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.