Happy Merry Christmas

Christmas isn't celebrated in Cambodia, so for us December 25th was just a normal working day.

On the other hand, Cambodians love the idea of family get togethers and presents, to say nothing of decorations and flashing lights, so on the evening of Christmas Day, Phnom Penh turned into an even bigger traffic jam than normal as everyone went off to visit each other. And throughout the Christmas period, our Khmer friends, colleagues and often even total strangers regularly greeted us with the phrase "Happy Merry Christmas". In fact, with the typical Khmer accent, what they normally said was "Happy Marry Christmas". Perhaps they meant it: the celebrations did look just like those they have for weddings.

And what did we do over the period (apart from work)? Well, we decorated the appartment with cards and little ornaments that we bought from a local community support organisation that makes them and, thanks to our daughter Kate, we were even able to include a tree.

We had Christmas Dinner the Sunday before with a few friends round at the apartment of our friend and near neighbour (and private medical adviser) Phil. Multiple courses, including the starter, seen below, of avocado filled with prawns. They were fantastic: you just can't get either ingredient of that quality in the frozen Northlands. Party poppers and crackers were also provided.

There then followed a significant feast. Next was roast chicken, stuffing, mashed potatos and gravy. Amazingly, the girls had even found brussels sprouts to go with it; however, this being the tropics, they were the size of apples. Delicious, though (if you like brussels, that is...) After that, it was steamed salmon (a whole one) with roasted veg. By this time, we were beginning to bloat. But we weren't done. Next was a Christmas Pud that Phil had brought back from UK. Sadly, every time he lit it, the ceiling fans blew it out again. Not a typical UK Christmas problem!

Phil looks pensive as Vic reviews what happens when the party poppers hit the fan.

We even had a Christmas tree - OK, it was a pineapple - and secret Santa presents. All of this in the tropical heat. Even though it's the cool season here, the daytime temperature is still around 30 degrees.

One of Christmas's scarier moments: Santa (Helen) deciding whether Leonie has been naughty or nice and which one means she's more likely to get a present.

But we still weren't done eating! Last, but not least, was chocolate cake. Done more in a spirit of triumph that we had got the oven working more or less properly than any seasonal one, it was something of a surprise that nobody burst after eating it on top of everything else.

The Norman Bates moment below is more along the lines of "not more food!" than "take that, Santa", despite the appearances.

Then it was games, chat, laughter and a small glass of sherry (honest, nothing more, we promise) and that was that. Until Christmas Day, of course, when we went out for another Christmas Dinner at a local restaurant. This being Cambodia, though, the menu included such traditional Christmas fare as curried lamb chops and squid cooked with green peppercorns. Oh well, you can't have everything.

And to close, a couple of pictures for those of you enjoying the balmy days of January back in the UK. Our orchids are flowering again.

VSO is a leading development charity with almost 1,500 skilled professionals currently working in over 34 countries. VSO's unique approach to international development is founded on volunteers, working together and with local communities to fight poverty and achieve lasting change. If you want to learn more about VSO, please visit www.vso.org.uk

War and Peace

Many of you will have seen the news in recent months about the border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand, which erupted into armed clashes in October. The argument is about land around the Preah Vihear temple: acknowledged by the UN to be in Cambodian territory since the 1960s, this hasn't stopped Thailand from apparently ignoring all the official maps that go back to the turn of the last century, various UN rulings, and the actual geography, and getting out its crayons and drawing its own maps of the area which, surprise surprise, show that it has really been in Thailand all along. Oh, and all those Cambodian soldiers that moved in as a response to the deployment of the Thai army are therefore occupying Thai territory. Charles Dickens's Uriah Heep was wrong: it doesn't take two to make an argument.

As you will have seen from the more recent news from Bangkok, this rather pathetic and, sadly, probably predictable attempt by the Thai government of the time to distract attention away from internal problems by manufacturing an external threat didn't work. However, because of the continuing political problems in Thailand, the situation still remains unresolved. The disputed area remains heavily militarised, with both armies well entrenched and, occasionally, wandering into each other's territory for a little bit of a toe-to-toe. Not surprisingly, therefore, the area is completely closed to outsiders. The British Embassy also strongly advises against attempting to travel to or enter the region, which is also one of the most remote bits of Cambodia. But did this stop Perry? Of course it didn't.

However, in my defence m'lud, I should probably point out that I was there on official Cambodian government business. At the beginning of November, the Ministry where I work decided that it should show solidarity with the soldiers manning the border by taking them gifts of food. For us, that meant fish. Our Director General (minister equivalent) decided that the senior staff should take a convoy of vehicles up to the temple site to deliver the goodies; would I like to come as part of the team? Since I was already going to be half way there, working in Siem Reap that week, and since the temple complex is reputed to be one of the most spectacular sights in South East Asia (it's just been made a UNESCO World Heritage site, which is probably what led to the initial Temple Envy from Thailand), and since the DG knows about my mis-spent youth in uniform, there could only be one answer. So at 4.30 a.m. on Saturday 8th November, the convoy set out from Siem Reap. It wasn't nearly early enough, as the rest of the day would show.

First, let's just see where we're talking about. The map below shows the location of the temple complex. It's right up in the far North of the country but, unfortunately, there's no direct road. The red line shows the route you have to follow; from Siem Reap up to Anlong Veng is a dirt road. Once you get past Anlong Veng, even the dirt stops and the roads are just mud. And, like all Cambodian roads, they're not straight: indeed, there are times when you are pointing in completely the wrong direction. So, all in all, the journey took a while. Six and a half hours. In a 4-wheel drive pick-up truck.



The convoy heads North.



When we arrived, the first thing that happened was a VIP briefing from the commanding General of the defences. This General also happened to be the deputy commander of prime minister Hun Sen's bodyguard, so it was clear the Cambodians were taking the situation seriously. The unexpected arrival of a foreigner in the command post didn't seem to phase him too much, though, especially once the DG explained who I was. Not sure it would have gone quite like that in my own days in uniform!



After the briefing, it was time to deliver the goodies. In the picture below, the DG shakes hands with the General. Picture taken by the next in line!



And here's the fish: fresh, dried, smoked, salted and fermented. The fermented fish - which I may have commented on before - is to be found in the old 5-gallon paint tins. Cambodians absolutely love it: personally, I'd rather have the paint.

Then it was time to go on up past the defences (some of which had seen rather better days) to the top of the incredibly steep hill where the temple ruins are.



At the top, we were met by the wonderful sign below. Please zoom in and read the bottom line - thank you, France.



Then another inevitable team piccy, before we all started wandering around the mine-free site (despite French grammar).



The ruins were quite similar in style and scale to those at the Angkor complex that we went to earlier in the year. Preah Vihear, though, achieves the same extraordinary magnificence at the top of an almost unscaleable precipice.



Despite their exposure for many centuries, the ruins are amazingly well preserved.

The carvings are less ornate than Angkor Wat, but still impressive for the 11th century: a time when our own ancestors were making most of their own buildings out of straw and cowpats.



The presence of the soldiers didn't disturb the tranquility and magnificence too much at all. I'm also getting quite used to the sight of AK-47s, which probably helps.



And, from the top of the hill, you can look down into Thailand. Real, genuine Thailand, not the bit of someone else's country they're trying to nick.



And now, as the song goes, we come to the tragic bit. I can't show you the scenes looking down from the top of the steps at the Thai emplacements, or the delicious picnic lunch we later had at Anlong Veng, last headquarters of the Khmer Rouge (boy, was that a weird feeling) because, just after the last photo above, it started to pour down with rain, so I made a dash for the shelter of the temple ruins. Running down the cobbled path went well and I was quite pleased by my surefootedness - I can still keep up with the soldiers. But pride cometh before a fall and so I converted my headlong trajectory down the path into a ballistic one up the steps into the shelter of the temple doorway. Luckily for me, a combination of the ground and the camera broke my fall.

Unfortunately, dropping a 100 kg weight onto a camera that is then pressed through two inches of water onto a solid block of granite apparently invalidates the manufacturer's warranty. So instead of showing you the creepy aura and abject poverty of Anlong Veng - where the Khmer Rouge kept on fighting right up until Pol Pot's not-before-time death in 1998, or scenes from the thrilling 13-hour drive back to Phnom Penh, I'll close with a few shots taken a couple of days earlier of what life in Cambodia should really be like.



I should probably point out that this certainly wasn't a VSO-sponsored trip. In fact, I suspect they wouldn't have been too happy about it at the time. No point hiding it, though: like everything else official in Cambodia, our visit was filmed. And broadcast on the 7 o'clock news the next day. At least it only showed me sitting in the briefing and nodding sagely and not the bit where the General asked me for my own personal views on the overall situation. That took some quick tap-dancing!

On the other hand, my job is to work with the people of Cambodia and it seemed (and still seems) important to me to show solidarity with them - rough and smooth alike. It was a heck of a trip.

VSO is a leading development charity with almost 1,500 skilled professionals currently working in over 34 countries. VSO's unique approach to international development is founded on volunteers, working together and with local communities to fight poverty and achieve lasting change. If you want to learn more about VSO, please visit http://www.vso.org.uk/

Transports of Delight

We've mentioned transport in previous blogs, so we thought it was time to give you a bit more of a taste of how people get about in Cambodia. To start off with, everyone can ride a bike and, in the countryside, that's what most of them do. The great majority of the bikes are simple and ancient, just like the ones VSO issue (and many of which subsequently miraculously move on to Cambodian owners - between us we're now on bikes numbers 5 and 6 and no, we didn't forget to lock them up). However, the bikes only come in one size, which can cause one or two challenges as you can see below:

Once you've mastered the trick of getting on and off, the next thing to do is to see how much you can load onto a bike without breaking it. The chap below is far from achieving the maximum load: the best we have seen so far is a convoy of about 6 bikes all carrying bundles of logs all about 8 feet long, put sideways on the back rack to get them to stick out about 4 feet on each side. That's the same width as a London bus. Perry's own personal best is 3 chairs and 2 stool tables, right along the busiest road in Phnom Penh.

For passenger transport, the realistic limit for a bicycle seems to be 3 people; at least, we've never seen any more than that on one yet. For a more comfortable option, however, you need a cyclo.

Cyclos are only found in Phnom Penh and date back to the 1930s (both the concept and the actual cyclos themselves, plus quite a few of the drivers). Designed to carry a rider and one passenger, they will quite happily accommodate an entire family plus bags or, in one case that we saw, what appeared to be a full set of plumbing for a new appartment building.

Of course, to move over longer distances, you need a moto - especially if you want to take your bike with you.

There appears to be no actual limit to what can be carried on a moto - people, goods, livestock, you name it. We've seen them with dead pigs on the back seat, completely covered with live ducks or bananas so that you can only see the body of the driver and the very bottoms of the tyres and, our personal favourite, one carrying a complete set of bedroom furniture. What's so special about that? A full-scale king size bed stood upright on the back seat and two chests of drawers tied to the sides. Plus a couple of bedroom chairs.

As you can see above, goods and passengers are not mutually exclusive. In the background is an older form of transport, but one still used everywhere in the countryside: a pony cart. Animals are used a great deal for pulling carts; ponies, cows and water buffalos are the most common. The picture below was downloaded from AP; we'll replace it with one of our own when... well, basically, when we get our act together and have the (new) camera on us (see the next blog for the sad story of the poor little camera - this time, it was death by water).



As the engraving below shows, they've been around without much change for centuries.

For bigger loads, you have to find a truck. Or make one. We're particularly taken with the deluxe accommodation for the driver and his mate.

For passengers, there are a number of options. Buses, usually very second hand, are the high end of the market. For most Cambodians, the normal way to get from town to town is by minibus or pick-up truck. Both are available in double-deck versions.

And, just like London double-deckers, standing passengers are allowed.



And now to consider the roads. Trust me, it's fun!



And when the roads get too wet even for Cambodian traffic, you can always find a ferry to take you to the next mudbath.

Maintenance of all these vehicles is to the very highest standards. Yes, that is a toothbrush being used to lock the winch on this boat.

Back on land, elephants aren't really used for transport in Cambodia any more, although we have seen one trundling down the side of the road in the Cardamom mountains bearing its rider and all his worldly chattels. Overall, it's probably just as well, as adding Jumbo below (pictured carrying tourists at Angkor Wat) to the traffic mix in Phnom Penh might just be the final straw. We would certainly give way on our bikes but we suspect that there are quite a few local drivers who just wouldn't notice something so small and discrete in their way.

More soon. In the meantime, please don't forget the need to keep supporting VSO through our Justgiving page at www.justgiving.com/jagoteers. They need the money to replace all the bikes that keep getting nicked.

What we did at the Office Today

Too Much Fun?

Just in case you thought we were only here to enjoy ourselves, we thought we should give you some info about our jobs and why they need doing. So not too many pictures and rather less frivolity in this post for once. It may seem like we are on permanent holiday, but actually we have only had 2 short breaks, one of 3 & one of 4 days in the 8 months we have been here, revolving around Khmer bank holidays - apart from the 10 days leave we used to go back to UK for Anna's lovely wedding.

No, we don't live in a hole in the road with the rats. Yes, we have made sure we have built up an essential social support network. Yes, we try to eat properly and take some time to relax. Yes, we take every opportunity to enjoy the wonderful childlike humour & good nature of the Khmer people we live & work with - they would be mortified if we did not. If we did not do these things neither of us would be able to do the jobs we do with any energy, efficiency or effect. If that counts as having too much fun, then, as a Canadian colleague of Sarah wearily said (about a particularly demotivated & dim government department in the murky bowels of the Dickensian workhouse of the Education Ministry):

''Well, you might just as well take 'em out & shoot 'em... Eh?''

We know that most of you that read our reports, & know us, 'get it' - you read between the lines, have imagination, & many have researched & read about the dreadful recent history of Cambodia & understand a bit about why it is how it is today. For anyone that doesn't, we hope the following accounts will fill in some of the gaps - photos not really required.

Sarah's Tale

We both work long days (8-5.30 or more) in and out of our offices & some of those days seem longer than others when there are power cuts. This is excluding the many evenings & weekends we have both put in. We do not lead a glamorous expat lifestyle, eat out at 'fancy' restaurants or drive airconditioned anythings. We cycle all over town & quite honestly risk life & limb every time we do so! We do not have a cleaner or cook as we are trying to live within our allowance - it is quite tiring doing all that ourselves. Even our Friday evening get together with colleagues at one of the bars usually turns into a strategic session of arranging the essential contacts & meetings which the various ministries aren't so good at.

I may have touched on this before, but we are guilty of only taking, & showing you, rather nice pictures. As I said, I don't feel I can intrude on people's lives & take pictures of families living in dug out caves in rubbish dumps, small children with lice festooning their hair weaving their way through the traffic at main junctions, begging with babies in their arms who I'm pretty sure they are not even related to; sometimes I'm not sure the babies are even breathing. Young, barefoot boys pushing their handcarts along the quiet streets late at night, scavenging the rubbish for recyclables to sell.

It is not a lot of fun basically ignoring these children, most of whom are addicted to glue or other substances, & kept that way by the people who run them. We also cannot afford to give to all the disabled and disfigured people, both physically and mentally, that live their lives out between the gutter and the mercy of the owners of whatever building they are in front of at the time.

It is not much fun cycling past the children & young adults who sit slumped up against the wall around the villa housing my office, with needles hanging out of their arms, on my way in in the morning. I wonder why they choose our bit of sidewalk - maybe they can see we are an NGO & feel somewhat safer there. Our security guard is a sweet-natured man who I don't think would kick them into the street.

I finished the Valuing Teachers report, although still have to do the final copy edit before publishing, then it goes to the printers in November. Anyone who is interested to read about the sobering state of education, let me know & I will mail you a soft copy. I presented the recommendations to various committees and groups of concerned parties and to the Minister and the Secretary of State, who received them in friendly manner that bodes well for future communications & continuing cooperative work. Frankly, the only way is up.

3 weeks ago I started my job at the Disability Action Council. There will be a lot in future blogs about the work that has & is yet to be done by this organisation - those of you with a nervous disposition... Basically it was formed at the government's request in 1997 to act as an advisory body to the government & the ministries involved (health, social affairs, education etc.) on how policies on disability should be developed, & a provider of information on monitoring & helping to implement those policies to the national branches of international & Khmer organisations concerned with disabled people. We work in the fields of education, livelihoods and rehabilitation (anything from prosthetic limbs to social rehabilitation for leprosy sufferers). To give you some idea of the scope, with one small example from each sector:

• No deaf child has ever completed their primary education in Cambodia - mind you, probably only about 40% of all enrolled children do anyway
• Disability = dire poverty
• There is a culture of unhelpful pity that is tied to Buddhism: the concept of Karma means that if one is born with a disability in this life it is because of some transgression in the last, and there is a general stigma attached to any disability, reminiscent of how I remember people's attitudes in the UK 40 years ago
• There are only about 150 physiotherapists in the whole of the country and the one spinal injuries unit (people fall out of trees quite a lot apparently & there are a distressing amount of road accidents) is due to be handed over to government control, for reasons too convoluted to address - which basically means the kiss of death.

(That's in a very small nutshell!)

I have recently been to several of our member NGOs - fantastic organisations who try to improve the prospects of adults & children who are blind, deaf, physically or learning disabled, including those children with profound disabilities. I could kick myself for forgetting the camera as it would have been very interesting for you to see how, & in what conditions, these dedicated people work, but there will be plenty of opportunities as the weeks fly by.

My main objectives as Inclusive Education Advisor are to strengthen the existing network of NGOs and to capacity build at DAC. About half of our staff are disabled themselves (polio, cerebral palsy & loss of an arm by a mine are examples), and the rest don't really have much knowledge of disabilities. They all need support with planning, proposal & report writing etc etc. They are mostly bright, young, motivated to learn & dedicated. The oldest (apart from Granny Sarah here!) is a lovely, gentle 41 year old man who graduated as a physiotherapist in 1989 & worked for 14 years at the Spinal Unit. He got a scholarship of $1.50 (one dollar and fifty cents), 10kgs of rice, a bar of soap & a spare set of clothes. He is passionate about raising the awareness of communities about the potentials of disabled people & about helping them to earn their livings and is a one man power house.

One of the problems is the perception in Cambodia of what a disability is. After the war, the many millions of landmines led to a great number of people losing limbs (if they survived) and most attention & development aid and funds naturally went to them. Now, although the number of mine victims is still a substantial 66 a year, the vast amount of disabilities are not mine related. Disabled people themselves tend to think that any policies or initiatives are not relevant for them - that they are only for mine accident survivors. Disabilities range from every sort of congenital cause to deafness & blindness, often potentially treatable or avoidable. Because there are no reliable statistics yet (due some better ones next year), it is hard to say, but there seem to be a very large number of deaf children for example.

You would be justified in asking, what on earth do I think I can do about any of this, & some may also think that there are plenty of good causes and problems back home. One thing that happened on Monday brought it home to me. We arranged a meeting between 3 speech therapists from London & some of our Phnom Penh members, the head of the school for severely disabled children, workers at the nutrition centre (an orphanage for abandoned severely disabled children who cannot eat or drink independently), & others. There are no speech therapists in Cambodia, most of our staff did not really know what they are & certainly not the range of resources they can provide. By the time we finished, we had established the role therapists could play in each of the organisations and how training might be implemented & developed a contact strategy to the ministries (in order for any development work to be effectively sustainable, it has got to be government supported, however painful & tedious the process!)

How will I know this will help any particular child? I don't, but one of the conditions that causes completely avoidable infant death, social stigma & educational exclusion is cleft palate. Now... I hope my dear brother & sister-in-law have no objection to me telling the happy story of my fabulous little nephew Cameron, now nearly 3. He was born with a cleft palate, diagnosed shortly after, and had feeding problems because of it. They were referred to a specialist, had advice on how to feed him, later he had surgery & follow ups, has seen a speech therapist & now speaks really well & will be following his big sister to school in a couple of years. Luckily, he did not need any help or advocacy from me whatsoever.

I'm very sad to say that a baby born here, unless lucky enough to be born into a family who could take him to another country for treatment, or near enough to the one children's specialist hospital, and to parents with the resources to do even that, would likely die from lack of nutrition before a cause was ever found. If he survived, he would be regarded as a victim of his fate & maybe even kept out of sight at home. He would never learn to speak & certainly would not go to school. Maybe that Monday meeting will help some babies like this in the future.

Everything we do here is drop by drop & step by step. My predecessor was instrumental in getting the policy for Education for Children with Disabilities adopted by the Ministry of Education this February - a great achievement. If I can help to get the monitoring of the implementation of that policy underway, that will be the next step. And I hope some of it will be fun!

Perry's Tale

Cambodia's population is around 14 million and growing at about 2% per year. 85% of the population is rural; 34% of the entire population live below the official national poverty level of about US$0.45 (45 US cents) per person per day (that's $2.25 for a family of five). In Cambodia, if you earn just $1 per day, you're not classified as poor. 78% live on less than $2 per day. That's eleven million people each living on less than about £1.25 per day. Cambodia ranks 131st on the UN Human Development Index. In simple terms, that means things are pretty bad in many ways, although they could still be a good deal worse: there are 46 countries in the world below Cambodia.

Infant mortality is 98 per 1,000 births. A further 43 will die before they reach the age of 5. Put together, that's one in seven. In the UK, it's one in two hundred. The maternal mortality rate is 1 for every 169 live births; in the UK it's 1 in every 125,000. Think of the implications for families of that. At the other end of the journey, life expectancy is just 58 years, compared with the UK's 79. Think about that too, those of you (like me) over 50. These figures are actually quite a bit better than ten years ago, so progress is being made in improving people's lives here, but the process of change can be painfully slow and fragile. And there's a long way to go.

33% of the population is undernourished: i.e. they simply don't get enough to eat. Malnutrition - not getting enough of the right things to eat - is an even bigger problem. Let's just give you a quote from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (one of the organisations I work quite closely with): "Malnutrition, especially in rural Cambodia, is widespread, particularly among children under five years and among expectant and nursing women." Malnutrition is one of the biggest direct and indirect causes of child mortality. Even of the children that survive, over one third will be stunted due to the paucity of their diet. Malnutrition continues to affect people here, especially poor people, throughout their lives. Malnutrition is often the root cause of disability.

In the West, we pretty much take it for granted that we can eat a range of food types to keep ourselves healthy. In Cambodia, up to 80% of the diet (and sometimes more) is made up of just one food: rice. Rice is very good indeed for carbohydrates but there are an awful lot of essential nutrients that it doesn't contain. Cambodians need to get their vitamins and minerals, especially iron, zinc and calcium, from other food sources. Fortunately, they have the Mekong river system and its fish. Cambodians get over 80% of their protein from fish and, for the rural poor, the figure is close to 100%. In Cambodia, fishing isn't a hobby.

But we have a problem: there's a limit to the amount of fish you can catch without critically depleting the stocks. You've probably read in the press all about this kind of thing with respect to cod stocks in the North Atlantic. In Cambodia, if we take all that we think the rivers and the sea can reasonably provide, we're left with a gap in meeting our nutritional requirements, and the gap is growing as the population grows.

Bear in mind that the picture above shows the challenges that population growth could cause in maintaining the current levels of nutrition, let alone actually improving matters for the poor. But the situation is actually potentially much worse. The Mekong is under a great deal of pressure from damming for hydroelectricity, especially in China, and is also starting to suffer from pollution. At the same time, demands for land for the growing population are leading to habitat destruction. All of this affects the ability of fish to breed.

Meanwhile, most Cambodians have no realistic alternatives to fish and the first priority for people who are hungry is to find food now. Consequently, Cambodia's harvest of wild fish has been running at the limit - and arguably above the limit - for some time now. Over-exploited stocks are at risk of collapse: if too many fish are taken, then too few are left to breed. Today, the fisheries are filling the nutrition gap but, if the catch of wild fish were to drop by just 10% per year (and some rivers have shown much more dramatic declines than that), then the situation would turn very much for the worse.

So we need to act now to increase production from other sources like aquaculture (fish farming), whilst simultaneously reducing the demands we place on the river and lake systems. My job is to help work out how to turn this:

into something like this:

These projections are ones I recently made based on the latest available data. It's the first time anyone here has really done demand forecasting as part of strategic planning and it has helped to show us where our priorities need to lie.

Without doing this, we wouldn't have known, for example, how much we need to increase the catch of fish from the rice fields (they swim in and breed when the fields flood, and they are caught as the fields drain and dry out). We knew that we could increase the catch if we dug lots of dry season refuge ponds for the fish, we just didn't know how important it was. Now we do, because we're basing our statistics on consumption, not production. I take no credit whatsoever for this particular change in data collection - that goes to the Mekong River Commission (a multinational body) and long pre-dates my arrival here - but my job was to say "what does this mean to us in terms of demand and sustainability?" and to help people to take it from there.

At the same time, I'm working to improve the understanding of how to do planning for fisheries staff across all 22 provinces of the country. This is also a first, and it's going to be a long, challenging task. I'm also helping to produce all the action plans that will go to implementing the progress we need to make. At the same time, I'm continually working to improve my knowledge and understanding of all aspects of the fisheries sector.

So that's the context my job sits in. I work with some highly talented and very capable people but there just aren't enough of them. The ravages of the past have left Cambodia short of leadership, education, management skills, training and just about any sort of infrastructure you can mention. My job is to try to help: to fill some of the gaps, and to try to help them to work out better ways of doing things.

There probably isn't very much that I do that a Cambodian couldn't do - if he wasn't already overloaded with everything else that needs to be done. And if he had got the right education, training and experience. And if he had survived the devastation and difficulties of Cambodia's recent past. Bearing in mind my own age and background, and especially how someone like me might have fared in the years from 1974 - 1979 under the Khmer Rouge, it's perhaps not surprising that I don't have as many direct counterparts as you might at first expect. The good news is that there are quite a lot of very fine people helping in the Cambodian fisheries: as consultants, as research partners, as volunteers and, last but not least, as donors.

By the way, we also now know, thanks to some excellent research, that by eating a particular type of small fish we can also significantly improve nutritional standards for the same weight of fish eaten. So our plans can not only prevent things from getting worse, they can actually start to make things much better. Now we just need to get it done.

Pressing On

So that's what the two of us do every day. It can be frustrating, annoying, infuriating, dire, hilarious, challenging and intensely rewarding: often all at the same time. But, every so often, it makes a little bit of a difference.

Our normal, lighthearted service will be restored soon. In the meantime, please don't forget the need to keep supporting VSO through our Justgiving page at www.justgiving.com/jagoteers. Our thanks go out again to all those of you who have already contributed so generously. You're helping to make a difference.

Back by Popular Demand...

Especially for those of you who liked the bugs and beasts (Ellie), here are a few more of the creatures we have encountered. We found the strange looking insect below sharing a swimming pool with us. We fished it out because we thought we should rescue it from drowning, and then found that it was some sort of water dweller - the long tail is not a stinger but a breathing tube. We have no idea what it is, but it was huge (when you blow up the picture, that's about how big it was).

In case you think it looks a bit like a scorpion, here's what an actual Cambodian scorpion really looks like. This picture isn't one of ours; it was taken by a friend who's working up the Mekong in Kratie. We were planning to go and visit her soon but now we're not so sure...

Especially for Kate, here's a cutesy little Cambodian wasp. The preview is about full size and it spent quite some time apparently wanting to be our friend and coming back every time we shooed it off. We actually don't get very many wasps at all but we do get some fantastic bees: they're about twice the size of a big bumble bee and are a lovely deep shiny blue colour. They never seem to stop long enough for us to get a good picture, but if we do take one we'll add it to the blog (there's probably going to be at least one more beastarium before we're done).

Just kidding, Kate, it wasn't really that big. It was actually only about two thirds of the size you see above.

Moving from 6 legs to 4, there are lizards everywhere. We have quite a few geckos that live in and around the house and we love them because they're cute but especially because their favourite food is mosquitos. They seem not to mind us most of the time, although one did object to being waken up one morning when Sarah popped some bread into the toaster where it was sleeping. I'm not sure who was more surprised, though: the gecko at having a slice of bread dropped on its head or Sarah at seeing a lizard suddenly fly out of her breakfast. We have now got into the habit of checking the toaster every time before we use it - not something we particularly had to do back in the UK. They tend to grow up to about 6 to 8 inches long (although the one in the toaster was a baby, only a couple of inches long). Here's one of our little mozzie-munching friends, hanging on upside-down on the ceiling of our balcony.



The rather bigger creature below is a Tokay gecko that used to come out at night at the small hotel we were staying at in Siem Reap. He was about 2 feet long and rather striking.

The big problem with Tokays is their somewhat irritating habit of letting other geckos know how big and strong they are. They do this by shouting "geck-o, geck-o, geck-o" at the tops of their voices, which are surprisingly loud. Unfortunately, they're nocturnal, so they do this in the middle of the night from the wall above your bed.

The lizard below was rather less chunky but also probably about 2 feet long. However, in this case, most of it was made up by what we hope you'll agree was a pretty amazing tail.

The next lizard was just the most striking bronze colour - just exactly the colour that Sarah has been trying to get some shoes made in. Not out of lizard skin, obviously (although we didn't see this lizard again, so I shall be keeping a good eye on the bottom of the wardrobe).

Next, here's a few more butterflies, because we're moving our eyes gradually upwards now...

This one was on the earth.

This one was on the grass - spot the small dragonfly next to it. We get lots of dragonflies here, sometimes dozens and dozens all in the same small area, and some are simply huge. No good photos yet, though; they're just too quick

This rather lovely swallowtail was on a bush.

And this beauty was resting in the lower branches of a tree.

And now we're in the trees, let's see what else we can find... Ah yes, another gargantuan orb web spider. Please bear in mind that this picture was taken from about 30 feet below it. How many European spiders can you even see from that far away?

And while we're up here, there are even bigger things. What looks like black fruit hanging from the trees below are actually fruit bats. They've got a wingspan of about 4 feet and when they fly they look like something out of a Hammer horror movie.

OK, so back down to the ground again and something that looks normal. The toads here look just like toads in the UK. They are bigger, though (of course).

And the frogs look nothing like the ones we used to get in our pond. What's more, they can also climb up walls.

But we love the frogs and toads because they also eat mosquitos. As does the lady below, when she just wants a small snack. She was walking across the floor of a village house we were visiting on Tonle Sap lake, so Perry started taking pictures. She wasn't amused by the attention and reared up ready to strike. Since she was about 8 inches long, Perry moved his fingers away fairly rapidly.

And while we're back on bugs, take a look at the extraordinary length of the front legs of this spider.

She had spun her web over a fish pond but her targets were flies, not fish. Just as well, as she was only an inch or two long and the fish here can get quite large. The Mekong has two of the biggest freshwater fish in the world, the Mekong Giant Catfish and the Giant Freshwater Stingray (click on the links for pictures from National Geographic). Both grow to over ten feet long. In Cambodia, there are also tigers (although not many any more), leopards, wild elephants, bears, and freshwater dolphins. When we get the photos, we'll show you. If we survive.

More soon. In the meantime, please don't forget the need to keep supporting VSO through our Justgiving page at www.justgiving.com/jagoteers. They need the money to keep up the payments on our medical insurance.