Greetings From Pursat

Dear team,

Jon, Dr. Wilkie and I have been in Pursat since Friday and we've been well on our way to assessing the areas. We're actually about to leave in a little to finally assess the villages which could just possibly be our potential target areas. Thursday was scheduled as a rest day, but we had adjusted to the jet-lag relatively well and so decided to see what there is to see in Phnom Penh. We visited the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda, Russian Market, and the eye-opening Killing Fields to name a few. It definitely helped us obtain a better sense of Cambodia's past, both ancient and recent. On Friday we drove to Pursat and upon arriving, were able to briefly meet the whole SC family. We were able to see how it all works. It's much more complex than I expected, and it seems that the whole organization is very ambitious and everyone is very dedicated to the organization's goals.

On Saturday, we visited 3 digesters built through the National Biogas Program (NBP), a government program which installs underground, continuously fed half spherical digesters made of brick and cement for those families who qualify (enough funds, enough manure). One was being built and two were already built. Two were 4 cubic meters and one was 8 cubic meters. The both that were already built have been in operation for about 2 months, and both families state that they would never go back. For the families who have had them already constructed, one fed it with 4 cows and 2 pigs, while the other family fed theirs (8 cubic meters) with manure stemming from about 35 pigs. The latter actually had a surplus of biogas! These models worked very well from what we saw, and the families were impressed as well. Dr. Wilkie and Jon did the scientific fun stuff of testing pH, electroconductivity, and methane content while I sat and observed. The apprentice will become the master. However, this all comes to a cost. For even the smallest digester, a family still has to fork up $300, and so only the well off can qualify. This obviously does not meet our target audience, since rural Cambodians, according to Sok nay, definitely cannot afford this price. Although this may be the case, we know there is a seemingly solid program advancing here in Cambodia.

Yesterday we checked the markets here in Pursat, and concluded that there are ample supplies to build pretty much whatever we wanted, not including polyethylene bags.

This morning we met with the government official heading the NBP for the Pursat province and got a boatload of very useful information. The program has reached the Pursat province recently, beginning in October of last year. Although only 21 digesters have been built in Pursat, over 8,000 have been built in all of Cambodia through the NBP. We received the breakdown of cost for the digesters including materials, equipment, and labor, and even got ourselves some souvenirs to bring back to the states (a couple rice cookers, pressure meters, biogas stoves, biogas lamps, etc). There is plenty more information that we can fill you all in on once we meet up to debrief in the fall.

While it was certainly important to see how biogas is already being implemented in Cambodia, our assessment of the villages themselves is what will allow us to come to our final conclusions on how to move forward with this project. One thing to note is that Sok nay has visited plastic bag digesters in another province which have failed, and state reasons for failure being maintenance (have to be replaced once or twice a year), disruption by animals (chickens making nests, cats having their own fun), and poor accumulation of waste. Just something to consider while we search for the best solution for this project.

I'm sure there is much that I have forgotten, but you will be filled in once we all get back. I'll update again as necessary. Hope all your summers are going well!

David

Vaccinations

I just got back from the satellite office of the UF Student Health Care Center at Shands (room D2-49 on the second floor of the "Dental Tower"--352-392-0627-- a little confusing to find, allow 5 minutes of wandering around to find it). The travel nurse recommended some vaccinations and precautions for me (Disclaimer: it was individual medical advice for me, and may differ for you, and you should definitely go to hear the specific tips she had):

• Malaria chemoprophylaxis: Specifically atovaquone/proguanil (Malarone) or doxycycline. I chose Malarone, although it's the more expensive choice, because of the photosensitivity side effects of doxycycline. Both have to be taken daily, 2 days before, during, and 7 days after the trip. For that reason I chose to get 20 doses. (also strongly recommended taking it when you'll be upright for a few hours, because it can get into your esophagus while sleeping and eat away at it)
  
• Typhoid vaccine: can be administered via shot or oral doses. I chose oral because it lasts a little longer (5 years), but you need to keep it refrigerated and take it every 2 days on an empty stomach for about a week. The shot needs to be given at least 2 weeks before travel.
• Hepatitis A: She strongly recommends that everyone get this regardless of where they're going. It is 1 shot for temporary immunity 1 month before travel, and one may get another 6 months later for long lasting (15 yrs or so) immunity.
• Traveler's Diarrhea: She prescribed me an azithromicin (spelling?) antibiotic in case of a debilitating infection. But strongly emphasized proper precautions for food, drink, and hand washing.
• She strongly recommended the use of 30-50% DEET insect repellents for the skin, and permethrin insecticide for clothing. I'll be picking up both sometime soon.
• She did not recommend Japanese encephalitis since we will have improved sleeping conditions, and against rabies since it is over $400 for the preventative series.
• She warned of Dengue Fever, which does not have a vaccine or curative treatment. It resembles malaria in symptoms, so you should go to the doctor when back home. It isn't dangerous, but will ruin your week.

I can talk more about the food/water/etc. precautions, but you'll hear them when it's your turn to see a travel medical specialist so I won't waste the time.

I also picked up some forms for the MEDEX service at the International Center. I apparently get the service for free through Gator GradCare, so I have my own form. David and Dr. Wilkie will need to fill out the MEDEX forms. She suggested that if Dr. Wilkie was billing SWS that she contact a person in the IC for whom I have a business card. They also do not offer travel insurance, but recommended that we speak to Scarborough... who have a local office that is used to dealing with short trips from the University.

Cheers!
-Jon

Efficient Stove

Hey team,

Yesterday, Jon, David and I made what we hope is an efficient stove. We mixed clay from the ground with water and sand. We didn't include any hay or grass, which is suggested for structural support. We wanted to see how the clay stays up without this.

This is the mold we made. We used 4 tall thick pieces of wood, cinder blocks for support and PVC piping for inlet of wood and container of fire. We are storing our stove underneath the covering near Dr. Wilkie's office.

Then we filled it up with the clay, patted it down and are waiting for the clay to dry. Depending on the weather, it'll take anywhere between 1 week to 3 weeks.

Also our phone interview is today with Joshua Knight for our assessment trip. Information on how that went will be posted later.

Here's a checklist for the traveling team to remember to do:

1) Vaccinations

2) MEDEX

3) Personal Health Form

4) Checklist for items taking on trip

5) Purchase tickets

6) Arrange final travel plans with Soknay and Priya

Sarah Grace Katz

Conference Call with Joshua Knight and Efficient Stove Construction

Hey team,

I wanted to fill everybody in on what's going on with the group.

1. We decided meetings should now be held at Dr. Wilkie's office from 4 till whenever. Over the summer we are only going to be able to get there on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays due to class schedules. We decided to make this our default meeting location so Wilkie can be filled in on the things we are doing quicker and she can feel more part of the team.

2. David, Jon and I are going to start construction on an efficient stove on Wednesday of next week. We are going to mainly use clay since it is abundant in the villages. We are basically making a column with a tight fitting hole at the top for the pot and a small hole at the bottom side for wood. After we make the base efficient stove and see that it is an improvement over the three-stove fire, we are going to improve the design. Starting with this basic design will help us know how to work with clay and to understand some basic principles on creating an ideal efficient stove for Cambodian villagers.

3. We are having out meeting with our project manager, Joshua Knight, next week about our assessment trip. We made our time slots for either Thursday June 3 or Wednesday June 2. We are going to meet one or two times after the weekend to make sure the whole team is on the same page.

4. David is borrowing Jon's copy of the down to earth biogas handbook. He'll be reading it over the weekend and passing to me the notes he writes down from the book. Hopefully we can start some biogas digester construction as soon as possible.

Things that still need to be done:

1. Create educational hand outs
2. Buy tickets as soon as we get approval for the trip
3. members need to get their vaccinations

Comment if there is anything else to add!

Summary of Soknay's Reply to our Questions

Cooking:

Soknay Sorn (Sustainable Cambodia's National Coordinator) wrote back to us, answering the questions that we asked. In summary, the Cambodian villagers are suffering from a variety of health problems resulting from smoke inhalation from the use of inefficient cook-stoves. These include skin and respiratory diseases, eye damage, and increased susceptibility to influenza and TB. Cooking is done on a traditional 3-stone support for a pot, or an improved clay stove available at the market. The most commonly used cooking containers are 30x25cm aluminum pots used to boil water for drinking, and cook rice and soup. There is the possibility of needing to grill food at one point, but it sounds like an occasional practice. We didn’t get a really clear answer on the quantity of wood used, and need to clarify (“At lease the cook used 8-12 pieces of wood for this 3 times cooking. Each piece should not be less then 40cm long and the diameter about 0.03cm.” Not sure if this is for each meal, and if the wood is really 3/10 of a millimeter in diameter?!)

For this reason, I recommend that we design or choose an efficient stove and biogas burner optimized for boiling large quantities of water… i.e. strong consistent heat supply over a relatively small footprint.

One possible setback to digestion is the fact that, culturally, cooking is done by each family unit independently, while most families have less than two large mammals (cattle, buffalo, or swine). Space doesn’t seem to be a problem for the digester, and clay sounds like the material of choice for the stove.

Water/Health:

The villagers, for the most part, rely on over the counter medication and traditional medicine for health problems. There are cases of water-bourne diseases. Ninety percent of the population drinks untreated water from the source (usually surface water), but some is obtained by boiling or treating with a biosand filter. We asked them about the bathrooms, which may have been a mistake in semantics… I believe we wanted to know information about “latrines”. Also, the villages conserve resources, and no food is wasted. But perhaps in the city there is a bit more organic waste that could run the digester at the school.

There seems to be a bit of room to help advise some BMP’s for their agricultural methods, i.e. increasing the use of mulches would cut down on water need and wouldn’t be too hard to implement.

It sounds like there won’t be any problems with cultural clashes, and we’ll be taken care of. Apparently some western volunteers get malaria medication, while others don’t do any vaccinations. (TB might be a good one to get…) The answer about car rental was a little unclear, it appears that it may cost $35/day for a car and $60/day for a minibus.

Feel free to comment if I didn't summarize something well, or if you have any input!
-Jon

New Blog!

Hey team,

From a suggestion from Wilkie, I decided to start this blog for the group. We should always post anything we do with the group. Post when you call any important EWB contacts and what was said during the phone conversation. Also if you do any independent research let everybody know. Just type everything that is going with the group so everybody can be up to date. I think I linked it so everybody gets a notification when somebody writes a post.

For everybody out of town, David and I are sending out the pre-assessment trip form out tonight to EWB-USA. First we are sending it to Lindner and Mark for review and then sending it off. It'd be great if you could read everything over also. We've been working really hard this whole week so it'd be nice if we could make it as good as we can before we send it in.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Sarah Grace Katz