Our First Field Report

This [post] is dedicated to my brother Manley. One of the last things he said to me before he died in July was that he wanted to know what the Lutherans were doing in Cambodia. Nothing I could have told him up until today would have interested him much. I wish he could have been with us yesterday.

 

Dear Friends and Family,

The thought of trying to put our first field visit into one email is overwhelming. From 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. we entered another realm. It’s hard to believe we were just gone for one day.

Everything seemed straight forward until we left the main highway at about 8:40 a.m. The packed dirt road deteriorated almost immediately and we spent the next 45 minutes bumping from one pothole to another. Once at the project office of Tuek Phos, we enjoyed a good conversation with Project Manager, Bunnath, and then with two Community Empowerment Officers and two of their Community Empowerment Facilitators. Our hope was to get a sense of their communication needs. We picked up some good responses from them which will feed well into our communications plan.

We joined the staff for lunch (later, each contributing 3000 riel ($0.75) to cover the costs) of rice, pork soup, grilled rice paddy fish (okay, Manley wouldn’t have liked that part–too many bones!), and pickled greens.

After some rest time, we loaded up two vehicles and headed out to Taing Thnong village. Fifteen to 20 villagers awaited us in the village meeting place. A very competent young woman of the Village Development Committee introduced herself and their agenda. All the mandatory introductions and greetings were exchanged. While the partner household structure was explained, boiled sweet potatoes and cassava were passed. Our side of the group was also given the opportunity to dip the boiled cassava into a bowl of sugar. Kids peeked around adults to watch us, but the adults were less discreet. The village elder, mistaking us for donors, lauds LWF’s efforts in the village and encourages LWF to stay and help them further improve their standard of living. And he’d like a loud speaker.

Finally, we had the opportunity to visit a partner household (PH), see their development plans, visit their gardens, watch them feed their hens and chickens, inspect their fishpond, and be commandeered into performing an interview (!).

Sla Khom, looking much beyond her 48 years, lives with three of her four children in a typical Khmer house on stilts. In the shade of her house, her neighbours help her show off her household plans. One drawing on flipchart paper shows her property as it was when she became a partner household and the second shows it the way she hopes it will be on “graduation”. Her daughter Sinuon ushers us to the garden, where “morning glories” (a popular vegetable) sprout and her mango tree is just settling in. It will be five years before it is bearing a full crop. Khom feeds her flock of chickens and passes the can of broken rice to me to finish the feeding.

At 21, Sinuon has a grade 7 education, but is keen to be part of the LWF project and proud of the household’s accomplishments. Before becoming a partner household, Khom met many difficulties, but now with LWF training in gardening and poultry raising, the family is doing much better. They have some extra vegetables to sell to neighbours and a half hectare of rice field.

Just a few hundred metres down the road is a second partner household. Keo Yoeun and her husband Nim Eng have six children from an 18-year-old girl to twin four-year-old boys. Because of their good progress, they will graduate from partner household status at the end of 2007. Yoeun’s husband is quiet while she does the reporting on the family’s hard work. Obviously it is still difficult to make ends meet at this household. They have big loans from the village rice bank–200kg last year and 300kg this year–and little income to consider repayment. She might make 500 to 1000 riel each day from selling surplus vegetables to other villagers. That’s 12.5 to 25 cents a day; not much to supplement Eng’s part-time employment as a soldier. Eng is on the list to be demobilized (as the government attempts to reduce the forces), so his 70,000 riel ($17.50) in monthly pay will soon be lost. Perhaps then he can join Yoeun labouring in the rice harvest, where she can make three to five thousand riels a day.

We’re now very late in our planned schedule, but we have made a commitment to visit another village, so off we go across the pot-holed roads to Srei Prech in a downpour. There is water EVERYWHERE. Road conditions are unbelievable. The Department of Rural Development’s pledge to this area is to pave six kilometres of highway a year. We saw a road crew laying a bed of baseball-sized rocks by hand. Our way is not far this afternoon, but it is very slow progress as we weave back and forth across the road. We pass another vehicle that has done what I fear we might: moved too close to the edge and slipped over into the ditch. The driver stands forlornly with cell phone in hand. Only a pair of water buffalo will be able to help him now.

At Srei Prech, the villagers have been waiting for us for three hours. Not that we were that late, but that they were that early. As we sit down on the reed mat, laid especially for us under the village shelter, the sky opens and it pours down rain. Before we can realize what’s happened, Marcus remembers the shoes we left at the edge of the concrete platform and is dismayed to look down and see his leather shoes filled with water.

We look around at the little crowd and realize how tired we are. They have waited so long, believing us to be donors (how can we possibly explain “communications unit”?), and now they want to hear our words of encouragement and our commitment to continued support. We can barely rub two thoughts together to ask about their village and its partner households—eight, and three are ready to graduate this year. Many of the villagers are refugees–internally displaced people–repatriated from refugee camps along the Thai border. Of the 192 families in the village, 47 of the poorest are eligible to become partner households.

LWF-Cambodia is proud of its “(human) rights based approach” to community development. The key is in empowering the people to make their own decisions, their own choices, in so doing holding their government officials accountable. Other NGOs continue to work sectorially—this NGO specializing in health, that NGO specializing in water. LWF-Cambodia staff have a wide range of skills (Vietnamese educated agronomists; Cuban educated veterinarians), but their main emphasis is in capacity building among the villagers so that they can gain independence from any NGO and manage on their own.

As the light fades from the sky, we make our way back to the highway. Pothole by pothole. Finally at the highway, driving is still a challenge as we drive through villages and pass unlighted bicycles, motorbikes, and carts. Eventually we’re back in the city and its amazing traffic habits, although much quieter at night.

Another 24 hours have passed and we’re still soaking in the experience. Tomorrow morning we rise early again for another field visit, this time to Thpong in the west. There will be more adventures to describe.

In the meantime, it’s early to bed… with thanks for your continued support,

Shalom,
Margaret & Marcus in Phnom Penh