My Essay

What I learned from my village

I live in the small village called “Daun Tor”. According to the words from the oldest person in my village, I was told that, the word “Daun” means grandma, and the word “Tor” is the name of one lady during that time. In the past there was one couple who lived in my village. The husband’s name is “Ta Mun.”( “Ta” means grandpa”, “Mun” is the name of the man.”) When Grandma Tor died the people buried her in my village that is why they call it Daun Tor. As we can see, the next village is called “Ta Mun” village which is the name of her husband. It is two kilometers from the main road, and located in Jeng Prey District, Kompong Cham Province, Cambodia.

In the rainy season, we can see the green fields lying across the wide distance. When I get up in the morning, I can see the flock of birds flying in the blue sky, and it looks very beautiful. The people in this village are farmers, including my own family. We do farming every year, but our farms do not produce as much rice as we need. We don’t even know how to use fertilizer in the proper way. In fact, from year to year, the more we use those fertilizers the more we spoil our lands. My parents always tell me to study hard, so I can get knowledge about agriculture. The other families also told their children the same as my parents did. On the other hand, most of the people in my village are uneducated people; because they are the survivors from the Khmer Rouge period. So, as a member of the young generation in my village, I feel very sad when I see these things happen to my village. Since I was young I have seen and learned a lot of things from my village. Therefore, I decided to study hard, in order to help my family, and the people in my village.

In my village, doing farming is the main job. Every family has their own oxen as they use it for farming. Unlike the other countries, Cambodia, especially in my village still uses the ancient techniques in agriculture. They do farming depending on the rain. They grow the rice only one time per-year. I remember the time when I was ten years old, and our farm seemed to produce much rice. In 2000, we started to use the chemical compost. At the beginning it seemed to give us good results. But later on it becomes less and less beneficial, because we do not know how to use the chemical compost in the proper way. Most of us are over-using it. The people seem have much desire for increasing the results. From year to year, our land becomes worse and worse. In fact, we do not know that we are using it to spoil our lands (even we know doing that will affect our lands and agriculture, but we still work on that.) There is no choice for us. The people are eager for much production on their lands. Since I was young, until now, I never saw any activist come to teach the people how to do better agriculture in my village. We make agriculture by our own experiences. Each year, after the harvest time had been finished, I saw the creditors come over to ask for the payment. Instead of giving back the money to them, my family has to pay them back the crops. Because the creditors will loan us the money, or let us use their chemical compost, and then we can pay them later after the harvest time. Therefore, we never have enough food to eat for a full year. Some of us have been selling the lands, because they think that doing agriculture cannot feed their families anymore. So many of them left the village, and go into the city to find new jobs there. Some of them migrate to the other countries as well. I think we must find the way to solve this problem, and the only way for me to do that is study hard. I will bring new knowledge and new technology to my village in the future.

In the farming time, in my village, the big problem for us is the water. We don’t have enough water. Actually, there are many canals and lakes in my village. But they are very old, and they were destroyed by nature and also from the farmers themselves. How can they destroy it? One man lives next to my house, and his land is close to the canals. Every year he grabs the land slowly from the small part of it, and now it has disappeared. So the water could not come to every corner of the fields, because it was stuck by the upper land as they did to take-over the canal or the lake. It is not only him, but there are many others. I remembered when my father was still alive, his friends and he helped each other to make a dam to keep the water for transplant season. But when they died there was no one to continue this work. Most of the time, they keep complaining about the inadequate water. I think there should be easy ways to work out this problem, but the old people in my village seem to ignore that. I always hear one phrase whenever they discuss about farming, they said “whose hair, whose care.” That means they don’t want to work in unity. They want to do it independently. So, in my opinion, I think that if the people do not change their behavior it will be worse for their next generations. They are just concerned too much about the present time, and they do not care about the future of their young generation.

Whenever the harvest time comes up, the people seem very happy for their products. During this time we can see the trucks, and buses come over into my village to buy our products. The people are always expecting the high prices from their customers. But things never go according to our wish. We did not find a good market for our exportation. Sometimes, when we finished our harvest the prices suddenly went down. We never know what is going on in the world, and we do not even understand about the economic crisis. Somehow, when the customers come and say “you should sell yours to me, and I will give you the best price. It is the best for you in this area, whereas the other I give them lower than you. Your crop is a better quality than the other.” So we believe them, and sell our product to them at a low price. In fact they cheated us. Most of us just work for the others. I mean we have our own land, but we do not have enough money to do this work. So we borrow the money from the rich people to pay for chemical compost, for the food and drink, and hiring the workers during the transplant seeding time. After the work is done (the crops are harvested) we can pay them back with the crops instead of the money. Moreover, the people sell their crop for daily payment. They don’t have specific jobs besides farming. So they could not use their rice for the rest of the year. In my village we have one slogan “for the rich man they are becoming richer and richer, and for the poor are becoming poorer and poorer.” I feel so sorry for them, especially my own family, and I have been saying to myself that one day I will change their lives, one day I will bring them up from this sorrow and hard work.

From my heart and soul I will keep studying hard for the future of my family, and my village. I will try my best to find new knowledge, and help them to have a better life. I do believe in working hard as some said “the man will never get the benefit by his fortune, but by his own hard working.” I am looking for the opportunity to study abroad such as U.S.A, England, Australia, China, Korea, Japan, India, and so on. These countries have high technology. Someday I will bring the knowledge that I have learnt from these countries to help my country, my people and my family. I want to encourage my people to rebuild the infrastructures in my village, and help them to use the chemical compost in the proper way. I will help them to make a dam to keep the water for their agriculture. And I hope someday we could have a community market so that we could balance our products ‘prices.