TAKEO - With much help, and by incredible luck, at least one of Pol Pot's
bizarre irrigation schemes has actually been made to work.
Rice farmers
in Takeo's Kirivong district are now growing crops all year round - a major
breakthrough for Khmer farmers - thanks to work by British NGO Oxfam.
On
less than half the money that some other NGOs spend, Oxfam has installed
culverts that now control water from the Tan Loap reservoir, built by the Khmer
Rouge in the mid-70s.
About 6,000 hectares of land - from Tan Loap near
Takeo town to the Vietnamese border 10 kilometers away - is now fully irrigated
and in constant production.
The Kirivong farmers are emerging as the
province's "nouveau rich." They are even beginning to save money.
As a
result the local market is comparatively booming - our interpreter laughed when
asked what the Kirivong market was like when Oxfam began work three years
ago.
"Nothing, nothing," he said. "The huts nearby are still the same,
but now there are television antennae sticking out of them."
However, the
success has created a bit of a problem for Takeo governor Sou
Phirin.
Peasants from neighboring Kompong Speu, Kampot, Prey Veng and
other districts are pushing in for a "slice of the pie."
"There have been
100 families [move in] from Kompong Cham," Phirin said.
He telephoned
neighboring governors "to control the movement of people and to have those
people [without proper authority] moved," he said.
Finally, he has
decided to ask for a formal governors' meeting with Co-Prime Ministers Prince
Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen, and Interior Ministry officials in Phnom
Penh.
Hun Sen visited Kirivong last week, and Phirin asked for help
building an ambitious six-stage irrigation scheme and more of the heavy roading
work now rolling into the province.
Meanwhile, the farmers - still the
butt of "countryfolk/cityfolk" jokes in the capital - are reaping the rewards,
according to Oxfam's American-born irrigation engineer John Busman.
"This
is one of the only places in Cambodia that can grow an all-year [rice] crop," he
said of the land that is now permanently green.
It feeds and enriches up
to six local communes, while neighborhoods in this, traditionally one of the
country's poorest provinces, seem to be profiting downstream.
Previously,
district officials say the rice crop was 270 kilograms per person - now, it is
350 kilograms per person.
The Kirivong experiment has prompted
neighboring districts to ask Oxfam for materials, such as culvert molds. "They
say give us what we need, we'll do it, don't bother us," Busman
said.
"People have a confidence in the future, and its not purely
selfish, they can see things being done."
Even the fishing has improved.
Unofficially, Busman reckons, the fish pulled out of the water might be worth
more than the rice it irrigates.
There are a few special "heroes" thrown
up, like Ta Ky My who built the culverts that have made such a difference -
under a "pretty good" Oxfam contract, Busman laughs. Ky My is now a well known,
probably famous face around town.
Oxfam has proved that for just $150,000
a year ["a limited budget," Busman says], a "low-tech scheme that is replicable"
can be produced.
"We have shown people things can change."
In Sou
Phirin, Takeo has an ambitious, tough and pragmatic governor who has stamped out
military and police "shakedowns" in his province and during whose tenure the
only Khmer Rouge group in the province appears to have been cleared. He also
enthusiastically supports the province's NGO teams.
And it started
because Pol Pot decided to build a reservoir that should never, ever have
worked.
The reservoir was little more than a natural depression in the
ground that didn't collect much water. The old French colonial floodgate
guarding it, at 100m long, was too big - but for some reason Busman can't figure
out, Pol Pot filled it in.
Farmers had to leave their land on the
southern side of the road from Takeo town to Tan Loap as the reservoir flooded,
but the water couldn't get to the farmers on the northern side.
Busman
says the KR built no downstream structures to control the water flow.
In
late 1991, Oxfam decided to fix the problem with a program that was too small
for the Asian Development Bank or the World Bank.
Kirivong's rice-growing
communities were "extremely isolated" because of the bad road.
Various
road building schemes had only improved bits of the road. Phnom Penh didn't want
to provide a smooth and direct path for any possible Vietnamese
invasion.
However, with "committed farmers and good local leadership,"
Oxfam added culverts, improved canals and controlled enough water for a host of
local communities to benefit from year-round rice crops.
Heavy
road-building machines are now rolling into the district. Takeo - or certainly
Kirivong - is establishing a reputation and people are leaving poorer areas to
resettle.
Kirivong is beginning to look like the countryside just over
the border in Vietnam, locals say.
Sweeping east into Vietnam from
Cambodia is prime rice growing land, almost regimentally irrigated with ditches
from a huge canal that runs parallel to - and just one kilometer from - the
border.
The water in the canal originally comes from the Bassac river in
Cambodia.
There are stories of Kampuchea-Krom farmers on the Vietnamese
side selling water to their Khmer cousins, who are as yet just a bit far from
the Tan Loap reservoir.
The going price for water? - 800 kilograms of
rice, to irrigate one hectare of paddy for one year.
Vietnamese laborers
cross the porous border to work in Kirivong during harvest times, though
governor Sou Phirin says he has cracked down on such temporary migrations.
However, the Vietnamese dong is readily accepted tender at Kirivong
market.
The Kirivong farmers are getting up to five, sometimes six tonnes
of rice per hectare of paddy - way above Pol Pot's "three tonne per hectare"
catch cry.
"The farmers are only paying between 15 and 18 percent of
their crop [for Vietnamese water]," says Busman, a doctorate graduate who has
worked overseas for years, the past six in Pakistan.
"It is not an
extravagant charge and the guy pumping the water is not going to get
rich."
Though permanent, free access to the Vietnamese water would be
beneficial, those close to the Tan Loap reservoir now have plenty.
Oxfam
is conscious that its work could produce a "have" versus a "have not" society,
where those farmers close to the reservoir get more rich, more quickly than
those who have to wait.
"We are aware of the contrast," Busman said. A
smaller reservoir on the other side of the neighboring mountain is being
developed now.
But the main reservoir "somehow just works," he
said.
"As an engineer I hesitate to calculate the water volume here
[compared to the usage]... it's scary."
When the Mekong floods and sends
water rushing back upstream, the Khmer Rouge system, with vital Western
improvements and knowledge, does the job.
"It is against all laws of
irrigation," says Busman, admitting that Pol Pot "lucked in" with his
scheme.
"For every one thousand I suppose you get one right," he says,
adding that many more former Khmer Rouge schemes were unworkable.
"Pol
Pot just got lucky. Normally we would have had to put in a lot more time,
materials and money to get this to work."
Busman compared the $150,000
Oxfam operation - without rancor - with other NGO budgets, such as
USAID.
"USAID figures on keeping one person in the country, housed, paid
and so forth, for $250,000 before they begin to spend more on their projects. We
have done this scheme on $150,000 [a year], and have involved the entire
community."
Fishermen now pull out a living from the revamped canals and
reservoir, though Busman says: "Oh, don't get into that" when asked how much the
fishermen pay, and to whom, for the privilege.
Busman says Oxfam's
methods had been criticized, but irrigation systems had to allow for drainage as
well as supply.
And for the farmers, "things are not just a struggle for
rice now, they can look at other things, other improvements," Busman
said.
The reservoir also came in handy after police recently stopped a
truckload of smuggled turtles heading for the Vietnamese border.
"No-one
knew quite what to do with the turtles," Busman said. "In the end a nun blessed
them and they tipped the lot into the reservoir."
