Today, we left for Agricultural Training Centre (ATC) to help out in the furnishing of the pre-school. We had to wake up 1 hour earlier today and had to pack so much stuff for the trip. The worst thing was that there was no internet access there and hardly any electricity!! Nooo! L
Anyway, we left at 7:45am for the 2+ hour journey on board our faithful lorry. We stopped by at about 9am to stock up on water for the days as potable water is rare there. After buying 60-litres of bottled water at 90000riel, we managed to find this Water Filtration Centre which purified rain water using UV and slow sand technique. We bought the other 60litres there at only 3000riel, which is like 30x cheaper!! Just that we had to give a deposit fee for the containers, which was a no-brainer. XD
The lorry ride itself was quite boring at first, but it was better than Day 2 as we started sitting face-to-face instead all facing the front. Equipped with the “surgical masks”, we managed to brave the ‘sandstorm’ throughout the journey (I really wonder why there’s so much sand on the front compared to SG). When we were 20mins to ATC, things got really exciting. The road became super bumpy and we had to hold on for our dear life. Quite exhilarating I would say, haha. We learnt that ATC was previously a mine field as well, and the mines were recently cleared with the help of UN. So its now quite safe. J Also, our very skilful lorry driver managed to squeeze through countless obstacles, which really amazed some of us. Oh ya, someone enjoyed the slap of her life during the trip. Great slap therapy, haha.
Anyhow, we reached Srah Romdeng commune in Chung Ruk village at 1012am. And there was a huge crowd of students already there welcoming us like we were some VIP (which they think we are?). They sang for us even and we returned with a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, haha. We briefly shared that we feel honoured to help them with the building of the pre-school and hope that they will really appreciate our help and stuff. The villagers seemed really thankful for that and we could really sense that they really valued our help fully.
After which, we gave out chicken biscuits to the pre-school kids. They were really cute and adorable with those small hands, and they seemed really delighted to have such treats, even though it was just a small gesture and effort on our part.
We even played tug-of-war with the children, which was really interesting as I have never seen so many people playing it before. We won’t holding on to any rope as well but just our arms around each other’s body. The kids let go too fast as they didn’t have enough strength, if not, it would have been much more challenging.
Then we went to ATC for lunch. Local food which was not too bad. And we did some FISHING!! It was quite cool as for most of us, it’s the first time we ever fished. Even though some girls didn’t want to try it for fear of animal cruelty and stuff, haha. I found it really cool that the fishing rod was hand-made. They just got a long bamboo branch and tied the fishing line on it. For bait, they just dug up some soil and used the worms inside. Really inventive of them.
We just fished in a small pond which was full of tilapia (aka drain fish, lol). And it was just for fun as most fish was so small that there wasn’t much meat to eat. The farmer and Mr Chenda were super awesome as they had a fishing net to play with. And they caught 2 BIG tilapias with it. J
I think we fished until 3pm. Then we had like a mini-orientation of ATC itself, where Mr David Scott (the pioneer of Biosand filter) and Mr Sothea showed us around the place, gave a brief history and told us the efforts that are currently being put in place to make ATC better. So currently, ATC uses solar panels to power lights at night and produces crops (which are rotated based on seasons) for small sales to their local market. Future plans include installing a biogas digester to degrade and utilize cow dung fully as well. And in the long-run, the goal that SC have is for ATC to become a production center for agricultural products where such goods will then be sold to nearby places, creating sustainability. A truly remarkable goal in my opinion, and I wish them success in their endeavours.
Other than that, some other random stuff I found out was that roosters crow randomly during the day, not only during sunrise.
And for the rest of the day, we just played card games, interacted with the locals and had HTHT. Then it was SLEEP!! Just wanted to end off by saying that we felt really grateful to the farmer and SC people for lending us their blankets, mosquito nets and hammocks. Without them, we would have been quite screwed. So lets give 3 Cheers for Sustainable Cambodia! Hip Hip Hooray!!
Done by Sam, Wen Hao and Yam
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