Barang on a bicycle

I'm sitting in Rebekah's office right now as the dark sky threatens to pour down rain. I hope it does - it cools us off and cuts the heavy humidity in the air!

Two mornings this week I tagged along with Leng doing site visits to some of the agricultural projects CHO has been involved in. Some families were growing morning glory, which is not something I had ever thought of as a vegetable before. The plants are harvested when they are still small, only 4 or 6 leaves on them. I have yet to try them. We also saw farmers growing soybeans, pumpkins, cucumbers, long beans, and other vegetables I was not familiar with. One farmer had just harvested a nice mung bean crop.

I returned to this farm the following day to buy some mung beans from him. I also asked if I could buy one or two watermelons. They came back with a basket full of eight! They said since they had already picked them I should buy all eight of them, but then they only charged us for six and gave us the other two for free. When we left the farm, I had a backpack heavy with 2 kilos of mung beans and a bagful of watermelons that I struggled to keep steady on the moto as we jolted and slid down the rocky, muddy paths. We've been eating the watermelons around here the last few days; I brought two of them to a barang dinner last night, which everyone brought their favorite fruit to. I've been eating fruit every day, usually some bananas, oranges, and American-bought dark chocolate with almonds (which I am running out of) for breakfast. Yum!

The mung bean casings do not go to waste: they are used in a nearby mushroom-growing operation. Six people had jointly obtained a piece of property (not sure whether it was rented or purchased) to grow a few varieties of mushrooms on.

We also visited the man who had taught these people how to do this. He has been growing mushrooms for over 6 years, and for the past 2 years he has been writing a book about it. This book will include everything he has learned himself as well as all the research he has been able to find that goes beyond his experience. I think it will be several volumes long. Here he is:


He served us several cups of tea throughout the morning as he talked with Leng about his recent work. The whole conversation was in Khmer, so I sat back, drank my tea, and took in the sights around me: he lived in a wooden house on stilts above the water, with a very steep set of steps leading up to it. Underneath this house was where he grew the mushrooms, in a large area enclosed by tarps on all sides. We walked barefoot in the mud and rice hulls up and down the aisles of mushroom spores growing in small plastic bags full of various substrata.


The reasons for these agricultural projects are many, and intertwined: since CHO started as an anti-trafficking organization originally, agricultural projects were started with some families as a means of poverty alleviation. Families here would sell their children to feed the rest of the family or they would leave during the day to work, leaving their children more vulnerable to being trafficked if they were home alone rather than in school. One of the farmers used to travel across the border into Thailand every day to work, but since he has started gardening, his income is greater than it was before and he is able to stay home with his family. I hope he sends his children to school now too. Here is a picture of the platform people use to cross the border.
Another reason CHO has invested so much in agricultural projects is to support and strengthen the local economy. People will often buy Thai produce because it is cheaper, but if more farmers and gardeners grow a variety of crops and produce in and around Poipet, it will keep more money circulating in the local economy... more about this later.

Rebekah and I talked yesterday about Jill's and my plans here with CHO. We hope to write a program plan for the Hope Transformation Center, a transition home for women who leave the sex trade. Jill and I both have already written similar project proposals as part of our class in Program Planning. This will be a good use of some of the research we have already done, and it will be a great help to CHO, which so far has nothing in place yet as far as a concrete plan for the HTC. They already have a building purchased and floor plans (4 floors), but our main task here would be to write up what would actually be taking place once the program opens up and women start coming into the center. We are both really excited about this, and one of the first things we will do is meet with other organizations (mostly in Phnom Penh - that's where most NGOs are headquartered) that already have similar programs in place. From this we hope to glean best practices and ideas, as well as connections and info-sharing opportunities as we find people and projects that are innovating in this area and doing well.

My agricultural visits thus far have been informative and educational for me, but I hope to integrate them into the HTC plans. Women who leave brothels are often funneled into programs that provide training in handicraft-making, for example, but the handicrafts are not always locally sourced or sold, or even beautiful or marketable. Many of these businesses depend on Westerners to buy and ship these items across the ocean. Being able to grow your own food is always a useful skill, and people always need to eat. I would hope that these women could be further involved in their own communities and contribute to the local economy, as stated above. I'm hoping to build into the program plan a way for those women who are interested in agriculture to get plugged into the ag projects already existing within CHO. The same goes for some of the other branches such as sewing and cooking in the restaurant.

I visited the Safe Haven Center this afternoon, where children in transition stay. It has a big piece of land that can be used for agricultural training, and there is already some vocational training taking place in the form of woodworking and sewing classes. There are hopes and maybe plans to build a Bible school here, and this place might be a hub for CHO activities in the future. On the way there, Rebekah and I rode on her moto, me wearing a helmet with the lining falling out so it kept flopping over my eyes. I took it off once we turned onto the dirt road leading to the SHC. (In a strange way, I like the anonymity afforded by wearing a helmet - I am better able to hide my identity as a barang, though only a little bit.) This road was flooded in several places, and I had to get off and wade through calf-deep water flowing across the road. Several people were swimming around and one guy was trying to fix his car, which looked pretty hard to do considering the water was almost touching the parts he needed to get to! We came to a wooden bridge lashed together with bamboo and wire, and used it to cross... guys kept talking to us in Khmer but we didn't pay any mind. Once we got to the SHC we found out that we were supposed to pay them a "toll" for using the bridge they had built! Oops. We paid on the way back, silly barangs.

Now, I have a bicycle CHO lent me. I can get around on it pretty well, but it is a one-speed so I pedal like crazy to get any kind of speed, and I'm on the bottom of the totem pole in terms of road vehicles. Oh well! Fun times.