21 to 23 March - Working with Trail Blazer

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Our first day at Trailblazer Foundation. Early in the morning Ellen and Alex make their way over to our hotel from their new accomodation, a cheap but clean guesthouse near the town centre called Orchidee. We take a tuk tuk around to the I Win guesthouse to wake Sam and Nick knowing that an early morning start for these guys is unlikely to be achieved without some assistance. With little real trouble we get them going and we make our way across town arriving at the TB depot at about the agreed time of 8.30.

The day begins with a briefing from the manager Scott who then turns us over to his Cambodian team leaders. TB is an American based charity that operates in Cambodia, its chief concern being the delivery of fresh drinking water to poor villagers located around Siem Reap town. The TB organisation in SR is organised in three distinct units, the main being for the construction and delivery of low cost water filters to the villagers, another team drills wells for the villagers and the final team runs a market garden both as an education program for the villagers as well as a means of revenue for TB. Its a very lean organisation with just Scott looking after the front of the shop and a handful of Cambodian staff that run the three teams being paid. Additional labour comes through the supply of volunteers that float through Siem Reap. TB relys primarly on donations from service clubs in America and uses very little up in overheads like office admin or overpaid management. The leanness of TB was one of the things that appealed to me, in particular the way it delivers aid constructively in a grass roots way. You can have a look at the work of TB at their website www.trailblazerfoundation.org Anyway enough of the sermon.

The working week at TB is organised around manufacturing the concrete water filters and the gravel and sand media that acts as the filter for dirty water. This happens on Monday through to Wednesday. The filters are delivered and installed on Thursdays and Fridays. The drilling for new wells occurs daily from Monday to Friday. As it is Wednesday, Ellen, Alex and I are assigned with a couple of other volunteers for a day of working with the water filters. Being fit lads, Sam and Nick are despatched to the well drilling team and they disappear on the back of the TB truck off to the back blocks of SR province. As there is already stack of water filters constructed the days work is about the the filter media prepared. The filters contain three levels of media - coarse gravel, fine gravel and sand. Each of these need to be screed, cleaned and washed throughly before being bagged in correct proportions to be despatched along with the the actual filters. Its tedious work and really hot work, but I'm pleasantly surprised by the expectations of the Cambodian staff and the insistence of the quality levels of our work. After about 5 hours we are told thats enough for the day. At days end it doesn't look like we've done much but it amounts to enough filter material for about 15 filters. Each filter can generate about 50 litres a day, enough for a large family unit. We are told that the working day for the water filter team ends at about lunchtime. For the well drilling team, the day finishes when they've struck water, installed a fairly rudimentary pump and come back to the depot. Its usually a full day. We meet up with Sam in the evening and we all agree that the work is hot but not overly burdensome.

The next day is Thursday and so Gina, Alex, Ellen and I are assigned to the delivery of water filters. The day begins with the loading of six concrete filters and the associated filter material onto the back of TB's other truck. The filter's are heavy taking 2 people to load and unload them from the truck. The cambodian staff, Vichet and Sothearos take up their positions in the truck cabin with the rest of us hopping onto the back of the truck to pivot amongst the filters for the ride out to the villages - its part of the experience. The ride out is hot and the dust that comes off the road, particularly when other traffic is about means that we are looking behind for most of the trip. After an early morning smoko stop and a drive of 30 minutes or so we arrive at our first delivery point. Its a reasonable sized wooden house, on stilts, that is set by the small road. The house is surrounding by a scrubby banana plantation, all around is dry land that supports little but the occasional rice crop. The house is typical of the houses in the area, and apart from one today, is typical of the houses we will deliver water filters to. Each of the households we will deliver has been selected by the village chief - this is part of the engagement process with the community.

We unload the water filters and associated material. The filters are put into the correct position, the media loaded into the concrete chamber and some initial water poured through the filter. After positioning, the filter is documented through both photography and GPS location. The water filter works by cleaning the dirty water that is poured through it by a biological process that is enacted by the sand level. It takes about two weeks for this process to commence. This is explained to the new owner by one of the cambodian staff, Vichet with a short but comprehensive briefing.

While this is all taking place we are surrounded by a gaggle of smiling happy kids. Not sure if the excitement is being created by the new water filter or the presence of us but it is very pleasant. When the work is done and Vichet does the education thing, we play a bit football with the kids, and buy a few cups of the palm wine that the household head. One thing we notice about the kids is that they are fairly grubby and their clothes tatty. After a bit of frolicking we notice some of the older kids have changed into their school uniforms ready for class to begin. In stark contrast to the kids we saw in Vietnam, the uniforms the kids are wearing here are very dirty. In Vietnam, a spot of dirt on your pants or white tunic meant you had to go straight home to clean it off. Anyway dispite the condition of the kids and the evident poverty, they were very happy. And very cheeky. The water filter is hopefully a small token of improvement for them.

The second delivery point is also where the drilling team are working for the day. So we meet Sam and Nick. The guys were late getting up this morning and so missed the departure team when it left the TB depot, however luckily for them, they ran into each in Siem Reap twon. Sam and Nick appear to be the muscle of the operation and are quite content with that role. We watch them go about their business of pumping water out of an existing well that is not operating very well, and use that water to drill a new well some 20 metres below the surface. The work is not overly hard, but in the heat and with water spraying all around it is a long day.

With our six water filters delivered we hp back onboard the truck for the dusty trip back to the town centre. We are all happy with what we've done and hopely have made a little contribution to the lives of the folk out here.

In the expectation of a big day installing ten filters, we prepare by buying an esky stocked with water for our last day. We arrive at TB depot unaware that the first hour on Fridays is taken up by a staff meeting. This particular the meeting drags on due to issues in the local chain of command needing to be resolved. As a result the 10 filters that need to be delivered changes to just one and that gets delivered by some brit volunteers Tom and Thali, also on their last days. Instead we spend the day working on the mushroom compost - filling plastic bags very tightly with a compost mix. The bags get steamed and a spore introduced and will later produce exotic mushrooms. While working we meet members of a Canadian Emergency Response team (engineers, medics, fireys etc) who are in SR to run some clinics for the local kids. They are piggy-backing on TB's network in the local province and hope to see about 2500 children over the next couple of days. We express an interest in going along to see the clinics in operattion and with fellow volunteer, an english lass called Thumi, we agree to come along to the TB depot tomorrow.

After about 4 hours of mushroom compost work our day is over. And so is our time at TB. It's been short but very fulfilling and obviously not the sort of thing you normally do on a holiday. Whilst our effort was probably a bit token, we know that the money Ellen raised will come in useful and help to generate clean water for quite a number of villagers. Sam and Nick decide they will continue on with the well drilling team for quite some time.

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