Hey… One of my staff killed himself. Chan, he was 33, from Long Beach, California.
I was training for an AUSAID workshop in Kompong Som last Wednesday – Saturday and got the call Friday night around 1am. Smiley, Trip, Van and Saw found him hanging in his room. He'd been dead for over a day. Saw cut him down.
He was depressed and suicidal for a long time, he'd been here a year and had worked at Korsang for about 11 months. I kept him around because I knew how fucked up he was and that he needed support. In the states he had major depression with psychotic features and was on medication that basically kept him stable. Since his deportation out here he could never get the proper medications in Cambodia, so he went on a huge decline into some really deep dark place. And then he started smoking yama and that escalated his demise. I got him meds from the clinic, but they didn't work, I got him a counselor from the Australian Embassy, but he couldn't keep appointments.
Needless to say the staff is messed up, again. And I came back from the workshop to a critical debriefing with the staff who found him.
Chan was a very sweet, sad, gentle, fragile, quite guy. This has to stop.
I want to use Chan's death to stop the deportation of Cambodian's with a diagnosed mental health disorder. It's a death sentence. Can we try to do something?
Thanx, Holly
It made me question really, what am I doing sitting here in my living room writing some paper on Southeast Asian second generation youth when there are Southeast Asian second generation youth shoot each other and themselves somewhere in the world. How will my paper help the community? Or how will this degree help me help myself and my community?
Sometimes I wonder what my priorities are. Why do I sit here with my 23 units when I could be doing something down the street in Oakland or Richmond.
I suppose one can only be an effective advocate for the community if they are educated about the community. Otherwise, I guess I would just be another uninformed charity person who is doing work as a result of sympathy or pity as opposed to a true advocate.
Looking at the greater picture, this paper is probably very important. It's just emails like these that make me want to hop on a plane and head back to Southeast Asia.
It made me question really, what am I doing sitting here in my living room writing some paper on Southeast Asian second generation youth when there are Southeast Asian second generation youth shoot each other and themselves somewhere in the world. How will my paper help the community? Or how will this degree help me help myself and my community?
Sometimes I wonder what my priorities are. Why do I sit here with my 23 units when I could be doing something down the street in Oakland or Richmond.
I suppose one can only be an effective advocate for the community if they are educated about the community. Otherwise, I guess I would just be another uninformed charity person who is doing work as a result of sympathy or pity as opposed to a true advocate.
Looking at the greater picture, this paper is probably very important. It's just emails like these that make me want to hop on a plane and head back to Southeast Asia.
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