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.