Alternative garbage disposal

Last night we ate at an Indian restaurant, The Kamasutra (no kidding). Our table was next to an Indian couple who heard me say as I ordered a glass of wine, “I am celebrating”. When asked what, the answer was President Obama and the Indian man turned to us and said that he was celebrating also. He and his wife were eating quickly to get back and watch CNN and he told us how proud he is of the US. We stayed up to watch the festivities on the small TV in our room. For us, the speech did not start until after midnight but we stayed up to watch, counting ourselves among the “thousands from around the world’. The excitement translated through the screen and the crowd scenes were amazing. The comment I heard was it is cool to be an American again. I feel so very proud.
We had to get up early to go with the Home Care team again. This time we went 81 km west to see a child with malnutrition. How they find these homes is beyond me but through a series of turns down rutted, red dirt roads we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere. The home was typically small, up on stilts and one room for the parents and 7 children. It was swept clean and had no mess as they have virtually no possessions. We were quickly surrounded by the extended family that lives in adjacent homes and there were a lot of kids as you can see in the picture. The child had been admitted for severe malnutrition and had been tube fed, then bottle fed with formula. Although they live on a farm, they have only 2 chickens which do not produce enough eggs for their family. Their big issue is lack of protein although lack of calories is an issue as well. By entering the hospital, this family gained access to seeds, a water filter, food delivery every 2 weeks with the home care visit, clothes and teaching about nutrition, hygiene and general health. The nutrition display was divided into starches, proteins and fruits/vegetables. The protein category includes chicken, fish, frogs, snakes etc. The community really benefits since once we arrived, the whole group came and listened to the nurse teach. While we were there, she also treated one of the siblings with a bad runny nose, and a young woman came in with her baby who had diarrhea so she was given oral rehydration solution along with instructions on how to prepare it. We saw a woman with a huge goiter and an aunt had what looked like a herpes lesion on her lip so she was given gentian violet for that (I will have to look that up). Lucky is the community with a child that can make it to Angkor Children’s Hospital with malnutrition.
The painful part was watching the food being given to the patient while all the other children looked on hungrily. The mother had the fruit washed and then shared it with the other children. This was “longan” which has a peel and fruit resembling a grape around a large black seed. She would pick off a bit of peel and then pass it to the baby. The peelings and the seeds would be pushed through a hole in the floor where the pigs rooted under the house. Thus the alternative garbage disposal.