Woke up to a cloudy morning day at 6:45a.m., I thought the rain will pour throughout the day.
Rode my bicyclette to the NGO office, 5minutes ride away from my hostel. When I arrived, the staff was having a meeting on keeping up-to-date on the number of water filters that have been installed and those that will be installed in the next coming week(s).
So I headed to the filter-making site and got down to business. With the guidance of another volunteer, I removed the moulds of the filter containers by unscrewing greasy bolts and nuts at the corners of the steel-moulds. The cement mixture that filled up those moulds yesterday have already dried up to form solid filter containers. Due to the grease around the screws, boy, my hands and even underneath my nails were charcoal-black! But i always love meddling with spaner and screwdrivers and tighten or loosing those bolts and nuts!
Besides the sand washing I did after that, I helped one of the staff to label logo of Trailblazer and name of donor onto the filter containers by spraying cans of paint spray. I liked the grafitti artist feeling while doing it! As I have donated one water filter to Trailblazer -thanks to you contributors, there will be real evidence of Trailblazer installing my/our donated water filter in the village as they will label my name of the filter and will send photos of the staff installing that filter along with its receipient - the villager! I am waiting to see that and will definitely post it up here and Facebook!
After second round of cement-making and cement mixture into the moulds, I headed for lunch and came back to Trailblazer again at 2pm to help out with the vegetable garden they have.
Trailblazer assists villagers in its microfinance as well by introducing new and various vegetables and mushrooms so they can sell more kinds of vegetables other than their common staple plantation like paddy and potatoes.
I helped in emptying bags of mushroom compost into a huge wooden container as the compost is to be reused again for growing mushrooms. If you don't know what's compost made of - i just checked on Google that its mainly made up MANURE. So I've been stepping on a pile of manure while i was emtying each bags. If that sounds disgusting, how about considering the smell of those compost oozing out from the mountaneous pile of it? Well, the smell didnt smell like your faeces, it has a starnge smell which I cant figure out what was that. It's a bit like what stale white mushrooms smell like. You're probable not going to eat anymore mushrooms from now. Ha! I guess me too. I can still remember the smell now and it came back to me when I tasted some black-coloured salt which came on a saucer along with my Khmer Lok Lak Pork rice for dinner! I didnt touch the salt after tasting a lil bit of it!
I took a break in between my gardening task and lied down in a hammock which was under a wooden shed while reading a newly bought book (bought from a man whose legs were most probably decapitated from the landmines during the Khmer Rouge) about the history of this troubled and poverty-stricken Cambodia.
There will be no work tomorrow as it is declared a national holiday to commemorate the previous King who died in 2012.
So, I will be back with my next update on Mon, 14 July! Bon weekend and Godspeed!
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