O-jaa!!

We had many awesome field trip days... but this was one of the best. Definitely one of the most impacting... off on a motorcycle adventure we go!

... to have a real, face-to-face introduction to the life-changing-ness of access to clean water!

HOPE met this family just a few short years ago... when just mere survival was a struggle. They live in the "higher lands" of Cambodia, where they can't really grow rice (which needs to be on lower land, where at least a couple inches of water can sit in the field), even in the wet season. There was no 'life'... just survival.

But then, in 2006, HOPE was able to build a well for this family!

Life has been incredibly, incredibly different for this family since they got their well. As the family shared with us with big, vibrant smiles of how life has changed... there was a moment where our whole team just stopped… and kind of took in the magnitude of it all.

A video of us, wide-eyed at the scene, would have caught the moment so perfectly well:

Kat: So… in four years, this family has gone from having absolutely nothing, having only enough rice to fill their stomachs for four months of the year… to having clean water, health, water to irrigate their crops, now a garden full of vegetables, and is making US$9 - $20 every other day selling their crops to the market? That’s pretty…


Adam: O-jaa!! ... which is one of the few Khmer words we’ve all learned, which means awesome!!

And awesomely o-jaa it is! This family has now been able to grow beans, cucumbers, watermelon, fruit trees, all kinds of veggies! And, fun for us - we got to join them for some planting that morning…

which will yield a harvest full of long green beans in just 2 months! :)

Hopefully anyways, if we did it right! We were joking about how the beans, when they are ripe, would get a better price at the market because they were barang-planted. Ly (HOPE Cambodia's director): "Yah, they could market them as miracle beans - it'd be a miracle that they grew!!" Haha.. well thanks to the family for trusting us with their bean field... fingers crossed we did them more help than harm! :)

As one of my UNION team said that day, “It’s amazing how one well transforms lives .. And we get to be a part of it tomorrow. Cambodians are filling my heart with love .. One smile at a time!” (I stole this off his Facebook, because this, among the other status's that they’ve been putting up, made ME smile so much, every time I took a peek on my news feed when we get a chance to catch some internet time… I hope he won’t mind). :)

O-jaa! 

Bringin' in the harvest

Field trip #3!

It’s just the start of the wet season in Cambodia, and like I’d said before, that means there really shouldn’t be any rice to harvest right now! But, lucky us, one of our neighbours has been a part of HOPE's Dry Season Rice projects... and so, has a whole field of golden ripe rice ready for us to harvest!

All this would've just been barren for 8 months of the year? Crazy..

Well, with a grim-reaper blade in hand, we get to take a go at rice-harvesting!

My first harvest handful, ta-da!!

Nice work, team! :)

Kat’s even got the bundle-tying down! 

Done!

 ... But now we’ve got to thrash it to get the rice kernels off! ... By schmacking the bundles against a wooden plank! Hiyaaaa! (Adam's go at it)

Look at all ‘em kernels flying off! (Scottie)

Kat, showcasing the shake-shake-shake (+song) technique.

And, finally... rice!

Fun! :) Kinda awesome to see where it really all comes from (ie, not just in a bag from grocery store!). There’s a lot of work that goes into it before it gets to our table. And- a lot of real people and real lives. Our neighbours, by the way, since being a part of the Dry Season Rice project, have been able to earn enough income (selling extra rice) to put their kids in school, and this year their oldest son is going to college! He wants to work in a business one day. Kudos & best wishes to him! :)

I didn't write about it before, but when I was doing the project evaluations on the Dry Season Rice Projects just before the UNION team came in, I talked with 2 groups of farmers (maybe 20+ people altogether) who were telling me about life in the dry season before joining the project. Many of them went to the Thai Border looking for wage labour doing agricultural work, carrying huge loads (a guy said he cried when he saw what he had to carry). They illegally crossed to the Thai side if they couldn't find work on the Cambodian side & -often- got arrested, beat up, any earnings taken from them, put in jail, dumped back into Cambodia in trucks, etc. But they had no better choice. Yikes. Now being able to work on their own land, on their own soil, in safety, with their families... and provide for their families through the year... is nothing short of amazing. Pure joy. :)

Thanks to our neighbours for letting us join in on their work, fun, lives... and yes indeed... joy. :)

Want to be a part of this?

Workin' the rice fields of Cambodia

Field trip #2! (Not really in the order that they happened in, but anyhow! :))... Team Barang-utang takes on the rice fields of Cambodia!

Like I said, we had many field trips during our 2nd week in Cambodia... to see more of what HOPE does! So, one day, we got to join in one of HOPE/DFP's village training sessions on rice farming

The facilitator explaining all the steps and techniques for good rice farming..

Pech, one of the HOPE staff, translating for us everything going on

With some good seeds (see my last post about this), and good training, from about 2.5 tonnes of rice per hectare, farmers are now able to harvest up to about 6 tonnes per hectare… and up to 3 crops per year instead of 1 for the farmers who have been able to start growing Dry Season Rice. Pretty darn amazing.

And then, a little later - post-training - we got to join all the villagers to the demonstration field to put what we’d learned into practice… (trans)planting rice seedlings! Out we go to the field!

Our field... / muddy puddle...

Seedings, ready to plant!

Hikin' up the shorts & gettin' in there!

Planting the seedlings, all in a row (with a cheater learning line to make sure they're straight! :) )

Look at all the rice we've planted.. one of 4 fields! It'll be ready for harvest in about 100 days (~3 months)!

Many hands make the work quick! :)

Even making our way to the field... is muddy work!

But… somehow, one of us barangs got a little muddier than others… but a LOT more laughs from the locals! Probably the highlight of the day... definitely was mine. :)

Like I’d said before – us being in Cambodia doesn’t necessarily do a lot for Cambodians in terms of practical help… but it was very evident that our presence brought something of value to our friends around us – and, I have to say, this team was especially amazing at it: Encouragement, support, and a whole lot of smiles and laughs and a delight in work! 

:)

xo
Rainbow

Field trip!

It was an awesome privilege for me to see some of HOPE's projects my first week in Cambodia doing the project evaluations... so it would only make sense for our UNION team to get to see more of the amazing work that HOPE does! So our last week in Cambodia, we also took a couple morning ‘field trips’ away from school construction… to experience more of real life in rural Cambodia, and see how HOPE is helping to transform lives!

Off we go in our ride - the back of HOPE's pick up truck!

 
What did we see and what did we do? A lot of different things - but I'll start with this one!  Actually I think we just walked to this family's house, it was down the road from our school, but anyways! We went to visit a neighbour in our village, who's gotten this water filter from HOPE for clean water!

But... before we get to see how the water filter works - we gotta get some water! So, that's what we did, as a small 'something' we could do for our kind hosts! The mom of the family walks down to the river every morning to collect water. She makes at least 3 trips a day, other families say they sometimes make 6 or 7.

Well, we barangs aren’t able to do a whole lot that Cambodians can’t do better for themselves… but we can take a turn in carrying some water!

The village kids all gathering to watch (and laugh at) what these crazy barangutangs are going to try to do now!

Down to the river we go! Scooping the water in...

Standing up… and trying to balance!

I can’t stand up!!

Show off. :P

Carrying water back up from the river to the family’s home

Gosh that’s a long trek!

It really wasn’t, but I couldn’t believe the mom of this family makes a this trip a few times a day! I was wobbling & swaggering the whole way up and - literally - hunched over & could not stand up by the time I got those water buckets up to the family's home!

Pouring our precious carried water into the family's big ceramic canister...

And finally, 9 big buckets of water later, we got to the best part… seeing that water go through a bio-sand water filter!! (which the family received from HOPE 2 years ago)!

Good enough to drink!

The kids guzzling down the water as it came out of the filter.

This little girl drinking is one of the daughters of this family... and one of my favourite kids in the village! Not that I play favourites... but she is always has a gigantic smile & is taking care of the even littler ones! (She's also the one on the left in the next picture)

It really was amazing to hear from this family – and all the kids that we have been playing with around the village. They used to get sick from typhoid, cholera, diarrhea and other unclean-water-related illnesses two or three times a month. Since they’ve gotten the filter? No one gets sick anymore!!

I think everyone (including me, again!) has been so, so, so amazed by what $50 can do. A filter for $50 (the material costs anyways, I guess plus the education & health/hygiene/maintenance training and staff time that goes into it too) gives clean water, freedom from constant illness, freedom for kids to do their work of laugh and play, for moms and dads to sigh a breath of relief and do other more important things like planting rice and growing crops, rather than taking care of sick family members.

Well, we sure found out the hard (and aching-shoulders!) way - it's still not easy to get water. But it is clean - and THAT makes a huge difference!

Healthy kids = happy kids.

Love it! :)

Want to donate a filter for clean water? :)

xo
Rainbow