HOPE's been working here since 1991. It's one of the poorer and less developed provinces of Cambodia, with up to 70 or 80% poverty rates in some areas (and that's why HOPE works here). But, as I am seeing - and hope to share soon - many lives are really changing incredibly!
And, it is beautiful!
It's wet season now - ie, for me, flash duck-under-cover-quick torrential downpours in the afternoon. And for farmers, the most important growing season in the year, especially for rice, the main crop. Here's some farmers working hard to plant their rice seedlings.
I've been spending my mornings going to visiting & interviewing families that have been involved with some of HOPE's projects, and spending my afternoons going through the interviews, talking with the HOPE staff and organizing it all into (hopefully!) some kind of coherent project evaluation report! It's been a lot of learning & working on the fly, and staying up a little late and waking up a little early, but it's been, really, awesome to see and get to hear families' lives & stories.
A couple more pictures:
Driving around to do the site visits with R-L: Ly (HOPE Cambodia Director), Bic (HOPE staff) and Pheap (Ly's husband, director of another NGO doing the dry season rice farming project).
Ly's been working with HOPE since 1995 and seen so much change in her country since even those 15 years ago. She is an incredible woman (so are the other staff). I'll ask her if I can share her story on my blog sometime.
In the meantime...: sharing the road with water buffalo :)
What I thought was amazing was that this long 2 or 3 km road for travel / dike for creating reservoirs of water for rice farming was first built by HOPE in the 1990s! It naturally eroded a bit, and then got significantly destroyed by some serious flooding in 1996, and had the Cambodian government along with some UN funding for repairs... but to be driving along that road for awhile that seemed to stretch on forever, seeing the water-filled farms on each side (needed for the rice paddies), and be able to get to the farmers far into the countryside... on a road made by HOPE... was pretty darn neat. :)
What I've been thinking most as I've been meandering through HOPE's projects - big scale like this road, or big, to an individual family - is that, wow, I'm somehow connected to all this grand, amazing work. I don't take any credit for it... I mean, I was barely alive in the early 90s when the road was built, lol... even now, working with HOPE, it's not like I had anything to do with these Cambodian families' lives changing due to their new clean water filter that I just first read about in the project report 2 days ago.. but somehow I'm connected to it now. It would keep rolling on without me, I also realize - I'm not an essential part at all of this picture. But, the neat thing is, that kind of I am. Or, I can be, with what I do with HOPE. Right now, I've just got an official HOPE hat on (should I be so privileged?), writing a report which really doesn't change much for the families I met today.
This simple water filter (I'll share more later) I saw today that cost $50 to build and is actually, really, saving a whole family from typhoid and other waterborne diseases? It's amazing! I had nothing to do with it! BUT- the one that doesn't yet exist that can change the lives of another whole family? I can be a part of that one. And actually so can you - anyone who cares to. You don't need to work for HOPE. You don't even need to come on a UNION trip (though really, you should! ;) ). Development (good development) is so much more than money... but it takes money keeps the wheels spinning. We make a lot of it. We do. A heckuvalot. What makes a life of a difference for a family here is so very small.
More stories to come soon (hopefully I'll get the chance soon-ish)... They are the stories of what I've incidentally (for lack of a better word right now) found myself a part of... they are good ones. :) Hope you'll like 'em too.
xo
Rainbow
neat to see your understanding of how you fit into the bigger picture, and how everyone can too.
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