Water Filter Distribution to Most Vulnerable Families in Kep.

The last two days, we distributed 250 filters to most vulnerable families in two communes of Kep province, Okrosa (of DomnakchangAeuk district) and Prey Thom (of Kep district). The cool thing was many of the families had been interviewed by Centre for International health (CIH) volunteers in June.

We held two water filter distribution "ceremonies," because one of the district governors refused to go to another district governor's ceremony. (The pagoda's where we held the ceremonies were less than 20 minutes apart...I thought it was a pretty lame excuse.) While Kunthy, our CIH program manager and organizer of the water filter distribution ceremony, rode her motorbike to the pagoda, the 6 of us volunteers took a tuktuk. In about 15 minutes we arrived at a beautifully carved stone arch, that lead us to a large open sandy area, where the pagoda was located. The pagodas in Cambodia are very open, with colourfully painted balconies (red, yellow, blue, pink...) beautiful frescos detailing the life of Buddha lining the top of the walls, and lines hanging from one end to the other, criss-crossing each other, with cute little shapes (flowers and triangles) cut from patterned shirt fabrics of all the colours you can imagine hanging from them in series. Some of them also have a wall where they record major donations and contributions from the community.

We were met with curious stares, and when we walked up the steps to the pagoda, and removed our shoes, a little boy with a buzzcut grabbed some straw mattresses, placed them on the ground and motioned us to sit on them. All of the villagers had arrived already, and were sitting patiently on the tiled floor. At first they look like a sea of darkened faces from the rice planting and the hot Cambodian sun, amid a multicoloured palette of dusty pink, purple, yellow, and grey blouses. Most of them were women, most middle aged or older, and some men. Slowly though, we began to recognize faces. In Prey Thom, we realized that two of them were our dessert ladies, others had charmed us with their hospitality and kindness when we interviewed them regarding safe drinking water in June. Suddenly the faces seemed friendlier, I even noticed one of my interviewees falling asleep during the district governor's talk (they are known to be long-winded...we asked them to speak for 15 minutes, but neither were able to stick to their time limits. They say it may be a Cambodian habit, of zoning out when you are being lectured at, because that is what they used to do during the Khmer Rouge regime.)

After the district governor and commune chief made their speeches, Allison and I with Kuthy's help, made a small presentation on the importance of drinking clean water (you can avoid getting stomach ache, diarrhea, and malnutrition if you remove the bacteria and worms from your water), and how to prepare, use, and maintain the filter in their homes. I was impressed with Kunthy's ability to connect with the audience. While we were up there, I noticed that every single face was turned towards us - not only was the material more interesting, and not only were we standing up and being more animated, I think Kunthy was doing a good job of using real life examples and cracking jokes here and there (e.g. the ceramic pot that filters your water is not a flower pot like you have at home, though it may look like it). She got the audience to participate, and she got them to ask questions when they were confused. From what I had been told by villagers during water filter interviews, it sounded like a lot of villagers missed a lot of information (particularly the woman that went back to drinking dirty pond water after her water filter broke!), and I thought that it was perhaps because of the boringness of the health education meetings. But now that I'd seen what Kunthy does, I think it has more to do with the fact that many of these villagers are illiterate.

In Canada, say if you wanted to know more about diabetes, you can ask your friends, family, relatives for answers. Ultimately though you will end up relying and trusting what you will have read, because you either look online for information, or ask your doctor because you have easy access to him/her. If you don't though, you end up relying on word of mouth for all of your information. You can imagine how confused you can get at the end of the day.

After the education about the water filters, we went to our stations to distribute them. That was another headache all together. Each volunteer was paired up with either a village chief ("mey poom") or village volunteer (each of them are paid $2 for helping out). They did not speak English, so Kunthy quickly taught us a few Khmer words "Ot Mow" for absent, "niak poom" for villager, and the relevant respectful titles. It seemed as though they were not well briefed on the distribution procedures because everyone seemed to be doing it differently. We were to collect 2,000 riel (US$0.50) for each filter (each filter costs US$10, but we ask for a small contribution from each villager to encourage them to value it, take care of it, and not sell it), and make sure that all of them are accounted for (somebody was caught stealing 8 filters last summer.)

Some of the village volunteers though were rushing through the process, calling villagers' names and handing out filters without marking things down, other volunteers were collecting money and stuffing it into their pockets without counting the money, still others collected money from everyone before the ceremony started without noting down who had paid what, and still others did not even ask for the villagers' Most Vulnerable Families List (MVFL) cards before they handed out the filters. It was a reflection of what both groups of volunteers were used to (doing things by memory and trusting villagers rather than keeping detailed records to avoid liability). In the end, out of all of the villagers in category 2 ("very poor" who lived on US$0.25 per member of the family per day), almost all of them were able to pay. For category 1 ("extremely poor" who lived on US$0.13 per member of the family per day) a little more than half were able to pay (sometimes they would give what they had, maybe about a fourth or 2/3 the asking price).

Since many of the villagers who had come to pick up the filter were old, we worried about them having to bring the filters back home. After all it was a pretty fragile and heavy giant ceramic pot inside a sturdy but still breakable plastic bucket and cover. Some villagers carried them home on their bikes, others had their 5 year old daughter carry them home with them, but for many of the elderly, their only option was to carry it themselves. And we're not talking about a simple 5 minute walk around the block, we're talking 30-40 minutes in the blazing hot sun of early afternoon in tropical, having to walk across very narrow rice field paths, over bushes, sometimes between trees, avoiding cow poop and trying not to fall into the ponds. It is HARD, and I have no idea how to describe it in words, or with pictures. You just have to come to Cambodia and try it yourself.

Anyways, that's all the time I have right now to blog, so I will be back with pictures. Stay tuned.