Fixing Computers

Tash had seen a charity that you could volunteer at for the day called Choice. They clean and supply water to villages that can't use the local water as it has Arsenic and Cyanide in that can't be filtered, also they provide transport to poor children who can't get to school, or buy uniform and provide further education in a school close to the villages (about a hour away from Phnom Penn).

I knew there would be a water run, and a chance to help out in the school but I didn't really know what I'd end up doing. They had a computer room with about 20 laptops in there, when the coordinator (Vanny) found out I worked in IT she said I could help them fix some dead laptops. It's a bit different from my usual working environment, a bit dusty and the laptops have been donated, so there is not a box of spares you can use to fix problems. I looked in some boxes for some spare cables and set off about 15 mosquitoes.

I did manage to fix a few with the resources I had, much more rewarding than doing it for a large corporation. It also made me think back to a time that I did a large PC rollout and we were not able to donate the 400 odd PCs and laptops to charity because of how finance wrote them off and also because of the companies security policy. I can see a much better use for them.

After 90 minutes we jumped on the lorry to visit a village on the water run. I had hoped I'd be running around with plastic bottles delivering them to people but it worked a bit differently. The lorry holds a 1000 litres of water, which has been cleaned at the school building. They give people 2 plastic containers that hold 30 litres each for the week. The lorry drives down very dusty roads to the villages, that are down the sides of rice fields that fill with water in the wet season, the houses are very basic and on stilts. I haven't seen much poverty so far in Cambodia, I knew it was somewhere and here it was, away from the tourist routes.

I felt a bit out of place as we didn't actually do anything ourselves, just waved and said hello to some local people on the way, makes you feel like you are visiting them as another tourist activity.

On getting back to the school we had lunch made for us by the school cook, a tasty soup with pork, pineapple and maybe some kind of squash or papaya. Spent another 30 mins working on another machine that needed fixing, to be then sent on another water run. This time some of the kids from the school were onboard, getting a lift home. So we were responsible for making sure they didn't cause too much trouble. It was funny, the roads are so bumpy, yet one kid managed to stand up, and stay on his feet for most of the journey. Chatting away in Cambodian, I joked with Tash that they could be planning a revolution and we wouldn't know about it! Another kid looked like he was going to climb on top of the cab, but he just wanted a better view.

Back in Phnom Penn we spoke to one of the managers, an English guy called Rob. He had just brought back some Raspberry Pi devices from the UK and asked if I knew how they could use them. I don't have any idea about this so if anyone reading has a idea then it might be worth getting in touch with them.

For sunset we boarded a boat to begin our Mekong cruise. The city is next to the meeting of 4 rivers, the Tonle Sap that supplies the Tonle Sap lake which swells during the wet season and quadruples in size (the current also changes direction during this time),the upper Mekong (from China and Tibet), the lower Mekong that ends in Vietnam, and the Tonle Bassac.

On board we had a few Gin, Tonic and Limes (we discovered Tash likes these) and had BBQ chicken, ribs and shrimps. It was quite calm just floating around for a few hours.

Back to the dust. To give you a idea of how dusty it was on the back of that truck, when we got back to the hotel Tash wiped her face with a cloth and it came out brown. Those kids don't have the luxury of a rain shower to go back to like us and have to breath it all in everyday as well.

Bowls of rice; 27
Tuk-tuk rides; 24
Computers fixed; 2