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Voices of the Motherland

Golden ricefields

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived at Sav Samourn and Kepehleb’s home, perched on a hill and surrounded by cashew orchards and ripening rice fields. So much had changed since we visited last July. Most notable were the rows of rice plants weighted down with golden rice grains, ready to be pulled and plucked from their stems. The towering papaya trees and bushes of thorny pineapple plants were also bearing fruit. The sky was less bright, dotted with darkening masses of clouds and the shadows of parrots flocking to the ricefields in search of grain. The farmers had to shout at them to keep them from raiding and devouring the ricefields.

Sav Samourn’s eldest daughter was also getting older and more aware of her appearance. She was toying with a comb and a mirror when I first caught sight of her. Sav Samourn told me she had cut her own bangs.

After lunch, Sav Samourn and her sisters gathered their baskets and hiked through the cashew orchards to the ricefields just beyond, to continue their harvest for the day. The ricefields were situated on a hill just above their home. From the hill you could see other hills and other houses perched on these hills beyond and other orchards and ricefields blooming with grain.

This was the first harvest of the year and the field being harvested belonged to Sav Samourn’s younger sister and her husband. Yet everyone pitched in to help with the harvest, including the younger children who looked after the babies under the shade of the cashew trees.

Sav Samourn and her two sisters worked their fingers among the rows, the grains falling effortlessly into the cup of their hands and straight into small, bamboo woven baskets. Once the small baskets were filled with grain, they would empty the baskets into larger baskets. Hour by hour, the mounds of golden rice grains grew, until they were ready to be carried away and stored in the threshing barn. The sounds of pulling and snapping were only disturbed by occasional chatter and the wailing of a hungry baby, carried on the back of an older sister or brother. Sav Samourn would unhitch the baby from the cloth krama, crouch in the middle of the rice fields, settle the baby on her lap, and croon while the baby sucked from her breasts. Her other sisters did the same once their babies also began crying, carried over by an older sibling. Once the feeding was done, they would hitch the babies back on the backs of their older siblings and return to the harvest.

They spent hours harvesting the fields, pulling grains and dispersing the dead grass that remained. Only when it grew dark did the sisters empty their last small baskets into the larger baskets and carried them home to the threshing barn with the younger children trailing just behind.

The kitchen also had something different hanging from the rafters - new baskets or kapaw, still white and newly woven, all different sizes to match the size and height of Sav Samourn and Kepehleb’s three older daughters. These baskets are one of the most important items the family own. Kapaws are used daily to carry newly harvested rice grains, potatoes dug from the ground, chopped sugar cane, and other items that needed to be transported. Kepehleb prefers to make the baskets himself. It is less expensive than buying them from someone else, which is the common practice for many of the villagers these days.

It was early afternoon. Clouds were gathering in the sky and Kepehleb was finishing the weaving of some of the baskets. With a sharp knife, he separated the thinner pieces of bamboo from the thicker, green outer layer. He then began to whittle the bamboo pieces until they became almost paper thin and malleable enough to be woven. As Kepehleb did this, their second eldest daughter imitated him with her own small knife, working her small fingers in the same way. Their eldest daughter climbed atop the motorcycle parked nearby, playing with the handles and peering at her own reflection in the rearview mirror. Sav Samourn was busy threshing the rice, separating the chaff from the grain. She would shovel the grains from the sacks onto large bamboo trays and shake the trays vigorously until the chaff began to separate.

Suddenly the sky shook and rumbled and drops of rain fell around them. Sav Samourn retreated under the threshing barn and continued with her work. Kepehleb withdrew into the kitchen and continued with his weaving. It was a full moon that night and Kepehleb worked late into the night in the kitchen, weaving the bamboo baskets, while his wife sat at the entrance of their bedroom door shining a flashlight, keeping him company. Old Cambodian tunes played in the background on a transistor radio placed on the bamboo floor.

On the Tonle Sap

LAND/WATER/RAIN - On the Tonle Sap from Kalyanee Mam on Vimeo.

I met Sari exactly two years ago, in October 2008. He was only fourteen then, but he had a keen spirit and a vicious curiosity that connected me to him immediately. He led us to his village mosque, pulled out a Koran and began reciting verses in a lyrical and hypnotic voice. There was still something gentle and innocent about him.

When I saw Sari again, I noticed something had changed. He had grown older, more mature, and perhaps more alive to his own unique individuality.

When we arrived in Kaoh Manou village Pou Sali took us to where Sari was fishing with his little sister, Um Mey, only twelve years old. The school will start again for Um Mey the next day and this will be her last chance, after helping the family fish all summer, to help out.

Sari looked like a tall bamboo reed from the distance, his eyes squinting in the sun beneath his flapping checkered hat. Sari directed the boat, while his little sister, covered in a white, cotton hat, paddled. Their boat was small, barely big enough to fit the engine. Sari apologized profusely for it’s small size, which, in Pou Sali’s eyes, could not be considered a serious fishing boat.

But the sister and brother pair still worked and smiled, diligently casting the net into the lake, section by section, each section weighted down by empty cans of insect spray that helped to buoy and locate the nets. The nets were left to sit for about an hour and then pulled in again, section by section, to remove any fish caught. Um Mey’s hands were nimble and precise as they pulled the nets and wove them back on to the boat. The hands, long and skillful, did not seem to belong to a small, twelve-years-old girl but to an older, more experienced young woman.

Sari and his sister had been fishing since early morning, before dawn, and had caught nothing. Some days are like this, especially when the current on the lake is strong. The official fishing season, which would start on the first of October, had also not yet begun, so they were restricted to less plentiful areas.

In between casting and pulling, Sari and his sister would find shade to sit in and wait. We docked the boat on the trunk of a pralea tree. Sari began to climb up to the branches and his sister climbed up as well, calling after him, the sun glinting through the leaves. They laughed like the children that they are, so different from the mechanical hands that felt so at home in their work on the water. Sari climbed further up the tree and swung to a branch, purposely losing his balance and falling straight into the cool, clear water for the perfect afternoon dip.

We drove the boat to a small fish weighing station set up in the middle of the lake, where Pou Sali’s wife was weighing fish pulled in by the various fishermen they knew and had deals with. Pou Sali and his wife would weigh and buy fish all day, late into the evening. Sometimes, they would even have their meals there, inside a small arched shade they constructed on the sampan. At 2 o’clock in the morning they would take the fish to the local market to sell to large trucks pulling in from the city to pick up the latest catch.

Without me noticing, Sari had slipped away on his small boat. I asked Pou Sali where Sari had gone. He told me in a few minutes I would be able to hear his boat, racing along the lake. This was a new sport that Sari had picked up and that he did whenever there was extra gas left over in the engine. Excuses were made to go somewhere and he would be gone, racing his boat fast and furiously with the local village kids.

Once Sari dropped me off at his house and told me he had to pick up his pants, which were being patched up by the tailor. Sari never came back with the pants. I asked his parents where he had gone. They shook their heads like any parents of a growing adolescent child and told me once Sari started boat racing, it would be a while before he returned. I smiled, understanding the rebelliousness of adolescence and the need to have time and space away from one’s family and especially the obligations that exceeded his age.

I spent the rest of the afternoon filming Sari’s younger brothers and sisters. Sari had five. The youngest was only one year and half. The second youngest attached her body to my leg as I tried to move around the house with the camera. She kept screaming “Si bai! Bai si! Si bai! Bai si!” Eat rice! Rice eat! Eat rice! Rice eat!

Um Mey, the eldest sister, bathed the baby and rocked her on the hammock that hung just close to the window overlooking the river channel where boats crisscrossed the village throughout the day. A boat pulled up to the house selling hot fried rings of dough dipped in brown, caramelized sugar. Sari’s mother handed the kids money to buy a few bags of the cakes, which the children and myself devoured within minutes, our hands and mouths sticky from the hot sugar. Double-fisting the cakes, the children laughed with stuffed faces.

When Sari returned from boat-racing, he spent the rest of the afternoon writing in his notebook. Before I left Cambodia in August, I asked Sari if he could keep a notebook of his story, his family’s story, and the story of the lake. After dropping out of school, he had no other opportunity to read, write, and learn, so he welcomed this task. He told me he even carried his notebook with him when he and his father went fishing in the middle of the lake. Sometimes the winds were so fierce there would be nothing to do but write.

That afternoon, Sari wrote while his brothers and sisters laughed and played, his mother cooked, and his father recited his afternoon prayers in the one-room house that all seven shared.

Contradictions

There is a complexity about Cambodia that I’ve tried to comprehend and have only now begun to grasp once I’ve learned to understand myself and reconcile with my own personal inner struggles. Perhaps my discomfort with Cambodia is a reflection of my own unease with myself. I see reflected in Cambodia so many of my own struggles – the struggle to reconcile with a tragic and traditional past with an ever encroaching and modern future, the struggle to balance family and society with a sense of individual purpose, the struggle to carve out an illustrious future while balancing an ominous present.

I discovered these contradictions in some form or other in every one and in every place we visited in Cambodia.

RATANAKIRI

When she was young, the elders told Sav Samourn that butterflies are born white and bloom with color only once they reach the mountains. The butterflies flutter between emerald green leaves, their yellow and sapphire blue wings flickering in the light.

Sav Samourn has sharp black eyes which pierces you when she stares, but only long enough to avert her eyes again, her lips blossoming into a bashful smile. Her skin shines like burnt bronze and her hair, which flows like liquid charcoal, is spun into a bun that partially falls down her shoulders. She speaks little but reveals infinite stories with her movements.

Sav Samourn and her husband moved from the main Jarai village near the Sesan River and up to the highlands five years ago, to start their new family and plant their own orchards of cashew trees and rice fields. Although far from the village, they found the red dirt, or dey krahom, as they called it, to be much more fertile than the sandy banks bordering the river.

Sav Samourn and her husband never officially married. In the Jarai custom, they simply took up house and began living together. During their time in the highlands, Sav Samourn gave birth to four girls. The eldest daughter is a spunky five year old, who carries her youngest sister, a six month old, wrapped with a scarf or krama, on her back. She taps the baby’s bottom before placing her on her back, mimicking the gestures of her mother with detailed resemblance. She assists her mother with all manner of household chores, helping carry water from the drinking hole, chop sugar cane, and dig for wood potato. I watched in awe as she chopped wood and prepared the fire to cook potato and stewed bananas with the strength and humor of a fully-grown adult.

After giving birth to four girls, Sav Samourn and her husband also wanted a son, but she knows that a son would not help her around the house the way her daughters do. A son would be coddled and revered and would not be expected to work as hard. Sav Samourn‘s daughter trails her mother without question. Despite all this, Sav Samourn wishes there was a way for her daughter to attend school. But the school is far away, located in the main village.

For the last three or four months, the village has been suffering from an unusually dry season. It has only rained four or five times and each time, only a slight sprinkling. If the drought persists, there will be no rice crop to harvest and Sav Samourn and her husband will have to purchase rice to feed their family, something they have never had to do before. They have always been able to harvest enough rice to store in their granaries to last the entire year.

Sav Samourn says the elders think the drought is due to the clearing of the forests. Almost all the trees in the highlands have been cleared by Vietnamese companies, but also mostly by the indigenous people themselves, hoping to cash in on the lumber business and clear land for more cashew orchards and rice fields. Although Sav Samourn grieves the clearing of the forests, she also regrets that her husband never took part in the lumbering to make some extra cash.

Sav Samourn and her husband were one of the first families to move to the highlands seeking more fertile soil. After their move, other families also followed suit, contributing inevitably to the clearing of more forests for rice fields and cashew orchards. Sav Samourn’s husband, Pehleh, remembers only a few years ago, sighting elephants and wild buffalo in the jungle. The elephants and wild buffalo have since disappeared.

In the early morning, before the sun shone too hot, Sav Samourn packed her kapau or bamboo basket with pineapple tops and headed to their new field recently slashed and burnt, to plant the pineapple, creating a simple border between the burnt fields. A slight drizzle began to fall as Sav Samourn finished her planting. She and her daughter retreated to a small hut built for periodic refuge. Sav Samourn uncoiled her long, dark hair while her daughter proceeded to pluck the gray hair. Sav Samourn was also afraid of growing old. Seated on the bamboo platform of the stilted hut, Sav Samourn looked out over hilltops covered with charred remnants of once dense forest, and contemplated the future of her forestland.

STUNG TRENG

The drought in Ratanakiri was also evident in Kbal Romeas village in Stung Treng. When we arrived at the village, the village chief and his wife informed us the village elders would hold a ceremony that afternoon – a desperate call and prayer for rain during one of the driest rainy seasons the village had ever experienced. Without rain, the villagers cannot begin to sow their rice fields. The fields seemed burnt by the sun, dry clumps of earth molded into thick cakes of clay, a reminder of a land overlooked by the gods.

The villagers made their way in a single file, trampling through the dusty rice fields and down to a small lake where the ceremonies would be held. Before the ceremony, we caught the eldest in the village splitting wood to be used in the ceremony, surrounded by other village members. We asked him why they were praying for rain. It was unusual for them to hold such a ceremony, which was only held in the strictest emergency. But this year was different. Dark clouds bloomed in the sky, yet failed to burst into rain. After months of waiting, the elders decided finally to make the necessary sacrifices to the gods who would answer their prayers. Incense was lit and rice-wine poured on the altars of the Neak-Ta, or protective spirit. A small piglet was chosen, burnt to a crisp, placed on a platter, and set on a bamboo contraption made with ascending platforms. Additional prayers and offerings were made to a bamboo totem placed in the water. The ritual gongs were played and rice grains scattered to call the gods. After much rice-wine were drunk the village boys would carry screaming village girls and dump them into the water. The ceremonies seemed as much a prayer for rain as a respite from the toils and worries that plagued the village.

On this trip we met with Srey Mom and Vannak, the daughter and son of the village medic and village chief, who had chosen to continue their education outside of the village and in another village 100 km away from home. They were the only pair in the village able to study beyond the sixth grade, the highest grade level available in the small village schoolhouse that was frequented by various school teachers through the years.

Srey Mom, who smiled shyly and wore real gold earrings dangling from her ears, a gold necklace, and gold bangles studded with gems on her wrists, an uncommon sight in an indigenous village, struck me immediately. Her father, the village medic, recounted how he had at first refused for her to continue her schooling. He didn’t feel it was right for her, a girl, to study so far away from home. He was afraid she would be influenced by the outside world.

I sat with Srey Mom near the village well, where she was drawing water for her family. The sun was a golden gleam as the darkness descended around us. Despite her father’s admonitions, it was especially the outside world that fascinated Srey Mom. She loved learning Khmer and English because both subjects revealed a different world that she had long been sheltered from. Somehow the words from these languages recounted stories that were unique from her native Banong tongue and challenged her.

After visiting the school and the school headmaster, Srey Mom’s father finally gave in. Perhaps he discovered in education for girls, opportunities he could not before grasp. He now wants Srey Mom to finish school and become a schoolteacher in her village. Srey Mom also envisions the same for herself. Although she longs to travel and explore the world around her, she also wants to return to her village and help her people.

Vannak, Srey Mom’s first cousin, did not meet with similar opposition from his parents. In fact, they encouraged him to continue his education. Vannak’s accompaniment perhaps also lessened the fears of Srey Mom’s parents. The pair now lives with the school headmaster and his family, who treats them as one of his own children.

However, if the village is relocated to a new place due to the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam, it is uncertain whether Srey Mom and Vannak will be able to afford to continue their education outside the village. Their families and the entire village will have to start anew, plant new seedlings and new trees that have taken years to bear fruit, and sow new rice fields in virgin jungle. Srey Mom and Vannak will also be needed at home to help rebuild their community.

We spent our last afternoon in the village with Lok Tha, the village elder. It was always hard to track him down. He never stayed in one place, always busying himself in the rice fields or on his farm, cutting wood or repairing a handle on the ox cart. He sat cross-legged on the bamboo floor and recounted his memories of the old days, when animals were plentiful in the forest and fish species now unknown to this generation, were in magnificent abundance. One had only to shoot an arrow or cast a fish net to ensure the day’s meal. But things are also much better these days. Those who work hard are rewarded, while those who are lazy, are justifiably disadvantaged.

As we spoke with Lok Tha, the rain began to pour in profusion, whipping the branches and palm trees.Lok Tha grinned and laughed. Now, do you believe in the gods? Do you believe in the spirits? Lok Tha lit a cigarette and watched self-satisfied as the heavens descended on his village with the rain they had prayed for.

KAMPONG CHHNANG

The rain that had fallen in Stung Treng had not yet made its way to Kaoh Manou, a picturesque floating village in Kampong Chhnang. By this time of year Sa Li and his family would have already moved their home from the main waterway to the top of the island, which would be completely flooded with water. His home and the other homes in the village as well as the village mosque, bright aquamarine, would float effortlessly on an island sea remote from the main waterway. Instead, Sa Li waited for the rain and floodwaters to come.

Lack of rain and floodwater also means lower fish yields for the year. Sa Li took us on a boat to a field of ripening grass normally flooded over by this time of year. The fish normally swim to the flooded grass areas, feed off the grass seeds, and lay their eggs on the grass. Without the floods, the fish are unable to swim to these nesting areas. Sa Li was uncertain as to the cause of this unseasonably dry year, but he believed it to be partially due to the cutting of the forest in the area.

Although the grass was blooming this year, Sa Li explained how local farmers typically cut down the wild grass to make way for rice planting. This also disturbs the local fish spawning grounds and hence the fish population.

When we arrived at Sa Li’s house, the house was abuzz with unexpected activity. Sa Li’s children had come to pay their parents a visit, bringing with them the fish nets that they usually weave in Ta Khmau, not far from Phnom Penh. Most of Sa Li’s six children had already married and left the house, save for the youngest who was going to the local school and the second youngest, who was studying at a Cham boarding school. Sa Li’s children also came to Kampong Chhnang to test the waters and see if they could make a good catch in the middle of the Tonle Sap.

Sa Li’s children spent two days weaving and preparing their fishing nets. The women sat the on the floor, legs extended at ninety degree angles, weaving the nets with their fingers and toes like agile spiders. The women wove from morning to night, while the men attached floating styrofoam to the nets and busied with other preparations. It takes an entire day and night to weave 180 meters of fishing net, which costs around 20 USD.

A bright yellow moon shone through dark clouds when Sa Li’s children decided to take their fishing boats out to the middle of the Tonle Sap. They woke before dawn and were on the waterway long before the sun rose, heading straight for the lake bordering Kampong Thom Province. The lake soon became a vast sea with no land in sight save for the shadows of distant mountains, floating clusters of water hyacinths, and Sa Li’s children casting their fishing nets into the water.

The nets were cast one by one, until they ran out, then the water, thick and swelling, were pounded with a large wooden paddle to scare the fish into submission and racing into the intricate web of fishing nets. According to Sa Li, this tactic, among others like the use of dynamite and electric shock, was introduced by the Vietnamese and was uncommon in Cambodia until recently.

Once their strength wore out from the pounding, the fishing nets were reigned in one by one and the live catch thrown into a well of water at the bottom of the boat. The catch that day was meager. The lake was unusually turbulent, promising less fish than usual.

Late that afternoon, Sa Ri, Sa Li’s nephew, also returned home after a long day of fishing with his father and siblings, bringing home only a paltry catch. Sa Ri, whom I had met in the village for the first time almost two years ago, was now 16 years old. He had grown thin and much taller, his face less boyish and more solemn and subdued. I did not even recognize Sa Ri’s voice when he recited the call for prayers over the microphone from the heights of the village mosque. His voice had developed a depth and huskiness resonant of someone more mature than this age.

Sa Ri had on a white Muslim cap, a long white shirt, and a light plaid silk sarong which he folded as he sat on the floor next to us outside the house. The time for evening prayers would commence shortly. The air was sweet and moist and fragrant mosquito coils were lit to keep the mosquitoes at bay. We scratched our feet as the mosquitoes gnawed them with an unusual ferocity that evening.

Sa Ri began his story where we left off, two years ago when he was still in school. Although realistic of opportunities available to him in such a small floating village, at that time, Sa Ri was still hopeful that he would be able to continue his education.

I remember when Sa Ri described for us the wonders of his village – the bountiful purple hyacinth flowers in December, the festivities of prahok (fermented fish paste) making in January, the swimming holes that he and the other boys frequented. The descriptions were of a paradise, but always tinged with the bitterness of never being able to leave this heaven on earth.

Sa Ri had achieved the highest marks in his Khmer language class for writing a story about the Tonle Sap, his village, and his family. The manuscript was pinned to the school wall for all to see and is now probably lost, possibly used to wrap pieces of dried fish. Sa Ri left school to attend a Cham Muslim boarding school that taught the Cham language and religious texts. When he left, his teachers understandably called after him, regretful to lose such a bright student.

Sa Ri left the village for Phnom Penh with his cousin, Sa Li’s second youngest son. It was their first venture outside the village, but not one that promised the freedom they expected. They woke every morning at 3AM to wash for morning prayers. Sa Li would doze during his lessons and every nod was met with the slap of a solid ruler. He had to memorize and recite religious texts without question. Sa Li could no longer take the strict schedule and prohibitive curriculum. He packed his bags and set out to return to his village alone. His cousin remained, determined to bear it out.

When Sa Ri returned to the village, his father resolved to put him to work, although Sa Li wanted to continue in a secular school. As the eldest in a family of six children, the value of Sa Ri’s capacity to work and help his father with the fishing was much more tangible and immediate than the uncertain and seemingly remote rewards of a higher education.

The rain poured continuously the next few days, but never with the extreme intensity of former years. It remains to be seen whether the Tonle Sap will flood enough for Sa Ri and his family and the village to move their homes to the top of the island this year.

A destined life

We returned to Kampong Chhnang today to meet with Sa Li again. Instead of taking the ferryboat to his house, we asked if he could meet us at the boat dock instead. The boat dock is always abuzz with activity, people loading and unloading items from trucks and wagons and carts onto small boats destined for villages along the expansive Tonle Sap River.

This afternoon, a large truck was unloading rainbow-striped bags of rice flakes, directed by a woman in a Vietnamese conical hat. Over the years, driven by an exploding population boom in Vietnam and the search for economic opportunity elsewhere, more and more Vietnamese families have been settling in the area. They tend to live along the water, where most Khmer families refuse to live, and negotiate their business on boats along the waterway, selling everything from fish to iced coffee and homemade desserts. The reaction to this strong build-up o the Vietnamese community is mixed. They are welcomed and envied for their strong business sensibilities and also blamed for the overfishing in the area.

Sa Li finally arrived bringing his niece Mariyan with him. I was immediately charmed by her radiant smile that crossed her face from one cheek to the other. Like most Khmer girls, she has a way of giggling softly, hiding most of the giggles in shyness. But there was also a strength about her that forcefully pushed through the shyness as she spoke, more mature than her years, about her father who had passed away from dysentery over ten years ago, and her decision to work at a factory to take care of her sick mother.

Mariyan is 23 years old and is currently working at Sportex Factory on Kilometer 9 Road in Phnom Penh and 90 kilometers away from Kampong Chhnang. Sportex is one of the larger factories in Phnom Penh that makes sports apparel for Addidas. Mariyan showed me a picture, which a friend of hers took of her with a camera cellphone, wearing a pink headscarf and face beaming behind her sewing machine. The conditions in the factory are decent, she says, because it is one of the larger factories. The smaller factories suffer much more. For example, if she has a complaint against a manager she can lodge it with a supervisory committee, which has a duty to attend to her complaint.

Mariyan has been working in the factories since she was 15 years old, before they became strict about age requirements, she says. She can make between 50 - 60 USD a month and up to 80 USD with overtime. She spends about 3000 riels (about 0.75 USD) a day on food and essentials. She is one of the fortunate ones as she lives with her aunt, about 8 km away from the factory. Most factory girls spend an average of 3,000 to 5,000 (0.75 – 1.25 USD) a day on lunch.

Mariyan rides a lamok, or a wooden cart pulled by a motorcycle, to and from work. The lamok can carry up to 20 people on a single trip. Mariyan’s aunt used to also work in the factories, but quit after working hard enough to qualify as a schoolteacher in Phnom Penh, pronounces Mariyan, with obvious pride in her aunt’s achievement. I asked Mariyan if she was also studying on the side. She smiled and said she was not. It is hard for her.

Mariyan is home for a few weeks. Business has been slowing down and she was offered an opportunity to take some time off. She decided to take it off to have some time to take care of her mother, who suffers from high blood pressure. Mariyan says she comes home often, at least once every one or two months to take care of her mother.

As we conversed and laughed in the car, we drove back to the city center of Kampong Chhnang and to another Cham village where one of Sa Li’s best friend, Met Bunteoun, lives. We passed by the market where Sa Li will sell his fish, starting October, collected from local fishermen. He travels downriver with his load and sells the fish at night, negotiating until early morning, when the fish will be transported, packed fresh, for Phnom Penh.

Met Bunteoun says his home sits at the juncture of three geographical points. To the left of his house, live all the Chams and their temple. To the right, lives the Vietnamese community. And in front of his house, resting on solid ground, are the homes of Khmer families. The different communities are all working together, but living separately, and his house sits right in the middle of everything.

Met Bunteoun is the embodiment of a free-market creature that has been forced to take up all sorts of businesses just to keep alive. He used to sell fish and even opened up a small café in his home, seating up to seventy people. His fish business was prosperous before, owing to the fact, he says, that he was cleverer than others. He was able to set the prices he wanted because people had no access to communication. Now everyone has cell phones and is able to seek out the right price. Declining fish yields and open competition with more fishermen, especially fishermen from Vietnam, has forced Met Bunteoun to seek new avenues for making business.

Three years ago, noticing the influx of clothing coming into the country, Met Bunteoun decided to invest in selling men’s clothing. A Korean company supplies him with a bundle of clothes and he is obligated to sell them off, his commission depending on how much he sells. Starting August, Met Bunteoun sells the clothes off a boat, to different villages along the waterways, announcing his wares on a large megaphone. Starting October, he and his business partner stuffs a small Toyota Camry with clothes and takes a road trip throughout the country, selling his wares. Met Bunteoun shows us photos from the road trip, he and his partner beaming arm in arm against the car, lounging on the side of the road, or bathing in the river with their sunglasses on. They travel all the way up to the Northeast to Stung Treng Province and all the way West, to Pailin and Battambang, near the Thailand border.

Met Bunteoun wishes he didn’t have to work as a traveling salesman, hawking his wares and cracking funny jokes for the sake of making a good pitch. When he thinks about it, he feels ashamed of himself as old as he is, but he has no other choice – hawking is one of the ways he can support his family. When not hawking, Met Bunteoun runs a ferry business, ferrying people across from one end of the river to the other, charging between 1,000 (.25 USD) to 5,000 (1.25 USD) per person depending on the distance. Most of the days, he transports workers cutting grass for cow feed.

Met Bunteoun and his wife, first met during the Khmer Rouge regime, on their wedding day, as they were forced, among many others, to marry. The Khmer Rouge staged the marriage for Met Bunteoun and his wife, a Khmer, unaware that Met Bunteoun was Cham. Many Chams and other ethnic minorities were targeted during a Khmer Rouge period that aimed to cleanse the country of all “foreign” elements and ideas. The only reason Met Bunteoun managed to survive was because his parents gave him a Khmer name as a child, not wanting him to be looked down upon by the other Khmer children at school. Now, Met Bunteoun and his wife view their union as a role model for their children. Even their children have married with other Khmer and even a Vietnamese.

Met Bunteoun and his family have been living on the water in the same boathouse since the Khmer Rouge disbanded. They say they are tired of living on the water. They visit other homes on land, with running water and a running toilet and shower and they also long for the same thing. In the life he wants to provide for himself and his family, Met Bunteoun says he hopes for only three things – friendship, clean food, and a clean bed to sleep on. But in his heart and in his own personal life he wants happiness, a solid reputation, and a firm future. But he finds his future constrained by his own destiny. He believes we are all destined for a certain life and this is his destiny.