Starting off this week's wrap of news from Cambodia, a press release from the World Bank about their approval of a $36.25 million grant for decentralization and related reforms.

The World Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy for Cambodia 2005 - 2008, endorsed by the Board in May 2005, recognizes governance issues as the primary obstacle to growth, poverty reduction, and aid effectiveness,... more

Families traveling avec kids, singular or plural, for adoption or vacation ... Mary, for example... might want to take a gander at this column on kids on planes.

Seems the writer mentioned previously that she prefers the company of children over that of adults during air travel, and that earned her more than 1,600 responses, many disagreeing with her take.

Here's... more

Continued from the previous posts.

G6PD (Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase deficiency) is, apparently, the most common enzyme deficiency in humans, with an estimated 400 million people worldwide affected. It is most common in Blacks and inhabitants of the Mediterranean region, although Asians are also impacted.

It is sometime also called Favism, as many people who have this condition are also allergic to fava beans.

Like ... more

Continued from the previous post.

By the time I arrived home in the evening, word was starting to come in from doctor friends to whom I'd passed all the info I had and asked for opinions, strategies, and so on.

Being that medical care available on this island is limited, it is often necessary for patients to seek treatment abroad ... my cardiologist is in Singapore, for example ... so figuring out how soon T could be well enough to travel had to be a consideration.

A look at his chart had told me that his ... more

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Although I thought I'd prepared myself, I was shocked when I finally did see T. Looking small and frail in the hospital bed, he was yellow and very weak ... and scared to death.

Because his mother didn't understand what was happening, no one had been able to explain anything to him. Well accustomed to my 'take charge' personality, he looked to me to give him a picture of what was happening. Unfortunately, I knew nothing.

Preparing to hang a second unit of blood for him, there was a problem with his IV ... a minor blockage... more

For anyone who happened to notice that I've not posted a darn thing in a while, my apologies. I've been in the middle of a situation here that required my full attention and most of my energy.

Being that I've been dealing with circumstances that could potentially happen in a number of international adoptive families, I'm taking the time today to share the experience and what I've learned so far.

As long-time readers know, Mark and I were foster parents before we adopted. Our foster son, T, went back to his mother, then to Thailand, but eventually returned to Seychelles a couple of years... more

Issues to do with children and adoption around the world range from the widely different to basically the same, as although cultural differences abound, we are at the base of it all humans.

For example, this story out of the UK illustrates how children of ethnic minorities there wait longer for placement in adoptive families ... up to three times longer ... and there are worries that placing children of color with white families can leave them "without a sense of cultural... more

Right now, in July of 2007, a discussion is going on in the UK ... a discussion about racism and a seventy-five-year-old book that some have finally insisted be removed from the children's sections of book stores.

"Tintin in the Congo" first saw the light of day in 1931, but is still found on shelves in bookshops in Britain, and up until recently along side Pooh and Piglet.

Now, thanks to the Commission for Racial Equality... more

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Politics are, of course, always a hot topic in Cambodia, and right now the biggies in the royalist parties are talking about working together to try to gain some finger-hold through next year's general elections.

With Prince Sisowath Thomico joining Prince Sisowath Siriroath and leaving Prince Norodom Ranariddh, there's not much support... more

The number of orphanages in The Gambia is going up fast, and projects, associations, organizations, institutions, societies and schools are popping up alongside. This article takes a look at why 'collectivism' is the right approach to the problems of orphans, or tries to.

Like much on orphans, there's more spout than clout here, so lines like, "Collective Responsibility: refers to a duty that a certain group of people consciously share among themselves for a specific... more