Letter From Cambodia: The Great Lake
A floating village can take many forms. Some floating houses sit on large, square-hulled barges. The bottoms are broad, made of quality wood slung low in the water. When waves sweep the lake, these barges roll gracefully as a boxer. The roofs are solid, the living quarters large and well-apportioned. To be sure, this does not make for an easy life. Those living on big boats face many of the same privations as any of their floating neighbors; few farmers would trade their humble fields for these houseboats. But most who live on the lake fare far worse. The simplest homes in a floating village are something of a marvel: how do they survive the water and wind? These houses have thin wood floors lashed raftlike to tires and fifty-gallon plastic barrels. The walls are made of salvaged wood or corrugated tin. They’re layered with green tarp or strips of palm leaf tied neatly down—the shaggy coat soon patchy.
Kampong Prek sits near the mouth of a nameless river on the lake’s southern edge and is filled with these types of homes. Here, just sixty-three houses float within shouting distance of one another. When the lake swells with rain, residents row their homes inland, always hugging the shore. To call it a village seems an exaggeration. There is no shop or school or medical center, just a few dozen families trying very hard, and mostly failing, to get by. What ties people here together the most? A wild, all-consuming desire to move to land.
This excerpt of Troubling the Water: A Dying Lake and a Vanishing World in Cambodia, a recently published book by NYSEAN member Abbey Seiff, is available in full on Asia Society. In her book, Seiff vividly portrays the struggles of daily life for the landless poor of Cambodia, drawing from a variety of personal interviews to let Cambodians’ voices speak for themselves.
