Newsletters

With our regular newsletters, we aim to keep you posted on all the interesting and important news and updates of our programs and various activities. Enjoy reading! 

August 2011

            	
Dear friends and partners, A second letter in two weeks – a bit of a record even for me – but yesterday was a day to remember. Srie and I went to Tram Kok , Takeo project. It is nestled under the Damrie (Rolling Elephant Mountains) – an apt name as two years ago – the mountains had rolled and there was a now a new fissure separating two of the mountains. People had been urged to move away but none had.
                
The scenery driving into the communities was stunning – lush with rice and rain. We visited several ponds that had been dug last October – we saw newly cleared fields growing rice in abundance. Several dozen families were so proud to show us the fields they had cleared, the fields that had brought food and prosperity. It was so very good. One of the families we met was a young man named Chreng – he had tilled his fields and raised onions and rice over two hectares of land during seasons when there was no food. He showed me the shack where he had lived with his family and the new house he was building with money earned from his labors. As we were walking through the fields the heavens opened and the torrents fell. All of us shuddered – how were we going to get the car back on good roads was my big worry – the staff and families were totally focused on another worry - how were they going to get me out of the wet and muddy fields to safety. Poew, our manager in Takeo and his staff, quickly put on their rain proof clothes, Srie and I were left being drenched – looking and feeling a bit bereft. We made it back to the car – but the car had traversed an ox cart trail and it was a bit slippery and wet – the rice fields looked ever so close to our wheels. And then the track disappeared into a fissure – like the mountains, the earth had moved and a fissure had appeared – an hour later with hoes and help – we made it through – on to our next stop – a school needed.