Home Sweet Dusty Home

Village 5, Treng Treung Commune, Kampong Speu.

My aircraft hanger of a house (second gate on left in picture) is starting to feel and look more like home. The front room is still bare except for the two rucksacks I haven’t unpacked, my bike and the huge heavy bench and chairs which sit at the edge of the room. I keep meaning to move them into a circle rather than a straight line so it at least looks like maybe people will socialise around them but the space is proving useful for me skipping and Becca, the German volunteer at Mlup Baitong, to work out in. I suspect the front room will remain a garage/gym for the rest of the year. It’s far too dusty from all the trucks outside to be pleasant and it’s difficult to stay away from prying eyes in that room even when the 8’ tall double glass doors are shut.

Instead, I’m spending a lot of time in my tiny kitchen at the back which feels like mire with all the ‘luxury’ items like pasta, sesame oil and, of course, peanut butter* from Pencil market in Phnom Penh. I’ve got a 2 ring gas stove to cook on although one hob doesn’t work unless you poke it with a knife first. I’m not sure what this does to it that makes it work but it seems to be the magic trick so I’ll carry on doing it. I’ve also got a charcoal-burning pot in my back yard but I haven’t had time to find where I can buy charcoal yet. At the moment it’s just decoration which makes my home look more typically “Cambodian”, along with the reed sweeping brush, string hammock and multitude of plastic plates, sieves, draining trays and boxes specially designed to keep ants out of cans of condensed milk. I never knew how much every kitchen needs these “bits of tat” as I’ve previously dismissed them until I was trying to balance dirty vegetables, soaped vegetables, rinsed vegetables and a bowl of pasta on 6 inches of work surface in front of my toothbrush and wash bag (the kitchen sink is the only one in a house with 2 bathrooms which is actually connected to a water source). Nevertheless, I still fail to see how every third person in the market can make their living from selling these life-saving-bits-of-plastic-tat.

My bedroom is also starting to take shape out of the grubby mess. I have a huge desk/dressing table and a big double bed neatly enclosed with the VSO standard issue mosquito net and a fan (in the same sun-faded blue as all the plastic-kitchen-tat). There’s no chair for the desk or anywhere to put my clothes so I’m still living out of a rucksack but hopefully that’ll get sorted soon.

So, that’s my house. There’s also another 2 bedrooms but they’re so full of dirt that I can’t even bear to open the doors at the moment but don’t that put you off visiting. The door of house 2, Village 5, Treng Treyung Commune, Kampong Speu is always only 3 hefty padlocks away from being your home away from home in Cambodia.

* You do not know the use peanut butter has in a multitude of recipes until you’ve been stuck in the Mekong Hotel for 6 weeks.