Battambang, KH – Rural life is hard – 15 Jan 2015

It has been over three decades since the end of the terrifying Pol Pot regime, when his Khmer Rouge movement led Cambodia and oversaw the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Cambodians who died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork. This was out of a total population of 7 to 8 million.

During this 1975 to 1979 period of death and despair, almost all teachers, former military officers, and people with education, light skin or wealth were killed. This killing brought the country to its knees and created pervasive poverty. The SYI family is one of the many families who have suffered at the hands of the regime.

During the regime, the mother lost brothers, sisters and relatives who died mainly from overwork and starvation. Many people in the Battambang area worked on digging what became known as the Killing Dam. The local people were rounded up into camps and put to work while receiving rice water with very little rice as their daily ration.  Mrs SYI still has nightmares about that time.

Since the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge, life has been very hard for the rural poor. Many people are not educated and are living in very poor conditions. The SYI family is living in Battambang province in a community that is near to the Killing Cave where people were clubbed on the back of the head and fell into the cave, those who did not die immediately were simply left to a slow death in the cave.

SYI cares for her one child and 80 year old mother who is living with her. Her husband has traveled to Thailand to work because he could not find work in Cambodia. So she alone has to shoulder all the burdens of the family’s daily life, supporting a child who is in school and the old mother who is sick and disabled.

She spends much of her time harvesting morning glory from local ponds and rivers for selling. Sometimes, she works in the rice fields, in a farm or in a restaurant washing dishes. In addition to all these jobs, she also plants some vegetables to consume and sell.The Healthy Life Reinforcement garden shop team met SYI when they built a Food Always IN The Home (FAITH) garden in her community. She was very keen to have a FAITH garden of her own, because she hoped that the garden would give her additional food supply and income with which to support her child and old mother.

SYI is a very helpful person.  She helped the garden shop team dig and pull all the grass in the area selected for the garden. She is also appreciative and very happy with the vegetables she harvests from her garden.SYI works very hard in her garden, making it very green and productive. She plants morning-glory, salad, lettuce and long bean. She told Salee that “I use some of the vegetables for daily food and sell some to the market”. As a rule, she can earn from US$ 2 to US$ 10 each time she harvests. While this money is not enough for all her family’s living costs, it has provided a large contribution to her child’s education and her mother’s medical needs.

Since she needs to use money earned from the garden vegetables for her child and mother, she lacks funds to buy seeds for re-planting her garden. Therefore, the garden shop plans to supply her with additional seeds and support until she is strong enough to stand by herself.