Be the Change Network

Chrauk Tiek Primary School, Cambodia. I just bought a deer. “Sat P’iam – (sweet meat), the cooks say. We’ll eat it over the next two days, hopefully before it spoils. It’s costing about $35 a day to feed everybody: 7 teachers, 5 community volunteers, our workshop team of 9 and the cook crew of neighbor ladies numbers 4 or 5. The School Director’s wife, Sowin, heads the show, cooking 3 meals a day for about 25 people on three clay pot cook stoves and a small wooden chopping block on the floor of the 2 room, thatch roof dwelling she, Director So Bun, and their 2 year old daughter call home. No running water. No refrigerator. No electricity. It’s a bit like camping and a huge family reunion rolled into one. Keeping everyone well fed is key to our success. I’m deeply appreciative of their efforts. Almost everyday someone from the community donates something to our crew. Yesterday it was a giant jackfruit, the day before that a black swan, and today the blind boy brought me boiled taro roots (a snack time treat served with sugar). So far, our intestinal tracks are taking it all fairly well. Only Grady, the native Cambodian in our family, has an upset stomach. It is just as likely due to dehydration or accidental intake of water from the river we bathe in daily. He’s also had some spiky fevers and I’m watching for symptoms of Dengue fever, an endemic disease that is spread by insects. Our 3 year old, Shanti, has finally accepted the fact that she has a nanny, and as long as she gets to swim in the river every day and take a nap in the hammock, she’s happy. She has even started to speak a little in Khmer.

As soon as the first metal presses were completed, we began making briquettes. A core team of about 10 volunteers have been showing up daily to help with the workshop preparations. Sanu wanted to encourage their interest so we began production with sawdust waste collected freely from sawmills and carton paper bought from the scrap trader. The team was shown how to tear up the cardboard, soak it in water, pulp it with their feet and wooden hammers, and then add about 20% to the sawdust mixture. Thus 100 kilograms of sawdust requires 20 kg of paper to function as a binder in the compaction process. Once the mixture is complete, a little water is added to help fill the tubular dyes; with thin metal separations each dye can mold 3-4 briquettes in a single press. The press extracts the water. When the volunteers saw the products begin to roll easily and quickly off the production line, the usefulness of this technology became clear. Within a day 4 families have asked if they can buy a press for their home, and the monks want one for the forest pagoda. We’ve told them they must complete the workshop first. As a certified briquette producer, they can buy a press and set up their own business, or work for us and become a trainer. The good news is that we have over 40 participants signed up for the three day workshop starting January 12th. I can never be sure, but I think that being here for an extended time, requiring volunteerism and community contributions is creating the personal investment and ownership we are hoping to build.

Sadly, we have an abundance of illegal sawmill operations. Since the sawdust piles are evidence of law-breaking activities (extracting bribes rather than repercussions), the wood cutters are keen to get rid of it. Our raw material collection team was distressed when they discovered some sawmills burning their debris. Apparently a rumor spread about law enforcement in the area due to the foreigners’ presence at the school. I’m not too worried, Sok Sarith says there is about 100 thousand tons of sawdust; we are using his decrepit 1987 pickup for collection. More importantly, we need a place to store the stuff.

A severe monsoon rainstorm yesterday afternoon presented the next obstacle – keeping the finished briquettes dry. Briquettes are dried in the sun and must remain dry until use. Our thin plastic coverings offered cheap protection to our 2 days work. The weather presents an expense I hadn’t considered, how to store and transport them without being damaged by moisture in a monsoon climate? Oh yeah, that.

If that wasn’t enough to frustrate the project, our music teacher quit. Rather, his family made him quit, because at 84 years old, his health is failing day by day. As much as he loves teaching the kids, he just can’t work anymore. Until we can find a replacement, our Briquette Project Manager will be the substitute teacher for the after school class. His grandson is the blind boy, Reat, who has an excellent ear for music. Sanu has offered to buy the boy his own Ronet (xylophone) so he can practice at home and become a master musician, and I have invited him into the English class. He picks up the language very quickly. We are hoping that with music mastery and some English, he’ll be equipped with the skills for a decent life. He’s twelve. Before we started the music class, he’d never been to school. Needless to say, the other students make fun of him and we’ve had to reprimand some kids and teach them about kindness. Grady has discovered that not all kids have “IB” attitudes, and you can’t discuss your feelings with people who don’t speak your language. When I wax philosophical, I think it is a good lesson for him, even though the misunderstandings have brought tears.

A week of sleeping on a wood plank bed has made me stiff and my early morning yoga stretches outside my room landed me job. The school director asked me to teach the students how to exercise. In the morning after pledge of allegiance and morning prayer, the kids go to the soccer field for a poor excuse for physical education. A militant series of basic postures with little movement: arms up, one foot forward, arms down, other foot forward, swing side to side, a lot of slapping your hands against your legs. It didn’t raise my heart rate one beat.

Now we’re doing Yoga together. The stretches bring huge smiles. When I taught them how to do jumping jacks, the squeals of delight lit up the school yard, reminding us all why we are here.