10 Years

Today marks the beginning of my 10th visit to Cambodia. In that time I've seen:

• Roads paved
• Electricity service stabilize and expand
• Children learn, graduate, and give back to their village
• Economic growth
• and so much more

Even with all this progress, I've also seen:

• A challenging election cycle with debatable results
• The same people in poverty, year after year
• Sickness and fear

The good far outweighs the bad. I hope I've had a small part in tilting the balance, but change is a funny thing. I probably can't continue to keep doing the same types of humanitarian work. For example, the explosion of mobile devices as a primary computing platform has arguably taken off faster in the third world because they didn't have the anchor of a beige box running Windows. Teaching basic PC skills will soon have no value.

For this reason I'll spend a substantial part of my time this year reassessing my outreach and asking the same question I did when I walked off the plane 10 years ago: "I wonder how I can best help the people of Cambodia?"

Flight number 2 takes off from SFO to Seoul in about 4 hours. I'll be in Siem Reap almost exactly 24 hours from now.