Only 19 work days left! : (

Hi There!

We are just about doing our annual survey against the baseline. This means that last year we did the baseline survey (the first survey of people's food consumption and income in our target areas) and we will do follow up surveys do measure how much impact our programs are having.

But before we could do this, we needed, Yes you guessed it, more refresher training! The first day was pretty standard and included GPS training. We wandered around Kampong Speu with our noses in GPS units much to the amusement of the households we passed. The second day was more interesting where we went out to trial the questionnaires about an hour and a half out of town.

Unfortunately it was totally PISSING down. Ironically enough up until that day, there had been no rain in that commune and we were considering drought assessments - in fact there was a meeting that day that my boss was attending to discuss this very problem. Safe to say the drought is over!

But this meant we were wandering around trying to find these households completely drenched. To make things worse, many households were on the other side of a swollen drainage canal with tiny makeshift bridges to cross to get there. As soon as i saw them i knew something would happen, and i said to myself please let us not have to cross those bridges! Sure enough, after yelling confirmations from the road this old man was the house we had to go to. Ive crossed my fair share of dodgy bridges and climbed many a dodgy ladder but the weather, my beer belly and everyone crossing on the bridge at once conspired to have me put my foot through this poor mans shitty bridge.


Luckily one leg kinda went through but i was able to keep moving and got off the bridge without falling in. To make matters worse it was the wrong house anyway! I asked about paying for it, but the guy said no problem, he could go to the forest for another tree.

And the next door neighbour had a very respectable and sturdy bridge which we didn't see!


So after about a week in the office (and a weekend in Kampong Speu where i did pretty much nothing) I was eager to head out to the field. Unfortunately come Monday morning i had developed a very annoying cold or flu or something. So i came into work and rummaged through the medical kits here and found some cold and flu medicine. I popped two and it soon became clear that these were not the normal strength we get at home. I got back to my desk and within half an hour i was asleep at my computer. Quite sadly no one really noticed and i woke up, tried to work through that haze then somehow peddled home and crashed out.

I had agreed to go on a field trip with Ratha because i hadn't been with him in ages, so i dragged myself out of bed and back to the office and we headed off to Kampong Chhnang. To compound my flu, we were doing School Feeding monitoring. So the next morning i was up at the bright and chirpy hour of 4:30am and we headed off at 4:45am. Nothing that exciting happened, just routine stuff. The food we are distributing is donated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who may have outdone even the Americans on their labelling (Americans say "From the American People", Saudi's say "Kingdom of Humanity". When the price of food shot up massively and we suspended the program, the Saudi's came through and gave a shitload of cash to WFP, $5m of which made its way to us.

I think Ratha could tell I was feeling 100% so he suggested we visit a crocodile farm to cheer me up since our next appointment wasnt for a few hours. And low and behold visit a crocodile farm we did. The kid there was encouraging us to climb this rickidy wooden walkway to get a better look but after my experience with the old mans bridge, i thought better of it.

As usual the crocodiles kinda just lie there.

But then he made the noise he makes at feeding time and then they all went nuts. Hilarious.

The shop is owned by this guy who carves intricate designs into trees. They looked awesome but were like $20,000!



So after a night on the turps as usual (my beer consumption was down due to my flu but that didnt stop the the guys from ribbing me about it) the next day Piseth and I headed out on a ferry to vet a school for a visit from Voice of America radio. Ive done trips in this area a few times but we were heading not to the main port so we hired a boat.
We refuelled at the floating village so i got to have good look at the 'streets' of the village. Most of these people are ethnically Vietnamese but i dont know when they got there. Khmers are quite racist towards Vietnamese for a variety of reasons, but i am sure the Vietnamese treat the Khmers in their country the same way.

We passed by Kong Roeung mountain, apparently named after a female giant that fell asleep and turned into a mountain over thousands of years.


And we finally arrived at the village, greeted at the Pagoda dock.


This was a school we had just expanded to and the people were very grateful for the food assistance. Its such a good feeling to visit such a needy place and feel like our programs are making a difference!

In the end , the journalist just wanted to go somewhere close so we changed to a school in Kampong Speu so the trip was a bit of a waste in that respect but a great experience for me.

For the weekend i zipped up to Phnom Penh, ran some errands. Its really spooky how close to the end of my contract i am (end of November) and i feel pretty sad about it, but excited to go and see my friends and family. I am getting slowly accumulating all the crap i want to take back, despite not actually having my own house so i will be turning mum and dad's place into a gaudy ethnographic museum.

On Sunday afternoon, Piseth invited me over to have dinner with his family and parents. Its kinda weird being here in Kampong Speu in that people's homes are actually back in Phnom Penh so on the weekend all they (understandably) want to do is spend time with their kids therefore not many invites with the dudes, although we do spend copious time together on field trips. But i think he realised my time is running out here so he organised it which was so nice. It was cool being able to talk a bit with his parents in Khmer, with Piseth translating the bits i didn't get. The food was yummy and they insisted i come and eat at their house if i ever make it back to Cambodia.

This week we have an Estonian film crew coming out (don't ask why estonian!) then i head up to Kampong Chhnang to work there the rest of the week.

Bye!