Chunchiet Japon Charan!!

The highlight of last week was organising and escorting 70 Japanese company executives at 6am in the morning to see our school feeding program. Ok maybe a little more background is justified... In Kampong Chnang Province and now Pursat Province we collaborate with an NGO called School Aid Japan that builds school buildings, water pumps and latrines whilst we provide the hot breakfasts.

They are supported by this company called Watami (apparently some Japanese restaurant chain) and they were going to visit the schools they were supporting. God knows why we were there but our Deputy Country Director decided we would hijack the visit and then promply pissed off to Japan on home leave.

So we spent the week prepping the school for the visit, trying to find any embarrasing problems and what not. On Wednesday night we had an impromptu office party which centred around opportunity. Apparently Vuthy had found a very tasty looking duck at the market and there was a weddding next door to the office with very loud music. So good food+beer+free music=impromptu party. As usual everyone got pretty hammered but it was fun cos we havent had one in a while.

The next day we headed out to do a final inspection of the school. We also dropped in on some Food For Work projects in Srae Ouk (Yaay) and Srae Prich (a neighbouring village). One things that struck me this time was the sandiness of the soil, it is like a beach or something!. Nothing much can grow here and how they manage to compact it into a road is beyond me. Not only that but they are hacking it out of swathes of scrubland in very hot weather, So the next morning we were up at 4am and drove down to meet the Japanese. 4 minibuses turn up about half an hour behind us and hordes of Japanese swarmed the school. It was unlike anything I have ever seen. I was able to answer questions for a few that spoke english but I felt a bit sorry for the kids and the houses around that we visited because it was like a human zoo. Well at least the Japanese put on an impromptu magic show for them...

and i got to meet an apparently famous pop star called Hitomi.

I spent the weekend in Phnom Penh following up a very disapointing lead instead of hitting the beach with the Belgians which was a big mistake!

In other news the price of food worldwide has gone gangbusters due to biofuels replacing food crops, oil prices, surging demand and more complex foods and cash crops being grown instead of staples. This means the World Food Programme is chronicly underfunded world wide. It is the bizarre situation where there is enough food but people cannot afford to buy it.

Here in Cambodia it has meant a 40% price rise in 6 months which is catastrophic for the hungry poor. WFP's rice suppliers have defaulted on their contracts to get better prices meaning we will suspend all programs as of next month until we can get reliable supplies. For me the heartbreaking thing is the support program for people with HIV. Most other people can cope but these people mostly can't.

In a more lighthearted vein here are some random photos...

Firstly constructing a well at one of the schools.

The absurd amount of male and female condoms that our office has been saturated in. Safe sex gone too far? This is just the bathroom, each persons pigeon hole has nine small boxes as well. Pressure or What!
My incredibly racist 'Black Man'' brand chopping block. Its a bit hard to see but its a total Uncle Tom picture on the brand.
And while I was staying for my weekend in Phnom Penh i got put in the crappy room at the hotel (no windows, smells of cigarette smoke) and next to it is some storage. Look carefully at the photo...anything out of place? How bout the shrink wrapped wads of $100 bills. Ok as you probably guessed they aren't real and are left over from Chinese New Year when giving fake money to the gods is a tradition. Still they are pretty damn good!

Oh and no photo but something very embarrasing happened to me on Friday on the way home to swap bags to go to Phnom Penh after getting up at 4am. My trousers got caught in the gear of my bike and my pants tore all the way up the seem to the knee Benny Hill style. This was as I was waving to the guy who runs the service station so I couldn't stop cos I was a bit embarrased and couldnt peddle because it was jammed so I glided along until the bike stopped and attempted to untangle the shreds of my pants from the gears before I could get off. Sigh!

This week I have some independant monitoring to do plus preparation for Mark and Tara's visit then Mum, Dad and I's trip to Vietnam for Khmer New Year. And the tempreture keeps climbing, average is now about 36 with high humidity. Consequently we get blackouts about 3 or 4 times a day now.

In Love With Srae Ouk

Last week I had another smattering of field trips which was great. The first one was with my boss Mony and Sokhom was driving and we went down to Takeo do do some food distributions in the TB and HIV programs.

Overally pretty uneventful except for Mony insisting we get smashed at dinner and the waitress there being rather...friendly. They showed me Ta Mok's House as well. He was one of the high ranking Khmer Rouge guys and its a house built on an island in the river. Rumour has it that it has many secret rooms and other oddities and that he killed the construction crew after each floor was completed to keep it secret. Nowadays the army seem to own it so you can't go in and see for yourself.

A few days later I headed up to Kampong Chnang with Ratha and Sokhom to check on the Food-For-Work program. I am technically meant to be running that program but in reality Ratha runs it pretty well on his own. I felt guilty so we went out to check on a few new projects.

One of the projects was quite remote in Krangski Commune and took hours for us to reach there. It was really quite amazing because its probably the most unpopulated area of Cambodia i have ever seen. It was pretty much all forest and predictably we got lost on the sandy trails.

So we finally arrive and the Village Chief was drunk (at 11am!) so it made for an interesting interview but the project seemed okay so we approved it (although it was very large - more than 50Mt of rice worth). We had a slightly more successful trip out to the provincial town but it took so long we couldn't visit any more sites.

The next morning we had to do more early morning school visits and I successfully bargained Ratha down from 4am to 5am (or did Ratha bargain me?). The schools were interesting because they had these massive Boddhi trees in them. Boddhi trees are holy trees because it is said that the Buddha acheived enlightenment underneath one. Apparently in the war there was an agreement that no one could fight near the Boddhi tree. Sokhom also told me that at night ghosts came out of the tree so you couldn't sleep near one. Kom is a bit scared of ghosts, he once told me he could never sleep in a house alone and would rather sleep in the office than at the shared house if everyone was out doing field trips.

We also went out to check on another project in Srae Ouk. I have waxed lyrical about this village before in other posts so I won't go on : ) What was funny was as we are driving around we turn the corner and see three Indians on a motorbike. I think I have mentioned this before but someone brings Indians out to travel across the country selling mozzie nets and shitty watches. Its quite bizarre how this makes any business sense. Mony once told me people think its a spying ring organised by the Indian Government but then he quite rightly questioned why the Indians would be spying on dirt poor Cambodians...

We popped into Thaym's house (the guy who always gives us coconuts and a chat) and to no great surprise he gave us some coconuts and a chat. His wife is massively pregnant and is ready to burst so I am hoping to see the bubba next time we drop by (which I hope to do a few times before leaving Cambodia).

On the way back to the office we swung by the Phnom Penh warehouses to pick up some new advocacy and ration posters for the TB program. While I was there I dropped in to see Nasser, who a french guy who used to be the logisitics officer but was seconded to the warehouse to run the emergency depot. It was great to chat and it turned out he was being flown out that night to the Comoros Islands (near Madagascar) to do an assessment. Apparently there is some disaster there that was not even reported in the mainstream media.

In other news I had a pretty good weekend. I went there with no plans and my time filled up including making a new American friend, Pat who is friends with my other American friends. Its getting hotter and hotter and this week we have a visit from a Japanese company - 70 Japanese executives turning up in rural Cambodia at 6:am in the morning to see the school breakfast progra! Thatsá Lota Landcruisers!

Like A Virgin

So...


As I mentioned last time, I now have to do independent monitoring visits, that is going to a food distribution without anyone holding my hand. The idea was originally that we were meant to accompany the field monitors as a bit of an anti-corruption thing and a quality assurance thing, but apparently the powers that be have decided against it. So trying to organise just me and a driver is a nightmare but I finally organised the first one.


So me and Pliep (the new driver) headed off to the town of Skun in Kampong Cham province, then would leave early in the morning for Chul Kiri. Along the way I realised we might have a problem when Pliep asked if I knew the way to Chul Kiri from Skun. I kind of always relied on the driver to know where he was going. So we arrived in Skun, settled into our shitty guesthouse and called a few people and we felt a little more confident. But then we ate an awful Suki Soup and things were looking a bit pessimistic again.


So after getting up at 3:30 we hopped in the car (after an appaling nights sleep due to the Karaoke next door) and headed off vaguely in the general direction. Almost the whole way we had to keep stopping and asking for directions (yes there are quite a few people out and about at that hour of the morning). It was driving me mad that I didn't recognise any of it because I had been here last year.

Eventually we popped out the 0ther end at Prey Kiri Village. Finding the first school, I suddenly had an epiphany, recognising where we were I confidently stated at the end of the road was a river. We get there and no river...what the hell was going on!

Dawn had broken when we got to the first school and after a few enquiries ascertained that the cook lived in the school. So we hollered outside this very basic house about ten metres above the ground. The cook poked his head out and invited us up. So we had to climb up the precariously steep ladder made of thin branches. Pliep of course had no problem, but being more heavyset that 90% of Cambodians the wood was creaking and bending underneath me as I climbed up. Thankfully God was merciful and I didn't destroy the poor cooks ladder. The guy was an amputee so the fact that I had trouble getting up and down was a little embarrasing.

Chulkiri is a strange area I have always thought. I can't decide if it is dirt poor or its head is just above water. There is plenty of water and the people can do second rice harvests but the quality of the housing and other things make it seem ver poor. Perhaps the they are sharecropping the land?

Another thing that amused me was the amount of goats. Goats everywhere! I mean you do see goats every now and then wherever you go but Chul Kiri was dripping in them! It reminded me of Mark's measure of poverty, the Goat-a-meter. The more goats, the poorer a place is.

Our final stop was a distribution of people living with HIV. Overall the distributions went well and I think I monitored them well, but I need a few tips on spotting diversions in schools.

As we were leaving I noticed a boat in the health centre and no water except for small ponds. And then it struck me. When I came here last most of the place was underwater in the wet season! Thats why I didn't recognise anything.

To illustrate the difference check out the tide marks on the school building. So overall I think it went well. It was a bit frustrating as Pliep didn't know much about the technical side of it so trying to explain concepts like home based care or food security was a bit hard. Which was entirely my fault for not speaking fluent Khmer but Pliep did well in the circumstances.

Haven't had a full weekend at my house in months so it is a bludge and rest weekend for me!

Kickass and Ass Kicking

Desperate to get out of the office once more, I threw myself off on another field trip. Assistant Heads now have to complete4 days a month independent monitoring visits (as opposed to the joint ones I do at the moment). Discussing this problem Ratha and Theary both volunteered to give me a freebie to get my target up (i.e. do a joint visit but count it only towards my target). The whole concept is a bit flawed because the idea is that I build the capacity of the staff not go marching off by my own. And not being fluent I need to take someone along to translate for me anyway.

Being a chronic shortage of drivers, Ratha and I drove up 2.5 hours on motorbike from Kampong Speu to lovely Kampong Chnang and boy by the end of it was my body hurting!

We were heading off to lovely Kampong Leng District, which you have to catch the ferry across to get to. I have been here before but I love the area. The mountain in the background is 'Sleeping Woman Mountain', apparenty it looks like a woman lying down and many a smutty joke has been told about this mountain but not nearly as many as 'Tit Mountain' in Battambang :)

We were heading out there to do some pre-work measurements of a food for work road and a distribution of food to TB patients. And as a sign things are hotting up I turned a nice caramel colour with a pink tinge throughout the day. Next time hat and sunscreen.

The next day I swapped cars and headed out with Theary at 5am to do some cooking spot checks of schools. Predictably we busted the cooks taking a few cans and hung around till 6:30 when the kids take their breakfast. It was quite ridiculous the amount of chickens around, there must have been at least 30 chickens around us and they would follow us wherever we went, which makes me think I am totally screwed if birdflu breaks out !

The cooks took pity on us and gave us burnt rice (the crusty rice at the bottom of the pan -yum) and some of the fish and lentil soup they had cooked. This put us into quite a position but we reasoned it was ok for us to just taste it, for pure quality reasons of course.

The second half of this post is about my absolutely kick ass weekend. Friday night was the joint farewell party for two of our staff. Predictably we all got sozzled and I think based on events I have become a little too Khmericised and some different perceptions of certain things led to some uncomfortable moments. But otherwise an awesome night and a sore head.

After dragging myself out of bed I headed out to meet Kat and Leigh. I used to work with Kat back in the Humanitarian and Emergencies Section of AusAID and she has now been posted here with AusAID. I met them near Olympic Stadium (note Cambodia has never hosted the Olympics and is pretty unlikely to ever do so) and we went and saw khmer kickboxing. I had heard Khmer Kickboxing was the original form which the Thai's adopted into Muay Thai, then the Thai's claimed they invented it. Thats why no Khmer fighter will ever fight in Thailand. Khmer style is a bit more brutal with fighters allowed to use their elbows to gouge their opponent.

We watched a few fights which was good. The skinny guys seemed to always win. Towards the end there was a few foreigner versus Khmer fights and the Khmers creamed them (although I heard the most famous fighter in Cambodia lost to an Australian guy and everyone thinks it was rigged - I had left already before this fight). One guy was amazing fighting this German fighter. He had this like flying knee butt thing happening and totally creamed the other, bigger fighter.

And we were sitting in the bookie's area. Look at this guy's mobile phones. He would take calls on all of them! We counted nine on the front and one on the back!

After the fight I went to meet my old friend Cristy for a drink then farewell dinner for another Kristy that was leaving. The next day I headed back to the Speu and pottered about. So it was a kickass weekend that had everything in it!