Kampot

Time for catch up. . . from two weekends ago.  Took a 3-hour bus trip that turned into a 6-hour bus trip (a lot of traffic and a LOT of pee stops for the weak-sphinctered bus populace) to a town called Kampot down near the coast.  Was put in the last row of the bus with 4 Cambodians who spoke a little bit of English and wanted to talk the whole way.  The were pretty entertaining, especially when the old guy sitting next to me decided that he’d rather pee into a little black plastic bag than have the bus stop and pull over.  I don’t think he was too successful, however, because about 30 minutes later, he had the bus stop so he could go outside.  Not sure what happened to the plastic bag. 

the bus stop. . . my bus is 3rd from the right

Saturday afternoon I travelled via tuktuk to two cave temples (Phnom Chhnok being much nicer than Phnom Sorsia) in which Buddhist monks had built brick temples in the 7^th century AD.  They were in remarkably good condition.  I had tons and tons of kids as tour guides—they all want to talk, and I probably waved and said ‘hello’ to about a hundred people as the tuktuk ambled down dirt roads out to the temples.  

on the way to Phnom Chhnok

more scenery

from the hill of Phnom Sorsia

Phnom Chhnok temple

my tour guides and the temple

with my tour guides

along the river in Kampot

Sunday I was going to go up to an old abandoned French hill station (Bokor) but the road up was closed for construction and the hike up takes 6-hours and requires an overnight stay that I didn’t have time for, so I just borrowed a bike and went on a three hour bike ride in the countryside—again, a lot more hellos. . .  then took a shared taxi (a toyota corolla with 5 other passengers—would have been 6  but I paid two fares so I could have the front seat to myself!!).  The driver actually shared his seat with a passenger.

taxi driver talking on his cell phone with a guy sitting to his left sharing his seat. . .

But it was only a 2.5 hour drive, rather than the 6 hour drive, and for only 6 bucks more it was worth it.  Was dropped off at a market in some part of Phnom Penh that I don’t know, so I walked around there for a while, bought some weird fruits, ate some coconut covered grilled bananas, took a moto-taxi back to my hotel, washed my feet and legs off, went for a run amongst thousands of people out for a Sunday night cruise on their motos and about a hundred-fifty dancing the Macarena in a public square !?!   Turns out it’s a quite a common sight, both on weekend nights and early on weekday mornings.  It’s done mostly as exercise.

Observation planning. . .

Tomorrow, we leave for our first three days of observations. We’re going to the Svay Rieng province which is about 3 hours from Phnom Penh. It’s the small Italy-shaped piece of Cambodia that sticks out into Vietnam in the direction of Saigon. We’re going to talk to a handful of villagers as well as masons, concrete ring producers and retailers—these are the main stakeholders in the latrine value chain. If we have time, we’ll also talk with village chiefs, schoolteachers and village- or commune-level health professionals. We’re also going to talk to someone on the province level of the Ministry of Rural Development. If you’re keen to know more about what we’ll be asking, you can find our interview guide here. We’ll use it as a guide for conversations rather than as a survey.

Kickoff

Last Wednesday, we had our project kickoff.  We had about fifteen people from many different organizations:  World Bank Water & Sanitation Program, Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), Future Cambodia Fund, LienAid, GRET, Rainwater Cambodia. . .  Mike (from IDE) gave an intro to the project and the Demand Assessment and Supply Chain work that IDE has already done.  I gave a short intro to IDEO and then we did a few activities.  I had everyone do a braindump on who in Cambodia is doing anything regarding sanitation, with specific emphasis on folks doing stuff related to latrine design.  I’ve since followed up with a number of those people and have had or will have meetings with them to learn what they’re up to. 

We also talked a lot about Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)—an intensive outreach program originated in Bangladesh that attempts to achieve open defecation free villages purely through education about the positive impact of proper sanitation.  To learn more, check out this video.  They’ve had great success there, and the MRD has had pretty good success here in Cambodia in its first three years of the effort.  CLTS doesn’t advocate for any particular latrine design, and one flaw in the program as experienced by MRD is that the majority of participants tend to build simple dry-pit latrines (a hole in the ground with a wood or bamboo slab over it). These have been collapsing during the wet season due to soil instability, which leaves people without a latrine in the wet season and forces them to redig the pit every dry season—neither of which is good.   Seems that even with the simplest of latrines, some reinforcement of the pit will be required.

We then did a quick brainstorming exercise to draw out everyone’s initial ideas of what the final solution will be.  There were some great ideas that I’m sure will stick with us to the end.

first ideas. . .

Finally, we got commitment from a core team that will work with me more intensely thought the project: Chhoeurn (MRD), Savath (IDE), Satya (IDE), Sopheak (LienAid) and Hengly (Rainwater Cambodia).  None are engineers, none are designers, none are ethnographers!!!  But they are all eager to learn and to work on solving this problem.   Should be fun.

kickoff peeps

more kickoff peeps

the teams

Market day. . .

Thought some of you might enjoy these photos from a market I went to on Sunday.  Was in one of the neighborhoods of Phnom Penh and, from the looks I was getting, not often frequented by westerners.  The market sold pretty much everything—meat, fish, fruit, veggies, clothes, watches, jewelry, packaged foods, grains, housewares (bowls, cups, etc), soaps and detergents, shoes. . . you name it.  In the humid, hot day, the smells were intense.  And in the fish/butcher area, I was regretting wearing sandals. . .

melting down gold in a ceramic shard crucible

many kinds of eggs. . . not sure what the black ones were, but they were coated with some substance that looked like really nice potting soil

egg lady

incense

squid

intestine

little fish

bigger fish

sausage (each the size of a malted milk ball)

banana alley

Hot dog

I learned today that in the Chinese culture, foods are either hot or cold.  Meaning that they bring you warmth or coolth.  This seems to be independent of the spiciness or physical temperature of the food. For instance, rambutan and durian are hot fruits.  Turns out that black dogs are also hot.  In the cold winter (meaning less than 80F), the number of black dogs on the streets decreases significantly.  A guy from IDE commented about a black dog in his neighborhood that has white stripes painted on it.  Clearly a family pet. . .

Coconut water

An aside from today at the IDE compound.  The security guard was hacking away at a half dozen or so young coconuts when I was outside taking photos of the latrine pans.  This materialized in a glass of fresh coconut water for me about a half hour later.  I subsequently learned that in an emergency, coconut water can be used as an intravenous hydration fluid.  The salinity and glucose levels are ideal, and the juice is sterile in its shell.   Check it on Wikipedia:   just don’t use the wrong coconut.  Coconut milk (the thick stuff you’re probably thinking of) might clog you up. . .

First day @ IDE

Monday was my first day on the project.  Was picked up at my hotel by Pisith (now the HR officer) and Savuen (the new Logistics officer) and taken to the IDE office just outside of what I glean to be the ring road of Phnom Penh.  These aren't great shots, but here's two pics of the office--it's more a big house behind a gate.  

Savath (the R&D tech assigned to this project) had collected a few samples of local latrines.  These were all pour-flush pans  and were sitting in a courtyard outside the IDE office:

ceramic pour-flush pan embedded in a tiled concrete slab--$17

side view of ceramic pour-flush pan embedded in plain concrete slab--$10

concrete pour-flush pan embedded in plain concrete slab--$6.50

Most of the day was spent talking with Mike Roberts (the Cambodia country director for IDE) and Dan Salter (a former regional director for IDE who’s now acting as the marketing consultant for this sanitation project).  In parallel with the product development portion which I’ll be spearheading, Dan’s working on the marketing and sales effort.    I’ll get more into that later on when I understand it better, but I did want to share some pics from a trip Savath and I took to a ring-producer.  These businesses are pretty common throughout the country (and take on a few variations), but they’re typically the ones that produce the concrete rings which are stacked upon each other to line the inside of a latrine pit.  It’s not a huge business, however, so these same guys also use similar technique to make concrete pipes of many different diameters to serve irrigation, drinking and waste water needs:

smaller diameter pipes (0.3m), some in molds

close-up of mold

1m dia x 0.5m tall rings--these are stacked to line a latrine pit and weight 80kg each!!

couldn't quite understand if they're reinforced with mesh or just vertical rebar

stacked rings mortared together--the sealing is not always done,

 especially when seepage is intended

This particular producer also manufactured concrete slabs with embedded pans (see above).  The porcelain pans all come from Thailand or China and are cast (upside down) into the slab.  When tiles are used, they’re also cast into the slab in the same step. 

  

mold for casting the pans into the concrete 

(not shown is the angle iron sides of the mold)

And lastly, IDE has had great success here in Cambodia with another product:  the Rabbit water purifier.  In Khmer culture, the rabbit is considered a clever animal, hence the branding. . .  It's a gravity-fed ceramic filter that sits in a bucket with a spout.  It's quite effective in filtering 'bugs' out of water, but because of the clays used, it adds arsenic to the water.  As I understand it, they have to flush 500 bucket-fulls of water through each product before selling in order to eliminate the arsenic.  Though I hope I'm wrong. . .

decal on IDE truck

testing of purifiers

the Bugs Bunny-ish rabbit