Human Translation

I find that the people with the most straightforward suggestions for improving life in rural Cambodia aren't in the government, and don't work for large international organizations. They are the everyday people I talk to in the villages of Balang.

For example: Bet Wi is the 47 year old matriarch for a family of five living in Kroper village, one of the eight villages in Balang Commune. She is one of the 9,000 villagers we work with on our irrigation, clean water, and scabies projects. Kroper village, like many of the villages in the Commune, is not in the best of conditions. The Khmer Rouge fought in this area until 1998, and the scene of some of the last violence between the government and the rebels was just north of Bet Wi's house. This meant that the positive development activities that were going on all over Cambodia by the mid-nineties weren't happening in Bet Wi's area. She would have to wait for the violence to end before anyone could help her and her family escape the trap of poverty.

A few months ago we got the opportunity to talk to Bet Wi. At the time we we were interviewing people in Balang to learn how we can work with villagers to improve their lives. I remember talking to her; she was in a great mood because she had just recently finished building a roadside store, and was beginning to sell small snacks and bric a brac. The store was built with a small loan provided by HRND, a local Cambodian organization that works closely with us and with the community of Balang.

It was apparent Bet Wi had caught the development bug. She was looking toward the future and told us quite clearly what she saw as the major issues affecting her and her community. We asked her what was next needed to improve life in Kroper. She replied:

"The most important way to improve life in my community would be to repair the irrigation system so there is more water for farming in Balang Commune. Doing this will increase our income, and in the process improve all aspects of life, including health, education and nutrition for the people living in my village."

Its not surprising Bet Wi said this. Most of the people in Kroper village and the other seven villages of Balang are farmers. Their livelihoods and the livelihoods of their ancestors have always been rice and agricultural crops, stretching back generations to before the time of the great Angkor Empire, one thousand years ago. Cambodia was always an ideal locale for agriculture, because of its fertile soil and plenty of annual rainfall.

Unfortunately, the farmers of Balang don't have a way to store water from the rainy season for use year-round. Without a storage system, the farmers in our villages can only use the water half the year, and they can't grow enough during this time to make a decent living. The rest of the year they are forced by necessity to turn to activities other than farming.

For Bet Wi's family, this means that her husband must go off to the forest to harvest wood for extra income. Many other villagers in Balang do the same to make up for the lack of food and money they earn from farming. In crisis situations, people turn to the first work they can find to earn money. This is also the case in Balang, and logging in recent years has become one of the most common ways for farmers to earn a living here.

But logging in excess is unsustainable, and recently the intense logging around Balang has begun to show a strain on local forests. Some villagers living near Bet Wi discussed with us the rapid deforestation they were seeing all around them.

Met Sim, 69, said "A cartload of wood used to be worth 5,000 riel ($1.25). That was 2 years ago. Now because there is so little wood the value of a cartload has increased a lot, but it is so much harder to find enough wood that its not very profitable work anymore."

Another interviewee, Mot Ten, living in Popeil village southeast of Kroper, said "Foraging wood used to be a way for people to earn money here in Balang. Now almost all the wood is gone."

A lack of water resources made farmers become, out of desperation, loggers. But as farmers turned en masse to logging in their area to sustain their families, the forests around Balang were rapidly depleted. Now forests are further and further away from the villages where people like Bet Wi and Met Sim live. The isolated areas where villagers collect wood are a risk for landmines-every day we see those unlucky enough to have lost a limb earning a living by logging. Not only that, villagers logging in distant forests often have to stay for extended periods of time in the wilderness; in the nighttime these dense, humid jungles fill with mosquitoes carrying malaria to unfortunate victims.

This is what happens when poor people don't have a stable source of income-they turn to activities that are often unsustainable and even just plain dangerous. The problems of malaria, landmines and deforestation could all be avoided in Balang if there was enough water for farming, enabling the people to earn a dependable living. Villagers would also have more income to pay for healthcare, education and food, all necessities they currently struggle to afford.

Given living conditions in Balang, its no surprise Bet Wi was so emphatic in stressing a great need for a better water supply in the villages near her. We asked her if our proposed project, the reservoir and canal system at Trau Kod, was a good solution for the problem of water storage. She said:

"If you put a dam at Trau Kod it will benefit this area a lot. With Trau Kod dammed, we can grow many things, even vegetables and fruits in the dry season. Without the dam, its not possible to make a living off of only farming in this area."

I agree with Bet Wi. Building a reservoir and canals at Trau Kod will give the villagers of Balang the solid foothold needed to climb out of the desperate conditions they now live in. It will allow them to leave the distant, dangerous forests and return to farming close to home with their families. It will change everything for the better in this impoverished part of rural Cambodia.

The discussions I had with Bet Wi, Met Sim and Mot Ten I took to heart. Now, many months later, we are finally able to work on a solution to their water storage and irrigation problems, a solution which will help them cultivate the land instead of deforesting it.

The Trau Kod reservoir and canal project has been under construction for a month and a half now. We broke ground on March 17th with the Governor of Siem Reap Province in attendance to inaugurate the occasion (that's him in the excavator "breaking ground"). By next rainy season, May 2008, we hope to finish. The irrigation system for Mot Ten, Met Sim and Bet Wi will be fully functioning and ready to help farmers grow enough to live a comfortable life, without having to turn to unsustainable forestry or worse.

But it won't help just Bet Wi and her neighbors; it will help 9,000 other villagers living in and around Balang. It will mean that Balang will have stability once again, after decades of violence and poverty.

Bet Wi said it best, and she said it simply. More water for farming is what the villagers of Balang need most of all. We've made it our job for the next year to translate her words, her dream, and the dream of many others in Balang, into action.

[all quotes provided by the villagers of Balang were translated by our field assistant Chai]