Stranded in the middle of Phnom Penh!!

Today, we needed to visit a government office in Phnom Penh. Just before we reached our destination, it started raining heavily. When our car arrived at the office, all the area was flooded! Our driver tried to park the car as close to the entrance as possible, but it was really difficult… Those among us wearing sandals decided to step out of the car, except Sally, our volunteer, who was hesitating as she was wearing sneakers… At the end, she went with us, crouch walking perilously on the narrow protruding edge of the wall…

When we talk in our blog about our Health Center’s construction delay due to heavy rains, it may not be easy to understand, but look at those photos! Even in the center of the capital, we are sometimes pretty much controlled by the weather.

Sally from Taiwan is Volunteering with Us

Sally is our new volunteer from Taiwan; she joined us on 4th October and is going to stay with us until 2nd November. She has a lot of experience in fund raising and is willing to share her know-how in this crucial field.
She is already planning to come back next year, to work with us in the long term.
She is very active and so helpful that we cannot believe she has been with us for only 3 weeks! What she needs to overcome is how to cope with the nature…. Mice, insects of all kinds, crawling and flying invaders… Sally, we believe you will get used to those things.

Health Center Construction Update

We have started working on the remaining part of the roof. As the yellow arrows indicate on the picture here below, the slope of the roof on the building front will be angled so as to let in as much natural light as possible, both sunlight and moonlight.

[Can you now visualize our roof design a little better?]

Meanwhile, it is with great gratitude that we received a donation from the Taipei Yunfu Rotary Club, to help cover the costs of the Health Center construction. Thank you from the bottom of our heart for your generosity!

[Rehabilitation Pool is also under construction]

Our House for Visitors

Our house is built in an energy-efficient way, with all the necessary facilities to ensure that our visitors are as comfortable as possible.

The roof is put in an angle that allows a constant air circulation inside the house, keeping the temperature indoors cool. The roof also has 2 layers, the outside layer is made with locally available grass, that ensure good heat insulation. There is a gap between the layers so that the under layer’ surface is kept dry, in order to prevent humidity build up inside.

The house is still on the way to be developed. We will soon put a mosquito screen at the entrance, in order to keep the bugs out. While the good air circulation keeps us comfortable inside, it also carries in a lot of mosquitoes; luckily, the constant air flow prevents them from feasting on us. For the moment, our open environment is also an open invitation to a wide variety of insects, and we are sleeping inside mosquito nets.

Water is no problem for us, as we are blessed with pure water running from the uphill mountain 8km away. We searched for a long time for an uncontaminated water resource that would be available year-round. Our major problem now is the naughty elephants which destroy our water pipes from time to time, stopping our water supply. This is the ups and downs of a life in the middle of nature.
Building such a house is a kind of experiment as well. We are testing new techniques and see how they work, in order to apply the successful ones for our Health Center under construction.

Pay or Stay Here

On September 25th at night, there was an accident near Phnom Penh International Airport and 3 people were injured, a couple and their 16 year-old son. The boy was seriously injured and, when a public ambulance arrived on the scene, he had already been taken by a private ambulance to a clinic, even though it is prohibited by the Cambodian government.
According to his parents, they were asked by the clinic to pay money upfront for their son’s treatment otherwise the clinic would not release him. The clinic was not equipped to treat him properly, and the boy risked losing his life if he were not transferred to a national hospital as quickly as possible.
International experts from Side By Side International went to the clinic in order to support the negotiation process. The clinic staff didn’t expect we would intervene, and they finally agreed to release the boy who was then transferred to the national hospital.Though it’s prohibited, there are still many unscrupulous private ambulance operators who try to profit from traffic accidents. This boy was only one of many who are mistreated in such circumstances. Cambodia’s government is making a lot of efforts to put an end to such practices, but it will take time to change people’s behavior.

Ambulance activity in Phnom Penh

Side-By-Side International (SBSI), one of our donor NGOs from Japan, is involved in the implementation of an effective public Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system in Phnom Penh, under the umbrella of Cambodia’s Ministry of Health. With Cambodia having a high rate of traffic accidents, it is crucial to put in place and develop such system throughout the Kingdom, and this what SBSI is planning to do as the project progresses. CDEP is collaborating with SBSI’s Cambodia office for this project, by providing technical assistance and sharing our expertise and know-how in this field.

Thanks to the strong leadership of the Ministry of Health, a number of agencies and ministries are now cooperating in this undertaking. There are many difficulties to overcome but we are convinced that, with the joint efforts of all, the project will succeed.