Jordan in Cambodia...Again

Siem Reap is like a breath of fresh air. Not literally...the air is still dusty, there are still indeterminable stenches in the air, but there's just a feeling here. The city is so alive, especially at night, which is contrary to anywhere else in Cambodia. In the evening, food vendors line the streets calling at you to come try their food. You'll pass by grilled meat, fruit smoothies, fried rice and noodles, all for cheap prices. Tuk-tuk drivers will call out trying to find more riders. Sellers at the market exhibit their most enticing products. You can get a full body massage for under $10. As a cherry on top, why not have fish suck the dead skin off your feet for just a couple bucks? At night, a street downtown livens as all the bars and pubs open up and blast their mixtapes of both western and Khmer pop music. No wonder they literally call this road Pub Street. I could walk around this area all night. I love it. There's another side of Siem Reap, however, that's ...

Does April 17, 1975 ring a bell to anyone? I clearly wasn't in the picture, but my parents were in school, my grandparents were probably at work. In Cambodia, however, it was the start of 3 years of living hell. The Khmer Rouge regime, headed by the radical Communist dictator Pol Pot, entered Phnom Penh with cries of peace and the end of years of political unrest. Hours later, they ordered the evacuation of the city with threats of an American bombing of Phnom Penh. In reality, they were clearing out the city to send its inhabitants to rural work camps. There, any educated people, innovative thinkers, or those with connections to western ideas were slaughtered; the rest were worked to death. They were forced to work on farms to triple the rice production; in blazing heat and receiving only two bowls of watered-down rice porridge per day, this was essentially a death sentence.  Over the course of 3 years and 8 months, over one quarter of the country's population was killed, a...

Everyone has needs. We all need food and water and shelter. That's common knowledge. Some people need extra attention; others need more alone time. Those who know me personally know that I frequently need a snack to hold me over till dinner. But what about knowing the needs of development work? Our first 2 projects here at HELP focused on needs. Our first day was spent walking the unpaved roads surrounding an orphanage for underprivileged Cambodian children and literally asking the people in the neighborhood what their needs were. We sat down outside of homes on flimsy plastic chairs asking what could help improve the community. What did they actually want to see happen? What were their concerns? We got a variety of different answers, many of them great ideas. But the same two kept popping up: paving the road and teaching English classes to the children. When organizations come in to an area, there are hundreds of different projects they can implement, but in order to find the mo...

Hello to all family and friends and any others who may have come across this blog! My name is Jordan. I'm a 22 year old student at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I study Public Health with a minor in International Development and hope to go on to medical school when I finish my undergraduate studies. I am passionate about traveling and hope to provide healthcare and education to those in developing countries as part of my future career. Luckily for me, I have an opportunity to do some of that right now. This blog will highlight some of my experiences as I travel to Cambodia, a place very dear to my heart. I lived in Cambodia for 2 years as a volunteer missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and then again for nearly 4 months as a project intern for the Cambodia Oral History Project, a BYU project that obtains through oral interview and archives the stories of elderly Cambodians to preserve their histories. This year, I have the opportunity to go...