"You are the Eggs who shall never go against the Stone"

On the 19 and 20 of October 2015 was the significant days I would like to remember. Our organisation would run two sessions at the Greater Mekong Forum held in Phnom Penh on the topic of the gender impact on communities affected by the hydropower dam development project. In order to present the issues and the intervention of our work more interactive, the team suggested that we put out the play to illustrate the issues. Thus, we invited an international consultant that have many years of experience running the forum theatre to facilitate the team discussion on how to present the issues.

We spent the 19 of October within a room with our facilitator, Jhalmar. He is indeed an interesting, an interesting joker. This is confirmed much stronger to me through my informal chat with him later during a day-out trip organised by our office. Anyway, the forum theatre - or The Theatre of the Oppressed  as I like to call -  is an interesting methodology in which the audience of the theatre are not just the mere audience but an engaged audience that could say 'Stop' at any point in time when the play is on-going and replace the role of one of the protagonist to offer suggestion to the problem being faced in the whole play. This is practically 'a rehearsal of the future'. You usually rehearse the future with the ideal situation but the situation, the methodology argues, is not always ideal that sometime it is not possible or require more than just one factor/actor to take the action.

We manage to put out three scenes: firstly, the issues around the forced resettlement from the area affected by hydropower dam development and dam reseviour, the imbalance of power relation at the household, the community and the relationship level between the investor-authority-community-family-women. Secondly, the change of gender roles in the household once the family resettled to a new site and women take on more active roles as income earners while the husband resorts to more domestic and caring roles for the house and the children. Thirdly, the protest by affected community as the dam developer does not keep the promise of the resettlement plan and the repression from the provincial and local level.

A moment of laugh with our talented joker when
we reflect on the role we play and the 'proposed solution'

While we put together the different pieces of the play, we need to also write the play script. What is interesting is that it is the chance for me to put together the different line of information that I accumulate through my years of interviewing, talking and collecting the stories from victims of the violence of different form. The argument the men/perpetrators always made about using/resorting to violence, the gender stereotyped about the domestic and breadwinner roles of men and women, the projection of imbalance of power between different entity whether it be individual or organisation... all those just pouring out of my brain. I played the role of a once domestic household but becoming a bread winner of the family at the resettlement site who go into argument with her husband at the end of an exhaustive day of selling produced at the market. While we perform our play - for the second time - someone shout STOP and asked to replace the role of the husband. That means a much more challenging role for me and i have to respect from my character point of view which could be continue the anger attitude or a compromised attitude. I respond with the earlier character.

Unfortunately, the proposed solution to the issue at hand proposed by 'my new husband' role is to migrate to a new place and start the new life all over again. Acknowledge that it was his mistake to sign away our right when he signed the relocation site contract, the relocation is just not appealing especially for a family of two children and particularly because moving to another site means that he will be able to get a job and so I could go back to my traditional women's role. How typical that the solution is to reinforced the traditional roles assigned to men and women by 'society'.

Looking back at the forum and the very many session run at the forum, it appealed to me that the participants that come to our session remembers the characters that each of us play at each scene and the key messages we would like each participant to bring back home.

On 20th of October, it was a very interesting day. In the morning, I was rehearsing my role as a community woman affected by the dam project, relocated to a new site, taking on a new role as a breadwinner in the family and end up having an argument with my husband about our roles and the suffering we went through as poor family. In the afternoon, I had to attend a meeting with the donor talking about how much we have spent implement our program. Sitting at the table among the very many key actors working on  the Mekong water program, I laughed alone at the contradiction of roles I play throughout my day.

The other observation I made about my engagement in the whole week is the very fact that here we are coming together as research, scientist, development practicioners and people who care about the Mekong and other river basin. We sit and meet and eat and use the space at the Cambodiana hotel, whose owner is the same man who own the Royal Group company, a partner company building the lower sesan 2 hydropower dam project in the north of Cambodia. The same man own the company and the hotel and the mobile phone service majority of participants at the conference probably use, the same man whose profit-driven idea cause the displacement and suffering of the indegenous community and the affected family at the centre of our very forum theatre we put out. And Yes, our play's title is "you are the eggs who shall never go against the stone".