Cambodia: The field trip

All our workshops usually include a visit to the “field” (or a community where our partners have a research project). This time we had a choice between several trips, and I chose to go a fishing village. This was quite interesting as the village is usually under water this time of the year (rainy season), but because of the visible effects of climate change, the rains haven’t been strong enough to make the lake overflow, so we could see that all houses are built on stilts. There was even a floating police station. We were told that by this time each year the houses all end up in water up to the second floor (they are designed as such), and the villagers end up moving around by boat instead of a car. One of the more interesting things in the community was a “floating” forest---trees that have adapted to be submerged under water during part of the year, but are above water during the dry season---this forest fulfils a number of important livelihood functions for the community during both seasons.

Fishing village

Our next stop was a visit with a Fishery and Forestry Community as well as some local government officials---and the meeting was in a pagoda where the monks were chanting prayers, people were having lunch, several kids were playing, and two dogs were fighting…again, all in a pagoda, that certainly appeared the center of social activity in this small community.
Our next stop was another pagoda where we actually had lunch! This was a newer pagoda with the paintings about the life of Buddha on the walls and the ceilings. After lunch, we even had to go through a small ceremony of making a donation for the maintenance of the pagoda to the resident monk.

Our "lunch" pagoda
After lunch, we went to visit a forestry community, which had their own community forest---their interesting story was tied up with the bloody history of Khmer Rouge. On a short, but very sweaty hike to the forest, I saw a slash-and-burn field for the first time. Even though it was a long day, I really learned a lot about the everyday life of the poor resource-dependent Cambodian communities and their difficult history.