Category: Daily Life in Cambodia

You could be forgiven for not knowing there’s a van under this load of vegetables. How long do you think it took to load it? And how many rolls of tape were used?

Mangoes grow everywhere in Cambodia and everyone with land has at least one mango tree in the yard. And if you have a mango tree, you need a mango stick–a long pole with something on the end to pick mangoes off the tree. Here the DDP house mother uses a 12-foot pole to pick mangoes that are not yet ripe–but are a delicacy for Cambodians.

Here is the business end of a mango stick. This pole just has a cut off plastic water bottle on the end of the pole. It works, though. Sreymom got three mangoes while I was watching.

Many oddities and quirks show up in Cambodian culture and daily life and one never knows whether it is a US-based or European-based fad or whether it some novelty originated in Cambodia. I saw this face? design? under a car door handle recently. What is it an image of? Does it mean something? Does somebody think it’s cute? Who knows?

Earlier I marveled at how our former Maryknoll office manager put together piping and a pump to send water through a house he built–and where I now live. I was pleased when he added a new pump because it created greater water pressure–and also because it eliminated a plastic garbage container he was using as a water reservoir. Now for some reason he has brought back the reservoir.

I’m not so happy with that. The water system in Phnom Penh has won an award for purity so after quite a few years here, in my last house I was drinking water from the tap instead of buying bottle water. But now that the water goes through the green plastic container above I’ve had to switch back to purified water. Notice that the container has a large circular cover that doesn’t fit tightly and allows dirt, rat droppings, whatever, to get into the water. I’ll pass now on drinking it.

This is Siphal, office manager for the Maryknoll office which closed two weeks ago. He worked for Maryknoll for more than 30 years. When I moved out of the office ten days ago, I moved into a second house Siphal built ten years ago. It’s more than I need but my stay there should be temporary.

Siphal was so helpful over the years! He knew where places were, how to get there, how much to pay, how much to bribe the officials–and how to fix things. Here he is installing a new water pump for the house. The short vertical connection had 21 valves, connectors, angles, and pieces of pipe. He sketched it on paper, eyeballed it, and then proceeded to cut and assemble everything without ever once making a measurement with a tape or ruler. Quite a valuable man for Maryknoll over the years!