These words best sum up the dual nature of our activities today: a visit to the APOPO landmine clearing organisation, and a boat tour of the floating villages of Lake Tonle Sap.
Starting the day at APOPO, we were introduced to the HERO Rats, whose natural ability to sniff TNT, has led to the development of a program that allows the animals to be trained to assist in landmine clearing efforts. The African Pouched Rats are trained using clickers and rewards, and work in a systematic way with human handlers, to clear areas of landmine contamination. A video explaining the whole process is provided below. As an organisation, APOPO provides an example of resourcefulness and ingenuity to solve a complex issue in areas of past conflict.
After a cooking class where we visited the food market and then made our own three-course lunch, we set out for Lake Tonle Sap and a boat cruise to the floating villages. This is an opportunity to see the resourcefulness of traditional subsistence lifestyle on the lake.
The students always find the visit to Tonle Sap quite dispiriting. Although we work with excellent organisations here, and see plenty of examples of positive and progressive change, Tonle Sap remains severely impoverished and the begging by adults and children is quite pronounced. We all took some time to reflect on this and consider the judgements and assumptions underlying our reactions. This is also a complex issue, with implications in terms of traditional practices and lifestyle, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, the double-edged nature of tourism development, and many other issues.
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