Jenny (real name: Ari) is an example of someone who I couldn’t help. I think she told me she was originally from Siem Reap. I met her, again, during the height of Covid.

She was hallucinating from day one, very friendly, smiling and speaking perfect English. I recall that she told me she was from Siem Reap. She was quite sociable and seemed to make friends with other Khmer women, who just accepted the fact that she talked to invisible people. She’s one of these beings that it isn’t possible to dislike. The women I was dating at the time was friends with her so we’d often say hello.

I wouldn’t say we were close friends or anything, and I’m not sure of her story. Often she would disappear for long periods. Each time she was around she would stop and chat, often not making much sense, but I think I know quite a few people like this because I’m (generally) comfortable around mental illness and people who are hallucinating, and frankly, it interests me, the phenomena, the mental processes, the philosophy of it. Why do some people live in a different reality like this?

I wouldn’t say there was a demise, but she seemed to have ongoing issues with homelessness. A lot of local places she could have stayed wouldn’t check her in because she had a reputation for random violence. After more than around a year of knowing her, I noticed she was living in a building site. Her hallucinations seemed much worse, it was harder to get any sense out of her and she looked a little physically unwell. In this building site, I noticed a lot of people smoking meth pipes but never saw her partaking. She was essentially in her own world. I think her income was begging and also being part of a homeless community where people feed each other, I’ve seen that a lot. Often in these situations, people who are sleeping on the floor are offering used watches, bluetooth headphones (used) etc for sale so I think there are various forms of … surviving.

Well the building site was completely demolished and she disappeared for a while. The next time I saw her she was looking rougher still and now pregnant. She was hanging around this restaurant ran by an old battle-axe of a woman, who also has an occasional kind side, like boiling up a load of eggs and letting the homeless kids take them, lending people money, looking after the ID cards of homeless people (who have them) for safekeeping. Anyway, she was allowed to sit in a quiet corner and talk to herself on the understanding that she doesn’t bother customers.

At the time I was doing a lot of writing so I sat with her, quite concerned about the pregnancy but I couldn’t get the facts of her situation. In Phnom Pehn, much of the cheap street food is pushed around on carts and every time one went buy, people hanging out, or me, would buy some and share it and this is, I think, how she was surviving. This was every day for about a month, and then she disappeared again.

I next saw her a few months later. At that time, I was still performing stand up comedy on stage at a venue near Wat Botum. I used to walk through the Childrens’ Park to get there, and I saw her under a tree, with her baby, a girl she had called Ratana. Well she waved at me and I approached her and as I did so, I was aware that the most of the (Khmer) people around me stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I had a brief conversation with her to try and understand the situation. She started to say something, but then heard some inner-voice or something and wandered off talking to herself. Now I understood why all the people around were staring at me, they had noticed this concerning situation… though not actually spoken to her because people are scared of mental illness.

Ratanna seemed well-cared for, newborn, on a cushioned bed on the tree roots. Jenny had this huge box full of baby stuff. She came back and told me that some woman, who is linked to the Buddhist Pagoda somehow, gave her all this baby stuff and ‘a lot of money’. She had some papers in Khmer from the hospital concerning the birth which she showed me. She had also saved the plastic tie they used to tie off the umbilical cord and various other baby things. She told me she had a room and indicated an area towards Naga casino. In-between explaining this she was walking off talking to herself while everyone stared at me and whispered. In between hallucinating, she would return and put a bottle in the babies mouth for a moment or push a little pillow closer to her, then walk off again.

I stayed with them until it was dark but then had to go in and do my performance, and when I came out they were gone. I didn’t see them for a couple of weeks, and then they turned up at the riverside, sitting on the bank most afternoons for around two weeks.

Things were going downhill. Ratana had a scar on her face and Jenny told me she fell down the riverbank (tumbling off the wall) and was laughing as she recounted it. The little bed was gone and the baby was on the hard, hot stone of the wall directly, very sunburned. Jenny was hallucinating and I stayed in the area for hours, drinking tea nearby and I watched her hallucinating and wandering off for long periods of up to half an hour, completely leaving Ratana alone on the stone wall. She was also unchanged all day.

Well this wasn’t going to work. It is not easy to contact services in Phnom Pehn, but she’s fell through the cracks somehow. The hospital didn’t realize her condition, although there are official papers about the birth, that would at least be a start. I started with that. Jenny also gave me a number of her mother in Siem Reap. It took a long time of listening to her babbling nonsense, but a number was written down. I called it and it didn’t exist. I asked if she would still keep coming every day and she just talked to herself. I walked away that last time, and never saw them again.

The point I want to make about Jenny is that I never could have helped her. I don’t know if she has SIP, or schizophrenia, but frankly I suspect the latter. Her mouth was always OK, no skin sores, no twitching. The hallucination was constant with no lucid periods. Also, unlike most of my friends here, she was literate and although she made no sense, her English was perfect. I don’t think this is a drug issue or loss of family network. It might just be a lady with schizophrenia with no support whatsoever. Now I don’t know what the treatments are, the main issue is that her situation isn’t being picked up by anyone. I have no idea what the treatments are or how effective they would be. Obviously, there is no set amount of money that would solve this problem. I don’t know what support exists here and how to access it, but if I can get things going, perhaps I can be networked with other agencies, NGO’s or whatever for at least referral.

So what I can do in this situation is notice, to see what is around me, to be comfortable with her illness and to have put her in a safer place when needed to be safe.

Not every problem is about money.