01 - Banteay Srei

15.11.2008 (Siem Reap)

It was a long and quiet trip via Seoul and I finally arrived well in a beautifully warm Cambodia. From the first day on we have been very busy exploring the situation in and around Siem Reap. So far we have developed quite a few ideas to get the Garden Shuttle running. However, the first set of pictures has vanished into the virtual nirvana, therefore, my report starts a littler later than actually intended.

Yesterday we drove to the Banteay Srei District about 40 kilometers northeast of Siem Reap and visited some farmers to have a look at the situation in the rural areas and to gather some information.

Aside from the dusty main road the roads are sometimes in a very bad condition and it can get quite difficult to drive by car. So we walked the last kilometer (just like some of the villagers on the picture). As can be seen there is no real agricultural area as we know from Europe. The fields are mostly scattered around the villages and are surrounded by wilderness.

By the way: They might also be surrounded by landmines. If you leave the pathway in locations like this, you cannot be sure not to step on a mine. And due to the vegetation on the ground you dont have the slightest chance to detect one before stepping on it. Unfortunately accidents still happen.

The farms themselves are relatively simple in this part of he country, mainly consisting of a house with one big room about 1.5 meters above the ground and some place to stay and store things underneath. The typical transportation means for people and products is the motorbike and it is pretty fascinating to see, how many of them can be placed on one single bike. Agricultural machines are very rare, the ground is typically processed with ox and plough. But even if there were machines, it would probably be difficult to move them to the place or the field where they are needed.

One purpose of this trip was to obtain more detailed information on the products of the farmers, how much they can produce and when they can produce them. Since the farmers themselves do not seem to be very well organized beyond the level of a village, this appeared necessary for us in order to estimate what we can possibly trade and where to get our products from. So networking is part of our job at the moment, but it would of course be more than helpful to have some kind of selforganizing network among the farmers. T conducted this investigation beautifully in the typical Khmer manner: relaxed and talkative.

One of the natural problems the farmers face is connected with water. During the rain reason there is too much of it and during the dry season too little. The solution so far is, that mainly the more elevated land is cultivated, whreas the lower land is flooded during the rain season. In my opinion it should not be too difficult to create a more effective balance, but this would require quite a bit of money and there we have the next problem... Again it can be seen that the parcels of farmland lie in between wild country. Another infrastructural respectively logistic problem.

But in face of all these obstacles the farmer actually do a great job and most of them really care a lot of their relatively small fields. Their products – like bittermelons in this case – look good and are certainly of good quality. As can be seen they are quite proud of their work and most are motivated to improve their work and their outcome.