Stuart Clark reports from Cambodia: Part 2

I’ve had staring contests before but never with a 400lb-plus water buffalo who’s giving me daggers because I’m standing on what he reckons is his tasty grass.

Much snorting of nose, stamping of feet and brandishing of horns ensues before I decide I really shouldn’t be doing that in public, and let my bovine adversary, who looks a bit like Liam Gallagher circa 1995, stuff his face.

We’re in Bakmek to see one of the 450 Village Associations that Concern have helped set up in conjunction with their local NGO partners. The idea is to identify the poorest people in the community and help improve their financial situations. This is done through a series of VA grants and loans, which are repaid at a monthly interest rate of 1% to 2% – a far better deal than the 20% a month previously demanded by local moneylenders.

The success stories include a family who bought a pair of breeding pigs with their loan, and within 18 months had reared and sold enough piglets to be able to double the size of their house.

A portion of the loan interest paid by association members goes into an emergency fund to help destitute villagers who are ignored by a government that despite imprisoning people for non-payment of income tax doesn’t believe in social security, unemployment benefit and pensions for anyone except their own cronies.

Concern have also helped to provide new access roads, latrines, wells, water pumps and a rodent and bird-proof rice bank, which means that for the first time since Pol Pot the village has guaranteed all-year round food supplies. The water pump means that instead of just the single rainy season rice crop, farmers are now harvesting twice, sometimes three times a year.

It’s impressive work, which their local partners will continue when Concern complete their phased withdrawal from Cambodia in June.

Before leaving the bright lights of Phnom Penh, we’d checked in with Kevin Doyle, the Glasnevin-born editor of the Cambodia Daily who told us that one of the five senior Khmer Rouge officials standing trial on charges of genocide, 87-year-old Ieng Sary, has cheated justice by dying.

It’s bad news for people like Tan Bunleng, Concern’s Programme Director in Pursat, a sort of Cambodian Athlone, which takes three-and-a-half hours to reach from the capital on roads that for the most part are less potholed than the ones in Westmeath.

“He should have gone to prison for the hell he put us through,” says Tam whose mother, father and six brothers and sisters all perished under Pol Pot. Two were bludgeoned to death with rifles while the others either starved or fell victim to disease in the work camps they were forcibly evacuated to.

“I joined Concern because I wanted to help rebuild my country,” resumes Bunleng whose composure is remarkable, but one suspects rehearsed to avoid the public displays of emotion that elder Cambodians find embarrassing.

His colleagues Sam Savoun, Kim Miratori and Morm Sopheak all have similarly effecting stories, which we’ll be telling in an upcoming issue of Hot Press.

Our field trip ends on a bit of I’m A Celebrity… ‘Bush Tucker Challenge’ note when Miratori takes me to one of his favourite Khmer restaurants and suggests we order the stir-fried cow’s penis with ant eggs. I’m expecting the other Ant and his mate Dec to burst through the door laughing but, nope, he’s serious. Not feeling the penis, so to speak, I negotiate the switch to a less contentious cow part. The ant eggs remained and were quite good in an odd squishy sort of way. Whatever about travel, travel certainly broadens the palette!