khmer sources

Mekong Fellowship 2005-2006
When a group of children on Vietnam’s Sông Tiê’n river are asked if they want to live their lives as their parents always have—in floating villages as fish farmers or fishermen—the children are united in their desire to move to the mainland. "We don’t want to stay here," they say.

One of the children’s fathers says he wants desperately for his children to move out of the floating village, but he cannot provide for their futures. The 55-year-old fisherman can barely afford to feed them, let alone educate them. As he explains this inability, tears slowly fall down his face and he turns away to look out over the water of the Sông Tiê’n.

Tran Van Thanh and his family have lived in a floating village in Vinh Long province, southern Vietnam, since 1981 when his parents died. Tran and his children are all fishermen; Tran’s partner (they have never married) sells what the family catches at the local market.

"After my parents passed away, I could not afford even a small piece of land; not even a space just big enough for a little house and somewhere to put a bed," Tran says. "I had no education, no qualifications, so nobody could employ me. I had to look for another way to survive, so my partner and I decided to buy a boat and start a life as fishermen. It cost about 2.5 million Dong [about $160]. "Tran’s boat was 4m long and 1.5m wide, and on this boat, he and his partner, and their two first-born children, lived.

"At first, there were many difficulties living on the boat, but we at least felt comfortable, because we were surviving … and earning a living catching fish. It was fortunate, because there was enough fish for us to eat and sell, or barter for rice."

When Tran’s eldest son, 26, married recently, Tran gifted his boat to his son, and bought a second for himself. The same size as the first, this boat continues to house Tran, his partner and four of Tran’s five children. None of his children have ever been to school.
"It’s very hard for us to be able to afford the hundreds of thousands of Dong for … annual school fees, especially as I only earn between $1.50 and $2 a day, which has to feed the whole family."

Tran Van Ut, 43, (no relation) is a fisherman who lives on the Sóng Ha’u (Bassac River). His situation is much the same as Tran Van Thanh’s.
Tran has two children; the eldest daughter is 13 and the son, 11. He says while his children are of school-age, he can’t afford the annual 300,000 Dong ($20) fee. "They don’t have birth certificates anyway … and my wife and I don’t have time to take them to school because we need the boat for fishing. We’d need a second boat to get the children to school and one to remain and fish," Tran says.

"We tried to send our kids to school, but in the end we had to take them out at the end of first grade because our stomachs were more important than school. As a parent, I know I have made a grave error, but life has forced us to do this."
"I’ve never heard of floating village people sending their children to school from primary right through until high school."

Most of those living in floating villages do not have the proper registration required under Vietnamese law; birth certificates and national identification cards are rare.
Nguyen Thanh Ky is a 37-year-old fish farmer from the Chau Doc area. His two children both go to Chau Doc school and are in the seventh and fourth grade, and even though Nguyen’s family all have identification cards, he says thousands of families don’t.

"The local authorities have never come to register any of them, or even give them information about how to go about getting the right papers," Nguyen says.
Mr. Tai, (not his real name) 63, is sitting on the bamboo floor of his small floating house rolling tobacco into cigarettes of cotton paper. He says he often worries about his children’s futures and he worries that without being registered, they’re not even included as part of Vietnamese society.

"I’ve been living here more than 20 years … I don’t have an id card or a birth certificate. I just think, that without those things, we’ve no value as Vietnamese people," Mr. Tai says.
"And what about the future’s children?" he asks. "I suppose only time will time, but I do get very upset thinking about them all."
"All of my children are … illiterate, save one, my youngest son, who is 15, but he’s already stopped going to school after only the fifth grade."

He ponders is own childhood. "When I was a kid, we didn’t go to school; we were too busy with farming jobs and running away from the effects of war everyday. And now, because of poverty, I cannot send my own kids to school. I’m so sorry about that."

Ving Long province fisherman Tran Van Thanh’s daughter Tran Thi My Loan, 16, shyly hides her face. She is sitting on her family’s boat, their house, near a pot of boiling soup: a few cucumbers float on the surface. My Loan doesn’t like to speak, but after a few minutes she softly bemoans her own lack of education.

"I just want to live on land. I can’t even read the script or the alphabet of the Vietnamese language, but living on the mainland must be better than on a floating boat. I want to go to school like the kids there … if only," My Loan says.
Her 23-year-old brother Tran Van Luc wants to improve his standard of living too.
"Living here lacks the things we need to change and improve our lives," Van Luc says. "It is better to be a man though; that’s the means I have to change. I can be a laborer." Van Luc says he has "good health" and is employable for it.

"You know, people from the outside never visit us … You are the first people from the mainland to come to meet us."
Government officials do make visits from time to time.
Chau Doc fish farmer Nguyen Thanh Ky says government officials come to visit his fish farm in order to register the bé (fish farm and attached house). "We have to pay tax for this authority of 1 million Dong per year. If we don’t pay, we are not permitted to sell the fish we produce at harvest time," Nguyen says.

"Of the 10 bé along this river, only one bé has fish. The rest are empty of fish. The farms encounter many problems you see, and we are not offered any technical assistance or help to find markets for the fish, so the fish die; they die mostly because of rising pollution. I thought the local authorities of the Vietnamese Government knew how difficult this livelihood is, but they’re doing nothing for our people here."

Nguyen’s fish farm harvests almost 100 tons of fish per year and he sells one kilogram for 10,000 Dong ($0.65).
The people living on the river are not the only ones suffering; their presence is taking a toll on their environment. All of the floating villages’ waste goes into the water.
"People cook with the water in the river, clean in the river, go to the toilet in the river. This is how we survive," Nguyen says.

Vietnamese families living in floating villages at different turns in the river have similar stories, whether they live in Vin Long or at Chau Doc, on the Tien (Mekong) River, or the Há’u (Bassac) River. They all have the same background and the same reasons for living the life they do: they are poor and have few skills. Most of them don’t have id; the children don’t have birth certificates.

A policeman at Chau Doc floating village, who wished not to be named, says there are approximately 4,000 floating houses in the village.
"Of that number, about 1,000 families are fish farmers. The rest are fishermen. A very small number have jobs on the mainland. There are no floating schools here, or government clinics, there’s only the police station. I don’t know the government policies affecting these floating people; maybe they’ll move them onto land?" the policeman asks.

"The numbers of people coming to live at the floating village is increasing every day, and the environment is losing out to this rise in population; there is so much more waste. What will the river look like in the village in the future? If the government follows the steps it took to reduce the numbers in floating homes in Vinh Long province it may prove not to be as simple [at Chau Doc]; there are too many to contend with."

It is difficult to get answers from the local authorities in Vinh Long town about managiement of the floating village population. Some locals say that in previous years, the government moved people from the floating village on the Mekong at Vinh Long to the mainland town of Bing Minh, where a vocational center had been set up. According to Vinh Long locals, in resettling the floating village people and limiting the number of people living there, the government felt they could maintain sanitation and keep the river water clean.

Across the border in Cambodia, at the floating villages on the Tonle Sap and at various points on the Mekong River, living conditions are similar to neighboring Vietnam. However the ethnic make-up of the villages in Cambodia is much broader. Khmer, Vietnamese and Cham families all live together on the water.

Commune chief of Kompong Loung, Pusat province Kev Sovannareth says 50 percent are Khmer, 40 percent are Vietnamese; the remainder is Cham. "In total, there are 1,214 families and a total population of 6,962 people," Kev says.
"During the harvest season, these families earn about 20,000 to 30,000 riel ($5-$7.50) per day. While during the low season (between June and October), the fish farmers earn barely enough to keep their families fed."

One Vietnamese fish farmer living at Kompong Luong Nguyen Din, 40, says he’s lived in Cambodia on the water for 10 years, and he says the conditions in Cambodia far outweigh those in Vietnam
"It is a lot better here," Nguyen says. "I can earn more than $1,000 per year, and that’s fine for my family."

Nguyen has three children, two of whom are married. None of the three attended school, but Nguyen did send them to small private Vietnamese-language classes near his house.
Nguyen is positive. "I don’t think we can find any place better than this."
According to the Preak Toal commune chief Preab Proeung the floating village on the Tonle Sap has 1,866 families and a total population of 9,904 people.

Preab talks earning potential and living conditions on the river in mathematics: "Seventy percent of the people living are just surviving or poor. Twenty-five percent have enough, and 5 percent are rich," Preab says.

"The poor people are only earning 5,000 riel per day ($0.25); those in the next bracket are earning 10,000 riel ($2.50). The upper bracket—the rich people—have large fish farms or crocodile farms, and earn more than $1,000 per year."
The stories and dreams of these different nationalities are shared: parents want an education for their children and the children want to learn " … if only …"