Newsletter 6
We make a living out of what we get, but we make a life out of what we give......
Sir Winston Churchill
Susaday and soksabai to you (hello and how are you)!
I can't believe how quickly times flies. Before I know it, it will be November and I'll be heading back to Australia to visit everyone. Don't forget you can click on any of the photos in my newsletters to see a larger version of them.
CLEAN DRINKING WATER AT LAST
Can
you imagine this being the only water you had access to for drinking, cooking,
washing, farming, etc? This is all that many of the villagers at Prasat Char
have available to them.
But thanks to all of you who have donated money there are now eight families
who have access to clean, safe drinking water. By the end of next week I
hope to have at least 13 water pumps completed, one at each of the poorest and
more remote homes. The water from the wells they currently use (in the
above picture) is absolutely filthy - its no
wonder the villagers are sick so often.
In
this picture (on the left), a well is under construction. They are a very
simple design and reach down under the ground to approximately 20 meters.
The men are using a type of drill to bore down to the water table, then
they insert piping down to the water and it is drawn up to the surface using a
suction method.
Completion of the first water pump - the children took great delight in playing in the water.
This man proudly showed off his new water pump. Notice how he has tried to make it look attractive with the addition of some plants and bottles (!) around the base of it.
THE WET SEASON KICKS IN
At last some decent rain has fallen on our little village. We are supposed to be in the wet season at the moment but up until recently there hadn't been enough rain. Its now the busiest time of the year for the villagers as they all head out into the fields to transplant the rice.
I've made many wonderful friends here and recently three of them wanted to visit the village. There was Aline and Gregory, a mother and son from France, and Gianfranco from Italy. We all headed out to the village last Saturday, but little did I know how "inaccessible" it had become due to the rain.
In this picture Sovane and his Uncle (on the oldest motorbike I've ever seen)
make their way precariously over the makeshift bridge.
We
then had to leave the motorbikes behind and go in on foot. Fortunately,
our little party were all up for an adventure.
Climbing
over rickety bridges with my camera gear hanging from my neck is not really my
thing, so you can imagine my dismay when I finally managed to reach the end of
this bridge only to find it ended in water! Talk about getting out of your
comfort zones.
On
this particular expedition we were taken to meet a couple of families that we
didn't even know existed. 
The
plight of one family in particular really got to me (all of us actually).
The family consists of a mother and five children. This family don't even
have a well to get their water from. The children have to go to a nearby
river in order to get water and carry it back to the house. We plan to
build a water pump at their house on Friday. I believe that this woman
doesn't actually have any land as such to use for farming. Apparently, in
order to get money to buy rice she collects firewood and sells it to the other
villagers for their cooking. The children also catch frogs to eat - here's
the youngest son holding up his dinner. To her credit, the Mother, ensures
that three of the children go to school. The oldest one is now in high
school though and as it is far away and he has no way to get there he doesn't
go. I intend to by them a second bicycle as soon as possible so that he can
continue to go to school. We will also look at other sustainable
ways that we can help them to improve their standard of living.
Fortunately, to that end, I've been meeting Cambodians who are proving to be a great help. Sophan is a Cambodian lady who lived in France for some time, hence she knows Aline and Gregory, and she is very keen to get involved and help with the village. She also knows people in the government which will come in handy when we have to make things official. I've also met another man, Roeurt, who I will talk about later in this newsletter.
On our wanderings through the more remote parts of the village we came upon a group of four men sitting down to a meal. They only had two bowls in front of them. In one bowl there was a frog that they were sharing and in the other there was ant soup. My first thought was "oh my goodness, I hope they don't get all hospitable and offer us some". Later that day when we visited little Lea's house (the little girl who had her arm operated on) we were told that a meal was being prepared for us and I had to tell the others that we had to eat it or it would be rude as it was being especially prepared just for us. You should have seen them trying to get out of it. As it was they only nibbled on a little bit and left me to eat everything!
Everybody thoroughly enjoyed their visit to the village. I asked Aline and Gregory afterwards if it was what they had expected, and they replied that the poverty was much worse than they imagined. There are people in Cambodia suffering serious food shortages at the moment (due to drought) and its been reported in the papers here that some people are actually dying from a lack of food.
Aline and Gregory left for France this week, but they have become very keen to help with the village and they left me with an "incredibly" generous donation (and just when I thought I was going to start running low on money). We have many, many plans for the village and now we will really be able to make a difference to these people's lives. My/our main goals are education and income generation.
Here's
Aline, Gregory, Mr Dean, myself and Sophan at a going away dinner for Aline and
Gregory. Mr Dean is from Australia but lives at the same guest house as I
do. He is here teaching English.
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