My friend, Larry Buck, who is also a clinical microbiologist arrived last week with his wife, Mary Ann. Larry will spend one month here working in the microbiology laboratories at the National Institute of Public Health and at the National Pediatric Hospital. Larry and I worked together at the University of New Mexico until I left in 1997. Larry just retired in January 2007 and has been doing some consulting for the American Society for Microbiology and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Kenya and Botswana. Here we are with the microbiology laboratory staff at the NIPH. That's me in the white shirt and Larry in the orange T-shirt.

Collecting recyclabe material

Perhaps the most marginalized people in Phnom Penh are the people who walk the streets pulling carts to collect recyclable materials. In Khmer, they "roat echay". They call out "echay" to let homeowners behind their walls know that they are passing. Homeowners typically sell their cans, bottles and paper to them and the "echay" people then resell them to middle men who collect trucks full of these materials. Often the "echay" people are mothers who must bring their children along with them in the hot sun. The child in this rickety cart is three years old but she was so thin and underdeveloped, she looked much younger.