PHOTO ESSAY: Flooded Fields, Forgotten Farmers

For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die.
GENESIS 6:17

For the past two months, Cambodia has been ravaged by the worst floods in remembered history. While the recent flooding in Thailand has made international headlines, the equally devastating floods in Cambodia have mostly gone unreported. An estimated one million people have been affected in seventeen of Cambodia’s twenty-three provinces by floodwater as deep as two metres. Government officials claim that 247 people have died, although the real number is likely much higher.

The worst hit areas have been the low-lying provinces of Kampong Thom, Prey Veng, and Kampong Cham. Throughout the country, rice fields have been destroyed and it is feared that the Kingdom will face serious food shortages in the coming months. Official sources state that the flooding has completely ruined 190,000 hectares of rice paddy and damaged 390,000 more—an area that corresponds to nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s rice-producing land. A Council of Ministers spokesman has assured Cambodians that there will still be enough rice to meet both export and domestic needs, but the grounds for his statement remain ambiguous.

In addition to potential food shortages, the floods have created more immediate dangers. There has been a spike in mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue fever and there is currently a large-scale outbreak of diarrhea in the provinces—a major killer in the developing world. Submerged power lines and generators create the risk of electrocution, and decreased land area increases one’s chance of encountering venomous snakes, spiders, and large aggressive animals such as crocodiles and elephants.

Last month, the Cambodian government staged a dramatic helicopter rescue of more than 200 tourists stranded by flash floods at Bantey Srei, a 10^th century Hindu temple famous for its intricately carved red sandstone walls and archways. The government’s assistance to affected Cambodians, however, has been less spectacular.

On October 13, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that this year’s water festival would be cancelled in order to channel money and resources to flood relief. The water festival, Cambodia’s most important public holiday, marks the reversal of the Tonlé Sap river’s flow with three days of carnivals and boat races in the capital city. Last year, the festival ended in tragedy when more than three hundred people were trampled to death on a small bridge leading to the recently redeveloped Diamond Island.

A National Committee of Disaster spokesman stated that 76,000 flood-affected families have already received government assistance. While Cambodia has not requested international help, it has been receiving money and supplies from China, Singapore, the United States, Australia, Vietnam, Japan, and NGOs such as Save the Children. I spoke to several farmers on the tiny Mekong River island of Koh Trung in Kratie province. The majority of families in this agricultural community have seen their crops destroyed by nearly two metres of water. Each family has only been given a single aid package consisting of several cups of rice, a few packages of instant noodles, a bottle of fish sauce, and a packet of soup seasoning.

After more than a month, much of Cambodia still remains under water. Some speculate that the rampant deforestation of this once jungle-clad country may be partly to blame for the severity of this year’s flood. When Cambodia experienced its last major flood more than a decade ago, floodwater stayed on the ground for approximately ten days. As of today, October 22, 2011, water levels throughout this inundated country continue to rise.

The following photographs were taken in September and October in Kratie, Kampong Cham, Siem Reap, Battambang, and Pursat provinces. The dramatic nature of the flooding was made particularly clear to me near Kratie. On September 20, I took a boat tour of the upper reaches of the Mekong River to see Cambodia’s elusive pod of freshwater dolphins. The boat driver claimed that the river had swelled to nearly double its normal width, and along its banks, we could see green shrub-like tufts: the tops of submerged trees. When I returned two days later to conduct interviews in the community, the cement bench I had previously sat on near the water’s edge was nowhere to be seen: the river had risen by more than a metre in 36 hours. That same boat driver said he had never seen flooding so bad in all of his fifty years.

The following day, all the streets in town were flooded. It was time to leave. I took a bus to Kampong Cham and was greeted by the smiling young faces of soldiers filling sandbags. The town’s riverfront promenade was completely inundated. While the people watched with horror as the Mekong rose, threatening their homes and businesses, laughing children splashed in the dirty brown pools that had collected between the rows of sandbags. In the surrounding villages, the only dry land was a raised strip of narrow tarmac. This highway was a condensed tableau of village life: cows, chickens, pigs, and children filled the road while adults watched mournfully from the islands that were their stilted houses.

Further afield, the dirt roads of Kampong Thom province were soup, and in the town of Siem Reap, I had to roll up my pants to navigate around the tourist quarter. When I visited Kbal Spean, a river famous for its thousand Shiva lingas, the water was so high that no ancient stone penises could be seen. In Battambang, river water lapped the back doors of stilt-raised houses, and in Pursat province, only the roofs were visible of the stilted houses that lined the mighty Tonlé Sap lake. The thousand families in the nearby village of Kampong Luong, however, were unaffected: their wood and corrugated iron homes forever float on oil drums, bundles of mature bamboos, and dugout canoes.

On the ride back to Phnom Penh, the bus driver told me not to put my rucksack in the bus’ undercarriage. As we drove through Kampong Chhnang province, I learned why: the bus ploughed through nearly a metre of water on National Highway 5, one of Cambodia busiest roadways. Back in Phnom Penh, I was glad to find my neighbourhood dry. Others in the capital, however, have not been so lucky: the predominately Cham Muslim communities nestled between National Highway 1 and the Tonlé Sap river have spent several weeks sleeping in waterlogged beds.

(click photos to enlarge)

DENGUE & DEATH FEAR DREAMS

Aedes aegypti: the culprit

Dengue. Two weeks of hot and cold fever vision head pains, shakes and splatters. It came in three acts, climax in the third at an empty guesthouse in Kep, Cambodia: a half-ghost town seaside resort where squatters live in the charred roofless ruins of French colonial villas that are slowly being reclaimed by the tangled green of the surrounding jungle. For three days, the rain came down without respite. Waves crashed over the seawall; streets flooded. And in my bedbug-infested room, I sweated and feared. The fever came stronger. I don’t remember night number nine.

Morning of day ten: I think it’s time to see a doctor.

I pulled myself out of bed, each limb a tired heavy log. Cowering under my mildewy plastic poncho, I stumbled five hundred dizzy rainy metres to the little restaurant where a persistent waiter had tried to sell me tours when I first arrived.

“Hello friend,” the man said, seeing me emerge from the rain. He wore the same striped golf shirt as when we first met. He was young, mid-20s at the oldest, with a faint wisp of a moustache on his smooth brown face. “You come back. I remember. You want boat tour today? You want visit old temple?”

“No,” I said, “I’m sick. I need to see a doctor.”

“So, you no want tour?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“I want to see a doctor. Is there a doctor in Kep?”

“There is doctor over there,” the waiter said, waving to the distance.

“Does he speak English?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Can you take me?”

The waiter frowned, looked me up and down. “You buy tour?”

“Oh man, not today. I have diarrhea. Do you understand? Di-a-rrhe-a. My head feels like it’s going to explode”—I mimed—“But when I’m better, I SWEAR I’ll only buy tours from you. I swear.”

The waiter thought this over. He hailed a guy dozing on a plastic chair, spoke to him in rapid-fire Khmer.

“This my brother,” he said. “He drive tuk tuk. He take you.”

“Does he speak English?”

“No.”

“How will the doctor know what’s wrong with me?”

The waiter sighed, shook his head. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I come. I translate. You buy tour next time.”

“I buy tour next time.”

We dashed to the tuk tuk and the driver started the engine. The little Chinese motorbike chugged to life and its gaudily-painted trailer bounced over the pothole-riddled road. We drove along the seawall—lurch, lurch, lurch—brown churned ocean, salt spray in my face, jungle-clad islands poking hills through the hazy distance, each lurch and bump a hatchet in my skull, a blow to my stomach. Sphincter puckered: I’m surprised I didn’t shit my pants.

As we drove, the waiter made idle conversation: “Where you from?” and “How long you stay Cambodia?” and “You want have tour tomorrow?”

I held my throbbing hot head in my hands. If I’m alive tomorrow…

We passed a statue of a naked woman, another of a giant crab, then an empty market and more bombed-out villas. Locals cowered in the doorways of ramshackle huts, watching the cold driving rain. No one was out in the streets.

After about fifteen minutes the tuk tuk stopped in front of a dilapidated one-room shack.

“Why are we stopping?” I said. “Where’s the doctor?”

The waiter gave me a strange look and said, “This is doctor office.”

The wood and corrugated iron shack was built on wooden stilts over an open sewer where brown frothy water and debris gushed towards the sea.

I hesitated and the waiter said, “You no worry. This is good doctor. No problem. He give me babies.”

I stepped into the rain, ran to the covered porch. The waiter followed. Rain hard on metal roof: deafening. Chinks in the floor showed me rushing filthy water. A half-unconscious man groaned topless on a rattan mat in a corner, and behind a chain-link window was the middle-aged doctor’s sour mud face.

The waiter spoke to the doctor. A piece was missing from his fat lumpy forehead. I steadied myself against the rickety wall. The squat doctor grunted, gave me a quick glance: the only time he looked at me.

“You’re telling him everything, right?” I said.

“I tell, I tell.”

“You told him about the headache and diarrhea and fever?”

The waiter added something and said, “I tell. I tell.”

The doctor started rummaging through a small glass case: his medicine chest. There were maybe twenty different types of pills in boxes and bottles. No more. The doctor picked up a little pair of scissors and started trimming away pills from larger bubble sheets. He took his sweet time, rounding all the edges before placing the pills in a little plastic bag. The doctor pushed the bag through the chain-link and coughed.

“He say take one now, then one later,” the waiter said.

I examined the contents of the bag: two big grey-black discs, four slightly different round white tablets, two gel caps filled with multicoloured pellets, and a pair of something pastel pill green.

“I only take one?”

“You take one one one now,” the waiter, “and one one one later.”

“One one one?”

“Yes, one one one.”

“You mean I take half of them now, then half of them later? And when later? Later tonight? Tomorrow?”

The waiter spoke. The doctor spat.

“Five o’clock later. One one one.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. How much for all this?”

The waiter asked. Another doctor grunt.

“You pay four thousand riel.”

One dollar. One one one. All right. I fished out the money and said thanks to the doctor in Khmer. He narrowed his eyes. The waiter stepped off the porch and I followed and—thwack!—slammed my head against a roof beam. I fell, narrowly missed tumbling into the sewer. Ha ha went the smiling waiter. Ha ha went the stained shirt-wearing tuk tuk driver. Ha ha went the shit-eating doctor. Ha ha went the topless guy who I thought was unconscious.

“Ha fucking ha,” I said. “Real funny. I’m glad you cocksuckers are having such a good laugh.”

Smiles and ha has were my reply. Slowly, I picked myself up and climbed into the tuk tuk. We bounced and flew beside the angry sea.

Back at the restaurant, I chased the first round of pills with water. The waiter said, “You pay my brother.”

“How much?”

They spoke.

“Three dollar,” the waiter said.

“Three dollars?!” Most Cambodians makes less than that in a day.

“Three dollar.”

Too sick to haggle, I paid. The driver smiled. Head reeling, I sat down.

“When’s the next bus to Phnom Penh?” I asked the waiter. “I think I need to go to a real hospital.”

The waiter looked at his watch. “It’s one thirty,” he said. “Last bus was ten minutes ago. You stay Kep today. You want have tour today?”

The rain eased for a few hours, and bundled in my poncho, I sat shaking on the small rocky beach, watching the waves. Khmer children splashed from inner tubes while their fully dressed mothers waded into the surf. A teenager approached me—“Hello sir. Can I practice English with you?—and we exchanged halting pleasantries until the rain came heavy again. Back in my room, I finished the pills. I still felt awful. Using the hotel’s ancient computer, I researched the medication the doctor had given me: all the pills were for urinary tract infections.

Another toss and turn night. Damp rainy bed. Cold fever sweats, hot flashes. Itching all over. Cough cough. Knives between my eyes. Aching weak body. Running to the bathroom down the hall again and again and again… Sunday morning I pack my bag and trudge to the bus stop for a bouncing rain-delayed ride back to the capital. I won’t describe the journey, but know that it was bad. When I finally collapsed in my apartment later that evening, I called a friend who’d been living in Phnom Penh for the past three years.

“Absolutely do not go to a clinic today,” he said. “Wait until Monday. The medical infrastructure in the city is bad enough as is, and the doctors they have working nights and weekends are bottom of the barrel: mail-order degrees. Hang in there man.”

Another night. Same same. It’s always worst at night. Vision shakes and death dreams. Shivering and soaking through my sheets.

In the morning, I headed to a clinic. I drove my own motorbike. Stupid fucking me. The doctors were all outside smoking when I arrived. One of them—a hollow-faced eastern European woman with a thick cigarette-husky voice—said, “Follow me.”

Examination. Blood tests. Verdict: you have dengue.

Dengue fever (also known as breakbone fever) is a mosquito-borne tropical disease endemic to Central and South America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. There is no vaccine and there is no cure. One to five percent of the nearly 100 million people infected each year die. Symptoms come in waves and can last for over three weeks. Dengue is transmitted primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a little black and white striped fucker that is most active during the day. Highly domesticated, Aedes aegypti makes its home in plastic containers and old tires. Aedes aegypti lives mostly in cities and preys almost exclusively on humans. Another common host is Aedes albopictus: the Asian tiger mosquito.

Treatment: a whole mountain of medication to combat my symptoms and several hours of being fed intravenously. After handing me a hefty bill, the doctor said, “Go home and rest for the next few days. There is little else you can do.”

Driving home, dizzy me. Why didn’t I take a tuk tuk? Cheap fucking bastard. Crossing an intersection, I’m clipped by a racing motorbike. I spill into the street. Traffic stops. The other motorbike keeps going. A few men loitering on the corner rush to help me up. My hands and elbows and shoulders are scraped and filled with dirt. Holes have been torn into my shirt and bag. I’m shaken, but my wounds are superficial; the bike is fine.

“Be more careful,” one of the men said in perfect English, “and look both ways before crossing the street.”

POLICE BRIBES AND NEAR-DEATH DRIVING

I’ve stood on street corners, trying to discern the logic that governs Phnom Penh’s traffic. My conclusion: there is none.

The old travelogues I’ve read call Phnom Penh “La Perle de l’Asie,” a beautiful and quiet city of broad leafy boulevards where rickshaws and bicycles pedal to the languid pace of the wide muddy Mekong.

Now:
Those once serene French-built boulevards are jam-packed with exhaust-spitting, engine-growling, horn-honking motorbikes, tuk tuks, and SUVs. The few remaining rickshaws and bicycles hug the sewer-water curbs, their drivers’ eyes wide with fear while their motorized brethren whip past at terrifying speeds. In recent years, the government has re-paved the city’s notoriously pothole-riddled streets and installed traffic lights at every major intersection. Their attempts to impose order on this madness, however, have proven to be entirely in vain. The locals have absolutely no interest in basic driving concepts that westerners take for granted, simple concepts based on collective safety (and sanity), such as our rules of right of way—“you go first,” the Canadian driver waves while at an unmarked intersection. “No, you go first,” the driver to his left insists… Marked or not, Cambodian drivers rush all intersections en masse. Total gridlock.

Even more rudimentary concepts go unheeded. Example: motorbike drivers race and swerve (forget indicating lane changes), then, while talking on cell phones, make one-handed left turns on red lights into the opposing traffic of one way streets. Even on median-divided roads, drivers pay no mind to the flow. Keep right or keep left: it’s up to you. Perhaps some of them were educated in Europe?

The law requires drivers of open-air vehicles to wear helmets. Drivers keep their helmets strapped to their handlebars, then slip them on when they spot the police. This law, however, does not apply to passengers, nor are there any laws prohibiting the balancing of five people or four-hundred pounds of unsecured banana bushels on the back of the little bikes. You see motorbike drivers with their two-year-old child STANDING on the seat in front of them, their eight-year-old wedged behind them, and their wife clinging to the back with a newborn baby in a harness dangling over the rear wheel. My guidebook warns: while on a motorbike, always keep your backpack in front of you. Bag snatching is common… Perhaps this woman is looking to lose another hungry mouth?

Watching it is dizzying. The anxiety of navigating it will turn your hair prematurely grey and take years of off your life, that is if your life doesn’t prematurely end when you’re ploughed over by a racing mammoth of an imported SUV—most of which, interestingly, sport large aftermarket decals on their sides advertising their manufacturer: Lexus, Nissan, Toyota, Land Rover… Status status status. With locked doors, windows up, A/C blasting, and stereos blaring nasal synth pop, SUV drivers, completely oblivious to the world outside, go fast and straight, hand on the horn (if they’re courteous), demanding that everyone conforms to their racing will. Watch out!

In an attempt to harmonize my disorientated soul to this chaos (and, because it’s been costing about $2 a tuk tuk ride to get to faraway downtown Phnom Penh), I have decided to rent a motorbike. Drive slowly, I tell myself, and follow the rules: you’ll be fine.

My little red 125cc Honda is no beauty: one of its mirrors is missing and the front light is cracked. Worst of all, when stopped, the engine stalls. My real estate agent friend who rented it to me for $40 a month said, “Oh, it no problem. You just always keep gas like this: vroom vroom,” he mimed, “and you have no problem.” No problem when it stalled crossing the busy Mao Tse Toung Boulevard. No problem.

Day one:
I am rear-ended at a red light. Damage assessment: none. Although the man who hit me sped away before we could swap insurance. Insurance? What insurance? Most people don’t even have licenses.

Day two:
Uneventful. Pounding rain. Thank god. I witness an accident. Oh god.

Day three:
Following the man in front of me, I make a left turn on a green light onto large Street 63. Within two minutes, I hear a shrill whistle. Looking to the right, a baby-blue clad police officer gesticulates wildly. He leaps into the road, directly in the path of my motorbike, and I slam the brakes: brakes that didn’t work before yesterday’s tune-up.

“One way! One way!” the cop screams, pointing to a sign further down the road, a red circle with a white horizontal line placed on a suspiciously temporary-looking stand.

I look at the sign, then at the cop. I say, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” A half-dozen other cops watch me from the corner, lounging on the seats of parked motorbikes. One of them spits. A few other drivers go past, travelling in the same direction as me. Fucking shakedown, I think. Coming from the university with my clean-shaven western face, dress shirt and slacks, I’m a prime target, a secure meal ticket.

“You big trouble now,” the cop in front of me says. “You talk with boss.” He points to a heavy-set white-helmeted man with bars on the epaulettes of his uniform. “You leave bike here and talk to boss.”

“But I didn’t know,” I say. “I didn’t see any sign.”

“You talk boss now,” he says. “Now!”

I sigh. No need to turn off the engine: it had already stalled. I take out the key, unstrap my backpack from between my legs, and rest the bike on its kickstand. The boss waves me over.

With his minions watching, the fat, hard-looking sergeant says, “New law in Cambodia. You drive wrong way, we take moto to station. You want me take moto to station?” His badge glitters in the blinding afternoon sun. He toys the baton strapped to his hip.

“I’m very sorry, officer,” I say. “It’s my first time driving in Phnom Penh. I don’t know the rules yet. It’s so crazy driving here. You know? I’m very sorry.”

“Maybe we take your moto. You like that? You want me to take your moto?”

“No officer,” I say, halfheartedly. “I don’t want that.” Do me the favour, I think. Prolong my life. Take the goddamn thing.

“New law,” he says. “Too bad. We take.”

“Listen,” I say, “let’s not go to the station. We go to the station, it’s big trouble for me and big trouble for you.” Trouble for you to get off your lazy ass, I think. Trouble for me: the more cops around, the bigger the payoff.

“Yes,” the fat sergeant says, grinning. “Much trouble. So, how much you pay?”

“Excuse me?”

He flips open a ledger packed tightly with incomprehensible Khmer curves. “See this?” he says, pointing to a number, “this person pay twenty dollar. How much you pay?”

“Oh Jesus,” I say. “I don’t know. I don’t want to pay anything.”

The sergeant’s round brown face darkens. He flips the ledger to another page. “This person pay forty-five dollar. How much you have? How much you pay?”

“Um,” I say stalling. “Well, I guess I can pay five dollars.”

The sergeant looks me up and down, then smiles. “Five dollar okay.”

I should have said two.

I fish out my wallet and hand him a crisp new bill. The sergeant places it inside an unmarked cash-brimming envelope and says, “You go now.”

“Okay,” I say. “I go now.”

The cops lounging on the parked motorbikes smile and laugh.

Back to my Honda. The first cop is standing in the road. The cop blows his whistle, jumps in front of a speeding Super Cub. The driver swerves, accelerates, and makes a left hand turn, disappearing down the busy bisecting road.

“Hey,” I say. “Aren’t you going to chase him?”

The cop shrugs.

I straddle my bike, reattach my backpack, and start the engine. Two helmetless boys on a scooter zip by. The cops don’t even budge.

“Now,” I say, “if I turn right, will you stop me again?”

“You go. You go.”

“All right.”

I change gears, turn right, and follow a black Mercedes sedan. In the middle of the road, the Mercedes slams its brakes. I stop inches behind it and am rear-ended by a small Suzuki.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” a young girls says. “I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

I look at her pretty worry-lined face, then inspect the back of my bike: no visible damage.

“Don’t worry,” I say, “don’t worry.”

I restart the engine—the damn thing had stalled again—and take off into the mad Phnom Penh bustle.