Visiting the poorest families in Kep Province

I finally had my curiosity satisfied. Yesterday was my first day out in the field, doing water safety research. Marlene and I have been doing data entry for the past week, inputting data that was painfully collected by Rebecca and 4 other students in every corner of Kep province, where the Most Vulnerable Families were located, behind and around public buildings, in the middle of dozens of rice fields, and shrouded among thick tropical vegetation. Finally, yesterday, we got the chance to see the families first hand, step into their homes, and experience a fraction of their poverty. PICTURES

Some of them were right behind the guesthouse I have been staying at for the past 3 weeks. Others were living around the City Hall two doors down the street, more near the Crab Shack I'd walk past every day for lunch. They were everywhere, but so far into the fields that you'd need a well-powered torch light to get you there safely in the night.

One of the major projects CIH is conducting this year is a water safety project. Students who volunteered last summer applied for funding from Earthtones (a concert put on by the University of Toronto's medical school that features local talent, and that fundraises through corporate sponsors and selling concert tickets). They received $8,000 CAN from Earthtones and Rebecca Draisey, our supervisor, received another $10,000 CAN from a very close friend who was very supportive of the project. The money will finance the re-designing the water filtration system at the Kep Referral Hospital, which currently chlorinates its water because the biosand filters they installed last year just don't deliver enough water at the right pressure (a rather important oversight by a well-intentioned but ultimately inadequately experienced engineering student).

The money is also going towards doing a Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practice (KAP) study, where we try to figure out how much the villagers in Kep Province understand about water-borne illnesses and how to prevent them, and whether or not they are actually practising what they know. Going into the field and collecting data is a very long and arduous process that is not very demanding mentally, but is physically taxing. On my first day, my senses were bombarded by the feeling of wetness, heat, the smell of smoke, mould, sea, and dirt that filled my nostrils with every breath, and the chilling sound of dogs barking loudly at my feet. By the end of the day, even though I felt ok, I think I was subconsciously so overwhelmed and "full" that I was not hungry at all by dinner time (and for those of you who know me, this only ever happened once, and that was when I had gastritis).

Contrasting with my sensory overload was the warmth and good cheer of the villagers that surronded me while I interviewed the families. I interviewed old women, middle-aged men, and even a young 18-year-old woman. Everyone greeted me with huge smiles, and before I even thought of sitting, someone would appear as if out of nowhere with a chair, patting it dry or dusting it off with a cloth before I sat. People from the village gather round once they see two strangers awkwardly dressed in neon coloured ponchos with pen and paper in hand talking to someone they know. We are the entertainment for the day, and a curiosity for the young ones who stare at us and smile shyly when we turn to look at them. The adults joke and laugh at each other (or us...it is unclear) around us, either standing, sitting, or leaning against the damp wooden boards of a house. When it is time to leave, we smile and nod with our palms together, "Akun Cheeran," thank you very much, we say to each other, and "Lia Hai," good-bye.

Today, I will be indoors at the guesthouse, working on the MVFL documentation project, with mixed feelings about being here and not being out there in the field.