He was a very small boy, and he didn’t give it a moment’s thought. He had to go, his friends were waiting, so he relieved himself where he was, into a muddy puddle on the grounds of Wat Chbar Ampou.
Such scenes, common in Cambodia, may spell trouble for the thousands of flood victims who will live—in some cases for months—in crowded, makeshift housing.
“After a while, it starts to smell bad,’’ said Chhay Rithy, a monk at the wat. “The small children get diarrhea,’’ and they don’t always make it to the six latrines that serve more than 1,000 evacuees.
People try to keep the grounds clean, he said, but with so many people jammed close together, “sometimes they don’t keep it clean enough,’’ and it’s only a matter of time before illness strikes.
Som Mao, 32, knows that already. Her 4-year-old daughter, Pal Mom, began vomiting early in the morning. Hot and feverish, she sleeps as if she were drugged.
“I want to take her to the hospital, but I don’t have the money to pay the moto,’’ her mother murmured.
Health officials say the good news is that Cambodia is used to dealing with floods, and that the Ministry of Health, Red Cross and other agencies have stockpiled supplies and trained health and disaster workers to cope.
The bad news is there were two floods this year rather than one, and the second was much worse than usual. Flood-borne or flood-related diseases can include typhoid, cholera, hepatitis and dengue.
Health officials said they hope to be dealing with simple diarrhea, scabies and colds instead.
Dr Eng Mony of the Ministry of Health said that until the waters recede, officials will not be able to tackle long-term problems like decontaminating wells and water supplies.
“Hygiene and sanitation problems may actually become worse’’ as victims return to their homes and begin the difficult process of cleaning up, she explained.
But in the short term, health officials have distributed nearly 60 health kits to the provinces hardest-hit by flooding, including soap, medicine, bandages and water purification chemicals.
Eng Mony said many rural Cambodians are learning about sanitation. About 50 percent of flood victims boil their drinking water, while another 30 percent drink from water jars or other sources protected from floodwater, she said.
Health officials hope to reach the rest with information and chlorine pills, she said. Dr Bill Pigott, country representative for the World Health Organization, said there are about 3 million of the water sanitizing pills in the country now, and more to come if necessary.
“People shouldn’t panic,’’ Pigott said. “People in the countryside work together well. People here have an amazing resilience and toughness.’’
Aid and health officials say donations continue to pour in, from rich nations and poor, individuals and organizations.
How families cope seems to have a lot to do with how experienced they are with floods and how long they’ve had to set up their temporary communities.
The people living at Wat Chbar Ampou, for example, have organized what is practically a permanent village on the pagoda grounds just north of National Route 1 east of the Vietnam Bridge.
Nuth Y, 69, has been flooded out of her home in Chbar Ampou II village every rainy season for the past few years, so she has the routine down by now.
Over the past month, evacuees have built a substantial village, with streets lined by thatch shelters over platforms raised above the mucky ground. Shops and restaurants do a brisk business, and Nuth Y, a hairdresser, gets a few customers a day.
Sanitation isn’t perfect, but families are trying hard, with the area around the wat’s well a communal laundry and bathing area, and trenches dug to carry waste water away from the houses.
But over on the eastern tip of Sihanouk Boulevard, just south of Hun Sen Park, conditions are more bleak.
Kim Savy, 41, normally lives with her husband and eight children in Village 14, a sprawl of wooden houses between Sothearos Boulevard and the tall grasses on the marshy west bank of the Bassac River.
But the water is now chest-high in Village 14, and Kim Savy is living with about 2,000 other evacuees just north of where the village used to be. For the past week, they have been living in tents constructed with bamboo poles and blue plastic.
“The village never flooded before,’’ she said, nursing her youngest child in the eerie blue light of the tent. Though it is only mid-morning, the air inside is stifling.
“Thatch would be cooler, but we can’t afford it,’’ she said. The family managed to bring a wooden platform bed with them, and the tent, donated by the Red Cross, keeps the rain off. The tent is only really uncomfortable during the middle part of the day, she said.
Conditions are worse for Chea Pao, 38, a cyclo driver and father of four whose tent was about a few feet away. His family was sleeping on the ground, and despite the trenches they have dug around their tent, water runs in whenever it rains, he said.
“We can’t sleep when it rains,’’ he said. “It’s noisy around here, and we need our sleep.’’ The camp is not far from Phnom Penh’s only amusement park, where music blares nightly.
Though health officials have set up four latrines for the evacuees, Chea Pao’s brother, Sim Tuy, 23, has already fallen ill with diarrhea. The whole family is under strain, Chea Pao said.
He looked to the south, where muddy water lay stagnant in a field not 50 meters away. “Even now, we are worried that the water might come up here,’’ he said. “And then where would we go?’’
