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| A girl scrounges for loose grains of rice which have spilled from a torn sack from an aid delivery in Kampong Cham province. Photo by: Vincent MacIsaac |
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| A woman affected by flooding receives a medical check-up in Kampong Cham province. Photo by: Vincent MacIsaac |
Monday, 24 October 2011
Vincent MacIsaac
The Phnom Penh Post
As residents of an island in the upper Mekong – where the floods hit first – they are adept at protecting their children, homes, livestock and food supplies from annual floods, but this year’s deluge swept almost everything off Koh Samraung.
During each of the five floods that have swept over the largest island in Kampong Cham’s Kampong Siem district since mid-July – submerging it entirely each time – parents managed to prevent their children from drowning by keeping them indoors, they said. As the floodwaters rose, they kept raising the floors of their houses to remain dry, but eventually gave up and began sleeping on soggy sacks of sand.
Last week, they began receiving their first deliveries of medicine and food. By then, most of the cattle that had not been swept away were either unable to stand or too thin to sell, children in every household had fallen ill, and nearly every family was in debt to Acleda and other microfinance lenders, rice merchants and moneylenders, residents said.
“This was the year the floods took everything. We had nothing left to eat. No food for people or livestock,” explained Num Chanran, 55, as she waited on Saturday morning for her first delivery of aid: food for one month, a water filter, mosquito net, blanket, soap, medicine and advice on how to prevent communicable diseases from sweeping through the island’s health-impaired communities.
“Everything was washed away – our crops, our fruit trees, livestock, our poultry,” she said, as she received medicine for a stomach ache, fever and dizzy spells.
