Snakes and ladders: Perspectives from the field in Cambodia

Written by Anika Funk, JPC, Management Support Unit, UNDP Cambodia

I slammed my shoe against the remaining cockroach in my room and after scraping it out the door, lay back on the thin foam on top of my concrete bed. Having almost stepped on a cobra earlier in the day, life was looking up with just a few more critters to remove from my room.

This was my third visit to Kampong Speu province in Cambodia for a field monitoring trip. As a Junior Professional Consultant for UNDP Cambodia’s Management Support Unit, I have had the privilege of making a number of journeys to the field to support monitoring and evaluation work here. The first trip had been relatively tame, the second involved encountering a recent death from a road accident, and the third had so far involved the aforementioned cobra.

If you're worried about my nonchalance, let me explain.

One of my colleagues advising this particular project also happens to have another expertise: cobras. At only 8 years old he lived through the Khmer Rouge Regime, spending 6 months in jail for stealing food as his family starved. When he was released, his family moved deep into the jungle to avoid recapture. This is where he became a cobra expert as he hunted these snakes for his family's dinner. He told me that cobras are remarkably easy to kill, as they are quite slow to attack. Simply take a stick found in the forest and whack them.


So when we were walking along a dam today in Kampong Speu and he suddenly grabbed my arm and backed me away, I didn't have my usual panic at seeing a snake (and let me be honest, it was a massive snake). It was a reality of his day to day life in the past and he acted with such calm and competency  - how could I panic? His understanding of the situation suddenly changed how I viewed the problem.

This same feeling transcended the entire field visit. The purpose of this particular mission was to conduct household surveys with 12 families to understand their perspectives before the intervention of UNDP Cambodia's project on Collaborative Management for Watershed and Ecosystem Service Protection and Rehabilitation (CoWES). The realities of each of these households changed how I viewed the problem.

A widow sat in front of us, wafts of alcohol made of tree root made their way towards us as it boiled next to her. Her children had moved to Thailand to work and she supplemented her income with this forest-brewed speciality.

A young woman sat two doors down. She told us that once the forest is gone, with no more mushrooms to collect, she will send her children to work at the garment factories.

Nearby a man carried a tree out of the forest. My colleagues told me this type of tree is used in a traditional tea that is said to have healed the woman standing next to us of typhoid.

As they shared their stories of reliance on the forest with us, cut open fresh papayas to share with us, and showed us their government-issued ID Poor cards, I learned something of their realities. A tiny, fragmented fraction most certainly, but it shaped my understanding of the project that much more. It was my ladder to the realities we sometimes forget when we work behind a screen, create theories of change, and analyze results. We forget to question how we view the problem.

The way in which we choose to experience, to listen, and to challenge our assumptions is imperative not only to monitoring and evaluation work at UNDP, but to career and personal development as well. Visiting the field is always a humbling, sometimes an uncomfortable, and unquestionably an incredible experience, all in one beautiful package. Each trip reinforces more fully how very little I understand and that helps me see my work with fresh eyes and be more agile as I develop my monitoring and evaluation skills.

As I snuggled up on my concrete bed in Kampong Speu with not a cockroach in sight, I had to think to myself, I really do have so much more to learn. From the communities UNDP works with, from my colleague the cobra expert, and, yes, also from snakes.