A TOUCH OF REALITY - A reflection

April 2020 

The last time I paid a visit to Kbal Romeas village[1], located along the Sesan River, was in July 2017[2], right before the demolition of Sreh Pok bridge. The bridge was a strategic physical infrastructure, connecting the village to National Road No 78 and Stung Treng provincial town.​ Haven’t been to this village since made me feel I have been disconnected from the village, the community and their struggle to rights, life and identify over the past 30 months of its settlers. But my conviction lies in the fact that being a close observant to the situation that evolved, it transformed the remaining collective of indigenous Bunong in Kbal Romeas village are able to arrive at today. This blog serves as a reflection especially on the brief engagement in early March 2020 where I reconnect with the community, its leaders and hearing about their current condition. I visited Kbal Romeas village (about 4-5 Kilometer from the existing village) where the remaining hold out group has been living for the last 2 years.

August 2020

We returned in early August to join the communal celebration of the World Indigenous People's Day. It was a condition I made the organising team to ensure a trip to the submerged village of Kbal Romeas was included in the program. 

So it was 5.40 in the morning when we set off on Kor Yun to leave for the old village. I was looking forward to it with a growing mix of feeling. After over six years of closely observed the evolving struggle local people engaging in the plight to remain on their ancestral land, I witnessed the progressive completion of the dam construction and what await in the village I used to walk the ground. Continuous official announcement coming from the authority for the people to make their move, to accept the allocated house in the resettlement site and make their way to the site before the operation of the dam started, scheduled for late 2017.

As we got off the Kor Yun to board the boat to Kbal Romeas village, the sun did not rise; a gloomy weather seemed to speak directly to the feeling of what await for us to witness.  A landscape of  water, perfectly still, in this early morning hour appears just like a sleeping child, so deep in sleep. But as the boat maneuvered its way and approaching the village entrance, I cannot help but observed the slight current of water flow; this is where is the main body of the Sesan River lie, the current signifies the weak flow regime. This, you can hardly distinguish if you haven’t been to this area in its original setting.

 

The standing dead tree in the dam reseviour -
as we approach out to Kbal Romeas villages inundated.
Photo by Author/Aug 2020 

Back in 2014 when I accompanied my colleague on a field mission to conduct the baseline for the Mekong Inclusive Civil Society in Water Governance project, we stayed overnight in the village, spoke to youth leader of Kreung ethnic about his passion to protect the forest and river resources that means everything to the indigenous identify and traditional practice and way of lives. Our interview with him was conducted on bamboo-bench - like bed floor posted on stools  on the riverbank of the Sesan River. The interview comprised laugh but also tears shedding  as he recalled the journey of struggle he went through being an active member in the struggle to defend their resources. The memory also included me and my colleague took a bath, sitting on a dead tree that has fallen by the side of the riverbank, and our sudden jump out of the water when I spotted a leech swimming away from the tree hole.

 

Our boat passed through a school where the water reached the level of what look like the floor of the classroom. We could easily spotted the school because of the red-zinc roof makes it stands out but the old and decaying wooden wall and window speak to a building that once home for young children studying lesson, learning and making joyous sounds during the break time. All of a sudden, a message of Education for All doesn’t hold the intended meaning, for the kids in this village at least. Since the final call for moving to the new resettled site, access to education and the pledge from the villager (one of the six key demands) to keep the community volunteer teacher remained teaching in Kbal Romeas villagers feel so far away a reality. As the process to get villagers to move the resettlement site accelerated back in 2016-17, the community volunteer teacher supported were cut off and students left without classes.  

 

We boated pass the school into the village, the scene in front of my eyes is a total different to what was in my memory. A shady villages, covered with green trees and a cool chill atmosphere is replaced with a silent, lifeless abandoned collection of houses. Trees stood tall with no leaf, all brownish, lifeless, only skeleton of the house-frame remains to be seen. During the wet season where water often fills the dam reseviours, the village is flooded – up to eight months. During the dry season, between Jan-March, the volume of water in the reseviour is low and therefore the village experienced the dried up  with lifeless tall trees stood idly in the setting, the same as when I was visiting the newly resettled village back in early March this year.

 

Images of houses in the old Kbal Romeas village during dry season (Feb) &Wet season (Aug). 

Top photo supplied; photo below take by author - Aug/2020

 

As the boat moved slowly in between the empty houses, I recalled the cool shady villages road I walked through in 2014, 2015 and 2016 during my visit. A colleague and I used to stop by a house where the indigenous women was making the steam bamboo shot that would later became an integral ingredient for the indigenous soup she would prepare for her family.  

Photos of scenes from the village as we boated in between rows of abandon houses. Photos by author - August/ 2020

 

On the day this post is blog is being finalised and shared is the 15th day of Pchum Ben; many Cambodian would have been to pagoda at least once during each of the 15 days period, as we would like to send merit to the deceased family members, loved ones, parents, siblings and those without family to think of and pray for them in their offerings to the Buddhist monks. Have we ever even for a split moment put ourselves into the shoes of the people who connection to their ancestor has been cut in the name of development and ask ourselves how that might feel like? To be in the shoes of those whose deceased ancestors now buried deep in the grave covered by reseviour water of a hydropower dam project!!! If we have to send merit to them during this very Pchum Ben festival, how would that look like? 

As frequent visitor, to witness the changes, to hear the cry and emotional express from women and men and young people recalling how this separation from their land, their home, their identity has been for them... it is hard to put into words. Maybe human society has evolved so fast and so much ahead that we put the value over different things, to me, to the people from Kbal Romeas, to our policymakers and people in the position of power, to the company head and their staff, and to the general public... what may mean so much to me might be meaningless to others. Whose narrative got told and to who as readers, the listeners and the viewers?  Can we also make time to hear the narrative of who speaking from the deepest place of the pain they have been living through?

-end-

12.28pm - 17. Sept 2020 - part I

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[1] In this blog, Kbal Romeas village refers to the old village located along the Sesan River that is affected by the reservoir of the Lower Sesa2 dam since the operation in late 2017.