![The ancient village of Kbaal Romeas has been flooded. Credit: Kris Janssens / IPS](https://static.globalissues.org/ips/2024/01/cambodiarituals1.jpg)
RATANAKIRI PROVINCE, Cambodia, Jan 18 (IPS) – “What on earth are you going to do in Tropeang Krohom?” The driving force of the minivan turns his head and provides me a puzzled look. Few passengers wish to be dropped off in a settlement between two provincial cities.
Tropeang Krohom or ‘Crimson Pond’ is situated at a junction of the primary highway. The identify refers back to the typical blood-red earth on this province of Ratanakiri.
From this level, a motorcyclist will take me to his village. It’s a experience of greater than two hours, alongside bumpy and unpaved roads, with giant trails of mud behind passing vans. The leaves of the grayish-green timber are lined with a thick layer of the identical crimson sand.
Stretched out valleys
Everyone seems to be en path to someplace. Some are packed calmly, others carry cartloads of greens, cassava or sugar cane stalks, to be transported from the sphere to the market. A road vendor travels from one village to a different on his motorcycle, loaded with small gadgets on the market equivalent to cleaning soap, sweet, or gentle drinks.
About 1 % of the full inhabitants of 17 million inhabitants dwell on this space. This province primarily consists of villages, every populated by 60-something households, unfold throughout huge valleys. I am going to Kbaal Romeas (actually ‘head of the rhinoceros’) subsequent to Srepok, a tributary of the Mekong.
Cambodia’s northeast is house to greater than 20 ethnic teams or Indigenous Individuals. They every have their very own story and explicit customs, from dying cults to like huts, they usually have particular languages, though these days hardly ever used.
Younger folks want switching to Khmer, the language of the most important Cambodian ethnicity, which is slowly wiping out the others.
On this province, the conflict between custom and growth turned painfully clear in 2017, when an enormous dam was constructed on the confluence of the Srepok and the Sesan rivers in Ratanakiri’s west. The ability plant turned an inhabited space of ??34,000 hectares into an enormous water reservoir. 1000’s of residents needed to be relocated to a spot with newly constructed homes and growth choices. However about 50 ‘Pounong’ households refuse to depart.
At first, they used small boats to row over the flooded village highway. Later, the everyday shaded areas beneath the stilt homes slowly full of water.
![Tompoun children want to show me the ghost forest, but they are still afraid. Credit: Kris Janssens / IPS](https://static.globalissues.org/ips/2024/01/cambodiarituals2.jpg)
Cussed resistance
In the present day, the villagers dwell just a little additional away, nonetheless inside rowing distance of the outdated spot. Sarcastically, this space near a hydroelectric energy station will not be related to the grid. Individuals right here do not wish to pay for electrical energy from that ‘doomed’ dam anyway. A Cambodian NGO supporting the cussed resistance is offering photo voltaic panels to energy night time lights and to cost cellphones.
“I’ve been to the brand new village a number of occasions to go to a sick relative, however I’ll by no means dwell there,” says Poo, 64. He exhibits me his rice area, which has simply been harvested. “This land is my id,” he provides. I do know a number of Cambodian phrases for “custom” or “origin,” however this man makes use of them multi functional sentence.
In line with many ethnic traditions, our bodies will not be cremated as within the Buddhist tradition, however buried. This additionally goes for Pounong folks, who consider that the spirits of the deceased are nonetheless wandering across the burial website. That is the primary motive why the neighborhood doesn’t wish to depart.
The cemetery of Kbaal Romeas is totally flooded and might now not be visited. To search out out extra about this dying cult, I journey to different villages in northeastern Cambodia, nearer to Laos and Vietnam. The present borders between the three nations of former Indochina have been established by the French within the Fifties, however these minority teams have been dwelling right here for much longer.
Within the Tompoun village of Katai, about 20 kilometers in a straight line to the Vietnamese border, I ask a younger girl to take me to the ‘prey khmaoch’ or ghost forest. She refuses. As soon as our bodies are ritually buried, they’re left to nature. Residing souls shouldn’t intrude any extra, she says.
5 youngsters are keen to information me if I promise we’ll keep collectively as a gaggle. I see two boys holding fingers, certainly one of them whispers he’s fairly afraid. As soon as within the forest, the one sounds we hear come from the dry leaves beneath our toes and from cawing crows excessive up within the timber.
Instantly, the primary grave seems in entrance of us. It’s a wood building with decorations and a stone stating the date of dying and an image of a girl with a typical pipe in her mouth. Different small wood graves, scattered across the timber, are in a sophisticated stage of decay. This place is macabre and peaceable on the similar time.
Water buffalo
The burial custom additionally exists within the Charai neighborhood. Leejapheuy, 68, sits on a bench within the sand beneath a canvas, in the midst of his village, Loom. A retired soldier who has lived on this village all his life, he has that assured perspective of somebody who’s seen all of it.
It seems he’s the sculptor who makes the wood animistic guards, defending the spirits. Within the dying forest, I see a statue of a person holding a gun and a sculpted elephant. Because the story goes, a water buffalo is to be slaughtered for each burial, however an increasing number of households are abandoning this apply as a result of the animal can simply price a number of hundred {dollars}.
The journey continues alongside winding grime roads and slim bridges, crisscrossing the tough panorama, which turns into one huge mud puddle in the course of the wet season.
Alongside the best way, we see employees on cassava plantations. 12-year-old Seth comes from Kandal province, greater than 500 kilometers south, subsequent to the capital metropolis Phnom Penh. He says he’s solely right here for the harvest and can return to highschool in his hometown afterward. “That is additionally a motive why conventional cultures disappear,” says Mana, 37, my motorcyclist. Seasonal laborers and momentary residents don’t observe the traditional customs.
The panorama modifications and we go miles of rubber plantations, recognizable by the black bowl on each tree trunk. “Ten years in the past these roads have been a lot narrower,” Mana remembers. “However these rubber firms have signed giant land concessions and wish to have the ability to drive their huge vans deep into the forest.”
Unique inhabitants retreating
Round midday we arrive in Ta Veng, one other village with elementary wood homes on sandy soil. A couple of neighbors are crouched on the bottom round a fireplace bowl with glowing charcoal. The lunch consists of home-harvested greens with sifted rice. Canine come operating in the direction of us, barking on the high of their lungs. Pigs roam freely. Barefoot youngsters shout from afar that guests have arrived.
We’re welcomed by Makara, who has married into this Prouw neighborhood. He limps a bit (“an anomaly from my childhood”), however that does not cease him from exhibiting us across the village. He finds conventional tradition attention-grabbing, however he thinks there may be additionally an necessary sensible facet.
“Monks within the Buddhist pagoda perform cremations without cost,” says Makara, “whereas funerals do price a bit.” He additionally notices that an increasing number of Khmer immigrants purchase land and plantations on this space. “The unique inhabitants are shifting deeper into the forest.”
Love hut
On the best way again we go a number of Kreung villages. This neighborhood is understood for its ‘love huts’, small personal homes the place daughters of marriageable age obtain boyfriends. The custom arose as a result of it’s troublesome to ‘date’ in a distant village.
“In my time, I had three lovers in a hut like that earlier than I met my present husband,” says Semapohean, 60, laughing. “And sure, the boys have been allowed to sleep over. One or two nights earlier than I’d ship them away.” Right here, it was women who obtained to decide on their favourite candidates. The customized is notable in a rustic the place marriages will not be essentially organized, however usually require household approval.
However at the moment the love huts now not exist. “Once in a while we construct one to indicate to vacationers, however these days folks use their telephones to satisfy one another”. As well as, households now dwell in bigger homes, the place the youngsters have a separate room and subsequently ample privateness. Semapohean doesn’t appear to thoughts that a lot.
Sookanjerai, 52, is extra pessimistic. “This new technology is simply too lazy to proceed the custom,” he says. Younger folks don’t essentially wish to depart the world, however they lose curiosity within the particular customs. Sookanjerai has little hope for the longer term “In a number of years from now everybody can have turn into Khmer and our ethnicities will probably be gone.”
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