Prey Veng - Day 2

Day two in the field. Again the demonstrations. This time we visited two villages, attracting a larger crowd and making a large volume of sales at each. We had refined our presentation, attracting larger numbers by holding the demonstrations before the worst of the day’s heat before 10am and after 2pm and handing out fliers to passing motorbikes (some of whom didn’t slow to grab their flyer from our hands), cyclists, and pedestrians. One village runs into another here like one suburb blends into another back home. By the end of the last village, Kimtheng and Kressna had their routine down to an art, cracking jokes like some kind of Vaudeville show. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but the rhythm and the laughter were there. Kressna though shy in English is apparently a laugh riot in Khmer.

Kimtheng and Kressna amuse the crowd.

At one point I was called upon to amuse the crowd by displaying the Khmer that Kimtheng had taught me. “Hello. My name is Adam. My surname is Kaufman. I am 23 years old. I come from Canada.” This gained some laughs. The applause came when I counted from one to thirty on command. I later further made a fool of myself when some of the villagers, seeing my Tilley Hat, insisted on knowing how much I had paid for it. It was a gift but I was forced to admit that in Canadian money, it cost about $50USD. The farmers all looked at me like I was crazy. Kimtheng pointed out that her hat had only cost 1$. Liz explained that hers was $3. The farmers told me that a good new cow was only $40USD. There was no arguing with that. I quickly gave up on trying to explain economies of scale (is that the correct term…?) and was forced to admit that it is a bit of a crazy purchase. A good time was had by all and by the time we finished at third village, we had run out of stock, leaving the chief to take down the names of those still wishing to purchase.

Overall, the trip seems to have been a success. We managed to promote the water purifiers enough to help our Red Cross partners begin to make inroads in Prey Veng province. For my part, I was able to learn a very little bit about the conditions in rural Cambodia.

Oh, and for those of you interested in the crazy stuff that they eat here, Kressna purchased some roast cockroaches from a street vendor at the ferry stop. I tried two. You remove the outer shell, take off the wings, break off the stinger, and eat them whole. They tasted salty, crunchy on the outside, with the consistency of toothpaste on the inside. A nice light snack anyway. I’m still considering trying the much more common snack of snails… and possibly eventually the palm sized roast spiders. Will keep you all posted.