Charlie Dittmeier's Home Page
Cambodia is trying hard to be a more modern country and in some ways–more paved streets, high-rise buildings, horrendous traffic–it has succeeded. But there are other elements of daily life that hearken back to the 18th century and beyond. One of those is the use of firewood for cooking. 80% of Cambodia uses wood or charcoal to cook every day, both at home and in the restaurants on the streets. It takes a tremendous toll on the remaining forests of the kingdom.
Cambodia just opened its first expressway, a limited-access highway like the Interstates in the U.S. It will cut the time for the trip to Sihanoukville in half but even the highway itself is an attraction for wonder and amusement.
On the surface, this lead-in to an article in the Khmer Times seems hard to believe–that there could have been police raids on 10,000 gambling dens IN ONE MONTH! I doubt those gambling sites were all set up that month so this looks like an on-going problem. And it may well continue to be a problem if only 200 people were sent to court as a result of 10,000 raids. If there is such minimal enforcement and consequences, why stop running a gambling den?
Probably the majority of humanity are feeling a closer relationship with nature these days. Slowly, unobtrusively we people have infringed upon the territory of nature and overwhelmed so much fawna and flora with air and water pollution, destruction of forests, contamination of all sorts. Now we might conjecture that nature is fighting back as so many parts of the world experience devastating fires and floods and drought as nature seeks to re-establish an equilibrium.
On a smaller scale, we might have a more personal, a closer daily experience of nature here in Cambodia. It’s very much a part of our lives. Here are three examples:
Just thirty minutes ago I was washing dishes after eating my rice and leftovers and I had my phone radio playing classical music. I couldn’t hear it, at full volume, because it is raining and the drops hitting the steel sheeting of the kitchen roof totally drowned out the music. And in the picture, the red bucket on the floor is to catch the nature–the raindrops–that are coming through a hole in the steel sheeting.
Lightning takes a huge toll on the people and cows of Cambodia. Practically every thunderstorm there are fatalities in one group or the other–or both, because daily life here is so close to and exposed to nature. In the photo are five cows killed by a lightning strike a few days ago.
We had a major power outage yesterday, caused by a faulty transformer that cut power to a large part of the country. Mechanical problems are matched by natural ones, though, as this snake on a utility pole discovered.
The last couple years the power situation in Phnom Penh improved but recently–in 2022–things have taken a turn for the worse. We have had more and more outages, some of them several hours long. We had one yesterday that lasted about 40 minutes and it turned out it was because of the above snake. He paid the ultimate price for inconveniencing a large part of the city.
