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.