Too many chiefs....?

We are doing well on our first builiding project. By day 3 we have removed all the trees and temporary structures that were in the way, dug the foundation holes and trenches, constructed 2 concrete pillars and have the foundations in for another 4.

Here you can see Paul (one of our volunteers and a builder!), Anna, Daniel and Patrick (who runs the centre) discussing what to do with the pillar that should have been where they unearthed the septic tank! Despite their VERY long discussions we got back on site the next day to find that the local builders had found their own solution!

Team

I have just found this picture of our current staff team team. Me, Daniel, Leap (our translator) and Anna. (Rachel is joining us at the tomorrow).

We are at Ta Prohm (as in Tomb Raider) - one of the temples at the famous Angkor Wat complex. The jungle has had it's way with these ruins over 100's of years, but the restoration programme needs to leave these huge roots as the building would fall down without their support.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

We were woken on New Year's Day (at about 7am when you in the UK were just celebrating Midnight!) by the loud, untuneful badly amplified noise of a wedding 2 doors down. This then goes on til 10pm for 2-3 days. The wedding spills onto the street and so there is only room for pedestrians / motocycles to go by. We are in a small residential street but it is not unknown for these marquees to be erected half way across a main road where hundreds of motorists are held up for days. This is the same for funerals.

Meanwhile, we wish you a happy and peaceful! New Year.

Beggars, Bangles, Bananas and BBQ's

We have just got back from Sihanoukvile - Costa del Cambodia !! There are some lovely isolated islands within a couple of hours boat ride where we had Christmas night in a hut on a deserted beach. The town itself is just putting its' toe in the water of tourism so some places are very fancy and some quite tatty. However, you cannot sit for more than a few minutes on the beach without a woman or child wanting to sell you fruit, jewellery or a manicure. There are also the woman beggars who carry their children along the beach and the amputees shuffling on their bottoms or showing you their stumps of hands. In the evening the beach bar shacks light the BBQ and the children sell fireworks and collect rubbish for recycling.

The children were very good at honing in on those toursists who would buy from them - a few words in Khmer (Ate akun - No thank you) had them scurrying off and we were bothered less and less - we obviously didn't look like tourists! All of this selling / begging is being discouraged through the local gavernment and NGO's. There is free schooling for all the children, there is vocational training for amputees, there is work for women yet it is more lucrative for them to be on the beach. The women who were carrying their children showed little sign of malnutrition and the child was able to walk, though this of course would not attracted the sympathy of the tourists.