CSI Kampong Speu

Morning Everybody!

So this morning I got up at the Matthew record hour of 3:30 AM for work. The reason? To do an early morning monitoring visit (maybe more of a raid :) on the school feeding program of course.

After several wrong turns in the dark we (Vuthy, Piseth and Theary) finally arrived at the Pagoda (upon whose land the school was built). We were gonna go to another school as well but the gates were firmly locked and didnt feel it was appropriate to be jumping fences at that hour of the morning. So at the next stop we tip toed across this deserted pagoda to get to the school to get to the kitchen to see the real story before any dodgy records or previously used cans could be substituted.

Small shack with a pretty good stove built in with two guys cooking. At first we were impressed, the community was providing fresh vegetables to be cooked with the WFP food (canned fish, salt, oil and rice). Then it was downhill from there.

We asked how many cans of fish they were cooking (canned fish is the most stolen commodity) and they said nine, but we only saw seven. They then sheepishly recovered the cans from their hiding place. Strike 1.

Strike 2 - the storekeeper said he gave the cook 24 tins, we saw only 9. The storekeeper was stealing 15 cans a day which are worth about ten bucks. That adds up to a healthy little earner in this country where 1/3 are living on less than one dollar a day.

Strike 3 - Cooks are paid a monthly ration of 15kg (pretty sucky ration considering you have to start cooking at 4:30 every morning!). We soon found out the male cooks were receiving 30kg ration while the female cook only 15kg. As it turns out there were two 'ghost cooks'who didnt exist whose ration went to the male cooks.

Strike 4 - The school director was paying 3kg of WFP rice to the cooks for a cubic metre of firewood. Firewood is meant to be an in-kind gift from the community.

Strike 5- They cooked enough food that day for six times the amount of students that actually attended (let alone actually ate).

Nonetheless we suspended activities in that school. Sadly corruption is schools is pretty widespread, but at the same time understandable. Teachers earn $30 a month, enough to place them on the poverty line.

Otherwise things are going well. I am OIC as Mony is away in the field for the next few days so everyone is taking advantage of that by requesting to go to Phnom Penh early. I figure as long as they don't do it all the time and have finished all their work its Ot Panyaha (No Problem). The rains are getting pretty regular now so the path to work changes potholes pretty much every afternoon.

Oh this random banner ......has been hung over the National Road running through Kampong Speu leading to much speculation, no logo, no explanation of who ''we'' is?. Will keep you posted :) And apparently there is a Dengue Fever epidemic in Kampong Speu at the moment so the next post may well be from a Bangkok hospital :)