Big Poppa

Hi Ya'll


So for the last few days I have been a/g Head of Sub-Office as Mony is on leave. Not very different from assistant head except that I am signing off petrol coupons, travel allowances etc. Not that exciting :) I was a bit late today so I got swamped by forms to sign before people could go out on their field trips so lesson learnt I have to get to work at about 7 when I am OIC.


Anyway, last week I went out to visit some Tuberculosis clinics in Takeo Province. As I have said before, WFP provides rations to patients undergoing the Directly Observed Treatment - Short course (DOTS). Basically you are an in-patient for 2 months then an outpatient for about 7 months. WFP has a pipeline break (run out of food) so the TB program is being interrupted. We were there to see the distributions of the leftovers from the last shipment.


Of course the first place had forgot to inform the patients to come and collect it and the second place only had enough food for seven patients. I am not sure what the effect of the health of people trying to kick TB but we will see. Hopefully it should restart in April.

Anyway after a weekend in Phnom Penh (Chinese New Year so not much was open- I am a pig and being a golden pig year it is meant to be very lucky for me!).


Monday a few WFP cars went out with a mission from Bangkok and Rome who have come here to try and do some mapping of food insecurity. The idea is to have a world map so food insecurity can be compared across the world. This is , of course, easier said than done.

We went thorugh Kampong Speu and Kampong Chnang to talk to drought affected communities. Firstly we visited a Khmer village (and were escorted by World Vision who we met at their office which was adorned with bibles and signs saying ''our core value is that we are Christian'' and then organised for the meetings with villagers to happen in...a church!).


Secondly we went to a Cham village (the Cham are the Muslim minority who were particuraly targetted under Khmer Rough (mosques destroyed, forced to eat pork etc.) and it is estimated about 1/2 of the Cham population perished.


Thirdly we went to a village that was set up for internally displaced people. Basically, when Khmer Rouge and Government were fighting in early 90s, these people were put in a camp by the government to remove them from Khmer Rouge area and were resettled here after Khmer Rouge were driven from the area.


Basically, all these communities had rice deficits because of water shortages. Generally the family had to leave the village to work in Phnom Penh for periods of time, pulling their kids out of school. We also heard that things have become easier since the garment factories opened. They can send their daughter to work there and she can send home about $30 a month. Anecdotally, we have heard Khmers want to have more girl children (boy children are traditionally favoured) because they have a chance to work in these factories. Male children dont really have much option but farming.

Sorry I couldnt really take any photos as it wasnt all that appropriate but hopefully more next time!

Oh I have got to tell you about this place we went for lunch yesterday. There was only three of us in the office and everything was closed for Chinese New Year so we drove out of town a bit to go to a wild animal restaurant. We had some kind of deer stir fried with tree ants and tree ant eggs. Then we had wild boar (cue image of pig hunting magazine) and then pigeon soup. I couldnt help but ask about the alleged dog restaurant and they confirmed it. One guy said he ate it every Sunday as a child but doesnt anymore. They offered to buy me some but i passed it up. That ten dollars goes wanting (for now!).

Bye :)

Kids and Uncle Happy in Singapore

Hi All

Its been a really exciting couple of days so I will fill you in.

On Thursday, I went and visited a school (Happy Chandara School) run by French Cambodians in France (Tute E'Lecole). It is supported by private companies, among other Marie Claire. It is located in Kandal Province, Kien Svay District.

The school was really amazing. It just started in November and supports 86 young girls from the surrounding communes who otherwise would not be able to attend school. It is a truly remarkable school (especially when you compare the quality of the state schools). It was clean, had hygenic latrines, had many resources etc.

The reason we were there is that WFP has begun providing food (rice, oil, canned fish, salt, mung beans) to the school for them to provide a hot breakfast for the girls. The idea of school feeding is that kids who arent hungry in the morning learn more (gee I feel like I am in a Weet-Bix ad!) and acts as an incentive for poor families to send their girls to school (taking the burden of a meal off the family). The school itself provides tonnes of other food as well, such as vegetables, meat and fruit. It also provides a take home ration to the girls as a further incentive to the family (13kg of rice a month). WFP also sometimes has a take home ration system but this school was doing it itself.

They are in fact using WFP food for lunch not breakfast but it appears that this is ok.

Anyway, after returning to the office for a few hours I grabbed my suitcase, stood on the side of the road and got picked up by a van heading to Phnom Penh (basically every van doubles as a taxi - so my particular one was loaded up with firewood. Normally these affairs are pretty squishy but apart from about fifteen minutes with three of us in the front with lots of luggage it was fine. Had a broken conversation with one of the guys, which I think revolved around how old I was. Cost $1 to hop off at the airport (about an hour from Kampong Speu).

I was, of course, off to visit Mark, Tara and Amali in Singapore. I arrived late that evening and Mark picked me up and we went back to their house. The next morning i woke up and stumbled out to reaqaint myself with Amali (who I havent seen in months and havent had any real one on one time with for at least a year). At first she was a little indifferent but after reading some books with her she warmed up heaps and we had tonnes of fun. She calls me ''Uncle Happy''.

Mark and I went out to the zoo which was great and Amali had a ball. Singapore Zoo has to be the best zoo I have ever been to. The best part was Amali imitating the animals, like Monkeys she did her ''Ooh Ooh Aah Aah'' dance and she calls giraffes ''Aff Aff''. So cute :)

There was a giant ball pit at the zoo and Amali went it, and she nearly disapeared! We had to launch a rescue :)

The next day we went Bike Riding in the morning, then swimming, then playing in the play ground. Then Mark and I went cable wake boarding. Basically its an artificial lagoon with a cable system going round and round in circles. You grab on to one of the ropes and you try and stay on the board. Even though I was knee boarding I predictablly sucked but it was lots of fun...and painful the next day!

I also snuck in a lot of shopping like books, groceries, toiletries etc. Mark and Tara took me to some great eats as well, including chilli crab!

It was short but tonnes of fun. It is so easy to get over there so when the new bubba arrives I will definately be making another visit.

Sup Bangs

(Bangs is an honourific term here when referring to someone)

So WFP hit Sihanoukville. By that I mean all WFP staff from the four office (Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham, Siem Reap and of course Kampong Speu) went to Sihanoukville (the beach resort town) to hang out with each other and complete our work plans. The hotel we stayed at had a casino attached which i visited twice (once with the other assistant heads to play black jack and lose and secondly with a guy from country office when we were both a little tipsy and i ended up winning 15 bucks woo hoo!)

I had to give two presentations on on 2006 in the sub-office (given I spent all of two weeks in said sub office in 2006) and secondly presenting our 07 workplan. Very exciting stuff. The photo below is myself, Coco (the Japanese deputy country director) and two field monitors Thol (behind me) and Bora (front of picture).

On the second day we went down to the port to see some WFP containers being unloaded and we all had to dress identically in WFP shirt and hat. The end result was some crazy korean package tour action (see below). Of course I decided I hadn't yet embarrased myelf enough so I spilt coffee all over mine (well i was bound to do something embarrasing!).

We were given a presentation by World Vision during which even the hardened secular die hards like myself started to come round, but then she cracked. The woman talked and talked and talked until eventually she was talking about the power of prayer in international development. Now dont get me wrong, people have the right to believe in any religion they want, but when you walk into a poor village with a bible in one hand and a water pump in the other, there may be some room for exploitation. One of the people at my office used to work there and although you don't have to be a Christian to work there, to get a promotion its an unsaid rule (this includes your families religion). They have prayer meetings every morning and chapel every week. He even said that they try to ''outchristian'' each other , so one senior manager put pressure on her staff not to let her children marry non christians [ I had head these rumours while working at AusAID about World Vision globally]. How this plays in a Buddhist and Muslim country like this, i will let you connect the dots. Anyway to her credit she clarified that she meant prayer of any religion.

The best part (or possibly worst part :) of the retreat was the evenings. It was lots of eating (mmm seafood), drinking, karaoke and dancing. I thought i knew the Khmer dance where you twist your fingers while going round and round an object in the middle but no, there is more. There is the ''electric slide meets finger twirling'' , ''docey doe [thanks Inky!] meets finger twirling'' and the ''messed up nutbush''. Khmers love to dance and everyone makes an idiot of themself so it was lots of fun.

My office, being the naughtiest office, snuck off after dinner on the first night to keep drinking at a local karaoke bar. I though i was safe as it was all in Khmer but my boss searched and found some english ones. So after he finished ''unfinished melody'' i thought i better contribute. The karoke beast took hold and well lets just say the details are better forgotten in the land of bad 90s love songs. Unfortunately someone found the english karaoke for the Friday (Australia Day) and the international staff sang some...very badly.

I spent the w/e in Sihanoukville which was really nice but it wasnt as hot as I would have hoped. Those of you that come visit will have to come to this place the seafood is awesome.

And finally, yet another Khmer Rouge moment. After attending a meeting in Phnom Penh, one of the drivers came up from the sub office to pick me up and we drove down, stopping for lunch on the way. He asked whether people in Australia eat much rice, and I told him as a matter of fact I ate tonnes of rice in Australia but that perhaps I wasnt a very good representative sample of Australians :) He showed me on the spoon how much rice he was given while in the Khmer Rouge camps and forced to work, it was one level tablespoon.

He was taken from Phnom Penh when he was 17 and sent up to Battambang to work on digging irrigation ditches. Each person there was expected to do a certain amount of work each day and if they didnt do it for any reason (including sickness) they were executed. While working there he contracted malaria, lesions etc. but was able to meet his quota which grew and grew (still on one level teaspoon of rice). When he came out 3 years later, all 8 members of his immediate family had died and only two uncles and an aunt of his extended family survived. He became a teacher later and had to teach by day and guard to school from Khmer Rouge at night and one night he was shot in the leg in a Khmer Rouge raid.

This guy is the nicest guy I have met here I think, and his demeanour would never give away the tragedy that happened in his life. But still he taught himself english and now earns a decent salary. Whats the worst part of it is that all the top politicians here are ex-Khmer Rouge, the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal has been stalled for about ten years and many of the victims of Khmer Rouge live neighbour to neighbour with ex-khmer rouge! No wonder this place is such a violent country (you often read about very small disputes being settled with someone stabbing someone to death [don't worry Mum, a foreigner hasnt been killed here since 96'' :)]. Well actually an aussie woman died last week in a motorbike accident but that was because she wasnt wearing a helmet [mental note remember to wear helmet].

Anyway...this week I have started formal Khmer lessons which is really hard going but I am told it will become easier with time.