Almost Famous

Hi

Its been a crazy couple of weeks but very interesting. I feel so tired at the moment but there is just too much good stuff going on and i don't really mind : )

Last week we had this random email from these freelancers doing a piece on food inflation costs in Cambodia from the Voice of America (basically this propaganda channel the americans have to show the developing world how great the USA is!). So we originally tried to hijack the story and get them to film the school feeding program (which has now been suspended for the rest of the school year but schools still have some stock to cook).

So predictably the journalists said they couldn't make it that early and we made it 10:3o thinking at least they can meet the kids who had eaten that morning. Low and behold three hours late their car limps into the office and its an Irish guy and an Italian guy (how they were planning to translate without us is beyond me). So we head out to a village about 30 minutes away to shoot some interviews (unfortunately not much on WFP but we managed to sneak in there - Mony is on it talking about people's rice supplies) but not me - who knows maybe that could have been my big break! :(

Mark and Tara came over to Phnom Penh from Singapore for a few days before heading up to Siem Reap then home. It was great to have visitors and judging by the amount of stuff they bought and the amount of food we ate I think they enjoyed it. The highlight was the obligatory trip down to Kampong Speu to see how I do things. Tara had specially requested to visit an orphanage to donate some things so I thought of the one in Kampong Speu (the ones in Phnom penh are getting a bit touristy these days). So after a week of trying to get an appointment we managed to settle on visiting on Sunday morning so we hopped in a taxi down there. It was a little weird at first cos the children were a bit shy but we had brought some soccer balls and volleyballs and Mark thankfully broke the ice to play some games which was great. It was so bloody hot but it was lots of fun getting our asses kicked. Tara showed the girls some games. It was also good seeing the babies.

At Mark and Tara's request the next day at work I organised 100kg of rice and some metal pans for laundry that they had requested.

The weather here has been pretty erratic. For a 'hot and dry season' it has been thunderstorming a lot which Mark and Tara kept getting caught in. The power has been cutting out for most of the day and from about 6 to 10pm so i have abandoned the notion of keeping food in the refrigerator until things improve on that front. Although living by candlelight does sometimes have its advantages : ) Also hopefully i should get 24 hour running water in a few weeks when the new water tank gets installed!

Apart from that I have been going to a few field visits and have some more random photos.

This is Theary (one of our field monitors) at a distribution making the introductory speech introducing the reasons for food aid and other messages. I think you have to squint to see Theary in the middle!
This is a canal gate that Ratha and I inspected just yesterday (grey thing in the background). At the moment they are keeping the water in one part of the canal so the people can grow morning glory (its a legitimate vegetable stop laughing!), watermelon and longbeans to sell.
Otherwise saw this cool critter at the office running across the petank field.

And i made a stirfry using banana flower the other day. This is a banana flower YUM.

The next two weeks I will be in Vietnam with my parents stomping about which is long overdue (although the timing could be different but I only realised that recently :) I have to escort a german TV crew around tomorrow morning though so I hope we finish early enough so i can catch my flight!