Preserving a way of life

Of the three provinces in the Northeast, I was most excited to visit Mondolkiri, having never been there before. I had already heard of its breathtaking and untouched beauty from my colleagues, who had visited the province only four years before. It is completely covered with forest, they told me.

As we drove past the border of Kratie Province, it was apparent to them that the province had changed. Not only were the red dirt roads completely paved but many of the forests lining the roads had been cut down, small family settlements from neighboring provinces, taking their place. There was not yet the abundance of cashew and rubber plantations as we saw in Ratanakiri, but it was not difficult to imagine, in a matter of years, many of the fields being cleared for that purpose. As we entered Mondolkiri, we began our ascent upwards past jungles and tropical forests to small mountains covered with bright, green grass and forests of pine trees. The air was cool and refreshing and I was reminded of being in Europe and not a tropical country. Over the years, elite mountaintop communities have formed with homes and land belonging to high-level government and business officials.

All along the way towards Senmonorom, the capital of Mondolkiri, workers were paving, cementing, and locking down the roads that would connect the three Northeastern Provinces and their valuable natural resources to the rest of the country, and more importantly to Vietnam. Wood, cashew, rubber, and even coffee flowed out, while processed items and cheap produce from Vietnam flowed into the country, overwhelming the local markets.

We stayed in a guesthouse owned by Mon, dark and broad-shouldered, hair shaven, strutting army boots, and Ray-Bans. Mon had come to Mondolkiri five years ago from Kampong Chhnang, when Mondolkiri was only forest. His father died leaving behind Mon and his siblings to take care of his mother and the family. Mon’s eldest sister decided they would take a chance in a place where few had dared to go. They came with nothing but their bare hands. At first, he was afraid of the forest, dark and menacing with wild sounds. But he got used to it as well as the rain, which often poured continuously for months on end.

Now a large, cement bridge runs over their property, bulldozed in by Chinese ex-prison laborers. They cut down all their avocado trees and would have taken everything in sight, if they were not there to constantly protest and send letters to the provincial governor. The family’s guesthouse and restaurant has become a favorite with local and high-level officials, with vegetable gardens and fruit trees running through the property and a gushing stream that feeds a small electric dam that he and his family built themselves. The property is completely energy self-sufficient.

Through the years, Mon has become connected with the surrounding indigenous villages. They started bringing him wild honey and wild meat from the forest as well as knitted scarves and woven baskets, which he began selling in a small gift shop. Some members of the villages now even make a bit of money performing for guests and taking tourists on elephant treks through the jungles. Mon showed them how valuable it could be for them to preserve their indigenous culture.

Mon took us to meet Ta Ting and his family, members of the Banong Indigenous group, who had adopted Mon as one of their own. We drank rice wine served in a porcelain jar and drunk through hoses made of bamboo and plastic and smoked herbal cigarettes – all traditional ways to offer us their welcome into their home. Ta Ting began talking about how popular he was and how many pictures had been taken of him when he visited Phnom Penh because of the large bamboo earrings that pierced through his ears. Ta Ting’s brother also bragged of his own popularity. He’s even made a split-second guest appearance once in a Cambodian music video, dressed in indigenous clothing, crouching out of his hut. He posed for the camera naturally and even let down his long hair for a picture. He told me proudly that he was one of only a very few left who still wore their hair long.

Mon began riling up the family and asked them to bring forth their drums. They danced and played almost mechanically, going through the rhythm of every movement and gesture as if done so many times before in front of so many guests seeking the wild, native experience. I wondered what they thought of their culture, now being preserved not for its own sake and for the sake of future generations, but to entertain tourists in search of a good show. Can a way of life be traded for money like any commodity? How does tourism preserve but also ultimately alter the traditions it seeks to preserve?

A bit of luck

This morning we had to decide whether we would remain in Ratanakiri another day and visit a different village along the Sesan River or proceed in our journey to Mondolkiri Province. We decided to stay one more day hoping the gods would this time be generous and help us. Amongst the three provinces in the Northeast, Ratanakiri was moving most rapidly towards development and its indigenous populations were also most severely affected. This is a rare and historic moment that we felt must be documented.

Like the villages in Stung Treng, every indigenous village we visited along the Sesan River complained of increasing cases of uncontrollable diarrhea and deaths caused by drinking river water contaminated by the Yali Dam upstream, since its construction in 2000. They also complained of uncontrollable floods caused by the release of water from the dam, destroying livestock and rice crops near the river. In Ta Tang Village, a Jarai indigenous village we visited today upriver and close to the border of Vietnam, fish spawning areas were also destroyed by the floods, lowering fish yields every year.

Villagers who used to sow rice fields along the river, made fertile by silt deposited from the natural flow and flooding of the river, are now moving into the highland areas in search of more fertile soil. Sol Lol moved his fields across the river five years ago and began planting his rice fields and cashew orchards there. Cashew and rubber has become the premiere cash crops in the area. Ro Mam Mly remembers when most of Ratanakiri was completely covered with forest only a few years ago. All the forests have now been cut down and covered with field after field of cashew and rubber. Highway 78 was recently constructed by Vietnam. The stretch closest to Vietnam is smooth and glistening with fresh tarmac to facilitate the transport of cashew, rubber, and particularly valuable lumber.

According to the villagers, unlike land bordering the highway, their land is community land and cannot be bought or sold as a concession to private companies. The village chief has advised the villagers to make use of their land or risk it being taken away. So the villagers have begun to move farther and farther inland, clearing forests and planting cashew orchards and rice fields to maintain their hold on the land. Accustomed to slash and burn subsistence agriculture, maintaining cash crops have introduced a new way of life for the villagers. Hunting for wild animals in the forest have also become less common as more forestland has been cleared and villagers overhunt wild animals to sell in the market.

We had to cross the Sesan River and climb several mountains before we reached the cashew orchards and rice fields planted in the highlands. Banana, papaya, pineapple, cassava, melons, and sugar cane were also planted for personal use, interspersed between the rice and cashew fields. Chicken, duck, and pig were also raised on the farm. One family oversaw each farm and whatever yield was gained from the harvest would benefit that family. Although the families continued to live in the village, they would come up to the highlands for weeks at a time to work on their crops.

This year, although the planting season has already begun, only the highland rice crops have been planted. The farmers must wait for rain before they can begin to plant. But this has been an unusually dry season and if the rains do not come within the next few weeks, there will be no planting of rice and the farmers must look for other ways to make money in order to buy rice from the market. The faces of the farmers turn pale when they speak of rain. For a country still lacking a modern irrigation system, rain remains the divine force that determines whether a village will starve or prosper.

In the late afternoon, as we prepared to cross the Sesan River again to return to the village, we met Sor Phai ferrying his motorcycle across on his way to Prey Meas or Gold Forest. Sor Phai is an itinerant seeker of opportunity from Kratie Province, who travels throughout the Northeast in search of work where he can find them. He drove his motorcycle off the boat and was negotiating the price on a small fish the children who ferried him across had just caught. He pierced through the gills of the fish with a stick he broke from a branch and strapped the live fish, still sputtering, onto the back seat of his motorcycle. This would be his evening meal.

Here, Sor Phai was digging for gold, or whatever was still left after a Vietnamese company came and sucked the mountain dry. A day’s work can yield between 3,000 to 5,000 riels (0.75 USD – 1.25 USD), just enough to make the venture worthwhile, or nothing at all. Workers also come from neighboring provinces like Kratie, Kampong Cham, Prey Veng, and even as far as Kandal Province near the capital, to work on the rubber plantations. The next morning, as we ate breakfast and on our way out of Ratanakiri, a group of young men came up to us and other clients in the restaurant for bus fare to return home all the way in Kandal Province. After working on the rubber plantation for several months, the plantation owner skipped town and failed to pay them. With only the clothes on their backs, they were stranded. The restaurant owner told us this was a common occurrence around town.

In this small town, it seems like everyone is depending on some kind of luck to get them through. Rain to water their crops during one of the driest seasons the region has ever seen, a flash in the pan or a small piece of gold in a forest already mined bare, and payment for hard-earned work in rubber plantations owned by scandalous thieves.

The idyllic village

It’s been two days now since we arrived in Ratanakiri Province, just east of Stung Treng Province and well known for its natural resources and the indigenous people who live here. The first large billboard to welcome the visitor to the province advertises a local phone card and holds a photograph of an indigenous family, grinning from cheek to cheek. An aging grandmother stands on the left, the elderly grandfather stands on the right holding a spear and carrying a traditional handwoven basket, while the mother and child stands in the middle. The child has pure white skin, looking nothing like the indigenous children living in Ratanakiri.

Tour centers offer village treks as well as homestays with indigenous families. Green and white highway signs point to “ethnic villages” only 10 km away from the city center. Carved wooden statues of indigenous women wearing traditional clothing and carrying handwoven baskets on their backs, decorate the local restaurants, as if paying homage to a lost, historic relic. Yet the indigenous people, also known as chunchiet piek thek (ethnic minority) or chunchiet daem (original ethnicity), walk to town every morning from their distant villages, oftentimes many kilometers away, to sell their meat and vegetables. They also comprise a majority of the population in Ratanakiri, although these numbers are dwindling as more and more of their land are being taken from them, stripped for lumber and replaced with cashew orchards and rubber plantations. The land is either being sold as governmental concessions or more often than not, stolen in a case of pure land robbery.

Before coming to the Northeast I had envisioned the perfect indigenous village tucked away in the misty highlands, but with access to the river for fishing. In this village there lived elders who were knowledgeable of village life before the introduction of modernity, middle-aged men and women who struggled to maintain their culture, traditions and animistic beliefs, and the younger and impressionable generation eager to assimilate and adapt to modern ways. There would be conflict amongst the generations, but the scenery would always be idyllic – the villagers hard at work in the fields and hunting in the forests for wild animals. The scenes would be punctured with revelatory myths and parables.

What I found was nowhere close to what I had imagined and I was severely disappointed. The villages were tucked away with river access, there were also elders and middle-aged men and women and many young children. But the scenery was less than idyllic. In fact, most of the villages we visited were empty. The villagers had abandoned their land to plant in distant fields since their villages were now prone to flooding from the Yali Dam upriver. The villagers wore modern clothes, drove motorcycles, smoke brand name cigarettes, and carried cellphones. Many of the villages along the Sesan River were littered with plastic bags and bottles, paper wrappings, and aluminum cans. And when we asked one village chief to take us by boat to the distant fields where the villagers worked, whether or not he would be paid was his first and primary concern.

The reality of what I saw did not fit with the idealism of what I had imagined. I wanted to reveal the natural beauty of Cambodia and its people. I wanted to show what would be lost if this beauty was not preserved. At every bend, at every twist and turn along the narrow dirt roads, I expected to find that idyllic village and symbol of natural beauty. But I felt like somehow I had arrived too late and the magic, mist, and fog had already disappeared.

I was surprised by my own disappointment and shattered expectations. I felt like a Western tourist in search of the noble savage, untainted, untouched by modern life. Cambodia is indeed moving quickly, faster than I or anyone could ever imagine. It will take time to understand this movement, to trace its course as well as its impact.

I realize the story is not in this lost beauty or in the disillusion of my expectations but in the cold and stark reality that the indigenous population along with their land, their culture and beliefs are indeed disappearing. They also remain one of the least educated and most marginalized and impoverished populations in the country. The story that must be told is not of a lost culture or tradition or a preserved ethnic relic, but of a people struggling every day to keep their land and maintain their dignity in the face of bold challenges as well as opportunities.

People help people

Located 75 km away from the city center of Stung Treng Province, Kbal Romeas village is situated between the meandering Sesan River, a major tributary of the Mekong River, and a jungle forest of towering maisak trees with broad green leaves. The Banong people, one of six indigenous groups living in Stung Treng Province, live here in Kbal Romeas village, yet their lives and the lives and livelihood of seven villages, 1,000 families, and 30,000 hectares of forested land, home to 500 species of wildlife are threatened by the impending construction of the Lower Sesan 2 hydroelectric dam by Electricté du Vietnam. If the dam is built, the village must move inland, 7km away from their village. They and other inhabitants in the area have already felt the impact of dams built upstream in Yunnan Province, China, Lao PDR, and the Yali Dam in Vietnam – low water levels, lower fish yields, contaminated drinking water, and waterborne diseases.

It was around mid-day when we arrived in Kbal Romeas village, sticky wet and humid from the slight, misty rain. We drove past a small, makeshift school lined with shiny wooden tables and chairs, but empty of students and teacher. The teacher is currently taking a course in town. It’s difficult to find teachers to commit to teaching in indigenous villages so remote, especially when salaries are paid so infrequently. The 25 USD per month salary are often paid every three months and rarely the full salary.

We searched for the village chief, but he was also away, taking a course in Rattanakiri and would not return until the evening the next day. His wife, Long Seung was the only one home with her four children. Her eldest son, age 15 years was studying in a school 100 km away from the village and living in a local dormitory. He and his female cousin are the only two in the village studying beyond grade six.

Long Seung introduced us to her brother-in-law, Srien Cheoun, the village medic. The village has changed significantly, he says. The villagers no longer wear their traditional clothing or live in their traditional huts. The village has even begun to adopt Khmer customs, cultures and religion. He tells us that during his parents’ time they only practiced animism, or the belief in local spirits. Now, the village houses a Buddhist pagoda. Multi-colored banners, the kind usually found in Buddhist temples, are strung across the village. But the most important change of all has been economical.

The villagers farm rice, hunt for wild animals and fish in the Sesan River. They only began selling fish and wild animals after the Khmer Rouge period. Before, everything was shared amongst all the villagers. Now, everything has economic value and can be bought and sold. When I asked the village chief’s wife, if she felt things had changed for the better, she was ambiguous:

“Today, we can have a better life than before because we can make money by selling what we fished and hunted in the forest. We can say that we are better because we can make money but we have less food for eating. For example, when we can hunt one wild pig, we will sell the whole body and just keep the head for eating.”

Before the villagers were able to catch 10 to 20 kg of fish in one evening. Now, they can only catch 3 kg. They only make 4,000 to 5,000 riels (1 – 1.25 USD) per kilogram, selling to a middleman from Banlung, Ratannakiri Province. The villagers must spend at least 200,000 riels or 50 USD a month on salt, seasoning, and medicine. For the last few years they have also had to buy rice. Flooding usually occurs once every three to four years. This year, the Yali Dam in Vietnam flooded the river three times, destroying most of their rice crops.

The villagers are also now suffering and dying from diarrhea and other waterborne diseases heretofore unknown in the village as a result of the dams built upstream. Diseases before were usually cured with traditional medicine. Now, the village medic dispenses modern medicine, which is still unable to treat some of the illnesses. Keo Mib, Chief of the Water Resource Committee, noticed many fish dying in the river and cattle also dying after drinking water from the river. The European Union and Oxfam have installed water bottles with filters in each home in the village. There is also a well from which the villagers draw their water. But it is uncertain whether the well may also be contaminated.

But the life of the villagers will change most dramatically when the new dam is built and they are forced to resettle seven kilometers away from their current home:

"There is no road accessible there. We can only go there by boat. We do not know whether the new forest (in the new location) houses good or bad spirits. If it has bad spirits, it will make villagers die or sick. Vietnamese workers who came to measure our farmland promised their company would compensate us everything. They will build new concrete homes for us, but they will be too small. We also want to be civilized like the other people wearing new clothes and sending our children to school. But it is really hard for us because we cannot even afford to buy rice.”

Before visiting Kbal Romeas village, I asked a villager in another village whether she thought life along the Sesan River had changed for the better. She was adamant that life today was indeed different:

“Fishing today is 100% different from the past. We cannot even afford to eat even though we fish the whole night. In the past, we share food among villagers but today everything is traded and exchanged for money. But it is good. A person who is hard working can have a better life, but the lazy one is still poor.”

One of the villagers in Kbal Romeas had just bought a small tractor, called yun keau, or cow machine, to help till his plot of soil. The village elders held a small ceremony to bless the tractor, laying out banana, incense, and even a small chicken to induce the well wishes of the spirits. The ceremony was to ensure the tractor would bring prosperity to its owner. I asked the owner how much he bought the tractor for. He said 10 million riels or 2500 USD. I asked him whether he would share the tractor with his friends and relatives in the village. He smiled and said he would not unless they paid him.

Following the ceremony all the elders gathered in the village elder’s home to offer another prayer and drink rice wine. As we sat I asked the eldest villager who had presided over the ceremony whether the tractor would be able to help the people in the village. He responded with a twitch in his eyes, “Machines never help people. People help people.”

We don't believe an individual should be on its own

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about visiting or living in other countries is the strong sense of community that is preserved in those cultures and the time that people always have to share, to listen, and to spend with friends and loved ones. Americans spend most of our hours working to pay bills, mortgages, loans, and mounting credit card debt. Some of us work two jobs to make ends meet. During the times when we are not working, we spend this time decompressing, watching television, eating, or shopping, but always consuming and buying things. We rarely have time to spend time or have a committed conversation with our families and friends.

I wonder how the people of Cambodia, with strong community and family ties, will cope with the transition to an industrialized and global economy. Extreme poverty and the quest for economic opportunity have already pushed massive internal migration from the provinces to urban centers and external migration to neighboring countries like Thailand and Malaysia. Entire villages throughout the country have been emptied of young women seeking employment in garment factories, restaurants, massage parlors, and karaoke bars in the cities. In the city itself, people are working harder and longer hours to make ends meet, to pay for increases in rent, electricity, food prices, and fuel - inevitable vestiges of economic prosperity.

As Cambodia races towards development, it seems like the only growth apparent are the external ones – skyscrapers, shopping malls, cellphone shops, large SUVs, expensive villas – while the growth of the mind, the spirit, the heart, and the community, is ignored. Economic opportunity for the very few are favored over education and social services for all. As individuals scramble for the top, there is an inevitable crash to the bottom for the majority of the population, barely struggling to survive. Most of these individuals are already recognized as marginalized – women, children, the elderly, and indigenous and minority populations.

Cambodia is not unique. The same phenomenon is being felt all over the world - from China to India, Mozambique to Jordan, Iraq, Brazil, Mexico and the United States. We are all waiting for the benefits of global economic prosperity.

In Fugitive Denim, by Rachel Louise Snyder, the story of denim and the borderless world of global trade, the author travels to Azerbaijan, of the former Soviet Union. Azerbaijan has a 2,000 miles oil pipeline, the world’s longest, extending from Baku all the way through Georgia and Turkey. The country claims oil and cotton as its major exports. Despite this, a third of the country’s population lives below the poverty line and the country is ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world. In the book the author meets with one of the cotton kings of Azerbaijan, who laments the current state of affairs: “We don’t believe an individual should be on its own; now we have only ourselves and our homes, but no community. Rich countries have human rights problems, too. People are trampled. We have riches, but no human rights. We are not part of anything bigger now.”

In our quest for economic development, perhaps we have forgotten about other kinds of development – communal, social, and spiritual - that bring meaning to our daily lives and existence.

Next week, as we travel to the Northeastern provinces of Cambodia – Stung Treng, Ratanakiri, and Mondolkiri – we will meet with the indigenous people who have lived their lives in deep connection with both water and land and the natural environment. With the onslaught of development in the area, they are faced with the threat of dissolution of their cultures, traditions, language, and livelihood. Will they welcome this change or will they fight to preserve what is still left?

The river moves with seasons

We tried calling Sa Li's cellphone several times, but failed to get through. Perhaps there was a problem with the server, or more likely, Sa Li had changed his number. It’s common for those living in remote areas of the provinces, outside of large city centers, to change their numbers as different servers become ineffective at different times.

So we decided to return to the small floating village of Kaoh Manou in Kampong Chhnang in search of Sa Li and his family, after not having seen them for nearly two years. The last time we visited them was in October 2008, when the water was high and the homes floated effortlessly along the river.

We did not recognize the place. Although the monsoon season had already begun, rain still had not yet fallen so the water level remained low and the dirt road leading to the boat dock was still dry. We asked one of the boat owners to take us to the small fishing village where Sa Li and a group of Cham Muslim families lived. They gave us a young boy about eight years old, to serve as our driver. He motored the boat and drove us down the river, past floating gas stations, homes, boat cafés, police stations, a small church with a prominent cross, and even a small floating school. But we could not find Sa Li and the young boy refused to take us any further.

Our young driver turned the boat around and proceeded to take us back to the dock. At a loss, we docked the boat and stopped to ask as to where Sa Li and his family might be. We found a small thatched hut with an old man sleeping in a hammock. We woke him, apologizing for the disturbance, and asked if he knew where Sa Li might be. “Ahhh, Sa Li lives here,” he said. “Just up the road.” We were puzzled. Sa Li and his family lived in a floating village, not on dry land. We followed him anyway as he led us up the small road and through the village. We passed a wooden, blue mosque on the right, which looked familiar. There were also other houses that were recognizable but they were all built on stilts on dry land.

We heard a shriek and there Sa Li was, as thrilled as we were to see him again. He led us to their home, the same home, but docked in a completely different place. During the dry season, their house floats near the main waterway. During the wet season, when the water has risen significantly, they will move their home back again, to float atop a small island (now dry) on the river.

Sa Li led us into the house and showed off his home proudly, which they had made many improvements to since we last saw them. Sa Li and his family were doing well. Sa Li bought fish from local fishermen and sold them in the market down the river in the city center. He was also working as an environmental officer for the local government, ensuring the fishermen were not fishing illegally and out of season. He was also monitoring the small farm plots along the river making sure no chemicals were being used.

Since the last time we saw Sa Li and his family they had bought some land in Ta Khmau and built a home in which their five elder children lived, knitting fishnets for a living. One of their elder daughters had stopped working in a garment factory. Sa Li’s wife, Sann Som, complained the work was tiresome, the pay was insufficient, and her daughter had no time to observe the five Muslim prayers required daily.

Sa Li and his family belong to approximately 500,000 Cham Muslims, an ethnic minority, living in Cambodia. They are all descendants of the Kingdom of Champa, once a thriving and powerful kingdom and now part of Central Vietnam. Kaoh Manou village is one of 35 Cham villages that still practice the ancient traditions and rituals of Champa. But this faction of Chams and their traditional custom is slowly dying out.

We asked Sann Som if she could prepare the same fried fish for us as last time served with green mango, mashed green tamarind, and hot chili peppers. Even two years later I could still remember the moist and sweet taste of the fish. But Sa Li had already taken the boat down the river to buy a fresh, live chicken, which they de-feathered and boiled into a soup with fresh basil leaves and lime. Sann Som, also prepared a dish of specially dried fish, which she flavored with sweet lime, garlic, and bright red chili peppers. All this was served with pearls of white jasmine rice harvested from the local rice fields.

As we ate lunch, dark clouds moved over the river and sheets of rain cut through the thickness of the heat. The river became a bright, glistening silver, punctured by large, gleaming droplets of water. We had to yell to hear the other speak.

As we ate our meal, Sa Li proudly brought an eggplant to show me. It was bright mustard orange. From the bottom it looked like an heirloom tomato. From the top stem down, it looked like a pumpkin. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Sa Li said the small farm plots that dotted the river were filled with beautiful vegetables like these. No chemical fertilizers were added. All, 100% natural. He also brought honey that was harvested from the river forests and used as traditional medicine. He told us about various roots that grew wild that cured ailments and when steeped in boiling water, made the skin shine and glow.

Life along the river moves with the seasons. From June to September, heavy rainfall brings high water and fish flowing downstream from the Mekong to the Tonle Sap River spawn in the river forests. During this time, fishing is strictly prohibited. But then spawning season ends and fishing commences again in October. The most fish is caught in January and excess fish turned into prahok, or fermented fish paste, a staple of every day Cambodian cuisine. January is also the season when the river is choked with bright, purple water hyacinth flowers called pkah komplauk, delicious when dipped in prahok.

But the seasons are changing. Water levels are decreasing, and less fish are making their way down from the Mekong to spawn in the river forests. The river forests and spawning areas are also being cut down for increased local use. The white egret, valued by the locals for their meat and delicious eggs, has also become scarce due to over hunting and the destruction of their natural habitat in the river forests.

More fisher families, especially from Vietnam, are crowding the rivers. And large fishing trawlers, also from Vietnam, dot the otherwise serene empty landscape of the immense Tonle Sap Lake. The nettings they use are small and fine, catching both small and big fish at once, allowing no fish to escape. The fishermen also fish without restrictions, making it impossible for Sa Li and other local fishermen to compete.

There are also other causes, unbeknownst to Sa Li and other members of the fishing village, contributing to the dissipation. Upstream, dams built by China, Laos, and Vietnam has decreased the natural flow of the river downstream and the consequential flow of fish as well. Another dam is also being planned upstream in Stung Treng Province along the Sesan River, a major tributary of the Mekong River.

Sa Li drove us down the river to meet some of his business friends, who also buy and sell fish in the city center. During the prohibited fishing season, they must pay 10,000,000 riels (approx. 2,380 USD) to the national Fishery Administration for the right to continue business as usual. Yet, the local fishermen, from whom they buy their fish, are still legally prohibited from fishing.