Last Monday morning we were all very anxious to see how our final revision of the survey would turn out in the selected villages for the day. We started the day at 7am, bright and early, in order to finish our work at a reasonable hour. After picking up our two NaVRI surveyors and the provincial veterinarian, we were off to Preuy Toteung: a village in the commune of Trapeang Veaeng.
All the formalities of conducting surveys in Cambodia have been costly in terms of time. Before entering the village, we had to go to the office of the commune we were visiting to get permission. This usually takes around 30 minutes, after we find where the office of the commune actually is. The next task after that is finding the house of the village chief, so we can find out how many households are in the village. This is important, as our survey is being conducted based on the principles of random distribution. This means that we are selecting the houses randomly based on an interval that is determined by the number of houses within the village. For example, if there are 100 houses in a village, our interval between households will be 10 because we are doing 10 surveys per village.
Getting back to that first Monday of surveys, upon entering Preuy Toteung and finding the village chief, we discovered that the village contained 184 households, meaning that we had to survey every 18 houses. Trying to organize the two survey groups that morning was a bit of a disaster. It seemed as though it took us forever to decide who was going where and how we would meet up again. It is rather complicated considering we only have one village chief and one vehicle to work with between two groups. This is further complicated by issues such as not having a map of the village, and trying to work in villages that are very spread out.
Regardless, once we got going the surveys were being completed very quickly. We all agree that the survey is now at a manageable length for both the respondents and the surveyors. After lunch, we completed our second set of surveys in Ampov Prey. Organizing our groups was faster that time and we were able to finish all the surveys by about 4:30pm. That night we had another great dinner at our guesthouse (Me Mates Place), and spoke with Sonia about the progress of our work.
Tuesday was another busy day of surveying. We ran into more problems upon learning that our first village contained 552 households. That meant that we would have to skip 55 houses between surveys! Surely this would pose some problems with regards to time. However, we were able to complete this task by remaining open to the idea of walking a fair distance. My group was lucky enough to steal the van for our surveys, while Matt and Amanda stuck it out walking the distance. At lunchtime we were able to map out the rest of our survey days in the province of Kandal. We planned on doing villages within the same commune each day so we wouldn’t have to drive to opposite ends of Cambodia in one day.
At the end of Tuesday, Ryan, Matt and Sonia had a meeting with Holl Davun (the Deputy Director of NaVRI) regarding the future use of the information from our project. During that time Ryan tried to draw a picture of a carcass we have often seen on display outside restaurants which we originally identified as a dog. However, Sonia would describe Ryan’s picture as more of a platypus than a dog- and I would describe it as a bunch of scribbles. Regardless, the director had no idea what Ryan was trying to draw, but managed to figure out that the restaurant carcasses are in fact a calf rather than a dog.
As Sonia was leaving us on Wednesday morning, we all went out for a nice Italian dinner later that Tuesday night. It was great to have some good pizza and talk about something other than our survey/project. With the rest of our time here planned out, and our data input sheet almost complete, we were all feeling confident that the rest of our work would run smoothly from then on. We were all very happy to embrace the idea of having only 2 people accompany the surveyors each day. This gives one group the chance to sleep in, and input the data from the previous day- a win-win situation of course. So we were more than excited to implement this new system as soon as possible: starting Wednesday morning. But then came the clencher, who would be the first group to work the next day? The only way to solve this fair and square was to flip a Canadian loonie. As Matt tossed the coin, I called heads (as I always do), and once again, it didn’t fail me. Poor Matt and Amanda were off to another bright and early day of work on Wednesday morning as Ryan and I enjoyed sleeping in. I finished off the data input sheet that morning, and sent it off for Sonia to check over and offer some suggestions. Ryan spoke with Sonia that afternoon, and we made some finishing touches to our input system. We then spent the afternoon inputting 40 surveys, which went by fairly quickly.
The Thursday that week happened to be the former Queen’s birthday, so this meant we all had the day off. Matt and Amanda took the extra time to relax, while Ryan and I had an adventurous day out in Phnom Penh. After almost being attacked by a monkey, I decided that I would try to keep my distance from any monkeys I come across in the future. However the rest of the week was fairly uneventful. Ryan and I worked on Friday, surveying 2 villages in northern Kandal. Everything went according to plan, and the surveys are being completed in a much more timely matter now. Getting permission from the commune officer and finding the village chief’s house still seem to take the most time in our day, but at least we are able to do the surveys quickly once we are with the village chief. We discovered that most village chiefs are able to call in some help to escort us around the village, so splitting into two groups is working just fine. We then need to split the money between the two people that help us get around the village, but luckily thus far nobody has had any problems with this.
One funny part about our surveys is our gift giving at the end of the survey. We decided that we needed to offer some kind of compensation to our respondents for completing our surveys. The best gift we could come up with (considering cost and value) was a pencil with a notebook. However, the cheap notebooks we bought here all come with a picture on the front. So of course half of our notebooks have half-naked oiled-up WWF stars on them. I can tell you that all of us have some qualms with offering these notebooks as a ‘gift’; so we all give these particular notebooks face down. The situation gets even more comical when we visit wealthy houses, where the residents have occupations such as ‘the secretary of the Cambodian Peoples Party’. In the future, we are hoping that we will be able to get less WWF themed notebooks but who knows if we will be so lucky.
With another week under our belts, we can’t believe how quickly time is passing us by. It’s hard to believe that we only have 2 weeks left in Cambodia! We are very much enjoying our time at Me Mates Place- the food is excellent and the staff are practically like family to us now. They actually call us ‘sister’ and ‘brother’ while serving us! It’s a great comfort after a long day of work.
So we will begin another week of surveys, and have more stories to share soon enough.
Signing out,
Gill, Ryan, Matt and Amanda
Authored by Gillian Park
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