It's Saturday in Honolulu, and I'm spending the day cleaning my house before I go to work. I'm reminiscing about what I would do on Saturday in Phnom Penh.

First, I would definitely ride my bike to Maharajah, my favorite South Asian restaurant right near the Independence Monument. See Cambodia was a French possession until 1953. When the Cambodians finally declared their independence they built a monument at the intersection of Norodom (the Family name of the King) and Sihanouk (the king from 1960 something through the early 21st centuray.) The monument is in the middle of a roundabout, probably one of the bigger obstacles in the city. I dreaded having to find my way around it. In fact, I would rather drive the wrong way on a one way street one block north of the monument rather than brave the roundabout. But every day I would brave it anyways on my way to work. And on SAturday I would brave it for a dish of green south Asian curry.

Every Saturday I would try to find a new merchant plying his or her trade. This man works at a shop near my house on the arts and crafts street. He is carving a naga, the image of a boddhisatva surrounded by cobra heads famous in Cambodia. In fact, if you double click the picture of the Independence Monument, you will find the entire monument is made up of naga heads. The naga is supposed to be wise and skillful as well as to be the protector of deity.










Saturday afternoons are perfect time for relaxing and playing with Tevi, my housemate Tashi's kitty. Tevi showed her love for anyone in her life by licking them even when that person had just upset her by petting her stomach (something that scares kittie's to no end.) Tevi paid special attention to the raw flesh left by the heat rash and would lick endlessly as if to clean up the yucky stuff. I'm so glad I got to know the kitty.

I hope she comes back to Kampuchea so I can live with her again. She was cool cuz she learned to pee in the toilet, though pooping was a totaly different story. She chased wads of paper thrown around the apartment just like alittle dog would do. I never quite got why she did that but it was fun throwing the paper.



Tevi's favorite perch was on top of the refigerator where she would wait for Tashi every day after work. To get there she would have to jump on top of the cover of this water filter. This is one of the best inventions in Cambodia. Produced by a group of women in Kampong Chhang this filtering system saves thousands of lives by simply preventing yucky stuff from flowing into people's glasses every day. It's simply a ceremic pot fired in a kiln and left unpainted. Then inserted into this plastic bucket with a faucet. Fill the pot with waterand it will trickle clean water into the bucket. A gallon takes about an hour to filter. Some people boil the water and cool it before filtering. Retrieve the water in a bottle and cool it and you have a nice cool glass of refreshment. Tashi and I drank at least four or five gallons every two days. Tevi even got regular doses of filtered water. Every few weeks I would brush the ceramic pot to clean it. And boy did it need it. Even without using the vegetable soap that we got at the supermarket I would brush out two or three gallons of brown dirt and stuff before the water ran clear. Wow. But such a simple solution to such a huge problem. Thousands of people in Cambodia suffer dysentary every day because they don't have filtered water.