Day 2: A Touching Trip to Tuol Sambo

We started the day traveling forty-five minutes by van to the Tuol Sambo community with the Sihanouk Hospital mobile clinic, the hospital staff and a truckload of XanGo Meal Packs and other supplies.

Tuol Sambo is a community of families where one or more members of each family are infected with HIV. These families have been exiled from the city and forced to live here with very little support, little available food and no simple solution for earning an income. On average, each family in Tuol Sambo earns $1.50 per day, and they feel fortunate to have 15ft x 10ft homes made of tin walls and roofs with concrete floors.

There are many more children than adults in the community, and they suffer from protein malnutrition—a fact evidenced by their wispy and reddish-colored hair and their distended bellies. The children’s daily diet consists of a couple cups of rice and maybe a piece of fish if they are lucky.

On arrival, the families gathered together to listen to Gayla Sparks teach them how to use the soap, lotion, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other supplies that we brought. Glenn Sparks demonstrated how to mix XanGo Meal Pack and the importance of boiling their water to purify it. One of the fathers stood and spoke to Glenn on behalf of the community to give thanks and appreciation for our help.

While we distributed the supplies and handed out many cups of XanGo Meal Pack, doctors from the hospital visited with patients, treating everything from the common cold to cat-scratch fever, and consulting with the HIV patients on their treatment and medication plans.

Later, we visited a mother and her 10-year-old daughter in their home. The father had died from HIV/AIDS, but not before infecting the mother; and the daughter was born HIV+. She is a beautiful little girl, and is fortunate to have the support of the hospital to keep her and her mother as healthy as possible.

Another couple we visited met in the critical care unit of the hospital. She is the daughter of a Cambodian political official, and after being infected with HIV from her first husband she was disowned by her family with no money, nowhere to live and no medical treatment. The hospital found her on the brink of death and admitted her into the critical care unit where she met her husband. They were married in the hospital and are now living in this community.

We walked away from the Tuol Sambo community feeling blessed to have met these people, fortunate to have the opportunity to serve Meal Pack to those who need it and humbled when we considered the incredible prosperity we experience at home. Despite the disappointing living conditions, these people were smiling the entire time we were with them, and we heard no complaints from them about the state of their lives.