Busby tells us some brief travel facts about Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Cambodia in general from her recent trip there. She says: “Phnom Penh is not a very safe place after the sunset. The staple diet of rice, chicken and the greens is a bit of a joke. The ‘green bits’ are often boiled marihuana leaves – not over potent, but they have a noticeable effect in hot temperatures.

“There is a game of ‘saving a turtle’. In front of King Sihanouk’s palace by the river, there are women with kids selling turtles. For $1 you buy a turtle and set it free wherever you want. Of course the women and children caught the turtles and sold them again. Not great, but I didn’t think there was any harm done to the turtles in the process.

“The major thing that bothered me in Siam Reap was the licences to the Angkor area. Not a cent goes to preservation of the area, rather, it is used to pay the Malaysian Government for their supply of oil. Not quite right is it?”

Have you visited Cambodia recently? Would you like to share your travel experiences with the Beetle? We’d like to hear from you.

Becky is a volunteer worker for Trade Aid and is working in Mikindani, Southern Tanzania. This story is a true account of how she experienced a narrow escape and could have been seriously injured in a bus accident travelling from Dar-es-Salaam to Mtwara in southern Tanzania – be warned!

The bus looked typically African; old, battered, dirty and rusting, with more luggage on top than was probably safe and as my brand new Chinese bike was strapped onto the back I sensed then that this was going to be an interesting trip.

I was privileged with a seat by the door where I got to enjoy the flirtations of the bus boys, who always loiter in the doorway, climbing on top of the roof and jumping on and off the bus at random intervals. For 12 hours we lumbered, creaked and bumped our way along and when the road particularly rutted we’d suddenly lunge and tilt precariously in one direction and then realign ourselves as the bus swung the other way I scanned the looks on the faces of the other passengers to search whether I needed to be fearful and not an eyelid was raised. One passenger caught my look of concern as we swayed onwards and I felt embarrassed that he’d witnessed the fear of a ‘mzungu’ travelling aboard an African bus. From that moment on I decided I had no need for fear as if they were happy and this were normal then I should be too!

When darkness fell we stopped off in a small village for a convenience stop. For some reason I will never be able to understand at this stage of the journey I decided to move and exchanged places with one of the bus boys so that I too could stand by the door and join in the degeneracy of the bus boy humour! ‘No I will not massage your leg!’ ‘No I will not marry you!’ – I can’t quite understand these men’s willingness to marry someone they’ve never even spoken to, maybe there’s hope for me yet! On the road once again it was approaching 8 pm and we were making our way to the top of a very long, steep hill, travelling very slowly as the engine roared and strained under our weight. We stopped for a second, I assumed to change gear and the bus slipped backwards, maybe a dodgy handbrake or the driver not as proficient as myself at hill starts. A couple of the bus boys jumped off to help but we continued moving backwards down the hill – I will never understand what caused me to do what I did next and I didn’t know I’d done it until afterwards but some super-instinct inside me alerted me in that instant I had to get off that bus. A bizarre instinctive force urged me as I threw myself off the steps of the moving bus.

My immediate thoughts after landing flat on my face (not very Bond like I’m afraid!) was that I really had proved how idiotic a race we Brits are! I assumed everyone had watched and would laugh on my cowering return. But it would appear that fate was with me that night and I will never doubt my instincts again. For as I stood and turned to look round the bus was continuing to move backwards, rapidly gathering speed as it headed back down the hill and very obviously out of control. It all happened incredibly quickly and in the dark I still am not certain of the chain of events, I just remember hearing the crunching of the sand under the wheels as they squeaked backwards and watched in amazement as the bus bowled backwards gathering speed veering towards the verge and onto the bank below. It was in that moment that I knew there was nothing we could do but hope and pray as I stood paralysed and helpless and watched as it creaked and wobbled off the road, turned over onto its side and banged to a halt as it slid down the bank, the brakes screeching and flying up sparks as it finally came to rest.

I approached the vehicle hesitatingly, legs wobbling beneath me expecting it to burst into flames. There were no flames and I’m sure there were screams and shouts but I certainly didn’t hear them at first as I just stood and stared at the wreckage in the moonlight. One by one people started emerging out of windows and the victims made their way towards the road. I wanted to help but couldn’t cope with seeing mangled bodies and people crying out in pain knowing full well there was no hospitals or emergency services within a four hour drive and knowing they would have to probably suffer in silence was more than I could think about. There were women, children of all ages, pregnant women and families. I took the pastoral role of helping people to the road and holding people as they came off the bus – I doubt my reassurances helped but I had to do something. People kept on appearing and eventually I saw bags passed out, radios, loaves of bread, individual flip flops….selfishly I thought about my luggage and wandered over to have a look and there was my bag, and the books that I’d left at my feet on the bus, and my football? I started asking whether anyone was hurt.

Not one person died nor one person was injured which I still cannot fathom. For that first twenty minutes we all wandered around in the dark grabbing those who had sat near us and hugging each other muttering murmurs of thanks. It was 8.30pm in the middle of the forest and hours away from the nearest town or help. Within an hour it seemed amazing to me, that women were settling down their children to sleep, campfires were lit and people sat talking, laughter emerged and I couldn’t help questioning whether I’d invented the whole accident. The scene was one of calm and order? It just pays witness to the hardship and pragmatism of these people as this was all taken calmly in one big stride. We tried to sleep on the dusty road, which was uncomfortable but warm by our fire.

Activity recommenced at first light at 5.30am after an hours sleep, unloading all of the luggage which had been on the roof of the bus. Bag by bag, piece by piece, mattresses, pillows, bags, construction materials were unloaded – my huge basket of shopping, intact. I was trying to ignore my worries of my bike which had I assumed become mangled amongst the wreckage. However my brand new bike was wheeled over to me still in one piece with just a small scratch on the shiny bell to tell the tale. I was called in to administer first aid, which involved giving the last few painkillers I could find, binding aching joints and dabbing calamine lotion on anyone who had pain.

We eventually left the roadside 18 hours later at 3pm the following afternoon, the remaining 40 of the passengers crammed in with all our luggage on the back of an open truck. When I alighted in Mikindani at midnight I was grateful to see the sandy track leading to my home and I pushed my new bike and its contents to the safety of Base House.

Although I was able to find humour in the fact that I had rolled from a moving bus and the fact that there really is no transport comparable to that of the African Bus Journey – it took a number of days to absorb what had happened. Only yesterday a bus from Dar-es-Salaam, on the same road, overturned and 18 people died on the spot. Everyone here has a tale to tell relating to either family or friends who have been involved in a road accident. Lucky does not begin to describe the out come of this accident.

For more information on the work carried out by Trade Aid in Tanzania, see their website www.mikindani.com

The Globetrotters e-newsletter has been following the case of Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman who was convicted and sentenced to death by stoning in March 2002 after giving birth to a baby girl more than nine months after divorcing. We are pleased to say that she has had her death sentenced reversed.

The 31-year-old, has been appealing the death sentence for two years. She insists she did nothing wrong and that the man who fathered her child made a promise to marry her. He did not, leaving her pregnant and with no support. The man said he was not the father, and three male witnesses testified he did not have a sexual relationship with Lawal. The witnesses constituted sufficient corroboration of his version of events under Shariah law, and he was freed. Under Shariah law, pregnancy outside marriage constitutes sufficient evidence for a woman to be convicted of adultery. Shariah law also allows amputation as a possible punishment for convicted thieves and has recently caused much controversy in Nigeria between Muslims and Christians.

Amina Lawal is the second woman in Nigeria to be sentenced to death after bearing a child out of marriage since 2000, when more than a dozen states in the north adopted strict Islamic Shariah law. In March 2002, an appeal court reversed a similar sentence on Safiya Hussaini Tungar-Tudu after worldwide pleas for clemency and a warning from President Olusegun Obasanjo that Nigeria faced international isolation over the case. After the hearing, press reports say that Ms Lawal said “I am happy. God is great and he has made this possible. All I want is to go home, get married and live a normal life.”

A big thank you for all your comments and thoughts sent to the Beetle. We had two votes for visiting Burma and one against visiting. What do you think?

London based Globetrotters member Steve wrote in to ask people not to go to Burma and this is why:

Dear Beetle, I totally concur with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and applaud Rough Guide’s ethical stance. As a Buddhist, I would dearly love to visit Burma and its beautiful temples but so long as the brutal regime are still in power and deny democracy and enslave their own people and worse still, the ethnic groups who live there, I will not go. What’s more, I will not buy any more Lonely Planet guidebooks or anything from any other company that I am aware profit from trade in Burma.

I have met many Burmese and Karen, Karenni, Mon and other ethnic groups from Burma and most of them have been very kind and gentle and urged me not to go there. Some years ago, I was taken over the border to Karen State to see the conditions they were living in for myself. I met many people who had been injured by shells and shooting from the Burmese army. At Dr Cynthia’s clinic in Mae Sot, on the Thai side of the Burmese border, I met many more with injuries from torture, malaria and other illnesses from escaping through the jungle to Thailand.

If you’d like to meet some lovely people from Burma who welcome outside contact, then go visit the refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border. It’s difficult to find a country that does not have some policies or practices that do not suit our ethical viewpoint but Burma is exceptionally bad, so please do not go there.

Pam from Chicago wrote in to say:

I did visit Burma for 3 weeks in about ’96. The visa had just been lengthened. We hooked up with 2 Burmese men in the airport who acted as our driver, guide and interrupters. We couldn’t stray too far off the beaten path as far as to which towns we went or what hotels we stayed in but their sympathies were very, very against the government and we didn’t stick to the tourist route or rules farther than that. They were invaluable to us and enabled us to see behind the government curtain, into the conditions in the country and speak with “real” people. It was they that thought it was important for foreigners to visit their country. At least someone will be there to see first hand and carry the message out to the outside world. It also gave them, private citizens, an income. Sure, they weren’t legal guides and we didn’t eat in proscribed restaurants but how many independent travelers stick to legal guides, official exchange rates and sanctioned restaurants when we travel anywhere?

A tour group sees only what’s on the agenda which is what’s proscribed. Globetrotters independent travelers, by definition, find their own way and learn about the country below the skin. I guess it’s the same argument that is made for Zoos. How many people can really get to see most of the Zoo animals in their natural homes? If no one sees the animals or knows anything about them, who will care if they live or die? How can we know how to help them if we don’t see and learn about them?

I was in Tibet in Sept. / Oct. of ’87 when the Chinese shot the Monks and some Tibetan people disappeared from Lhasa. If foreigners hadn’t been there to carry the news and pictures, the word would not have reached the rest of the world so soon.

Michael Rakower, our lawyer regular contributor from New York wrote in to add his views on visiting Burma:

This is a very difficult question. I think the right answer must lie in the individual’s choice. We independent travellers have a firebrand spirit. We seek to learn and question where others don’t dare. We see beauty and opportunity where others see a wasteland of underdevelopment and lost causes. Additionally, most travellers are also highly sensitive to the circumstances of the lives of others. This puts us in a difficult position. On the one hand, we rage against the confines of established society. On the other hand, we can’t help but appreciate the level of fairness and quality of protection we in the developed world enjoy. Clearly, certain very important things are being done right for us.

In 1996 I went to Burma during a lengthy trip through Asia. I considered the same issues back then, and chose to go. This issue boils down to a moral one. To me, the most moral thing one can do is to recognize that fact. By doing so, one recognizes that his/her actions have a moral effect on the world. Some will choose not to go to Burma, choosing to pad the pockets of governments more worthy. But the issue does not have to be so simple. There are other choices that lie between going forward blindly and not going at all. For example, one can go but sneak away from changing money at the government institutions (as I did).

In retrospect, I am very glad I went. First of all, I am more aware of the plight of the Burmese now that I have gone. I watched a speech Aung San Suu Kyi gave in front of her home, along with hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Burmese waving their walkmen in the air so that they could tape her speech for the edification of their families. She spoke of freedom, liberty and resistance, and I’m glad I was there to attend. On another day, I met a local man who slapped me on the arm while we were walking alone on a desolete street merely for asking a question in public about the government. In the privacy of his home, he told me that informants lurk everywhere in his village. The impoverished Burmese, he told me, are quick to turn on their neighbors if they can do so secretly.

But then there is another side to this struggle. I stopped by an open-air shop one afternoon that sold an alcoholic beverage tapped from a tree. I befriended the shopkeeper and his family. Before I knew it, we were all taking pictures of each other. Without question, I believed these people to be warm and decent. Yet, while taking pictures, I noticed a military jacket behind the counter. The eldest son owned it. I have thought about that scene for a long time. This was a poor and decent family. In a land of poverty, where almost no opportunity exists, even those families who despise the government may wish their children good fortune within it. This poor shopkeeper wanted more for his son than he could give him.

So, from a moral point of view, what is one supposed to do? As I said, I think the solution lies in recognizing that one’s actions carry a moral play on the world. While Rough Guides may believe that the statement it can make to the world by refusing to publish information about Burma is the most effective measure it can take against a repressive regime, Lonely Planet may feel equally strongly that its position will have an influential effect toward positive change. In truth, they are probably both right. To turn the tide of repressive forces, creative and noble people must act in the manner they deem most effective. Raising public awareness, getting everyone to consider the issues and act according to his conscience, will, in time, have the most positive effect.

MTV and the Burma Campaign UK are running a joint campaign calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. In the last month over 40,000 people have visited www.mtvburmaaction.com and emailed Kofi Annan and the five permanent members of the security council, demanding the UN take action.

Puerto Maldonado, Peru: The Piedras Biodiversity Center (affiliated with Tambopata Expeditions) is looking for for 2 volunteers to help out with an amphibian survey scheduled for November/December of this year. The project will last about 6 weeks, and the work will be “quite adventurous,” involving the night-time collection of various frogs and toads in swamps and streams. Previous experience is helpful but not necessary, and all volunteers will be trained. This is a great way to get into the jungle while helping a worthwhile project. It is also easy on the pocketbook! If this sounds like the project for you, please email Tambopata Expeditions at info@tambopataexpeditions.com and visit their website at www.tambopataexpeditions.com

Did you miss out on a Gap Year when you were 18 and are considering making up for it now? Have you always wanted to be a TV star ? The BBC have asked us to help find a number of mature (30 +) people who are wanting to volunteer abroad and star in a documentary. The programme will show how the various volunteers cope with the planning and the assignment itself. It will focus on how they are affected by the experience.

So if you have always wanted to volunteer abroad and be a TV star, get in touch with us, Muir’s Tours now. We provide a wide range of support to various communities in Asia, Africa and the Americas. If you want to be one of the 8 BBC stars you need to be free to travel abroad during the period December to March. The ideal candidates will be:

• over 30
• self-financing, or at least have a healthy budget
• planning to travel alone
• planning to leave in late 2003 / early 2004.

Get some ideas from our list of placements and then we put you in touch with the Beeb. See http://www.nkf-mt.org.uk/volunteer.html

Richard Mowll is a civil engineer from Croydon, who travelled to Western Uzbekistan in January 2002 with MSF to rehabilitate a 600 patient TB dispensary. He then went on to prepare a 100 bed facility for multi-drug resistant (MDR-TB) patients, where he was Project Co-ordinator of the 16 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff programme.

“The dispensary building in Nukus was a mess – the result of the near collapse of the health service in this country over many years. Through my work there, one incident stands out. A minor incident but one which left a lasting impact…”

To know what new pipework to order, I inspected the Dispensary room by room to measure sizes and to identify the fittings. As I was in one open room with just a bath in it, a thin girl with a headscarf walked slowly past me and up to the bath. She held on to the side with both hands and with apparently all the strength she had, she coughed. Weak, pitiful, tiny coughs. She was clearly beyond just ‘ill’. A friend of hers came into the room and stood beside her holding her shoulders from the side, supporting her as she coughed.

What could I do? I’m an engineer who formerly specialised in road maintenance and concrete construction – she didn’t seem to need either of those specialities just then. I couldn’t do anything, but feel out of place. I left the room. This was a private moment for them, and I wasn’t helping by being there.

There were and continue to be so many like her – six hundred in the Dispensary itself (although in varying states of illness) and literally thousands of others throughout Uzbekistan. All of these TB patients were the victims of not only the infection, but also of the health system that was not just in a state of decline, but near total collapse, where doctors earn as little as ten pounds per month (how could that feed, clothe and warm a family of four?). How could a health system so under funded help the population overcome the spread of this disease?

What could I do for the girl? Nothing, by myself. But the medical staff and the MSF project that I was working on was trying to improve the system of healthcare for TB patients by using the World Health Organisation’s Directly Observed Treatment – Short-Course (DOTS) TB treatment methodology. This was where it struck me how MSF’s work was truly a team effort. I know nothing (or at least very, very little) about treating TB patients. The medical staff knew very little about rehabilitating a TB Dispensary building. But this rehabilitation was one link in the chain, which was improving conditions for the patients and helping lower the incidence of TB. The medical staff were more links in that chain.

I never saw the girl again – perhaps she got better and left, although I kind of doubt that that could happen. This incident made me realise two things. Firstly the total need for someone to help this girl and others like her – MSF are one of the few organisations doing anything here – and secondly the way that MSF missions are based so strongly on teamwork. I guess I also realised a third thing – that I was proud that I was working for an organisation that was trying to make a difference.

Today, Richard is back in Uzbekistan working with another organisation. The TB dispensary is part of a network of State TB facilities supported by MSF. It will be handed over to Uzbek Ministry of Health control by the end of 2003. The MDR-TB programme will start treating patients in the coming months.

If you would like to contact Médecins Sans Frontières, you can e-mail them on: office-ldn@london.msf.org or visit their website:

www.uk.msf.org

Post Script:

Kidnapped: our MSF colleague Arjan Erkel was abducted more than six months ago in Daghestan, Russian Federation. We still do not know what has happened to him. Please sign MSF’s petition to President Putin asking for urgent help to get Arjan released. Click here and pass it on to your friends:

A recent UK scientific study on the efficacy of sun creams says that although they help prevent sunburn, lotions fail to block out the harmful ultraviolet rays which can cause the skin cancer. Sun block could give sun worshippers a false sense of security.

Burns specialist Professor Roy Sanders said that the only way to really protect the skin is to stay in the shade at the hottest times of the day or cover up with hats and T-shirts.

According to Professor Sanders, one in 68 of the present UK adult population will be diagnosed with malignant melanoma – the most dangerous form of skin cancer – at some point in their life. By 2010, however, that figure will have risen to one in 50.

Skin cancer can be caused by two types of ultraviolet light, the short, energetic wavelengths of light in the sun’s rays. UVA penetrates the skin most deeply and can suppress the immune system and damage cells. UVB also damages skin cells. The ‘factor’ rating on a bottle of sun block refers to the level of protection against UVB, historically considered the greater danger. A little-known one to four star system – normally printed on the back of bottles – indicates the level of protection against UVA.

Meeting news from our branches around the world.