intentions?

I was about to give myself good kick-in-the-butt when I heard Sreyleak crying inside. I gritted my teeth and headed back in. Her temperature was 39.5 degrees and she was struggling, sweating and shaking her tiny fists. I felt like she was pleading at me to do something. Instinct said get her to hospital, but the HfCC nurse was insistent Sreyleak would improve with a dose of paracetamol (as she had done on countless occasions - apparently). So after a protracted hand-signal conversation, and a promise that a doctor would be called if she worsened, we trudged home.

I slept little that night, preoccupied with how Sreyleak was faring. I knew she was much stronger than she looked - after all she'd survived worse. But how much can one little body take? How much should it have to?? (As a baby Sreyleak had suffered severe lung damage from Tuberculosis, and her parents simply left her alone on a roadside. To die, to be found... we'll never know. Thankfully she was discovered by a kind soul who brought her to HfCC).

By morning Sreyleak's fever had broken and it was crisis averted - again. But she had made an impression on me I will never forget. So I plucked up the courage to hold her.

I was hooked. I cuddled and soothed and sung songs to that girl for hours, just trying to pour as much love as I possibly could into her every day for six weeks. It’s the first time I've felt something close to what parents must feel for their children - that I would do anything, absolutely anything to protect her from another minute of suffering.

Hanging out with Sreyleak when she was in a happy mood was something else. I rocked her back and forth on an exercise ball, gently exercising her little limbs as instructed by my friend - who had devised an exercise and eating program to aid the development of Sreyleak and the other disabled kids. Seeing her face, arms and legs relax as I rocked the ball back and forth making funny faces was priceless. She'd look at me like I was crazy, but then crack a face-splitting grin.

I also discovered that Sreyleak loved music - firstly from singing to her and then by bringing my iPod to our exercise sessions. She started relaxing so completely on the ball that she slept soundly on it, and on many occasions my friend found me cramped awkwardly on the tiles, while Sreyleak lay fast asleep beside me. Other times I would pump Cher's Greatest Hits at full volume and spin around the bungalow while she squealed (happily, I think).

The day I left HfCC was the hardest day of my life. Saying goodbye to the kids and our new friends was gut-wrenching. But giving Sreyleak that last hug broke my heart. I wanted to believe I would see her again, but knew that poor tormented body probably wasn't long for this life.

When I returned to Oz I resolved to do whatever I could to help Sreyleak and the disabled kids, and with support from family and friends, we raised enough money for a full-time disabled care nurse at HfCC. Someone to continue with the program's we had put in place and to measure their development. But most importantly - to spend quality time with them.

Over past 10 months we had learned that Sreyleak, and the three others, had put on weight and made huge developments in terms of their alertness, strength and ability to interact with the other kids. However it was an email from the HfCC chairwoman in January which delivered the most positive news to date - Sreyleak was the happiest Jenny had ever seen her, and a far cry from the sickly child she remembered from a visit 12 months earlier. So we had done it - we made a difference. And not for ourselves - for her. 

Knowing that Sreyleak is no longer suffering is a comfort, but it's bittersweet. She opened my eyes and my heart in a way that I never thought possible - and selfishly I had hoped to see her again. But I'm certain she is now in a place that's far better place than anything the world could offer. Happy, giggling and - with any luck - dancing to "If I could turn back time" at full blast.

RIP beautiful girl xoxoxo

Have we over e-volved?

I'm going on a diet.

And no, it isn't the Lemon Detox or a powdery meal-replacement endorsed by Biggest Loser alumni. This diet is called Cyber Slim, and it has a very simple premise.

Low gigabytes.

You see when it comes to internet usage; I've become a glutinous pig. My habits have grown from the occasional email and news wire check, to compulsive, nonstop feedings that start at breakfast and end moments before I go to sleep. In fact, after some particularly lengthy sessions, I have to flop back on the couch and pop my top button open to breathe.

It's pure greed. Fuelling my insatiable appetite for anything from breaking news and emails, to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, music downloads, celebrity gossip, special offers and holidays I can't afford. You name it - I'm all over it like a $2 cyber hooker.

But I'm not alone - this internet gluttony is an over-indulgence shared by many. We all have friends who are eternally online, and I'll bet I'm not the only one whose knee-jerk reaction is generally wow such and such should get a life. Yet we fail to draw the obvious parallel that we're always online to catch them.

Although I've recently noticed a trend at social events where some turn their nose up at being online. You know the type, people who claim they haven't seen this or that status update because they're far too busy and important for such trivial matters. When in all likelihood they're running to the loo to like, tweet or re-tweet something every five minutes. He who doth protested too much, no?

But I realised just how dire things had become when I started hiding my online presence. Offline on Facebook, invisible on Gmail or away on Skype - yet still very much online. On its own not such a big deal? But last night a close friend living o/s logged into Skype on the rare occasion I was 'available' and within seconds an incoming call flashed up. Shit, hide! I thought, frantically logging out. I don't want to have an actual conversation!

I know what you're thinking. I mustn’t really like said friend, right? Well that couldn't be further from the truth. So as I sat guilty on the couch I wondered - if I don't actually want to talk to people, what the hell was I doing on Skype? Was I no better than some common voyeur, lying in wait to make sure my friends and family were what - still alive? Did I simply want to prove that I was alive too?

I suddenly realised that I'd been bouncing around these sites so habitually, that I’d actually forgotten their purpose. Skype is for phone calls and talking to people. And to make matters worse, I had been perfectly content to skulk around offline, reading things about people and leering at their photos, than I was to actually speak to them.

It finally occurred to me that a greater force than I was at play here and - like so many others - I'd simply fallen into its sticky trap.

FOMO. Fear of missing out. A social phenomenon that has existed to some degree for centuries, but here in the 21st century, has found its perfect breeding ground in the internet.

While there are doers and doubters, haves and have-nots, or quite simply the cool and uncool, there will always be FOMO. But in the old pre-internet days, if I wasn't invited to a party my initial thought would probably be - maybe they lost my address? And I could sleep at night, safe in the assumption that some external factor had intervened.

But not these days. If I log into Facebook and see that 67 friends are invited to a party, and no corresponding invite is waiting on my home page - there's nowhere to hide. I am simply not invited. (And somewhere behind the screen there are little Facebook minions pointing and cacking themselves laughing I'm sure).


But it's not just invites. I, we, we're all addicted to updates of any kind. Like when I'm bored at work and check Gmail 27 times a day. What do I expect? A long lost relative to email and say I'm entitled to a lazy few million in inheritance or a country estate? Because it would be good news, surely?

I think that as a society we've been rewired to need new information at regular intervals or we start twitching - which explains why breaking news FOMO is now more prevalent because of the internet. In my office it's like a daily battle to see who breaks the most sensational headlines first.

Trust me, one day that annoying colleague is going to turn around and say 'Oh my god they just cured cancer!' and we'll all be slapping our legs under the desk, thinking damn I wish I'd seen that first.