Restaurant day in Helsinki

A week ago on saturday Komitu held a pop-up restaurant in Helsinki to bring cambodian delicacies to taste. A lot of friends showed up and passers-by stopped to have a tasty meal or a refreshing smoothie with cambodian music to complete the experience. Both of the main dishes and smoothie choises were sold out before five and after the expenses some money was left to donate for the youth center project. The most important of course was that food and weather were good and we all had a wonderful Restaurant Day!

KKYC Construction Crew

From left: Phal (site implementation), Inari, Mom the II, Mom, Narin (site manager), Save, Na, Chaet, Pollaa, Peter (contractor), Sreng (site supervisor) and the Kids.

Missing from the picture: Van, Saa, Mie, Cheth

Komitu Architects proudly presents: KKYC Construction Crew!
To be accurate, the picture was taken on Monday this week (just before two people were picked up by scooter from their homes from a post-salary-day-sabbatical-leave). During the past few days our crew has expanded by 1-2 people each day – Thanks to the people, we are now progressing on gear 5! By a quick look to the site today, there are 6 men plus the site managers Pol and Sreng, and three women. We have now been able to form two teams:

• The bamboo team (the ladies) is in the middle of oiling the ready made bamboo beams and columns with a certain kind of vegetable oil.
• The concrete team (men) will continue with the footings work a few more days before starting the ground beam casting.

A truckful of red bricks for the septic tank arrived on site today, so perhaps soon we will have a brick team also.

Beautiful floor tiles in the corner of streets 163 and 104

On our way home from the site we spotted very beautiful floor tiles in a shop in the corner of streets 163 and 104. Unfortunately the shop was closed so we couldn't go inside to ask about the prices.

Those of you reading the blog and living in Phnom Penh - do you know some other shops that are selling these kind of "vintage-looking" tiles? Please send us email or comment in the KKYC facebook-page!

Day 5 on site

The foundation work is proceeding slowly so not much news to tell. However, here are some photos from one working day on the site for you to get an idea what's going on.

Back in Phnom Penh!

Sisko and Inari arrived to Phnom Penh last Wednesday. The construction of the center is going way slower than estimated; mostly because of daily rain and the challenging starting point. We will have to work hard and smart to keep up with the schedule to get the center's roof up before the heaviest rains in August, September and October. Luckily there will be more workers coming on site on Monday and we will be able to start working in teams which hopefully makes the work more pleasant and fun and also helps us to proceed in a faster pace.

Farewell / start up party

Just as we were getting ready to go back home to Finland with Tuuli, the site was getting ready for the actual construction work so we decided to have a party in Kouk Khleang to bring together the workers, community members and future users of the youth center. We handed out flyers and brought the scale model on site so people would be better informed of what was actually happening in their neighborhood. We had a great time eating, drinking and dancing. Thank you everyone who has been a part of this amazing experience so far and also to everyone who will continue to take part in the future!