A morning with Sophek

Sophek preparing a meal for her family

This morning I paid a visit to Sopheak’s house.  Sopheak was my Khmer 101 language teacher when we first arrived here in Mondolkiri and, who came highly recommended by other VSO volunteers. However, I stopped taking lessons from her because I increasingly became busy with my work and, I felt, at that time, that I wasn’t progressing much with my Khmer 101 lessons.    More to the point, I wasn’t putting it into practice!  

Since I last saw her, last March 2014, Sopheak had called me several times for a visit, for dinner and to think about taking Khmer lessons with her again.  Guilt began to creep in, I hadn’t seen her for almost a year and so I thought it was time for a visit.  

Of course, as per usual we were overjoyed to see each other and, Sopheak as always, greeted me with a cup of tea.  Her smiley 4-year-old son Leidai had grown considerably.  While Sopheak and I talked, Leidai was testing his new bow and arrow that his father had recently made for him.   He ran around the garden and in the two chicken compounds shooting his blunt arrow at banana trees and at anything that moved, until his mother suggested to practice his archery skills elsewhere.   Leidai soon gave the idea up and joined us in our conversation.

Ph'nong children walking to the market to sell their produce

Tea in hand, and Leidai leaning against his mother, Sopheak told me that she was busy everyday with the avocado season, and, weekends were no exception.  She began her day at daybreak, at 5 in the morning to buy avocados from the Pn’óng farmers who traveled every morning on foot, approximately 25 kilometers to the Ph’nong market .    At the end of each week, Sophek loaded her avocados in large crates for shipment to Phnom Penh and to Vietnam, evidently selling them for a higher fee than she had originally bought them for. Though, aware of high competition with other vendors, Sophek emphasized the importance of supporting the Ph’nong people and, if they were times the buying was poor it didn’t matter to her, as long as the Ph’nong people were paid a small commission for their hard day’s work.

Onward and upward with her day, typically by the time Sopheak arrived home from the market, her husband Sophal, her 15 year old daughter Lyn and her son Leidai awoke to her call for breakfast.   When Sophal left for work and Lynn for school, Sopheak spent her morning home schooling Leidai.  

During my visit with her, bright and early that crispy Saturday morning, Sopheak proudly showed me around her 'organic' vegetable garden, her passion fruit vines hanging abundantly on her trellis, her strawberry patch, her chickens who shared their space with turkeys and, her pigeons on the hill, some protecting their young.   She also pointed to the eggs that were sat on day and night for 21 days by mother hen and, to her chicks that were pecking the ground searching for bugs, Leida remarked .  

Pumping water from the well

Next, she excitedly pointed to her new house standing high on the hill, in the sunlight that was under construction.  Her present house metres away from her new one was being demolished for the wood, for the building materials that Sophal planned to use for his new (two-storey high) house.   Sophek announced that she couldn’t wait to move in, mostly for the view.  However, it maybe awhile before it’s completed, because her husband only had weekends to work on the house.   

While we continued touring the garden, Sopheak and Leidai watered the plants while sampling 'unripe' strawberries along the way.   They also, fed the chickens with ‘home made ‘rice meal mixed with water.  Sophek made a point of telling me that her chickens were free range and well fed.  However, they were unusually smaller than the chickens at the market because her chickens were not injected with hormones.

Fresh eggs

As I was about to leave, escorting me to the (light weight) bamboo gate, Sopheak gave me a bag of fresh eggs and declared that her eggs were rich in texture: the yolks were a deep orange, they were tastier and meatier than the eggs from the market.  We hugged, and I promised that I’d visit her and her family a little more often;  clearly to chat, to pick up more Khmer from her and to taste her delicious cooking. Oh yes, we had already made plans to attend a mutual friend's wedding together the following weekend.

Since I last saw Sopheak, her avocado, her vegetable-fruit garden and poultry business had expanded.  Aside from her ongoing avocado enterprise, more people were buying from her, especially her eggs and passion fruit.    

Sophal, with his perfect English was now manager of an NGO.  In fact, the whole family spoke ‘impeccable’ English.   Lyn was doing much better at school as a result of receiving private lessons.   Leida was enjoying home schooling and undivided time with his mother.  Though this is only a small window of the life of Sophek, all in all she seemed happy to do as she pleased in a now ‘free’ nation, where people were left alone for the first time, in more than a decade.

More Later …