Life in Cambodia

Ants and Frogs

Ok, the ants in this country are serious, organized and ready to strike at any notion, however slight, that food will be, has been, or is in the process of falling to the counter, ground, desk, computer key board, etc. Never have I quite experienced their madness like here in Cambodia. Really. I know this may sound kind of typical to some of you, but damn, nothing can be sealed tight enough. Worse than Cameroon. They are even in my refrigerator (while it’s running, not only when the electricity is out!) climbing up the side, inside around the mustard jar and sniffin’ out my UHT sealed-tight milk. Don’t even get me started on the soda/beer can candle holders I’ve made—the candle light attracts the bugs, fire kills ‘em, they drop inside the candle holder and within seconds the ants are all over the dead stuff. Madness I tell you. The poor project officer who works with me must have dropped some crumbs next to his printer, it was covered, swarmed even, the guy had to finally remove himself and his cell phone, jump drive and planner as they were over-running his desk-top area. And, my favorite, in the middle of the kitchen floor a nice large flying roach has been killed and well, I just have to wait about 24 hours and I’ll find the thing more than half way across the kitchen on its way to the small crevasse between the molding on the door and the wall—save for the mighty stream of ant-workers, nothing is left behind. Ok, so they’re good for some things.

Anyway, there are a lot of interesting creatures and critters here (these crazy spiders I’ll report on at a different point)—frogs like you wouldn’t believe. I had a really cute small one jumping around my house and several taking up residence on the porch the other night after a good 30 min. rain. I actually learned about how useful frogs can be in providing sustainable support for vulnerable households here…guess? Yes, they’re easy to produce and they’re healthy and nutritious too! One of the other CBOs we work with here is piloting a project where they have introduced this new, big, hearty version of frogs from Thailand and are harvesting tadpoles and training community members on small scale, sustainable production for households. It takes very little input—just some water (clearly there’s plenty of it in the rainy season, even fairly accessible in the dry season), a net and some careful watching and a little shade. Presto, those bad-boys produce like no tomorrow and keep producing. I was pretty impressed and people love to eat frog here so it’s not even an issue about introducing a different, unaccepted type of food. We’re going to invite these folks to talk about this and their other very appropriate interventions to our workshop in June for our partners.

Otherwise, work is keeping me quite busy and I don’t see any break in the near future…however, I just found out today that I’ll be going to Zambia in July for about 4 days for an Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) project technical conference for the organization. Very cool. I’ve never been to Zambia and I’m really excited to learn about new and different approaches to support OVC in more sustainable and practical ways so this should be good.

Other things that I’m learning about:
-Avian flu and how to set up a rapid response system if an outbreak occurs (and if it spreads to humans);
-Integrated Farming Management Systems; Farming techniques that use the whole farm/household to sustain and provide inputs (chicken coops over fish ponds, production of liquid fertilizer (I know, very cool), well, the frog production of course and wild fish preservation (one intervention protects them in a pond near a pagoda in the dry season and then in the rainy season release them into the rice paddies to help the whole fertilization, growing process--fish eat good stuff, release good stuff and the farmers can fish traditionally/naturally to keep 'em in check—the whole process is connected so the fish remaining actually make their way back to the pagoda—it’s amazing);
-The health system, referral system, home-based care services and the operational district (Ministry of Agriculture uses this) vs the health center coverage areas (Provincial Health Department and Provincial AIDS Authority use this) in Svay Rieng province, which overlap somewhat since our project works in agriculture defined target areas but we work through the PHD/PAA and health center coverage areas;
-Low input gardening
-And Khmer—Good night=Rea (roll the ‘r’ a little) tri (like ‘try’) souah s-dey (like sa+‘die’); mango=svay (as in 'Svay' Rieng--we have lots of mangos here--lucky for me ;)

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 10:08 AM