First Overnight Field Trip

So last week (Thursday and Friday) i went on my first overnight field trip. Piseth (one of the program officers) picked me up at 7am at my house and we proceeded on a 2.5hr drive to Kampot Province. We were going to monitor the distribution of food at government tuberculosis clinics. Patients receive 60kg of rice, 1.5kg of fortified oil and 1kg of iodised salt twice during their treatments (TB treatment lasts for 6 months).

We arrived at our first site which had about 100 beneficiaries waiting to collect their food (the food had already been delivered and in storage). We arrived and hung around a bit while they finished registering who had come to collect their food and who was absent. We then went into the food storage and manually counted a few tonnes of rice, oil and salt. The distribution went well and the government clinic managed it and we pretty much obvserved after that making sure everyone got their correct ration.

We then drove on for a couple of more hours to the town of Kampot where we dropped in on a vocational training centre. This place was receiving support from tonnes of donors (Germans, Japanese, Asian Development Bank) and was really impressive. They had auto repair, tailoring, weaving and animal husbandry (model farms and aquaculture ponds). The students are from very poor families and stay at the school so WFP provides some food to keep them there. We got given a free ''krama'' which is a traditional scarf to protect you from the sun. Sweet.

We then booked into the hotel and i took the mack daddy suite (a/c, hot water, tv, love heart bathroom matts) for $15. Well it was either me or Piseth who took the mack daddy suite (it was one of two rooms left) and the national staff use their travel allowance as a bit of income support.

We then went for a drive around Kampot and visited a Durian farm (well i was curious!Durian is the fruit that smells like a dead body!) and went across a suspension bridge which crossed the river which was really beautiful and clean. Driving back we saw the outside of the private zoo with two giant gawdy paper mache tigers out front. I wanted to go in but Piseth dissuaded me. We had dinner at a seafood restraunt and ate massive banana sized (if you can remember what they are) prawns, two crabs, tonnes of baby octopus and plenty of beer for ten bucks!

The next day we left at about 7 and went down to the seaside town of Kep, of which i saw the inside of the TB clinic. Here the staff had locked away half the food and lost the key which was a little dodge so half the people who were waiting had to go home and wait till the next distribution which we were not very happy about. I made sure the people knew it was the hospitals fault, not ours.

The next clinic was very remote on an extremely bad road. Here there were lots of orphans and vulnerable children undergoing TB treatment and you could see the hardship these kids faced and how grateful they were for the food.

The final clinic we went to was even more remote and the food storage was disgusting (mice, insects, open bags!). The hospital director and i were casually chatting and he said 'I am 32, in Pol Pot's regime things were very bad. I killed some people''. Well i didnt know what to say after that. Talking about it with Thierry the Belgian he said one of his staff had told him he had killed people when he was 8. I dont think we can judge, people did what they had to do to survive and i am sure we would have done the same thing in that madness.

Anyway... I thought it was interesting.


Cheers