Monday, 22 July 2013

Sakhoeun, Micah, and Raza (left to right) in the MKK Village, currently under construction.

            Monday, the director of BSDA’s Mekong Kampuchea Kids Project (MKK), Mr. SAY Sakhoeun, took us on a tour of several communities helped by MKK.  These are some of the poorest of the poor, where there’s a recurring theme of families being relocated from fertile riverside land to small, infertile plots in dredged lakes.  One community was what Sakhoeun called a “rubbish community,” which has an especially uncertain future: this group of landless families collects cardboard and tarps to be sold in Vietnam, where there is recycling.  The community builds their homes based on whoever will let them live on their land (often temporarily).

            Despite these very difficult circumstances, all the communities we visited were incredibly welcoming, and very eager to help themselves rather than wait for various NGOs to come along.

After visiting these communities, Sokhoeun took us to the fascinating MKK Village.  Set to be finished with construction in 2016, this is BSDA’s self-sustaining master plan for the NGO’s headquarters.  Two residence halls will house 140 students, and there will be office buildings and a hostel.  There are multiple hectares for BSDA to manage its own agriculture, which dovetails beautifully with the vocational training program for cooking, and the market provided by the Smile Restaurant.  Additionally, there’s a building filled with looms for BSDA’s vocational training in sewing, a program where students are already making crisp clothing for export, as well as for BSDA’s own staff.  There’s also a solar-powered water pump, to boot!

We finished the day with a trip to the so-called “monkey temple,” where we fed peanuts and bananas to, well, monkeys!

Raza feeding peanuts to the most vicious female monkey.

Sunday, 21 July 2013

Zombie-Teletubby-Vandong

        Sunday, we decided to take another bike ride, this time to Wat Phnom Hanchey.  This ended up being a much loooonger bike ride than we intended, after some scenic and not-so-scenic detours and mix-ups, but the view from the “woman mountain”—adjacent to the so-called “man mountain”—was gorgeous.  Just before leaving the lookout, the sky tore open and we donned our colorful ponchos (which made us look kind of like Teletubbies).  As we started to make our way down the small mountain in the rainstorm, a woman told us there’d been an accident: a family going to see their son join the monkhood in the mountain’s temple had somehow run their moto-trailer off the steep road.  The vehicle had landed in the brush about ten meters down the slope, with the trailer half on top of the motorcycle half and the driver miraculously unscathed.  Amidst the strong smell of gasoline, we helped carry the family’s belongings up to the road, then, with help from several other Cambodian guys, we all heaved-and-ho’d and tugged-and-towed until the trailer and bike made it back on the road.  The family’s overflowing gratitude for all who helped—and our awe that no one was hurt—made it easy to forget the torrential rain and our bike-sore bums.

View from Wat Phnom Hanchey

A Wise Tree

Teletubbies! (Left to right: Micah, Raza, Vandong, Savoeun, and Aryn, with Abi as photographer)

 

Saturday, 20 July 2013

Biking on the island of Kos Pen

            Saturday, we went to one of the coolest places I’ve ever been: the island of Kos Pen.  This island sits in the Mekong River just a wee jaunt from BSDA’s Smile Restaurant.  We rented some bikes and took a ferry to the island, where we ate delicious fried bananas, waved to countless kids shouting “Hello-what’s-your-name!”, and then dined with the chief monk of the island’s temple.  It was an altogether unforgettable experience, especially within a backdrop of red clay roads, fields, forests, and a temple decked in marigold tiles and centuries of overgrowth.

Vandong knows: Safety first.

Island Temple

On the pontoon-boat ferry!

Abandoned temple on Kos Pen.  Fun fact: the figures where the posts meet the roof's overhang are Gerudas, and the pointy serpentine figures on the roof above them are Naga vipers--the two are mythical enemies, but when they're in the same place, they represent peace.

 

Friday, 19 July 2013

Holy smokes, it’s been a while since we blogged!  There’s been a whole lotta hubbub going on here.  To keep this thing manageable, we’ll go ahead and break it down on the daily.

Mmmm, spider!

           

FRIDAY, 19 JULY 2013

            Last Friday, the 19^th, we made our first trip to Wat Nokor Bachey, a nearby Buddhist temple.  In the pagoda, Venerable Cham Pholla told us the history of the Buddha’s life as interpreted in Theravada Buddhism.  Then, still on the temple grounds, we watched a dance performance from kids in BSDA’s apsara project.  (This project brings OVCs—Orphans and Vulnerable Children—together to learn traditional Khmer dancing and breakdancing.  It's part of BSDA's Mekong Kampuchea Kids Project.)

            Afterward, we got to explore the wat (temple) a bit, learning that it’s roughly the same age as the famous Angkor Wat ruins.  It’s also the only wat in Cambodia where a new temple was built inside the old ruins!

Apsara in the stone

Wat Nokor Bachey

Modern temple built inside ancient temple ruins

Inside Wat Nokor Bachey

We're here! After 3 days of sight-seeing in Phnom Penh, we are onsite with our partner Buddhism for Social Development Action (BSDA) in Kampong Cham. Vandong, the Executive Director and one of the seven founders of BSDA was our very own tour guide. It was great spending time together and getting to know him after communicating over the last two years. We had the privilege to tour the National Museum, the Royal Palace, Tul Sleng and the Killing Fields. We learned a lot about Cambodia's tumultuous history. It was a very powerful experience.

Streets of Phnom Penh:

The National Museum:

 
The Royal Palace:

Tul Sleng:

Pits left from mass graves at the Killing Fields:

Abi and Micah with BSDA's director Vandong:

Our last night in Phnom Penh we met up with the GROW team from the University of Washington. They have been in Phnom Penh with their partner for a month already! It was great to meet them and hear about their experience.

 Upon arriving at BSDA we received a very warm welcome from the entire staff! They were full of smiles and continuously thanked us for all of the work we had done. So far we have had 2 presentations on BSDA. We heard a lot about the Mekong Kampuchea Kids project (MKK) that trains Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs) so they can start their own businesses with loans from BSDA.

Today we got an extensive presentation about the progress of our project of livelihood improvement and capacity building for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV). With the $8,000 we have raised in the last two school years, 64 families have been affected. The money is being loaned to them to build chicken coops and get trained on how to raise them. Others are receiving loans to begin small enterprises selling cakes and other goods. The PLHIV are able to make a profit off of these projects. Because of this, they are increasing their community involvement. The presentations stressed the importance of accountability and complete transparency, ensuring the money will be used responsibly and the loans will be payed back.

The food is great, the temperature is hot, and we are learning a ton about our partner with every moment!