Cambodia is a place of so much beauty and so much pain, side by side.
I can think of a thousand examples. The lovely smile and grace of an old woman, who lost her husband and children during the Khmer Rouge. The crystel clear ocean waters, edging sandy beaches trashed with plastic bags and old syringes. The hope of one new baby born with better medical care, and the despair of a mother who has no money for a doctor when her baby is sick. If the doctor is even at his office at all. This period of peace and economic growth after so much conflict, yet marked by land-grabbing and sex-traffiking and continued abuse of those most poor and vulnerable. The unfathomably lush and endless forests, and the massive (and often illegal) deforestation of huge swathes of Cambodia's land.
Prey Veng actually means "long forest"...a name that evokes images of endless trees and natural resources. But in case you haven't noticed from our pics of Prey Veng, such is not the case. Most of it has been chopped down for rice paddies. Which isn't necessarily wrong, since folks need space to farm, but it has resulted in more droughts, more floods, more dry wells due to dried-up groundwater.
During a recent trip up noth to Cambodia's Mondulkiri province, we were reminded of what a long forest might be like. Mondulkiri is ridiculously lush and beautiful, with its "ocean of trees" vista, and a seemingly endless supply of passion fruit, avocadoes, strawberries, mangosteens, mangoes, cashews...
Yet even in Mondulkiri the signs of "development" are painfully evident. Enormous stretches of once forested land, all chopped down for lumber. Or to plant foreign investors' rubber plantations. Tiny new wooden homes errected along the sides of the highway, a reminder of the thousands of Cambodians who have been evicted from their homelands in the past few years.
And just last week, a prominant anti-logging Cambodian activist was shot and killed by military police. My desperate hope is that this would be investigaed. That the government wouldn't excuse and ignore such cases as they so often do.
Sometimes it's very hard to have hope here. The pain overshadows the beauty, even while they co-exist. And yet as I look back over our photos of Mondulkiri, and as I see the smiling faces of the ladies back in our Prey Veng market, it's hard to not retain some hope that the beauty of this place can win.
{ a few photos of our Khmer New Year vacation to Mondulkiri }