Wiring houses for electricity

When a car battery is charged up, the villagers can take the battery home to use.  

We have wired up 83 houses, and provided each house with several LED lights, mobile phone chargers, and a small radio.  

Some of the houses are constructed of wood.  Some consist of a simple wooden frame covered with corrugated metal sheets, or even simpler methods of construction.  When the heavy rain comes, which is often in Cambodia, the houses do not provide a lot of protection against the elements.  

Some have few possessions.  A few clothes hanging from strings, a mattress, a mosquito net, a sack of rice, …

At a house, the mother was feeding her toddler son with a fruit from the Palmyra Palm (糖棕).  

The translucent flesh tastes like the flesh from a young coconut and slightly sweet.  Quite a good snack.  The toddler seems to want the mother to feed the cat with the fruit, but the mother refuses, with a smile.  

At another house, some students taking a service-learning subject taught by a nursing instructor were teaching the inhabitants some stretching exercises.  

Such is village life in Kampong Speu.  Some of the Cambodian students from other provinces such as Takou and Kampong Cham commented that village life here seems more impoverished.