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A wealthy neighbor of the Deaf Development Programme office just had some metal gates and barriers made. The workmen cut and welded all the metal out in the street. And then they spray painted it all black and green, leaning it up against a neighbor’s wall or laying it flat in the street. You can see the mess it left. Only it’s not a mess for the Cambodians. They would never think the paint all over everything is a problem.
I have written before about the thousands of heavy wooden doors that are constantly being made in Cambodia. They are nice to look at before they weather and the varnish wears off, but they are often not well fitted. Click here to see some problems with Cambodian doors.
You want a challenge? Imagine doing something with this pile of cable with many different sections spliced together. I wonder what it came from? Some construction site where it tied sections together?
Cambodia is a very dark place. Most of the country now has acquired some form of electricity as of the last three to five years. According to the World Bank in 2018, 72% of households are connected to the grid; 26% are off the grid, using home solar systems or batteries.
The electricity supply is unreliable. Only 13% of the people have electricity 23 hours a day. 70% face frequent unpredictable power outages. 33% experience damage to their appliances because of voltage fluctuations.
On top of that, electricity is expensive here. Also most buildings were put up before electricity was available and it had to be added later. Thus the lighting in most houses especially is quite minimal.
In the picture above, at a sacristy in a girls school, there is one eighteen-inch fluorescent light above the window and that would be typical lighting for many buildings, even with much bigger rooms.
So often I have mentioned that discipline and order are not strong values in Cambodian society. It is perfectly acceptable to go both ways on either side of the street as evidenced by all these motorcycles going the wrong way in the lane. Perfectly acceptable.
Defenses against the sun: the umbrella for the stock and customers, a leopard-skin cloth for a motorcycle, and a piece of paper for the shop proprietor.