They shovel salt, sell trinklets, plant rice, process fish, pick through garbage, make bricks ... Karen Coats investigates Cambodia's child-labour culture.
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia.
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia.
Had I been born as Roeut Sokang, who is precisely my age, I would have three kids, aged 14, eight and five. For the hottest four months of every year, my family and I would live together in the salt fields of Kampot, in southern Cambodia. We would make the journey from our small farm, in Svay Rieng, many hours away, to camp in a wooden hut with dozens of others. The families here would come in droves, driven by necessity but never choice. I would dream of a time when my kids could go to school uninterrupted. All of my neighbours would share that dream.
My youngest child would play around the house, hunting for recyclables, still too young for the fields. But the rest of us would toil in the shallow ponds beneath a non-stop sun. We would shovel thick wet salt into baskets, one after another. We would lug those baskets, about 20 kilograms each, two at a time, on a bamboo pole. Back and forth we would trudge, from field to warehouse, where the salt would sit in piles seven metres high.
If we could afford socks, we would wear them to protect our feet from the gravelly salt and its hot, oily film.
That salt would be bundled into 50-kilogram sacks and shipped to Phnom Penh and Thailand, and points beyond. We would work each day until our muscles grew strong, our bodies lean, our arms and legs chiselled by repetitive motion. Each sack of salt would sell for the equivalent of $US2 ($2.30) on site - so cheap, our boss would let us take a small bag home for free. All that work, all day long, and the three of us together would earn just $US5 a day.
If I had been born as Roeut, this would be my life every dry season for 12 years straight - through the births of two children, through the end of war. I would go to work these days in peace time, no longer scared of attacks by Khmer Rouge soldiers. I would take my children with me - or else we could not eat. And had Roeut been born in my shoes instead, she would sit at restaurant tables far away, where the food is cooked in Kampot salt. She would lift a shaker over her plate and sprinkle her food with little white flecks. She would season her dishes with salt from a harvest that maybe, just maybe, my children and I helped shovel.
The differences between Roeut and me are manifest in countless ways - not just what we wear, where we sleep or the money in our pockets but also how our cultures interpret the image of her children working beside her, sweeping salt in the mid-day heat of a tropical sun.
My youngest child would play around the house, hunting for recyclables, still too young for the fields. But the rest of us would toil in the shallow ponds beneath a non-stop sun. We would shovel thick wet salt into baskets, one after another. We would lug those baskets, about 20 kilograms each, two at a time, on a bamboo pole. Back and forth we would trudge, from field to warehouse, where the salt would sit in piles seven metres high.
If we could afford socks, we would wear them to protect our feet from the gravelly salt and its hot, oily film.
That salt would be bundled into 50-kilogram sacks and shipped to Phnom Penh and Thailand, and points beyond. We would work each day until our muscles grew strong, our bodies lean, our arms and legs chiselled by repetitive motion. Each sack of salt would sell for the equivalent of $US2 ($2.30) on site - so cheap, our boss would let us take a small bag home for free. All that work, all day long, and the three of us together would earn just $US5 a day.
If I had been born as Roeut, this would be my life every dry season for 12 years straight - through the births of two children, through the end of war. I would go to work these days in peace time, no longer scared of attacks by Khmer Rouge soldiers. I would take my children with me - or else we could not eat. And had Roeut been born in my shoes instead, she would sit at restaurant tables far away, where the food is cooked in Kampot salt. She would lift a shaker over her plate and sprinkle her food with little white flecks. She would season her dishes with salt from a harvest that maybe, just maybe, my children and I helped shovel.
The differences between Roeut and me are manifest in countless ways - not just what we wear, where we sleep or the money in our pockets but also how our cultures interpret the image of her children working beside her, sweeping salt in the mid-day heat of a tropical sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment