Vlady Fresh

Today I traveled with our Home Based Care (HBC) staff to O Reang Ov, a district about 30 miles outside of Kompong Cham City. As always, I appreciated getting out of my routine of writing reports, checking finances, and writing thank you notes. Spending the day with various clients in the countryside is always sobering and serves as a healthy reminder of why we do what we do. Three scenes left a particularly strong impression on me.

Scene 1: Intake
Part of the purpose of this trip was to meet with two potential new HBC clients. After chit chatting for a few minutes, Dr. Mony and Bora, his assistant, whipped out their intake forms and began asking the husband a series of questions. Here are some of the more memorable answers …

• What’s your name? Dy Sokah
• How old are you? 33
• How many years of schooling did you complete? 3
• How many siblings do you have? 12
• How many are still living? 3
• Do you have any children? Yes, a boy and a girl.
• How old is the boy and through what grade did he study? He’s 12 and studied through third grade.
• How old is the girl and through what grade did she study? She’s 10 and studied through second grade.
• What do you do for work? I’m a farmer / laborer.
• How much do you make per day? 8,000 riel (2USD), but I’m too weak to work every day so I work one day and rest for a few before I can work another.
• Where do you live? With my father-in-law. (This is very common in Cambodia.)

A few minutes later we walked over to their home to see their living situation. Their house was a thatched awning, about 9 feet long and 5 feet wide, attached to the back of the father-in-law’s house. There were no walls (except for the one shared with the house), and no possessions except a platform for the whole family sleep on, a torn mosquito net, a pot for cooking rice, rice, salt, two plates, a few spoons and a knife.

Scene 2: Hospitality
After visiting a few families and meeting with some local officials, we stopped for lunch. When we finished eating, Bora asked us, “Do you want get back to work immediately or do you want to rest first?” Of course, since we’re all used to getting 2 ½ hour lunch breaks, we answered, “Let’s rest first.” I thought we were going to seek out one of the many places where people can rent a hammock for a few cents to take their afternoon snooze. Bora surprised me when he stopped in front of a hammockless house and said “Let’s go in. It’s a Catholic school, they’ll let us rest here.”

Sure enough, when we told them that we were Christians and were traveling through the countryside to assist the HIV positive poor, they welcomed us in. In less than a minute she laid out the sleeping mats, gave us all pillows, and told us to get some rest before we headed back out. I closed my eyes to rest for a few minutes but when I opened them again, I found that I had slept for an hour.

Scene 3: Biogas
Early in the day Bora mentioned that there was a family nearby that used cow manure to produce methane for cooking. Since I have grave concerns over the clear cutting of forests to produce charcoal (which is the traditional cooking fuel used in Cambodia), I was excited to hear about this news. I told Bora I saw a TV program one night that examined the production of biogas from pig manure in rural China and was glad that the technology had seeped into Cambodia. That’s when Bora asked, “Do you want to see it?” “Of course!”, I answered.

When we had finished our HBC visits, Bora was true to his word and brought me to see biogas production in action. It wasn’t until we arrived that I realized that Bora didn’t really know the owners of the house. Hospitality must be a local virtue because they gladly gave us the grand tour anyway. Behind the house there was an enormous open pit of, well, you know what. Between the pit and the house there was an underground cistern/gas chamber and a cylindrical opening for adding fresh manure and water. It was quite an underwhelming experience because it seemed so ordinary and the open pit (from which they would make fertilizer) was quite gross. It was interesting though that there wasn’t even a hint of the odor that I expected would overpower me.

In contrast, the inside of the house was amazing. It was the first Cambodian house I’ve seen that didn’t have its stove connected to a gas tank but rather had a gas line coming in from the outside. As our host boiled water to make tea, she joyfully explained that they have never run out of gas and have saved countless dollars by not buying charcoal. Then to really show off she said, “Look at this!” and lit a surprisingly bright gas lamp. She said that her children can read by this light and, since the TV uses costly electricity while the lamp uses free gas, she encourages her children to read. I love it!

Later, as we sat on the floor drinking tea, I asked an endless series of questions regarding her family’s experience with this technology and how it is perceived by the neighbors. Though there was widespread skepticism and even snickering at first, everyone seems to have come around. While I was encouraged that two other families had already built their own methane production systems, I was saddened that the majority of the others simply stare in envy because they can’t afford the $375 price tag.