AsiaLIFE

Will discovers that living the country idyll while saving the world isn’t all it’s cut out to be.

I travelled to Cambodia to save the world and push my limits. I wanted to find out what I was made of, what I was capable of.

After a year volunteering at a Christian school in Phnom Penh, I was ready to strike out and help Cambodians in a worse situation. I wanted to get out into the provinces, to where there were few roads, no electricity and a culture untouched by the ways of the western world —and I was tired of explaining the difference between essential and nonessential clauses.

I thought I could handle anything, I had even taught a kindergarten class for a total of three hours — and if you doubt the difficulty of teaching kindergarten, you have obviously never had to face that horror.

So I signed on with an NGO to advise on a literacy project and travel around the fringes of Pursat Province to monitor and evaluate the project’s progress. Pursat’s capital was only a three-hour bus ride from Phnom Penh and had electricity and running water, so it seemed easy enough. I expected to spend about a week every month checking on projects in Veal Veng, a district of Pursat that borders Thailand, so I didn’t expect to get too bored at a desk job.

Unfortunately, when I had imagined Gilligan-Isle-style serenity in the countryside, I failed to recognise that the TV show wasn’t a realistic depiction of what it’s like to live “without a single luxury.” And Veal Veng had cultivated a reputation among aid workers of being an especially inhospitable place.

Malaria is endemic throughout Veal Veng, and visitors who spent the night in the district tended to contract the disease no matter what precautions they took. One aid group set up its foreign trainers in Pursat town, where malaria is not a problem. Every morning after sunrise they drove them several hours over rough dirt roads to the Veal Veng district capital to train the locals in whatever it is they needed to learn. Then, every evening they drove the advisers back out.

The European advisers all got malaria anyway.

Being a foolish American, I was convinced I could venture into Veal Veng untouched. I rubbed myself with enough DEET to make my lips go numb. Every day, I began carefully preparing my sleeping roll and mosquito long before the sun approached the western horizon. I did everything except take anti-malaria drugs, on the advice of a doctor who was later deported for not actually being a doctor.

I got malaria. I spent a week in a hospital. It hurt. A lot.

Now, if you take almost every precaution, head off into the jungle and still rack up medical bills in excess of four months of your stipend because a single mosquito nipped your heel, you'll likely take that as a hint that you're better off living in a city.

Not me. Once I was capable of travel, I went right back out to Veal Veng. Two months and two trips later, I had malaria again.

I had learned enough to recognise the symptoms and took the proper medication early on. It wasn't as bad as the first time, but that's not saying much.

As I was recovering from the third bout of malaria, my boss in Phnom Penh sat the team down and informed all of us that I would not be going back out to Veal Veng. I may have protested, but I don't really remember. I was a little delirious.

I found out what I was made of – stuff that is all too vulnerable to malaria. It wasn't long before I decided I would rather teach English than try to dodge mosquitoes and run up red ink on insurance companies' balance sheets.

Will Koenig lives in Oregon with his wife and son. Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .