My name is Sokhem Kuon, and this is my story…
This name puzzled me, as at that time there
was no hope, no future. The Khmer Rouge had destroyed my
home. when I was a small boy, we had no food, no
land, no money, no schools, and no doctors.
My father found work as a woodcutter around Chi Phat, a
village hidden in the Cardamom Mountains. We cut and
burned some forest to clear land for us. We planted corn, but
were still hungry. Often, I would travel with my father deep into
the forest. We collected vines and tapped resin to sell. We set
traps for animals, so that we would have enough to eat.
That was when I learned about the forest. Many people
harvested from the forest, but my father was the most skilled,
and taught me all he knew: the names of the trees, the birds,
the animals and the spirits.
At ten years old, I knew where the deer
drinks in the dry season, where the owl sleeps in the rain, why
the gibbon sings, and how to respect Neak Ta, the guardian
spirit of the forest. My father was never afraid of elephants, nor
tigers nor snakes, but he was fearful of Neak Ta.
- “Do not anger Neak Ta. He is powerful, and will make you
sick and die,” he told me.
- “What angers him?”
- “Taking what is his,” said my father.
- “What is his?”
- “Everything is his: the land, the streams, the trees and all
things that live here. If he favors us, he will show us wild fruit
trees, and lead animals to our traps. We may take what we
need to live, but no more, and whatever we take, we must
share with him.”
It was never easy to survive on what we could collect from the
forest, but year by year, we managed. I grew to be a young
man, skilled in forest life. With the end of war, roads came,
and the roads made our lives harder, not easier. Loggers and
traders moved in, buying our wood and animals to sell in the
capital, and abroad. People took more than they needed to
survive. Loggers cut every resin tree for wood. Traders killed
many tigers and elephants. Animals became scarce. The
forest had survived the war, but could not survive the peace.
How we hated those new people. We were just trying to
survive, the way we had since the world was young. My father
aged, and became sick: Neak Ta was angry. He stayed at
home, while I went to the forest with friends.
One day, while checking my traps, soldiers arrested me. They
took me to see a foreigner. She had long white hair, and was
sitting on the forest floor, crying. Nearby, a mouse deer lay
dead in my trap.
- “Why did you kill this poor deer?” she asked.
- “We are hungry. We need food,” I said.
- “Why don’t you work?”
- “There is no work. If there was work, I could stay at home
and look after my father.”
I did not know it yet, but that day, my life changed.
One month later, the village chief called us to a meeting. The
soldiers were there, and the foreign lady. She was the most
beautiful person I had ever seen, but I was more afraid of her
than of Neak Ta.
The lady, Suwanna, was the leader of Wildlife Alliance.
Suwanna said she would give us jobs; we would no longer
need to go to the forest. We were to become an ecotourism
community. Nobody knew what this meant. Even when
Suwanna explained it, few of us believed people would want
to visit our forest. Nevertheless, Suwanna was right!