Shut up and shovel

Vernsai Village, Ratanakiri.

To the edges of CambodiaSince the dengue’s finally making a retreat, I’ve been making the most of my time of unpaid leave to explore the corners of Cambodia that otherwise I might never have had time to see due to the difficulty of getting anywhere fast in the wet season. Last week, I visited the Mlup Baitong offices in Stung Treng and spent a couple of nights in our CBET village, Preah Rumkel, from where you can look back south and see the Laos border (how the land is laid out so that we’re still actually in Cambodia I’m not sure because we definitely passed the border in the boat and we couldn’t drive because I didn’t have my passport...). Today, I’m on a field trip with another volunteer’s organisation, NTFP, in Vernsai village an hour and a half north of the already-remote Ban Lung in Ratanakiri province. It’s hard to believe that this quiet backwater cluster of houses which becomes almost isolated in the wet season due to the poor condition of the roads is in the same country where new KFC takeaways and multi-national banks are opening up every day in the city.

As in most of Cambodia, the biggest problem facing peasant farmers here is land grabbing by the government and government-endorsed foreign ‘investors’. Land which has been farmed sustainably for centuries is commandeered by companies flash with cash and already impoverished Cambodians are left with no ways of making a livelihood or supporting their families. Fighting this process is a long and arduous journey and as yet there’s only one small piece of land in the whole country which is protected and legally belongs to the community who live there; even this is still under threat from illegal loggers who can pay bribes to the necessary people. In Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces, where well over half the population are indigenous and often only speak their own languages, exploitation of the vulnerable and unrepresented is even more rife. Imagine trying to combat this corruption and empower a community to protect their own rights to farm their ancestral land when even the concept of land ownership is foreign and maybe you’ll begin to see how complicated the issue of secure livelihoods is in Cambodia.

Shut up and shovel

In Vernsai, I’m sat watching the morning fishing boats come and go but already at only 9am I’m uncomfortably full of food and drink because, yet again, my lack of language skills has ended up with me being plied with more food in a few hours than the average Khmer person eats in a week. I’ve already been taking advantage of being in the north of Cambodia where the coffee is chocolatey, strong, and addictive, always served with a big helping of condensed milk.

I’ve been talking with (or, been talked at) by three men who may be from China, Vietnam or Laos. I’m not sure which but they speak some Khmer, Laos, Vietnamese and Chinese but no English. As with most people I’ve met in Cambodia, they’re friendly almost to the point of being intrusive but keep offering to take me to see their homes, meet their cows, children and wives (in that order!) and I feel like I’ve been unforgivably rude when I make my excuses about waiting for my lift and refuse the trip.

This being Cambodia, the conversation eventually turned to food but I was caught off guard by a question I really should have understood, “have you tried coconut juice?” (Of course I have – how can anyone be in Cambodia for a week, let along 5 months, and not have been pumped full of the stuff by overzealous landlords, work colleagues and neighbours? But that’s besides the point.) As usual when I don’t know exactly what I’ve been asked to try I answered “ot tey, ot squall” (no, I don’t know it) which usually gets me off the hook and the conversation moves on without spending ages trying to get me to understand the word for something that, when it’s finally produced, is often a random inedible looking leaf or knobbly tuber but rarely anything worth getting excited about. However, this time, it landed me with a coconut bigger than the size of my head, paid for by the Chinese (?) man. I’m always aware of how much more money I have than most people here so this sort of act of generosity isn’t to be taken lightly. Also, since I’d been incredibly rude in turning down the offer of a trip to see his cows, I smiled, pushed down any thoughts about my waistline and how full I already was and nodded an “mmm, chnang” (delicious) which was met with huge smiles back at me and a bunch of tamarinds being pushed into my bag. You’ve got to love this country.

Not all the food I’ve been plied with these last few weeks has been quite so tasty. When I visited Preah Rumkel, the CBET site of Mlup Baitong in Stung Treng, myself and Chhe, a MB colleague, were invited to the village chief’s house for dinner. Being the only house in the village with electricity (from a generator) it was obvious which house we were headed to as Chhe wobbled along on an ancient moto with me desperately clinging on to the back and hoping that in the pitch black we weren’t going to hit a passing water buffalo, drive off the river bank into the Mekong or, more likely, fall off the rickety planks across the 3ft deep channels which dissect the path. I’m certain walking would have been much safer but Cambodians will generally think you’re crazy if you suggest going anywhere on foot when there’s a perfectly good moto to use.

Most people in Preah Rumkel speak Laos as their first language and Khmer as a second language. However, since Chhe only speaks a little Laos and I speak only a little Khmer with no hope at understanding Laos, the evening started off in a slow and clear Khmer which was easier to understand than any other I’ve heard from a non-barang person. This made the fact that the whole extended family had been invited (not implausibly with the sole purpose of meeting The Barang) a little less intimidating.

However, within 10 minutes of us arriving, a 2 litre bottle of home-brewed rice wine in an old Jonny Walker bottle had been produced and placed in front of Chhe and I with one shot glass between us. Without too much hesitation I bit my lip and began thinking up my reasons for refusing it.

1) Rice wine is notoriously pungent and the cloudy beige colour is distinctly off-putting.

2) I hadn’t drunk alcohol for nearly 2 months and I’m a lightweight at the best of times. I didn’t fancy getting merry and possibly ill again when I was an hour and half boat ride from Stung Treng in the jungle.

3) Being told quite so many times that I’m a bad woman for drinking beer and that Khmer women don’t get drunk, I don’t want to cause offence or be too culturally insensitive in a traditional village where I have to work in the future.

4) Chhe was already downing his second shot and the moto ride here was hard enough sober never mind if we were both drunk.

Despite so many good reasons for me saying no, there was never really going to be a choice so I was welcomed in to the men’s drinking club like it or not. It didn’t actually taste as bad as I’d feared, although that’s probably due to the first shot burning off my taste buds, but even just a few tiny shots was enough to make my Khmer tongue loosen up and the room spin. Unfortunately, Chhe, always the centre of attention, seemed to be handed a shot after every bite of dinner and soon stopped translating anything into English. The chief seemed to forget he was meant to be speaking Khmer and kept ardently trying to tell me things in Laos and the other boys in the family forgot their inhibitions and started trying to teach me Khmer dances. Add to this image several screaming kids, a TV playing bad karaoke songs through a wall of professional speakers loud enough to make the floor reverberate, half the village peering in through the door trying to watch the TV or/and The Barang, flickering fluorescent strip lights from a generator which couldn’t keep up with the music and lighting demands and ever flowing rice wine.

On top of this, trying to navigate my way through the food was a joke as, with the exception of the rice, I’d never seen anything like what had been prepared. By my right hand was a pile of leaves which, from their appearance, might as well have just been a random handful pulled from the nearest hedge. Some were delicious, others were revolting and since no two looked alike, you couldn’t be sure what you’d be getting in the next mouthful. The leaves were used instead of cutlery to scoop up what turned out to be the Laos-style prahok (fermented fish paste – much tastier than it sounds but you really don’t want to get a mouthful with the guts in it). I really can't tell you what I was eating, partly due to the rice wine, partly because Chhe forgot his English and the family only knew the Laos names anyway, but mainly because it was all so new. In the end, the only thing to do was shut up and shovel it in. With all senses on overload, it was definitely one of my most surreal nights here yet.