chamkar bei village, Kampot province – During an emergency mosquito net donation in Kampot province last week, the needs of more than 3,000 farmers and their families were easy to recognize. The farmers, displaced by flooding in the Mekong Delta, had begun to erect a makeshift village around the foothills, heavy with trees and underbrush—a perfect breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
The new villagers certainly needed nets. But in the middle of the handout, the dark clouds that had hung over the mountains all morning split open, releasing a torrent of rain.
Though the nets would save lives, they still lack shelter. Some of the hundreds who had been waiting in line to receive nets scurried for shelter, crouching under trees or huddling together in the only standing building—a barn converted into a hostel that houses around 50 women and children. But for most there was nothing to do but stand up and let the rain come.
They had come here seeking higher ground and a place to graze their cows after flooding detroyed everything else.
By last Friday, when the nets were distributed, there were 624 families. By the following Wednesday, there were almost 700.
“And they’re still coming,” said Linda McKinney, who heads the UCC Development Foundation.
Her NGO normally teaches small-business skills. Now, though, it has turned into a temporary relief organization, taking care of displaced families and their nearly 2,000 cows. The displaced struggle to erect makeshift shelters with wooden poles and donated blue tarpaulins.
The foothills have grass for cows and wood for shelter. They also have mosquitoes, and the need to build shelter has brought the families up against a threat nonexistant in the lowlands.
“We already have some malaria,” McKinney said. “So we’re getting these nets just in time.”
The National Malaria Center distributed 3,500 nets to provide some level of safety and comfort to displaced families. The nets came from donations of the World Health Organization, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Federation, and the US.
The Malaria Center is “always fast to respond,” McKinney said, as scores of villagers stood by and rain continued to pound the foothills. “Most of the people are sleeping in the rain—like it is now….So now we need more shelter.”
