APAD 146: Rainy season
Folks, the rainy season has officially started.
The roads in most rural areas in Cambodia are now, more or less, like this:
This photo was taken years ago when I was on a fieldwork in Kamchai Mear district in Prey Veng. The soil has turned into a red, sticky, slippery matter that was ankle-high. In some areas, there were lots of potholes filled with water. When this dried up, they were as hard as cement. I kid you not. I can show you my shoes, if you insist, lol.
I pity the guy as he maneuvered his moto through this sticky mess. A little further down the road, it was even worse that our 4WD got stuck for an hour. It took about a dozen village folks to extricate our vehicle from the mud. Imagine the schoolchildren who walks to school everyday. The villagers we interviewed wished for better road conditions.
Several years after that fieldtrip, this wish was somehow granted. A former colleague told me that almost all of the roads to Kamchai Mear are now better, wider and cemented. Thanks to international funding, life is now easier in this rural area. Good news indeed.
APAD 145: Sambo the Elephant
This is Sambo, Phnom Penh’s resident elephant. He is now 53 years old and, until recently, he has been one of the lovable and enduring figures for visiting tourists and locals.
Finally, Sambo has retired from his “work” at Wat Phnom.
Sambo’s story is one that could be made into a Hollywood movie.
The Story of Sambo starts all the way back in the 1970’s when he was split up from his owners during the civil war and Khmer Rouge takeover and Sin Son. the boy who had raised Sambo had feared him to have perished along with so many others until after surviving the brutal Pol Pot regime he returned to his old village to find his only remaining neighbor who informed that Sambo had survived the Killing Fields but was now across the other side of Cambodia.
You can find more about his story here.
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