February 15

Feb. 15. Went to TB and gave them pix of boy scout and Sras trip, that I had downloaded on my thumb drive. I need to have Steve do a picture of Nak and me and bring it to her.. Initiated Rattana to set up visit to Sras on March 9-10, as March 8 is Women’s Independence Holiday. It seems that the number of three day weekends rivals that of the USA. Nuong, my unsuccessful house broker who also touts herself as a fixer and nature tour guide, broke her lunch meeting with me and rescheduled for later in the day at 5:30 pm. So I did some errands. I needed to extend my visa as I was not able to get a business visa at the airport and ended up with a 20 day visa which expired on February 17th. Guess that means I have been in Cambodia for a month without Lauren, as I re-entered the day Lauren left for home on the 17th of January. I will be fined $5 a day upon leaving the Country if I do not extend. The strange part of it is to get an extension, other than paying the fee of $45, I needed to surrender my passport so it could be sent to Phnom Penh for processing which takes a week when the 3 day holiday for the Chinese New Year is accounted for. I am trusting this process !!! I have a copy of it so that when I travel to Battambang I can use the copy when checking into the hotel, which always wants to copy it. You go to a travel agent to do the extension, so while I was there I bought all of the tickets that Lyman and I need to return to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh after a week of filming there and the tickets for all three of us to leave on March 19th, with Lyman catching his flight home from Phnom Penh and us from Bangkok. I met Nuong for a beer and to hire her as a fixer to arrange for us to be able to film a traditional dance ( Aspara dance)., a shadow puppet performance and a trip to Phnom Kulan ( Mount Kulan) where there is a waterfall and a pagoda to arrange for a blessing by Monks to be filmed at the waterfall. We shall go the waterfall on Saturday and I need to figure out if we should try and film it now with Steve and save a day from our shooting schedule with L and L. I had dinner at home and ate a home made dish of pasta and Bolognese sauce that I had cooked earlier in the day. This is the first real dinner I had made for myself and I froze most of it for another night.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

March 4-



March 4-5, 2010
Spent these days shooting Hengly. We were picked up at 6a.m. so that we could make a meeting that he had in the District for a training session to teach commune women and men how to market toilets, or has he puts it how to create demand. We stopped for breakfast at the side of the road modern fast food breakfast spot where all of the breakfast choices were illustrated by pictures on the wall. There no bacon and eggs and I had beef noodle soup.
After the Distict meeting we went into the village and met with the Chief who was the first to have bought a latrine. The flush toilet is really a squatter with a shelter around it i.e. a door sides and roof. One can upgrade from zinc sides to concrete for more money. The basis cost is $42. The way one flushes is to scoop water from a huge water storage jar. So this family sanitation is certainly a step up from defecating in the bush but there is no leach field as all of the effluent goes into a “ concrete ring” in the ground. There is no system yet to empty it other than digging it out and then where does it go. In other words and I apologize for the graphic images here but I am into the latrine business, there is no service that pumps out the tank. It is seen by the public health officials as step one and an improvement from the bush where when rainy season comes….
This family’s water supply and most of the village is from what is called the “pond” which is stagnant lotus growing area next to the rice paddies. He hooks a barrel on a little trailer behind his moto and goes the 400 meters to fill the barrel with “ clean water”. He used to use a filter but that is broken and so now he boils the water, most of the time. I am posting a picture of the water and notice the color.
We then attended a meeting at the Provincial level.Hengly has been able to convince this Province of his marking scheme to sell toilets to villagers and to use the capitalistic model to be self sustaining. He is a very personable and driven 26 year old.
Got back to the hotel around 7PM another long day and we were all to exhausted to do anything more than grab a shower and some Indian food around the corner.
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