Dhammayietra 22: Avian Influenza prevention during the annual monks' peace walk in Cambodia

By Tongngy Kaing

March 20, 2012

Every year, Cambodian monks partake in the Dhammayietra, a peace walk. This year, MID-BCC supported the monks by providing training and materials for the monks to spread avian influenza prevention messages to the schools and communities they visited. MID-BCC consultant Tongngy Kaing accompanied the monks for their training and the first part of their walk, and shared his experience with us.

(Editors's note: minor copy edits have been made to the author's original report)

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March 10, 2012

I left home very early at 6 am to go to the bus/taxi station. Since taxi is faster, I took a taxi from Phnom Penh at 7am to Siem Riep and then took another taxi from Siem Riep to Samrong Oddar Meanchey. I arrived at about 5 pm and stayed in a small hotel called Heng Mean Chey Hotel.

March 11, 2012

Pre-departure training took place from March 10 to 11, but I could join only on the 11th. It started 7:30 and finished at about 11:30. The contents of the training are Buddhism, prayer, disciplines of the walk, how to teach students, general guidelines. But what is interesting is that there was a 30-minute training on how to teach hand washing to students and children at about 10:00. There was a revision of how to wash hands properly for all the monks. Since I got some A4 posters from FHI 360 here, I gave one to each of the 40 monks. Each of the nine teams of the monks was asked to show how to properly wash their hands with our soap. I guess it is the most interesting part of the training since everyone could get up and do activities.

Figure 1: Udom Syvorn is the coordinator of the pre-walk training, where about 40 monks have participated.

Figure 2: As a part of the pre-walk training, monks were trained on how to properly wash their hands with soap in order to prevent H5N1 and other diseases.

Figure 3: Each team had to come and demonstrate hand washing while the others observed

Figure 4: Each monk read the hand-washing poster carefully before they came to demonstrate the practice.

Figure 5: Hand-washing training is probably the most interesting part of the whole-day training based on my personal observation.

Training resumed at about 1:30. Mostly guidelines and do's and don'ts were discussed. Older monks shared their experiences of the previous walks. Then the rest was about logistics and preparation of the materials for students' training the next day. Work finished at about 5 pm.

Figure 6: Between 60 and 100 bars of soaps were prepared for each of the 39 schools.

Figure 7: Each school would receive this set of materials, including soap bars.

Figure 8: Monks helped Syvorn to prepare all the materials for the next day's training in 39 schools.

Figure 9: 2000 bars of soaps would be delivered to 39 schools, eight pagodas and five sangkat/ communes.

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