A LEG FOR A LEG
rself with a sudden burning need for an artificial limb, you may get the socket fit at a few other clinics throughout the Kingdom, but the materials and components will all come from the ICRC. The other big player in the assembly and fitment of prosthetics/orthotics here is The Cambodia Trust (another extremely meritorious organization), but their components come from the ICRC and the ICRC give them to the CT, gratis.
I emphasize these two orgs only because lately an awful lot of the bigger humanitarian/aid orgs have justifiably come under fire for corruption, incompetence, misuse of funds, sloth, bureaucratic petrification and generally doing more harm than good. It is demonstrably often the case and is certainly not with both of the above-mentioned organizations who both aid and employ (often amputees themselves) huge numbers of disadvantaged Khmer people. These guys deserve all the thanks and credit (and donor faith) in the world. And I’ve now been inside them, in a way, at every level.
The factory on Monivong Blvd is a capacious one level bungalow tucked inside the Ministry of Social Affairs compound: well-kept, well-swept, lots of flowers and shade trees; offices at one end and a tranquil shaded central courtyard with a fountain and lunch benches all flanked by the hands-on business of making limbs and crutches. I was in there just a day or two ago and just a day or two after Khmer New Year when all of Cambodia, including the factory where just easing back into action. Even so, there were lots of skilled Khmer technicians engaged in a dizzying number of tasks using a frankly shocking number of expensive looking machines. A very costly operation. It struck me that (although certainly all their patients are not the victims of war, still, plenty are) maybe this is part of the final tally of the cost of war (that and trauma) that politicians, sociologists and historians neglect to enter or don’t consider. It’s now at least 20 years after most of the barbarism, yet the damage rolls in and the money pours out.
It would strike anyone else too that this huge volume of production (remember that none of this is exported outside Cambodia and that, certainly, none of it will go to waste) that all of this is at once both highly impressive and deeply tragic. A warm thanks to the brave, hard working soldiers of salvation at the ICRC, and a big hug to my Cambodian brothers and sisters, who are a very strong people indeed.
Check the pictures down below and stay tuned for more reports from the NW Provinces.
Peace!
