The Other Side

Hey everyone

Looks like i am making up for lost time with a few quick fire posts.

On Thursday/Friday I headed out to food distributions in Kandal Province for TB patients (nothing says hello like coughing up a gollie). Anyhoo i always thought this province was just an extension of Phnom Penh cos i always end up in this town called Tawkhmao (which has this big statue of this black guy holding a club which no one seems to be able to tell me who he is). But we went to the other half near the border with Vietnam and it is quite beautiful lots of rivers and lush trees.

I guess this trip kinda brought back the other side of working in this field, when you have to say no to people. One of the health centres had forecast the patient list wrong and we didnt have enough rations for 35 people. Unfortunately these people were inpatients (so the ones that were still symptomatic) and probably needed the food the most. Balancing that with the patients who had completed treatment and still entitled to their ration and had been waiting 8 months for other reasons is hard. I guess its easy to say yes but hard to say no

We managed to squeeze one ration to one lady in the inpatient who was so ridiculously thin whose arms were as thick as maybe two pencils next to eachother (TB greatly increases your metabolic rate meaning you lose a large amount of weight).

We also had to turn away some people who because of a technicality were not entitled to a ration. When we ran out of food in the first quarter of this year, those who completed their treatment then missed out and we didnt have enough food for retroactive rations.

On the drive back on Friday we passed the wackiest pagoda I have ever seen. It has this ridiculously tall steeple with Bayon style heads up the top. The entrance is 5 giant demon heads and the stairs coming out of their mouths like tongues. Am so heading back to take photos at some point. As we passed Sokhom, the driver, said the crazy monks had spent 10 years building it and it will have to be torn down if they ever expand the road to more lanes. Then realising he just called the monks crazy he put his hands together in prayer and said 'som doh' (please excuse me).

So exhausted from standing up for about 6 hours in the hot sun i retired to the speu for a quiet weekend. One thing i did get done was cycling up to the water resevoir at Kombol about 40 minutes up the road. We always pass it driving between Phnom Penh and it has been an ambition to cycle up there. So i finally did, very sa-at (beautiful).

Oh i love this photo, the sign is for the Kampong Speu Tourism Department (methinks that one went outta business a while ago!)

Me-un Panyaha! (Have Problem!)

Hi Everyone

So...wanting to get out of the office this week, I accompanied Ratha and Vuthy to go check on non-food items (NFI) in Basedth District of the Speu. Why they just dont call them box culverts (since thats all we ever give) i dont know! Anyway, normally i dont go on this field trips cos looking at concrete pipes aint really my thing, but throwing caution to the wind i went (I must admit I have a soft spot for Basedth, quite a picturesque area).

Unfortunately there has been a small plague of brown planthoppers that is affecting rice fields. We pulled up and had a look around and it was clear this village had been hit hard, with healthy rice fields dying out. The village chief said that of the 130 Ha of fields, 90 had been destroyed and they expected the rest to go soon. Obviously they cant afford insecticides and when they do use them they dont use them safely or effectively.

So we will keep an eye on it and wait and see if a food gap appears or not. The villagers also made a special prayer and burnt some infected rice to see if there would be any divine intervention, lets wait and see about that as well.

Anyway, so we looked at some concrete pipes being built to control water flow and provide road access. As i say, not really my thing but Ratha was in control.

The interesting part happened when we were negotiating round some tiny village roads to get to another site. So Ratha and I hopped out and Vuthy was gonna turn the car around. Unfortunately the side of the road collapsed and the car slid into the rice fields.

Vuthy tried to gun it and things quickly got worse, the two side wheels went underwater and one wheel on the other side was in the air. Uh Oh!

road 51`!
As you can imagine this spectacle soon attracted the attention of most of the village so soon we had a crew going. I was having a little trouble following the action due to language problem so i was put to work as the anchor to bring the wheel back on the ground (given that most Khmers probably weight like 40kg I was valulable bulk :)

Two hours later we were out and i helped carry some of the wood we used as rails to drive along. Except I picked up the heaviest piece and negotiated my way over bamboo fences etc before realising I had walked straight past the house I was taking it too! So much to the bemusement of the villagers I negotiated my way back over the fragile fence muttering 'just don't fall over, just don't fall over!

Anyway, this is rainy season!

Back Online!

Hi Everyone

I seem to have dropped off the face of the earth as far as this blog goes so here is an attempt to bring it back on the rails. It seems viruses of the computer and physical kind have been conspiring against me.

Last week I was OIC all of the week so I was looking forward to sorting out some of the food for work residual issues. Of course I contracted something on the Sunday (I always seem to get sick in Phnom Penh) which turned out to be a respiratory virus ,which i have almost kicked. Of course thats when the Belgians got together for a cheese party so I couldn't miss that!

So for the last couple of weeks we have been madly rushing to finish Food for work distributions which were due to end August. Our office had the only carry over projects, 20 in all, which is a little disapointing but we had pretty valid reasons (including our partners being the least resourced for some reason which i hope to change next year). Unpredictability, like this truck being stuck in the mud adds to it. Its kinda disappointing cos FFW will contract quite a lot due to lack of donors and it is by far the most interesting but we shall see how it goes. We had a party with our partners the other week which pretty much involved drunk Khmer dancing, which is always fun – i am master of the maddison (the messed up nut bush).

Yuki from country office who is really cool has come out to audit a few projects which i have joined him on a few times, including the really fun ons when the canal has flooded. My colleuagues never let me go all the way in so knee high wading is as good as it gets. I remember we went to one really flooded area and the rice bunds had collapsed in some places so i sunk into the mud several times (including when on the phone to one of the other offices which they found very amusing!).

One the roads we went and did postwork on was in a mixed Cham (Muslim) and Khmer village. It was particuraly nice as we had visited there a month or so earlier and approved an extra project as it was a really poor village. In fact, they had started building the road last year but it was never actually approved but the commune chief told them to do it anyway. Now the road is built up, so its nice to see the before and after shots. Except that the road finished in the middle of no-where... seems like they will add an extra 2km next year to link up to the health clinic and school.


Another particularly cool trip was in Kampong Chnang to a fairly remote site where we had to catch the river ferry for about an hour, then a motodop for abou half an hour to get to the site. Those trips are always the most interesting. We got to go through all the floating villages.

The rice we are using at the moment is a gift of Japan but the bags arent badged apart from a sticker, so its quite funny watching a distribution when everyone plays silly buggers with them (putting the stickers on eachothers backs/cows/children).

Anna (my equivalent in Siem Reap office and alround cool dudette) left for home a few weeks ago, so myself and Cristy (assistant head at Kampong Cham) took Friday the 13th off to go exploring. Anna wanted to go to the silk weaving villages in Takeo province and since that province is on my turf we went out there with a hand drawn treasure map. So we eventually got there which was interesting, but silk weaving isnt really my thing. We ended up getting into an argument with an old lady who turned nasty once she realised we didnt really like her designs. We then climbed up Phnom Chisor, a not particularly imposing mountain, and prayed at the cow temple at the top. On the way back we stopped at Ta Prohm temple, an Angkor era ruin which has been partly restored and quite nice. The entry ticket alone was worth it, imploring us to throw our rubbish on the clean side of the river ONLY!

So this week I am taking it easy. The weather has gone hot again which i prefer to last weeks consistently cold and wet and spattered in mud. We have a pilot project for fish pathways (i still dont understand the concept but its a canal linking rice fields and village pond for fish to traverse) which should be interesting and Friday we have our monthly management meeting where we meet the new Assistant head in Kampong Cham and farewell Cristy as well.

I have also started doing english lessons on the white board in the waiting room which is really testing my credentials as a native english speaker, like what the difference between solve and resolve is!

Umm other random news is that i bought a mountain bike off Anna who then used the money to set up a women's NGO...got to be some karma in that right?

Also had a few days in sleazy sex tourism capital of Asia, Pattaya Thailand with the folks as they were returning from a winter retreat to Europe. It was...interesting though i must say i just dont really like Thailand that much (gasp heresy i know!).