Rice Drop

I have now had a week at work and have a much better understanding of what i will be doing, basically setting up or helping to set up 1 main library at REDA and 4 smaller ones in the local schools and/or pagodas. There are a few boring times at work, but also some very funny times, for example trying to explain, the magic schoolbus has ants in its pants when busses don't wear pants! or trying to explain what a monster is... 'a scary creature' right?
...wrong! the book title is "My monster mama loves me", not exactly scary creature I had in mind! and no not like a dinosuar because a monster was and never has been real!
Also "The dog who had kittens"... hmm work that one out! and trying to explain who Santa Claus is when they have never heard of Christmas!

On the Friday at work a large 20T rice drop was organised for People Living with HIV AIDS (PLHA's) I got to take part and was treated like an absolute celebrity in fact im fairly certain most people had thought the rice had come directly from me! Afterwards I got a small chance to mix and mingle with some of the people and these are 3 lovely ladies who were very kind to me and loved having me to chat even though no one could undertsand a word of what the other was trying to say!

The rice also comes with palm oil and salt and soya beans, each of the 305 PLHA families gets a share of it so once the speeches were over they started to measure and pour and divide and weigh, nothing was wasted, even the string used to tie the bags of rice taken. The World Food Director came up to me afterwards and said, these people are very poor and can not afford to buy more scales and funnels to measure the rice and food, perhaps you could ask your country for some.... hmm?!

Dear My Country...

Please provide me with 5 sets of scales and 5 funnels for the Cambodian people,

Love fi

Doesn't really work... Its hard to get across that I'm here to volunteer and am not from the government and don't have a lot of disposable income from NZ at my fingertips. Funny story but with a few serious undertones and attachments.

50kg bags of rice stacked and piled way high onto motos! I'm suprised they even stay upright!

This was one of the trucks that arrived with the rice! heaps and heaps of bags of it! And around 300 eager families waiting to get their share, although there was no arguing and no pushing or stealing all the rice just got fairly distributed, it was nice to see!

Just another random photo of the quantity of people at this rice drop! so many families that were so reliant on this rice! What you would call a staple diet.

I love to photograph children these kiddies all have HIV/AIDS and were very shy at first but once i start taking a few photos and they can see themselves on the camera they kind of opened up a little. Gorgeous children with beautiful smiles!