July 2006: Water Project Short
Over a year ago, we took on the task of helping a group of Cambodians find water. What started as a small irrigation project has grown into something much larger than we ever anticipated. Video by Irene Pak and Justine Gerenstein.
March 2006, Tobias Rose-Stockwell
My body is adjusting to being home. America seems to be a very bizarre place after being in Asia for some time. I’m not sure what that means yet, because I remember it being the other way around three months ago. How is it that Cambodia feels normal now? Why do people here drive so slowly? Where are my street vendors and dusty motorbikes? It has been an odd change for me. |
Site Updates :
|
This is an update, about what I’ve been doing throughout my time away, up until my return this week. In a nutshell, this has been a trip with three goals: To make sure our projects are coming together, to network with new compassionate people, and to do research on a revolutionary method of humanitarian aid.
Dam & Canal Reconstruction Project
There is still a sad spot under the sun where a small river flows through the ruined walls of an ancient dike. There are still bone-dry rice fields because of this, and thousands of villagers with barely enough to eat. There are still a group of monks from this community trying to organize ways of pulling people out of poverty. We are still helping them do this, and it has become something much larger than I ever originally imagined.
It has been a difficult journey at times, but this has not been a trip about suffering and redemption, nor trauma and catharsis. It has been a trip about progress, and the gradual, rolling pace it has come about. I am learning that these steps ahead are hard-won in Cambodia. They involve putting feet forward, then taking one back, while holding the faith that you're actually getting somewhere.
Cambodia has not stopped being a raw and vivid place, but I have begun to adjust to its oddities. The everyday beauty and ugliness of this country have merged, and I am starting to call them both life. Strangely enough, this is a life I have come to really enjoy.
But this trip has not been about me. It has been about others, reaching out and helping to realize our goals. They are the best way through which to explain what has happened with Human Translation, because they have been a part of it.
Steve Forbes - Engineer Without Borders
I left on Christmas eve, and spent my holiday in a cramped dry airplane and an airport in Korea. I arrived in Siem Reap after my third flight, and immediately met up with an engineer from Texas named Steve Forbes.
Steve took it upon himself to come out to Cambodia over Christmas at his own expense for the sake of the dam reconstruction project, and his insight has been tremendous. He works with Engineers Without Borders (ewb-usa.org), and spends a great deal of his time dedicating his considerable skills to small development projects like ours. We spent the week trolling around the dusty villages and rice fields, meeting with monks, and talking details with provincial leaders. Steve brought his voluminous knowledge of hydrology to the project, and has guided our local engineer towards understanding what we need to make this project happen safely and sustainably.
Pros: Proper engineering and sustainable prospects!
Cons: Showed us how much more work we need in order to do this right.
I spent New Years in Phnom Penh with a few friends, and had a chance meeting with prominent author Loung Ung, who wrote the well-known autobiographical book ‘First They Killed My Father,’ about her life as a child growing up under the Khmer Rouge. She is a powerful inspirational figure, and we shared some common ground on work in Cambodia. She has provided sage advice about nonprofits and some wonderful insight on being successful in helping others.
Pros: She expressed interest in contributing to Human Translation in the future.
Cons: She sets the bar very high indeed.
I flew back to Bangkok to meet Irene Pak, a friend and filmmaker who had decided to come out and start a documentary about aid-work in Cambodia. Her camera, bandana, and shotgun microphone were a ubiquitous sight throughout the following month as we hopped from project to project.
Pros: She got some beautiful footage.
Cons: She also sadly got Dengue and Typhoid fevers, simultaneously, after a month. She cut her trip short and flew home from Bangkok, where she has now fully recovered.
Sut Dien
On our way back into Cambodia, I searched out and found Sut Dien, the little girl whos life collided with mine last year. She is doing fine now, and her extended family (whom I’ve finally met) seems to be tremendously sweet. When my Khmer is a little better I have plans of collaborating to help her through school.
Just a few days later, Orion Henry, voluntary tech director for Human Translation, flew in with his bright enthusiasm and voracious appetite for Khmer culture. In his short ten-day trip I did my best to throw as much authentic Cambodia at him as he could take. In turn, we used his fresh perspective and external legitimacy to stick some tough questions to our local governmental engineer about the necessity of the current design. What came from that focused dialogue was a big reduction in the engineer’s cost-estimate, by about twenty-thousand dollars. That conversation brought the total down to around $50,000, and us almost half-way to hitting our mark, which is great news for our monks and our villagers in Balang.
Pros: Massive cost reduction.
Cons: Getting Orion to stop raving about his trip.
After a month of work I headed back to Bangkok for the third time and met up with William Haynes-Morrow, one of the most determined and committed additions to Human Translation. He has proven himself to be a great contributor to our project. Up until this point he has worked with a Cambodian community in Chicago to build support for our organization from a distance. We spent a full week brainstorming about the future of humanitarian aid, and sharing mutual inspiration about the necessity of helping Cambodia.
He comes to this endeavor as our second full time volunteer, after myself, and brings a wealth of nonprofit experience with him. He just took my place in Siem Reap, and is now living there as our project manager, spending his time in the villages, and building a better relationship with the monks.
Pros: By working from Cambodia, he has doubled HT's capacity to make an impact.
Cons: By working from Cambodia, he has made me really jealous.
Throughout all this traveling we’ve been working on something big. Something much larger than Human Translation has ever attempted. This is something new, and is for you just as much as it’s for the thousands of Cambodians we’re trying to feed. Expect more on this from me soon – and thank you for catching up.
Update : October 2005
Tobias Rose-Stockwell
Home again, home again. Past due for a proper update! This is relative to my August trip to Asia, lasting until late October, 2005.
Relief Coordination in Pai, Thailand.
I found myself in the northwestern portion of Thailand during the first week of my trip, working on coordinating some disaster relief with flood victims in a small valley known as Pai. In a very underreported story, massive storms in the region had brought some of the worst flooding ever seen there. I spent my time coordinating with a small group of volunteers dedicated to helping out many of the local villagers that have been hard-hit by these floods.
Volunteering with Karen hill-tribe children
Afterwards I headed from Chang Mai down to Majeam province, where I spent time volunteering with a small organization that provides a home for Karen hill tribe children too poor to go to school. This was a beautiful little experience, involving many days living in a giant old wooden house under the tallest mountain in Thailand. I spent with my Thai friend Ole teaching English to classrooms full of eager Thai and Karen snots, most of which had never met anyone as tall as me. Other days we spent hiking into the bright-green hills and harvesting corn with gruff little nuns, avoiding heavy monsoon downpours under tiny thatch huts. I met a very large bug from the jungle there, who tried to tell me a story. I think he was very old and tired.
A Chance Meeting
I returned to Bangkok for some research and just before jumping into Cambodia, I ended up having a chance meeting with the friend of a friend - a wonderful Australian Catholic priest named Father Ron Nissen. His organization is one of the principal supporters of the Sarnelli House orphanage in northern Thailand – a place which changed my life two years ago. I had a long conversation with him about our various endeavors and projects helping people between Thailand and Cambodia, and shared our new ideas for compassionate action. At the end of this talk, he offered the generous support of his organization, the Marist Mission Center in Australia, to our Dam and Canal reconstruction project in Cambodia. On top of that, he offered us additional support to help us realize some of our broader goals. It was a wonderfully lucky connection, and I’m sure we’ll be sharing a dialogue with him for years to come.
Back into Cambodia
I had a rather difficult experience getting into Cambodia. Once I made it to Siem Reap, I made significant headway on our plans for dam reconstruction, including the induction of a new volunteer into our ranks to do project management for us on the ground. I spent a few weeks between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, meeting with development organizations and visiting local projects which we’re affiliated with. I saw Phnom Penh as I had never seen it before, washed clean by monsoon rains with green bushes and blooming flowers. Cambodia’s crazy capital is actually a lovely place in the rainy season.
My Nongkhai
After nearly a month in Cambodia I headed back into Thailand, met up with a friend in Bangkok and celebrated my 25th birthday with some of my expatriate friends there. Soon after we took a night-train northeast into Issan – the poorest and spicest region of Thailand. We found ourselves in Nongkhai, which sits just across from Laos on the massive Maekong river. We huddled with thousands of Thais and Laotians on the bank of the river the following night, waiting for the annual Naga serpent fireballs, which supposedly shoot from the water every year on the full-moon (a mysterious and unexplained phenomenon). We did not see them, unfortunately, but did have a fine time watching hundreds of burning candle-laden boats float by us as offerings to the mythical serpents.
We biked out to the Sarnelli house orphanage the following day. This is a home for children affected by HIV and AIDS, which I’ve volunteered at many times in the last two years. The blue concrete walls hold many warm memories for me, and seeing the children again after twelve months was a wonderful sight. They have grown! All of them have stretched upwards like taffy. They were healthy, happy, and full of enormous smiles.
A week in Nongkhai behind us, we headed back into Bangkok, where I had some minor dental surgery, and then pointed myself directly towards home.
I’ll be back in Asia come December, so I hope to connect with you before then.
All the best,
Tobias
Tobias@HumanTranslation.org
Collaborate | Projects | Translations