Human Translation

The Event at Clos Pegase

2008-08-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

Our 2008 fund raising event at Clos Pegase on August 17th turned into an amazing success. The opera performance was by all accounts breathtaking, and despite a cold wind and a few AV glitches along the way, a tenacious crowd and a fleet of incredible volunteers helped us raise over $100,000 for our new projects in clean water and education.

There is a long list of heroes who made this event a reality. Thank you to each and every person who helped make the night such an incredible success.

View a slideshow here. Photos by Jessica Caisse.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/humantranslation/show/

Article, and Opera

2008-08-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

Carolyn Younger recently wrote an article for the Napa Valley Register outlining the completion of our reservoir and our upcoming fundraising event "Transforming Lives". The event will be happening on August 17th and will be supporting our new Education and Clean Water fund.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us to get to this point. I am speaking for several thousand of us in saying that we are tremendously grateful.

Downstream Canal Excavation

2008-07-11T01:08:00.000-07:00

Though the concrete work on the water gate is completed, there are still a few construction issues remaining for us to take care of over the next few months. Chai began work on the excavation of the downstream canal yesterday and instead of hiring an expensive excavator that would probably sink in the ground once or twice a day, the work will be carried through by local laborers from the community of Balangk. Chai has hired twenty laborers and one foreman to dig the new pathway that will allow the downstream flow to merge with its original stream, O Ta Bet. Hiring manual labor allows us to help employ locals in the villages we work with, providing work opportunities that are hard to come by.

There is also rip-rap and gravel installation work to be done for the water gate wing walls and upstream toe embankment slope. In addition, stop logs still need to be ordered and placed in the water gate. We believe the work will be completed in less than a month’s time.

The first of many Human Translation t-shirts have also been delivered. We are sending most back to the US for our fundraising volunteers, but many of the residents of Balangk who have worked closely with us for the past few years deserve them just as much. Our first recipient was of course Met Sin, the hardworking and talented farmer who lives closest to the reservoir. Below is a picture of Met Sin with the HT shirt posing with Ceda.

Grassing Party

2008-06-20T01:06:00.000-07:00

We held our second big grassing party on Thursday, June 19th, to try and complete the embankment grassing for the reservoir. We had around 140 villagers participate along with 70 monks from the Wat Trach pagoda to complete another 20% of the embankment, which means we only have another 15% left. The day would not have been possible without the help of volunteer cooks from Prom Kod village, who cooked all of us a delicious meal, and various other villagers who helped set up the tents, collect firewood, wash dishes, donate ox-carts and refill the water supply. Without the support of the community we wouldn’t be able to pull off these events and therefore appreciate the time and effort that everyone contributes to the project. The monks from Wat Trach also deserve applause as their strength and continued support of the project sets a wonderful example for the community of Balangk to follow. Although we did not finish all the grassing, we still view the day as a huge success because as frustrating as it is working with uncooperative villages, it is more than worth the stress when you see other community members pull together to accomplish the goal at hand.

Concrete Completion

2008-06-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

The concrete work for the water gate is complete as of last Friday, May 30th.

The backfilling of the wing walls was also completed last week allowing us to ride over the bridge of the water gate on our motorbikes. Our contractor's remaining crew is currently working on the rip rap lining while waiting until Sunday to remove the rest of the formwork. Chanda, our contractor and his team are a month and a half ahead of schedule, and we are very excited to see the finished product. We went out on Tuesday to test out the control bars of the gateway, and were very happy to see some red added to the water gate. We are now concentrating our efforts on mobilizing the villages to complete the embankment grassing - just another 30% left! We are organizing another big event on Thursday, June 12th to accomplish the grassing in one day. We believe it will be another success. We still have substantial work to do on the excavation of the downstream canals, and we'll begin our celebrations when that and our Water User Groups are up and running!

Bac Kron and Met Sin (the two living closest to the reservoir) pose on the water gate

Ceda, Tobias, Chai, Bac Kron and Met Sin inspecting the newly painted control bars

Monsoon Grassing

2008-05-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

Monsoon Grassing Video Montage from Tobias.

Grassing Kickoff

2008-05-26T23:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday May 18th, 2008 [Click the photo above for Gallery Shots]

This is a picture taken from last Sunday’s Grassing Kickoff. In order to involve the community on a large scale we decided to put on an event that would allow the villagers to get together for a day of fun and grassing. Along with our partner NGO, Human Resources and Natural Development (HRND), we invited the monks from the local pagoda, Wat Trach, to bless the reservoir and lead the community in the grassing work. It was a frenetic day as 350-400 villagers and monks showed up to help cook, set-up and most importantly, grass the 13, 200 square meter embankment. Although we were only able to grass 50% of the whole embankment, the event was a success as everyone had a great time grassing to the music blaring out of the speakers and slipping on the wet grass after the downpours of the day.

Our focus now is to keep the enthusiasm going among the village chiefs to mobilize their villages in order to finish grassing the rest of the embankment before the monsoon hits. We are depending on the continued participation of the community to complete this part of the reservoir reconstruction project as we are on a critical time schedule. But mobilizing a community of ten villages is a difficult task. It has and will take longer than we thought, but it will be done.

Video Footage, Apr 11

2008-05-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

HV20 Test: Children on Embankment from Tobias on Vimeo.

Spontaneous Human Translation

2008-03-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

A lot of people ask me what Human Translation means. The idea evolved from a simple truth - that we all share a universal sense of human understanding regardless of country, culture, background or language. This video was shown to me yesterday, and I think that it is an inspiring example of universal human translation. Thank you Matt.

In the Air and on the Ground

2008-02-27T19:30:00.000-08:00

Photo Gallery: Aerial Imagery and Water-gate Construction

Images taken from a recent flyby in a friend's helicopter. Shots by Bouny Te and Steve Forbes. Thanks go to Steve Forbes for making this happen. Shots also of the base slab construction on the Water-gate, for which construction is now fully underway.

2008-01-01T18:18:00.000-08:00

New Gallery Posted

Construction 2007

Including the photographs of Courtney Worthington, Stephen Forbes, Bryse Gaboury, Tobias Rose-Stockwell and Bouny Te.

Changes in the Field

2007-12-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

As you know we have been working for the last four years trying to bring water to thousands of people, in ten villages, who do not have enough for their crops. Their crops are their livelihood, and without this water, they cannot pull themselves from poverty.

My organization was founded to translate the needs of this impoverished community into actions - actions that will make an impact for generations. We're finally seeing huge strides towards completion of our reservoir.

Since receiving such tremendous generosity from you over the summer, we've seen many changes:

We've successfully trained over a hundred community members into skilled laborers and technicians in infrastructure development.
Cleared land-mines from 50 acres of irrigation area.
Moved tons of earth to repair the mile-long retaining levee.
Continued to supply clean drinking water to hundreds more people through our Red Filter Project.

We can still use your help. We know we are finally feeling the momentum we need to complete our largest project ever attempted - the Trau Kod Reservoir System.

Construction has been going along full speed for the last two months, and if all goes to plan, we'll be seeing an ancient body of water restored to its full, life-sustaining capacity in the next six months.

If you'd like to read regular progress reports, please read the blog of Bryse, from Engineers Without Borders, who is in Cambodia providing us with some wonderful assistance.

Reservoir Constuction Begins

2007-07-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

We have now, finally, begun construction on our reservoir.

After ensuring the community's need over three years. After organizing an enormous de-mining operation that took many months. After working through a tangled web of bureaucracy on all levels of government - we have finally begun our construction.

We have enough funds for Phase I, so we are starting. Phase II and III will begin after the monsoons, pending financing. 9,000 people still need water, and we will do our best to provide.

for progress on construction, view EWB's website here: http://ewbnycambodia.blogspot.com

Photo Journal, April to May

2007-05-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

Most recent update through photos and words.

Photo Journal, HT April-May 07

Bet Wi and the villagers of Balang

2007-05-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

I find that the people with the most straightforward suggestions for improving life in rural Cambodia aren't in the government, and don't work for large international organizations. They are the everyday people I talk to in the villages of Balang.

For example: Bet Wi is the 47 year old matriarch for a family of five living in Kroper village, one of the eight villages in Balang Commune. She is one of the 9,000 villagers we work with on our irrigation, clean water, and scabies projects. Kroper village, like many of the villages in the Commune, is not in the best of conditions. The Khmer Rouge fought in this area until 1998, and the scene of some of the last violence between the government and the rebels was just north of Bet Wi's house. This meant that the positive development activities that were going on all over Cambodia by the mid-nineties weren't happening in Bet Wi's area. She would have to wait for the violence to end before anyone could help her and her family escape the trap of poverty.

A few months ago we got the opportunity to talk to Bet Wi. At the time we we were interviewing people in Balang to learn how we can work with villagers to improve their lives. I remember talking to her; she was in a great mood because she had just recently finished building a roadside store, and was beginning to sell small snacks and bric a brac. The store was built with a small loan provided by HRND, a local Cambodian organization that works closely with us and with the community of Balang.

It was apparent Bet Wi had caught the development bug. She was looking toward the future and told us quite clearly what she saw as the major issues affecting her and her community. We asked her what was next needed to improve life in Kroper. She replied:

"The most important way to improve life in my community would be to repair the irrigation system so there is more water for farming in Balang Commune. Doing this will increase our income, and in the process improve all aspects of life, including health, education and nutrition for the people living in my village."

Its not surprising Bet Wi said this. Most of the people in Kroper village and the other seven villages of Balang are farmers. Their livelihoods and the livelihoods of their ancestors have always been rice and agricultural crops, stretching back generations to before the time of the great Angkor Empire, one thousand years ago. Cambodia was always an ideal locale for agriculture, because of its fertile soil and plenty of annual rainfall.

Unfortunately, the farmers of Balang don't have a way to store water from the rainy season for use year-round. Without a storage system, the farmers in our villages can only use the water half the year, and they can't grow enough during this time to make a decent living. The rest of the year they are forced by necessity to turn to activities other than farming.

For Bet Wi's family, this means that her husband must go off to the forest to harvest wood for extra income. Many other villagers in Balang do the same to make up for the lack of food and money they earn from farming. In crisis situations, people turn to the first work they can find to earn money. This is also the case in Balang, and logging in recent years has become one of the most common ways for farmers to earn a living here.

But logging in excess is unsustainable, and recently the intense logging around Balang has begun to show a strain on local forests. Some villagers living near Bet Wi discussed with us the rapid deforestation they were seeing all around them.

Met Sim, 69, said "A cartload of wood used to be worth 5,000 riel ($1.25). That was 2 years ago. Now because there is so little wood the value of a cartload has increased a lot, but it is so much harder to find enough wood that its not very profitable work anymore."

Another interviewee, Mot Ten, living in Popeil village southeast of Kroper, said "Foraging wood used to be a way for people to earn money here in Balang. Now almost all the wood is gone."

A lack of water resources made farmers become, out of desperation, loggers. But as farmers turned en masse to logging in their area to sustain their families, the forests around Balang were rapidly depleted. Now forests are further and further away from the villages where people like Bet Wi and Met Sim live. The isolated areas where villagers collect wood are a risk for landmines-every day we see those unlucky enough to have lost a limb earning a living by logging. Not only that, villagers logging in distant forests often have to stay for extended periods of time in the wilderness; in the nighttime these dense, humid jungles fill with mosquitoes carrying malaria to unfortunate victims.

This is what happens when poor people don't have a stable source of income-they turn to activities that are often unsustainable and even just plain dangerous. The problems of malaria, landmines and deforestation could all be avoided in Balang if there was enough water for farming, enabling the people to earn a dependable living. Villagers would also have more income to pay for healthcare, education and food, all necessities they currently struggle to afford.

Given living conditions in Balang, its no surprise Bet Wi was so emphatic in stressing a great need for a better water supply in the villages near her. We asked her if our proposed project, the reservoir and canal system at Trau Kod, was a good solution for the problem of water storage. She said:

"If you put a dam at Trau Kod it will benefit this area a lot. With Trau Kod dammed, we can grow many things, even vegetables and fruits in the dry season. Without the dam, its not possible to make a living off of only farming in this area."

I agree with Bet Wi. Building a reservoir and canals at Trau Kod will give the villagers of Balang the solid foothold needed to climb out of the desperate conditions they now live in. It will allow them to leave the distant, dangerous forests and return to farming close to home with their families. It will change everything for the better in this impoverished part of rural Cambodia.

The discussions I had with Bet Wi, Met Sim and Mot Ten I took to heart. Now, many months later, we are finally able to work on a solution to their water storage and irrigation problems, a solution which will help them cultivate the land instead of deforesting it.

The Trau Kod reservoir and canal project has been under construction for a month and a half now. We broke ground on March 17th with the Governor of Siem Reap Province in attendance to inaugurate the occasion (that's him in the excavator "breaking ground"). By next rainy season, May 2008, we hope to finish. The irrigation system for Mot Ten, Met Sim and Bet Wi will be fully functioning and ready to help farmers grow enough to live a comfortable life, without having to turn to unsustainable forestry or worse.

But it won't help just Bet Wi and her neighbors; it will help 9,000 other villagers living in and around Balang. It will mean that Balang will have stability once again, after decades of violence and poverty.

Bet Wi said it best, and she said it simply. More water for farming is what the villagers of Balang need most of all. We've made it our job for the next year to translate her words, her dream, and the dream of many others in Balang, into action.

[all quotes provided by the villagers of Balang were translated by our field assistant Chai]

Pagoda Monster

2006-12-17T03:04:00.000-08:00

Maintaining focus is a tough business in Cambodia. There are always side-paths here. There is always more need. We have finite resources through which to solve problems. Finite resources to battle the silent monsters afflicting people’s lives.

We do what we can when the opportunities are in front of us.

About two months ago, in the midst of our second engineering visit from Steve Forbes, we began a water quality assessment for the first set of filters we installed in Balang. Between photographing wells at the dusty Pagoda and asking survey questions, one of the young monks approached us and held up his hands. The boy - who was not more than 14 years old - had the wrinkled, gnarled hands of an old man.

He was from a village far away, and after coming to the Pagoda one year ago to study, found his hands began to itch tremendously. Through a slow progression of scratching occasionally, a rash erupted into bumps and eventually into small sores. It had spread from between his fingers, to his stomach, all the way down to his feet.

We asked questions, and found that he was one of many kids that had this problem. We maintained focus and moved on and we finished our study, noting the problem in our journals.

I returned two weeks later to put together a history of the problem, armed with questions from a doctor in town. I drove in one late afternoon by motorbike with Ceda, our precocious project assistant.

We started in Trach village, which is the closest point to the Pagoda and began our survey, walking from house to house back down the red dirt road asking questions. What we found was that every few houses had someone with the same problem, and that nearly everyone along the way knew someone who had it. By the time we had reached the Pagoda, we had found over twenty people with symptoms, four of which were serious.

The Pagoda children were happy to oblige our questioning, which was sober with a little bit of silly. I sat with them in a little concrete gazebo under tattered prayer flags until dusk turned to dark. They lit yellow wax candles and we continued, asking every child and monk what their experience was in the Pagoda and how the problem began.

The story was the same: it arrived a little over a year before, and began as itching between the fingers, toes, and places where there are folds in the skin. As it spread about the body it turned into welts, then open sores. If the children were especially good at itching, their legs were covered in scabs, scars and small open wounds.

I was taken aback by how widespread it was, and how serious some of the children’s problems were. They said it had been a slow gradual beginning, and that now the pain was so much that they could not sleep at night. Every child had it, and as we asked we tracked a transmission pattern between the kids. They slept three to a bamboo mat, shared clothes, and rarely washed their apprentice monk robes. Among the dirty young boys with little hygiene, it spread like wildfire.

Our questions ended with fits of laughter, silly faces, and a ridiculous lesson in nighttime flash photography. We ate a dinner of rice and boiled duck eggs in the darkness, and drank our filtered water on a raised wooden platform where the monks take their meals.

That night we unrolled our own bamboo mats on the floor of the Pagoda and chatted with the kids in my broken Khmer. I unrolled some thick brown paper I had brought also, and began sketching a few of the children sitting cross-legged in the yellow candlelight. It felt good to stretch my hands over the paper, as my opportunities to draw had been overruled by programming, paperwork and engineering.

I finished a few sketches, and the children disappeared into the complex to study before bed. As I lay down to sleep under the odd bright paintings of Buddha’s life, my mind was full of thoughts. I felt progress, momentum. The water project is our path, but there are many ways to get there, some more direct than others. This was another need, another side-path through which to help.

In Cambodia there is a language in movement. When you move forward, the path you follow is never a straight line. You must listen, and adjust, and you must bend with the path. Otherwise you are stopped. Otherwise you lose direction.

I realized this was the same spot where I napped as a tourist, three years earlier when a few ambitious monks pulled me out of the temples, into a world of broken dams and dry rice paddies. I thought about where we had come since then. Soft chanting echoed about the Pagoda as the monks recited their prayers before bed. I could see the night sky and a familiar milky-way, framed and shining through the open window as I fell into sleep.

The next day we returned to Siem Reap Town by motorbike after eating some fruit with the kids, washing in the pump well and speaking with some of the head-monks. They understood that some of the children would be scarred for life, but they had no idea what to do about it. Their only medication was boiling tamarind leaves and soaking the sores in the hot water. This did not help.

We shared the history we developed with a volunteer doctor at Angkor Hospital for Children. She said, after looking at the pictures and our research, the problem was almost certainly a severe form of Scabies, with secondary infections of Impetigo. I was glad, after hearing the diagnosis, we had been so careful during our contact with the children. I was also glad to hear it was something treatable, even if it had become an enormous problem so far out in the middle of nowhere. I found it amazing that such a small creature could manifest into such a serious monster.

I am not a medical professional. I only profess to have the ability to connect people to causes, to help find solutions for problems. In the following weeks, I pursued connections between intense engineering work and a lot of research on the water-gate project. I kept my eyes and ears open for people to help.

Last weekend, my good friend at the hospital, Jon Morgan, invited me to his farm for a small gathering. While there I met an epidemiologist named Sheena, from Australia, who was volunteering as a lecturer at the hospital. She had just arrived, although she had volunteered in Cambodia many times before. She was bright, spoke with authority, and had a skill-set that shined through.

After finding the three needed medications and developing a plan through a volunteer pediatrician at the hospital, Sheena and I went back out to the Pagoda, and stood in front of the assembled children, telling them what both Scabies and Impetigo were, and what they could do to avoid it. In the next few weeks, we will attack the problem with a potent plan.

We are now, with the monks of HRND and the hospital, developing a system for de-infestation, disinfection, and the training of an expert in the community. Sheena is heading it up, and is staying in HT’s office as our resident health professional. We expect it to be eradicated in a month, and if our plan for education works, it will never come back.

Bend in the path. Focus maintained. Progress made.

Now back to the bigger monsters.

Water Project Short

2006-07-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

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.

Others

2006-03-08T03:07:00.000-08:00

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.

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.

Watergate & 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.

Loung Ung - Author / Activist

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.

Irene's Documentary

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.

Orion's Tough Questions

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.

The Will to Work in Cambodia

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 for the months I am home.

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.

Following Up, October 2005

2005-10-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

This is what i've been doing on my most recent trip to Asia.

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.

Click here to read the story.

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.

View photos here.

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