During march we created new plans for our handmade shredder that answers to OBT locals and employee's needs. We made a shredder working on one side with a bike and on the other side with a thermic motor using plastic oil. It's made by the workers of Chiro with the plastic waste produced in the village.
It took time to find the pieces in Kampong Cham (the closest city from Chiro) : metal sheets, axe, pulley and engine belt, bearing... Before starting to build our shredder.
For now, the bike shredder is almost finished and soon the first straws and caps will be shredded with it.
Here in Cambodia the energy comes from hydraulic dam and during the dry season the water level goes down and some village like Chiro has power cut half a day.
We were in the impossibility of working without electricity so we started the plastic boat project : picking plastic bottles from the dump and building our own boat with it. Why not dreaming about sailing on the Mekong with an entire recycled boat ? We used 900 bottles and 400 more should be added to it (believe us,that amount of used plastic bottles is easy to find..) We plan to build another one with the kids !
Daily life in Chiro
We are now in Chiro since 2 months : having the same rythm than the locals, the families and the houses in which we are living. We are now used to weddings or karaokes starting at 4 in the morning or to the roosters which yell all day long and not just at sunrise. And also to the kids rythm ...
We are learning Khmer thanks to a 75 years old woman who lives in the village. What we always say here is : At pan ha, mak peah kniom ! Which means « no problem my friend »
At the end of march we spent some days in Siem Reap to say goodbye to Solène. She came to OBT for an intership and helped us on the project. Thank you a lot Solène ! We took this opportunity to discover Angkor temples
In Cambodia there is the Khmer New Year from 13 to 16 april: holiday time, water fight along the roads and party time in pagoda !
And to conclude we are very happy to announce you a big new for the following of our project : we received a grant from Nicolas Hulot foundation with « Génération Climat – Agir à l'international » call for project !
Thanks for reading us,
See you soon !
Alix, Manon, Alex, Théa