One Night in Bangkok and A Few Days in Pursat Province

So as it happens, Lindsay (my old flatmate in Canberra) is working with the International Labor Organization in Bangkok under a similar deal as me. In fact it’s a little weird that all my flatmates have worked overseas in similar work (Nadija in Samoa, Dylan in East Timor). Anyhoo a while back I decided time was running out for me to go over and visit so in decadent expat style I booked a weekend in Bangkok. So it finally rolled around and I was all set. Except I was working in Kampong Chnang all week and returned to work and found that Air Asia had sent me an email with no subject line and just an attachment (my itinerary). Thinking it was just a courtesy reminded I though nothing of it. But later that arvo when I went to print it off I noticed that the flight was for the afternoon of Saturday (not the morning). And as it turned out it wasn’t my own incompetence (which was the most likely candidate) but they cancelled the morning flight. So that meant that I had a 21 hour holiday in Bangkok, arriving early Saturday evening and leaving early Sunday afternoon! Possibly the most expensive per hour holiday I have had. Anyway it was great to catch up with Lindsay, have dinner, go to lots of bars and the next morning nerding it up at bookstores and soaking up air conditioned shopping centres!

So we are in this peculiar situation at work. We run two projects, one called Protracted Relief and Recovery (PRRO) (which covers education [school feeding, vocational training], health and nutrition [food support for people with HIV and TB or both] and disaster management [food for work, relief]. There other is a Maternal and Child Health (MCH) project. Now PRRO is massively underfunded (leading to, as avid readers will know, the suspension of the school feeding program) but the MCH project is actually fully funded but we are unable to meet our targets due to lack of partners.

We run the project through an organsation called the Reproductive and Child Health Association (RACHA), a local organisation in Pursat Province. They made a proposal to expand their program into 48 new villages and the head of Health and Nutrition, Mory (who is very nice but a total micro-manager) insisted on approving each village (normally the partner approves them and we spot check them according to the criteria used). So Mony proposed I go and spend the week fighting with her about methodology (of which neither of us had any).

We attended one distribution of an already selected village and did some random surveying and the partner staff did some instruction on complimentary feeding.

It was great heading up there, and although frustrating at times, was very informative. The area we went to was really remote, pushed right up against the Cardamom Mountains. The roads were generally pretty appalling and muddy

for which I thanked god we had the 4wD (which we got into a few tight spots with).

There were also many cleared minefields (and I presume uncleared minefields) as this was a front line for fighting between KR and government and later Vietnamese troops. What was striking was how recently they were cleared which makes u wonder how many people had been affected by them. This one, for instance, was only cleared in Feb 04 (as I was going into my last year of Uni). As you can see, now it is a productive rice field.It was amazing how one relatively rich village can be less than a km away from a real dirt poor village. In fact there was one village in particular that really shocked me. Households were living on about 500 Riel a day per capita (12.5c) in houses about 5m² and rice fields only productive enough to meet about 4 months of their yearly consumption. Also many of the men of the village had immigrated to Thailand to work. What really affected me (and I have to say I am not easily emotionally moved) was the stunting of the kids. Stunting means that kids don’t have enough nutrients as they are growing up and end up physically smaller and weaker than they should be. Sadly enough it’s relatively common but there were a few cases that were really tragic. There was one kid who looked about 8 and was 14 years old, and other guy who was my age (25) but who looked about 14. I guess what really upset me is that this damage is irreversible and will effect these kids for the rest of their lives (as if general poverty weren’t enough). Most of what we see in our work is poverty but you are left feeling that if the right conditions prevail then people can remove themselves from poverty, for these kids there is no going back. All we can do is try and help the next generation.

Anyway enough of the bleeding hearts!