One of my hobbies when I would visit Phnom Penh during my last term was to walk around the city. It is not a gentrified city, instead the poor live in makeshift homes squeezed into any free bit of land they can find. They live there until the land is sold out from under them, a wetland is filled in, or some other obstacle to development is removed – then they relocate.

I decided to walk home after getting registered at the bank on Wednesday and found myself near the sewage canal. This is a well known landmark in Phnom Penh.

I didn’t take photos of the people who lived here on this walk as I didn’t have my notebook yet. Later, I may come back and talk intentionally with some of them. For occupation, many of them were carpenters, street vendors, and tuk tuk/moto dup drivers. There was a bakery in a shack, a series of woodworking shops, and a business for gambling on cock fighting. Children sat in their homes watching television or ran around playing.

This community is just on the other side of some wetlands from the neighborhood where the Mennonite Central Committee office is located.

Last term I took several walks along the railroad tracks in the Boeung Kak community of northern Phnom Penh. The lake was being filled in at the time. In 2010, shortly after I left, the community was demolished to make way for upscale developments. I’ll try to make my way up there for a before/after blog post later.