Prey Veng - Day 1

My first trip into the field was two days of culinary, linguistic, and personal adventure, mixed in with the kind of simple advertising drudgery common to most part-time sales jobs back home. I had brought along my Khmer textbook to pass the time during the drive. Liz, who after nearly ten weeks in Cambodia still loves to take photos of everything, would often shout at Kressna to stop the car so that she could photograph a passing oxcart, bigger oxcart, or fishing boat as we crossed the bridge. I took advantage of the two native Khmer speakers with me to learn more of the language. Kressna, though obviously outgoing and humourous with his fellow Cambodians, often seemed anxious about joining in our conversation, physically covering his mouth for fear of offending when he did speak. I’ve been told that the Khmer are a very polite people and that this gesture, though not very common, is used to avoid causing offence through bad breath or bad words.

In the meanwhile, Kimtheng proved to be an excellent Khmer tutor. Given her limited command of French, we had soon struck a deal, she would help me to practice Khmer and I would help her to practice French. So far, it’s been a very profitable deal.

Village Children and Me

Though we arrived late in the first village, the chief had not yet assembled many people. While we waited, I passed the time by amusing and amazing the local children and their parents by recording them on my digital camera. Never have I had so many children overjoyed to see me so quickly. ;-) I was even able to sneak away for a little while to watch a team of men assembling an ox-plow and yoke using simple hand tools.

The demonstration itself consisted of us setting up a loudspeaker system on our pickup truck to play the radio ad for our filter, a re-writing of a traditional Khmer love song to mean something like this:

Man: Please will you marry me?
Woman: No.
Man: What if I purchase this water purifier…?
Woman: Of course then I will marry you, for our children will be strong, healthy, and well-educated. I love you.

Enticing no? Following this came the real proof with a live demonstration of the filter. Dirty water goes in. Clean water comes out. Unfortunately, we didn’t sell a single one. Several women were interested, but were worried about justifying the $5USD cost to their husbands. To put this in perspective for you, a rural Cambodian family will likely earn between $125USD and $250USD per year, depending on the quality of their harvest. $5USD is a lot of money to these people. To put it in better perspective, there were one or two children in the group with the kind of thin frames and distended bellies I normally associate with bad malnutrition. This is about 100km away from where I live comfortably with air conditioning and a microwave for $125USD/month.

This is not just the case in rural Cambodia. In a medium sized town where we had ferried our way across the Mekong, we stopped for lunch. The daughter of the family who owned the restaurant looked about ten. The son looked about six. They were actually fourteen and ten respectively. The children of farmers and restaurant owners alike can’t afford enough food for themselves.

Hotel Sign. You know you're in Cambodia when...

That night we stayed in a hotel. Using the standard IDE stipend for workers in the field, we each had a room with not one but two beds, air conditioning, and private bathroom to ourselves. The idealist in me died a little bit again.