If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it New Boneyard. All those new components will be shipped to the ICRC’s centers throughout Cambodia and to the Cambodia Trust too. That’s Channat, the Factory Director. Many thanks to both Channat and to Didier Cooreman, the Head of Physical Rehab for both the rare chance to tour the factory and, more, for the opportunity to train rehab therapists and teach amps mirror therapy wherever they operate in Cambodia. Chapeau to the whole organization here which is doing a powerful world of...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itrself 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...
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Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it They’re in the heart of Phnom Penh, within the Ministry of Social Affairs...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it “When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said: ‘At least the handle is one of us.’” Old Turkish...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it This ol’ girl had both her legs blown off some 25 yrs ago (she can’t remember, which is common – PTSD). She was in the forest (which doesn’t exist anymore) collecting the fronds that they use to thatch the sides and, sometimes, rooves of their huts. Boom. She lives alone, tho her son, who is also an amp (landmine) comes by when he’s not working the fields. She chews betel nut or pan and was constantly bending low in posture of prayer, but it was only to spit the flagrantly purple betel juice between the bamboo slats whereupon the chickens lapped it up. Nothing is wasted here. Except lives and limbs. Handicap International built her a nice loo with a ramp … there’s a grab-on bar inside there for her too. Nice work. That’s Ramon and Sovan, his assistant. She was in love with both of them; they check on her at least once a month to make sure she’s still kickin’ and give her rice and other small things from time to time to help her along. She tends her own little vegetable garden, if you can believe that. She says she only gets uptight when the rains come, cuz she’d rather not get washed away. These people are...
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