They lift you up your mum and dad

“We don’t get to choose our parents, but some of us do get extraordinarily lucky. I’m one of them”.

So says Dr Andrew Thomson at the end of his popular book subtitled ‘True Stories From A Warzone’, which starts in Cambodia and accompanied me in the last two weeks on my travels across the country with my own parents. I share his good fortune.

My mum and dad’s stay was great for all the best reasons. Any visit to my remote posting is special and uplifting, but with mum and dad we could also catch up on local and family gossip, agree that little changes back home, and enjoy tales of rotten weather and depressing government (or is it the other way round?).

It was a big moment too for Katja – ‘meet the parents time’! Strange that the girl who is so much part of my life had not yet met my family. Unless these days meeting by Skype counts, in which case they were already old friends. Either way I soon couldn’t get a word in edgeways, which I guess is a good sign?

It was also lovely to have time as a tourist in this wonderful country. My parents were incredibly generous in paying for hotels and restaurants way beyond my modest volunteer’s allowance, where I could gorge on bread and butter to my heart’s discontent. I’m very lucky that the bank of mum and dad stays open well into my thirties!

But their visit showed me I owe them much more than this.

For one, after over a year here it was great to once again see Cambodia through fresh eyes. The beautiful landscape (albeit browning rapidly), the smiling children, even just the peaceful simplicity of daily village life were all brought back to me afresh in their company.

Of course the temples of Angkor were unmissable, and mum and dad’s enthusiasm gave me a renewed interest in the ancient Khmer civilization. Their sedate pace helped me appreciate masterpieces such as Bayon’s ornate bas-relief carvings of daily life. They also persuaded me to visit Siem Reap’s national museum, a showy building with wordy captions, but redeemed by galleries such as the 1,000 buddhas which are simply breathtaking. Lucky mum and dad ignored the guidebook’s sniffy review or I’d never have gone.

I also learned a great deal from them about Cambodia’s more recent, less glorious history. We had enlightening debates about the impact of the American-Vietnamese war, the Khmer Rouge and the civil war (not the same thing, I now realise), the UN-backed elections of 1993, and how we arrived at today’s Hun Sen era.

Maybe parents never stop educating you? Another wealth of knowledge shared was about the natural environment. I love the beautiful flowers in the lakes, but thought they were lotus not lillies, and hadn't noticed how they open in the morning but close when it’s hot. I enjoy birdsong, but never really knew minors from sparrows, kingfishers from egrets. And do you know the difference between a moth and a butterfly?

But perhaps the biggest impact of their stay was in my little village of Thmar Puok. My friends and colleagues were fascinated that the respected elderly white visitors had made it to such a remote spot. My landlord even polished his trophy car and proudly drove us to the local temple – now that doesn’t happen every day!

Sadly I didn’t fully shake my workaholic tendencies, sneaking off to early morning hospital meetings whilst the oldies caught up on sleep. My colleague Alison and I were struggling to drum up enthusiasm for our infection control drive, and the poor parents had to put up with us complaining bitterly about the lack of progress on the first morning.

So what did they do? Rather than taking a well-earned rest, they came to the medicine ward in the afternoon and helped get things going. I was so proud of my mum and dad – 68 and 70, but still rolling up their sleeves in the heat of a foreign land, on their holiday no less, to help people less fortunate than themselves.

Happily, the next day staff jumped to the task of cleaning obstetrics, this time needing no encouragement or direction from us. I congratulated myself on having successfully shared skills in a sustainable way, the holy grail of volunteers. Only later did a colleague sheepishly admit that it wasn’t me so much as the sight of the elderly barraings scrubbing unmentionables off beds which shamed the staff into action. Good on you mum and dad!

This reminded me of yet another debt I owe my parents - in so many ways I wouldn’t be here without them. I like to think my wandering tendencies come from being conceived in Dar Es Sallam on the way home from their own development work in Zambia. Unless my gestation period was nearly a year it was more likely a council estate in Oldham, but I’m sticking with the more romantic, less likely version.

And many of the characteristics they have passed to me - idealism, adventurousness, independence, even stubbornness - have stood me in good stead for my life as a volunteer. Given these gifts, perhaps it’s churlish to complain that they also passed me my big nose, hairy back and bald head…

So thank you mum and dad – for your visit, for showing me how extraordinarily lucky I am, and for reminding me why I love you so much.