River of Tears

For Cambodia’s fishing families, living on the Mekong River may be rent free, but it still has its costs.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - When you live on a wooden sampan boat on the Mekong River, the daily hardships of life are sometimes emphasized in cruel and unforgiving ways.

Meysma, 25 and a mother of four, was on her family's boat boiling water to make rice when she turned away for just a moment.

In that time, her tenth-month-old son Hawaway, crawling near the pot, slipped and fell. His head plunged into the scalding water.

"The burns were bad," she says. "I was so afraid for my son."

She says she took him to a local clinic near Phnom Penh, which provided a topical antiseptic cream.

"But they didn't give him anything for the pain," she says. "He cried for weeks."

Even today, a month later, Hawaway's scalp is scabbing over in some places but still red and puffy in others, a possible sign of infection. It's easy to see how that could happen, considering the poor sanitary conditions with seven people crowded aboard the small craft (the brother of Meysma's husband also lives with them).

Life on the Water » View

And the vessel is not just their home, but also the workplace for her husband, Mono, a fisherman. When he goes to work the family goes with him; his brother and two older sons, Weyza, 10, and Rophilin, 8, sometimes helping tend the nets.

But these days the daily catch is so poor that many local fisherman like Mono feel like they're working with giant holes in their nets.

"I was out all morning, from 5 a.m. until noon," Mono says. "And I only caught about one kilo of fish."

He says the family might make about $4 a day with the fish they sell in the market.

"If the children don't get sick," Mono says, "then we are okay. But if they get sick, there's trouble."

Mono and some of the other Cambodian fisherman on the banks of the Mekong across the river from Phnom Penh say that the river is being depleted by Vietnamese fishermen, who live on and work the same stretch of river.

They say the Vietnamese fish the river more aggressively, sometimes using car batteries and wire to stun the fish with an electric current. Mono says there's no animosity nor violence among the fishermen — the Vietnamese are just getting more of the haul from a river that seems to be giving up less and less.

Working the Mekong River » View

Indeed, on this day another fishing boat has just docked with a basketful of fish, all of which are no bigger than a few inches. But they are sold to a local woman within a few minutes of the boat tying up to shore.

Nearby, a young boy from another one of the fishing boats approaches the same woman, trying to interest her in a dead turtle he holds up for her inspection. She walks away without so much as a glance.

The Mekong, a river with so much history, has taken a turn for the worse, a victim of pollution and over-fishing.

But Meysma says life has never been easy on the river. The poorest Cambodians seem to collect on the riverbank like so much driftwood.

"We like to live on land," she says, holding her badly burned son in her arms as she nimbly steps from the shoreline back onto the sampan. "But we don't have any money."

And while they may not have to pay rent to live on the water, every time she looks at Hawaway's head, she knows there is still a price to pay.

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