Phnom Penh Pal: sea forest

Apologies for the recent blog hiatus. May turned into a rather busy, and slightly strange, month for us both. On the 1st of May I started my new job as a Communications Adviser for VSO Cambodia. It's a six month volunteer placement similar to Gordon's. It's been great so far and I'm really enjoying working in the office. More about that later though. Week two of May I was off to the provinces (then Gordon and I went to another province, Ratanakiri, for the King's birthday holiday. Then we finally moved into our apartment and on the same day Gordon got ill. We discovered he had dengue fever, he spent a week in hospital on a drip and the last week has been spent with him recovering and us trying to unpack and settle into our house. More about all of that later...)

So. Week two of May I was off to the provinces! Whereas in the UK we have counties and shires, here in Cambodia we have the provinces. We live in Phnom Penh province, and so far we've visited Kampong Cham (where we did language training) and Kep (where we went for the Khmer New Year holiday) provinces. Sam, another volunteer, was telling us how him and his wife Gilly (their blog here) are having a competition to see who can visit all the provinces first. This sounded like a great plan to me, especially when I heard I'd be going to Mondulkiri so I'd be one up on Gordon!

Mondulkiri is in the highlands of the northeast and is known to be leafy, cool and beautiful. And I was heading up there during avocado season. Bonus. I was off to see how some of the other volunteers lived, where they worked and do some investigating into communications between them and the country office (where my placement is based).

Midwifery Adviser Dominique, fondly known as Domi, was our host for the four days we were there. My other travelling companions were Clare and Ulises - Ulises is taking over from Clare as senior programme manager of health - and Reth and Sokunthea, the secure livelihoods programme team (read more about programme areas here.)

Mondulkiri (MDK) is about 370km from Phnom Penh. The road has been upgraded and paved quite recently and the journey now takes about 7 hours (things happen a lot slower on the roads here). In the VSO pick-up though, we made it in 6 hours. Which still felt a little like an eternity in the heat (even with air-con) and bumpy roads.

Sen Monorom high street - MDK's capital

The next day we were off out to one of the villages to see Domi hold a hygiene workshop. The village was about 45 minutes about by moto along bumpy, muddy dirt tracks. This was my first real trip on a moto if you don't count scooting around Phnom Penh's roads for 10-15 minutes.

the gang, after crossing a big muddy hole

Mondulkiri has lots of indigenous tribes with the majority being Phnong or Bunong, who are forest dwellers. Our remote Phnong village has only recently had the road upgraded (that picture above shows the upgraded road) - it used to take 2-3 hours to do the same journey. The improved road means that the village is under even more of a threat from new logging and, like many of the indigenous tribes, their land may be taken. Land rights are a huge issue in Cambodia - not my area of specialty so not one I will attempt to discuss here.

Domi was doing a hand-washing workshop and then showing how to make oral rehydration solution. It was a really lovely morning, sitting in the grounds of the school, which is opposite the health centre, and seeing how the community responded.

the local nurse (standing) translates from Khmer to Phnong.
The lady on the left, with the krama wrapped round her head,
turned up smoking a home made, rolled in a leaf, cone shaped cigar.
It's amazing what you can do with a leaf!

the school - the library is through the left door

watching how to make the rehydration solution

Domi and Tak, her volunteer assistant who translates for her

A little girl peed on the tarpaulin while Domi was talking about the importance of washing your hands. The mum went off into the forest to get a leaf, came back and made a scoop out of the leaf to get rid of the pee. Genius. She then mopped up the leftovers with her scarf and hung it out to dry... I wanted to point out that now was a perfect moment for both hand, and clothes, washing but I obviously kept my mouth shut. I saw another mum using leaves like toilet paper on her little boy. The forest really does provide everything.

Before this turns into the longest blog post yet, I'll leave you with some more lovely shots of MDK