History Repeating

Hi Everyone

These past few weeks have been a bit interesting. For one week I was OIC as Mony was away on holiday so that was fun (although frustrating cos i had to stay in the office for most of it signing things and getting constant phone calls from the Country Office!). The main thing we are doing at the moment is baseline surveying. Our current project concludes this year and will be replaced next year so before that they want to survey the villages we are working in now and survey them after the project to see what impact we might have had.

Luckily the next week I headed up to Kampong Chnang with Ratha, Piseth and Vuthy to do some sampling in the food-for-work villages for next year. One of them is Srae Ouk which is a really interesting village which we have worked in for some years. It is a mixed village meaning it has Cham (Muslim) and Khmer (Buddhist) areas within it. It is a remarkably poor village that suffered a lot in the civil war. Everytime I have been there there is this Cham couple that always invites us in for a snack so this time it was a coconut in the breeze, last time grilled beef but its just so incredible pleasant. Riding around in the back of the pickup (sorry ute) is fun as well.

The surveying was interesting, people are subsiding on remarkably little in the most cases. Although I am sure we didn't pick up all their sources of income some households (5+people) were living on around $100 a year.

So I have now clocked up one year (Dec 8) in Cambodia. Its funny to see things repeating with the seasons. Papayas are now in season, jackfruit tree at my house is flowering again and the weaver ants are licking their nippers whenever i walk by.

People are completing the harvest and drying their rice and the land is turning brown as the rains havent fallen for some weeks now. The mornings are cool but the days are still very hot. And the food-for-work season is beginning so I really feel I can make a good impact in 2008 (having spent most of last year learning).

However I must say I am really fixated on my trip to oz so I am really looking forward to it. But before that we have our annual retreat next year (which for my office means pissup!).