"Using The Old To Make The New"

If you had told me at the beginning of law school that I would be spending one day during the summer after my first year hanging out in Phnom Penh with a bunch of Cambodian ex-gang members and ex-cons, I would have thought you were crazy.

But, that's exactly what I was doing today, and hanging out with them to pass out hygeine kits in a Phnom Penh slum no less...

Let me start from the beginning. I spent today doing an outreach with my group partners, Grace and Brad, at an organization called Korsang. The organization was started by a woman named Holly, who I mentioned once before. Holly is an ex-drug user from Boston who moved to Cambodia a few years ago. While here she met up with a group of Cambodians who had been deported from the U.S. under new immigration rules brought in after 9/11. Basically, most of these guys had been in gangs in the U.S. and caught up in drug use. They were all convicted of felonies, most spent some time in jail, and they were deported back to Cambodia, although many of them had spent almost their whole lives in the U.S.

Here in Phnom Penh they started Korsang, which loosely translates to "using the old to make the new." The organization's main goal is harm reduction, especially for intravenous drug users. The main "harm" they are seeking to reduce is HIV and AIDS. The group does needle exchanges with heroin users, distributes condoms to sex workers, does general HIV awareness and training, and operates a drop-in center for at-risk youth.

Today we hung out with our new friend "Big Head" and his group on an outreach to a slum in Phnom Penh. Big Head moved to California from Cambodia when he was very young and lived there for about 27 years, but was in jail for almost half of that time. However, he wasn't bitter at all about his deportation, and actually said that he thought it was a blessing rather than a curse, because he had the opportunity to get a second chance and give back to try and help others.

At the slum Big Head and his outreach group handed out hygeine kits with toothbrushes, toothpaste, condoms, and other items to the slum's residents. The slum was one of the most desperately poor places I have ever seen. Apparently the residents were evicted from their home to make way for a high-rise apartment complex and now they live in awful conditions. Trash lay everywhere, and the homes were shabbily constructed huts covered in tarps.

There were many many children around the site, and they followed us around the whole time we were there. The kids were beautiful (I can see now why Angelina Jolie came here to adopt) but almost all of them were barefoot and there was tons of broken glass and I'm sure many other dangerous objects poking out of the garbage. I can't imagine the disease that infests this place.

This was our first exposure to the work of Korsang, but by no means the last. Because Grace, Brad and I are going to be working on developing an HIV/AIDS manual, we will be doing a lot of work with Korsang and other agencies working on HIV education and harm reduction.

The whole experience was almost a little difficult to process, but hopefully more of it will sink in when we go back on Wednesday for another outreach. What I do know, though, is that this was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life, and Korsang is one of the most incredible organizations I have ever seen.