In this video you should be able to find all countries I have lived in: Moldova, Chile and Kazakhstan (to live in, just visited for now).

So, I thought I posted this on my blog a while back.  Now I can’t find it.  Perhaps I only posted it on Facebook.  Anyways… a while back in Chicago, this was organized:

How cool was that? I would have loved to be a part of it!!

Even better, Chile had a response.  Props to the students at Universidad Alberto Hurtado.  I would have loved to see this live.

And in case you hadn’t had enough… here are some elves in New York.  How random!

Blizzard 09 DC, originally uploaded by coming2cambodia.

It snowed a little in DC. I guess this is a good taste of what next year in Almaty will feel like.

Before I left for Moldova, I saw a picture of Moldova with an old lada driving with HUGE packages of toilet paper on top. I got quite a laugh out of it.

I got to Moldova and my laughter quickly turned to tears. The toilet paper was rough and sandpaper like. Sometimes, it was not toilet paper, but rather old paper. The glossy magazine pages were the worst.

My friends, Dan and Helen, get huge props for sending me soft toilet paper (2 large boxes) to Moldova.  I used it sparingly and treasured it.  Yes, I realize that sounds pathetic, but please, don’t judge until you have lived it.  Or just use newspaper, magazine pages and sandpaper for a week and then get back to me.

I have found that similarly, around the world, I have run into the same problem. I even have complaints about the toilet paper in the Frankfurt airport. I mean, I am not that picky— or, maybe I am.

New topic: Holiday party.

I got hired with a great group of 40 people. We had a little holiday shindig two weeks ago (take a look at the previous post for a picture).

Part of the shindig was a secret holiday gift exchange. These were the exact directions given:

If you wish to participate in the secret santa gift exchange, please bring a wrapped gift (no more than $5-$10) which you would consider a “necessity” to take overseas.

Eleven people participated.  We were each given a number.  The first person choose a gift and opened it.  The next person could “steal” someone’s already opened gift thus allowing them to choose another wrapped gift, or could pick their own wrapped gift to open.  First person opens.  She gets toilet paper, a plastic bag, a bag of candies for the kiddies, and a bag of coins to tip.  Second person opens a bag.  She gets 4 rolls of toilet paper and some Kazakhstani chocolate.  The 11th person also got toilet paper.

See! I am not the only one.

Today I had a wonderful holiday party with some colleagues.  (I will regale you with stories– or rather one funny anecdote– tomorrow).  For today I just want to share a photo of what could have been:

And what actually was:

Taly, I miss you!

HIV Positive and Serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer

I am going to re-post an article that I read here in full, because I fully support Peace Corps decision to allow healthy, HIV positive, volunteers to serve and because I found the author’s words honest and touching.  While I am sorry that she, or anyone else, lives through what she has, I am amazed at her ability to be positive and use what could be seen as a personal tragedy to change others. Here is what the first HIV positive volunteer to service as a PCV has to say about her infection (as a volunteer) and returning to Africa to teach about AIDS.

-Elizabeth Tunkle, RPCV, Zambia and Lesotho

When you join the Peace Corps, many people ask you why. I never had a very good answer. But the truth is something way down deep inside of me told me that is what I needed to do and I listened. I really had no idea what I was getting into. I thought 2 years would go by in a flash and I would come home better for having gone so far from home and for having done such a noble thing. Two years did not go by in a flash and I came home changed but not how I thought I would.

I started out my service in Zambia and after getting posted to my village, as I was settling in, I met my future boyfriend. When we started dating, I asked him if he had been tested for HIV. He told me yes. He told me his test was negative just 1 year before and he had not had unprotected sex since his last test. We mutually decided it would be safe for us to use birth control and not condoms. We were wrong. Despite the fact that I knew all about HIV prevention I had unprotected sex with him anyway.

A few weeks later, I decided we should get tested. I had a bad feeling. I tried telling myself that it couldn’t be me. I was going to be fine. Too many times in my life I had played with all kinds of fire and survived. Not me. I was too nice and honest and fun and giving and I practiced yoga and meditation. We get bonus points in life for being good, right? No, I guess we don’t. HIV doesn’t just choose mean people or people who tell lies. It turned out it chose me. We found out my boyfriend was positive and that I was also infected. As if that news isn’t devastating enough, the Peace Corps told me I had to go home and that I would not be able to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer anymore, anywhere. I was too shocked to fully understand what was happening, but I did feel like the Peace Corps was acting contrary to what they teach us. “Fight the virus not people with it.” “Treat people with HIV just like you would treat anyone else.” But yet, here I was going home. I felt like a weed that had been violently ripped out and was being thrown away.

I was shocked and traumatized and had to pack up my things and say goodbye to my life in Zambia. I felt like a failure. I had come to teach prevention and here I was infected. I was asking myself that why question all over again. Why did I come to Zambia, did I come to ruin my life? Who did I think I was coming over to Africa to tell people how to live? I didn’t even know the meaning of my own words.

PC Washington told me that I would be evaluated and then separated. I asked my nurse who worked for PC if it was possible for me to continue to serve and she said no. If I was positive I would have to be separated. However, after I had been home for a month PC changed its mind. Why? My friend was digging around on the Internet and found a story about another volunteer who had been sent home earlier that year because of an HIV infection. He felt like his rights had been violated and had asked the ACLU to help him out. ACLU went to the PC and told them that their policy discriminated against people with HIV and they needed to be more accommodating (see our August 2008 article for information about the Jeremiah Johnson case and changing Peace Corps policy related to PCVs with HIV.) They just told me they were considering clearing me. Everyone seemed to agree that I was physically and mentally well enough to go back.

It was suggested that my asthma was reason enough to keep me from going back to Zambia but I could go to Lesotho if I wanted. I was faced with a big decision. At first, I was not given a choice and now I was. What did I want to do? It seemed like a difficult decision at the time but I think I knew all along that I wanted to finish. That I was not going to let some illness or my shame stop me from returning to do the work I had set out to do. I even had a hint of an idea that I could do it better the second time around. So I said yes!

I was in a plane flying to a new country in Africa. Lesotho was going to be my new home. I arrived and met a whole new group of staff and volunteers. I made the most of my new home and my new family. I started making friends but I kept my status to myself. I felt alienated for having to keep such a heavy secret. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share my status at all. I felt too vulnerable and I wasn’t sure how I would be received. After only 2 months in Lesotho, I went to a volunteer training session. Volunteers were struggling with the emotional toll of living in a country where so many people were infected. We had a session to talk about it. I sat in knowing that no one in the room knew about me. One guy shared, “I found out my counterpart was positive and I am trying to give him support and but it is emotional for me to know.” They were all being so honest and I wanted to run out of the room screaming. After so many people had shared, our director said, “One good thing about all this is that you have each other. We are all in the same boat.” I then did run out of the room screaming. Well, ok, not screaming. I walked actually. But I left the session early and went to the medical office and talked to the only people who did know. “I am not in their boat,” I said. I felt even lonelier and more left out than I had before and I hadn’t thought that was possible.

After I calmed down a bit, I went to see the Country Director. I told him I had been thinking and I wanted to share my status with all of the Peace Corps Volunteers, all 87 of them. We were going to have an All-Volunteer conference in January and I wanted to have a session all to myself to share my story. I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret and this way I could control how the information got to them. I would not be gossip. I would just tell them. So, January of this year (2009) marked my big coming out ceremony. The day of my talk, I was terrified. I knew that I was going to be taking my most personal and private reality and laying it bare for everyone to see. I started my talk with a news article about the ACLU case against the Peace Corps. Then, I told them my story. I told them I knew better than to have sex without a condom. I told them I knew all the things they know that make them feel immune and I still got infected. In the end I asked them to make good use of me. I was the first infected person in service and I wanted to tell people what happened to me so that maybe they could learn from my mistake and not repeat it. That was, after all, why I returned to Africa

They started using me immediately. I went to a Diversity Camp in Butha-Buthe district. 20 something teenagers came together to learn to be more accepting of the differences around them. I was one of the key speakers. I asked them to brainstorm words that came into their mind when they heard “HIV.” “Don’t censor yourselves. Just say what ever comes to mind. Good or bad!” They did. I heard words like prostitute and sex, anger and fear, stigma and blood. We made a long list. And then I told them my story. I told them everything. They were teenagers and statistics said they were all probably having sex already. They really listened. Afterwards, they asked me questions. One woman asked me, “How do you have so much courage to stand up in front of us and tell us these things?” I just looked back at the list we made and said, ”If I feel too afraid to speak about this to all of you then I let this list define me. I refuse to let this illness keep me locked up in my own world of shame. And if by sharing my story with you, maybe one of you rethinks having unprotected sex then I have accomplished something out of this.” For the first time, I felt like I hadn’t become infected for nothing. Maybe this happened to me so that I could share it with people. Maybe it had a purpose in my life.

I did that many more times in my time in Lesotho. I went to 4 Diversity Camps. I spoke at schools and youth centers. I had one audience as big as 140 students. I spoke to peer educators, youth groups, and students. I spoke to primary schools and secondary schools. I even traveled 2 days up into the mountains to speak to a HIV+ support group about a healthy way to deal with hard and dark emotions. People really heard me. I felt connections with the people of Lesotho like I had never felt in Zambia. People came and shared their stories back with me. They asked me questions and invited me to their homes. I felt the force of belonging to a community.

I spent my second year of the Peace Corps speaking my truth over and over again. The fact is none of that would have been possible if it weren’t for the courage of other Volunteers who stood up to the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps did something they had never done before and let me, an HIV+ volunteer serve out my time in Africa. I received more from sharing my story than I could have ever given to the people of Lesotho. I think the Peace Corps is like that. We go to far away lands to give of ourselves, to help, to make something better but it is the people who house us and love us and work beside us that truly give to us. They gave me a sense of purpose. They made me believe that something good could come out of getting a very scary, chronic illness diagnosis. And I believe that it did. I would never had asked to become infected with HIV but without it the community of people living with the virus around the world would be just out of reach and I want to connect. I want to cross over the line that separates and make a connection. So here I find myself. My service is complete. I am back in America. I served my country. I told my story. Somehow I think I answered my “why.” The work I did as a volunteer in Zambia was forever on the outside looking in. Later, infected in Lesotho I felt as though I had stepped through an invisible barrier and was welcomed with open arms.

World AIDS day was December 1st, sorry it took so long to find the words I wanted to post to commemorate it.

Clare, originally uploaded by coming2cambodia.

Here I am finishing, and showing off, the bamboo I harvested. I was in Japan, it was April 2007. I was off with a friend learning about the wonders of harvesting and eating bamboo. I believe I tried cooked bamboo 27 different ways.

Today I am finishing 30 days of NaBloPoMo. This is my third year in a row. I feel like it is a mini-accomplishment.

I haven’t talked about human trafficking here for a while.  Since it is a central topic of this blog, let’s take a look at human traffcking in the news today:

State warning on human trafficking in the Fiji Times

FIJI should stand guard against human trafficking, President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau has warned.

He said while Fiji had for many years been fortunate to be buffeted from human trafficking, “our history and that of the Pacific, sadly records that we have experienced, traumas of institutionalised human trafficking”.

China joins Mekong countries in fighting cross-border human trafficking in the Window of China

Mengla is the southmost border county in Yunnan Province. It shares a 677.8-kilometer borderline with the Laos in the south and east, and is separated in the west from Myanmar only by a river. With 46 land crossings, 14 market places for border residents, as well as five motorways to the Laos and Myanmar border, it is regarded a major passageway to Southeast Asian countries.

Residents at the Lao-Chinese border usually share the same origin, custom and are therefore able to speak the same language. Different economic levels at both sides of the border have sparked cross-border migration as well as human trafficking.

During the ten-year since he was on the narcotics control task force under Mengla county public security bureau, Zhao has been involved in rescuing and transferring over ten abducted victims from Laos.

US officials begin push against human trafficking in Associated Press

Fourteen cities are being targeted in a new campaign aimed at alerting people about human trafficking, federal immigration officials have announced.

Antoinette Davis, Shaniya Davis’ Mother, To Be Charged For Sex Trafficking, Child Abuse in the Huffington Post

Antoinette Davis, 25 is charged with human trafficking and felony child abuse. An accomplice, Andrette McNeill, 29, will face kidnapping charges. He was seen on surveillance footage carrying Shaniya at a Sanford hotel. As a result, another man who was arrested last week has been freed.

Human-trafficking conviction first test of state law: West Seattle pimp convicted on six of nine counts, including child prostitution charges

Facing a first test of a state law aimed at sex trafficking and modern-day slavery, a 19-year-old West Seattle man has been convicted of human trafficking for his role in a prostitution ring alleged to have included at least 12 girls and young women.

Returning a mixed verdict Tuesday, a King County jury found Deshawn Cash Money Clark guilty on six of nine counts related to allegations that, as a member of the West Side Street Mobb gang, Clark prostituted two girls and a third young woman. Among the counts, jurors found unanimously that Clark had engaged in human trafficking by forcing a former girlfriend of his — who proved to be a key witness for the prosecution — to work as a prostitute.

Thanksgiving Stats Americans consume about 13.4 pounds of turkey each year.

There are three U.S. cities named after turkey: Turkey, Texas, Turkey Creek, La., and Turkey, N.C.

There are eight cities in the United States named after the cranberry.

There are 28 places in the United States named Plymouth.

Source: United States Census Bureau

Thankful for family and Harley and friends. Thankful for a job and a nice place to live. Thankful to be able to learn languages quickly and to have someone paying me to learn. Thankful for days off and movies and sunshine. Thankful that those around me, for the most part, are doing well. Thankful that I can still believe that the world can change for the better, and that people can too.