8 months and 21 days
Until a few years ago, there was no road to O'Svay. The only way to leave this northern Cambodian village of a few hundred people was by boat, down the Mekong river.
So when a young woman greets me with a warm, crystal clear "Hi! How are you? I'm Kina." I was surprised. And, life took an even more interesting turn as 22-year old Kina told me her story of leaving O'Svay, and then, coming home again.
Kina spent five years in Malaysia as a domestic servant. "I was 17 when I left," Kina says. "Though I lied about my age - I used my sister's identity card and said I was 18." She heard about the Malaysia work on Cambodian radio. "The advertisement said to call in, so, I did," she says. She was desperate to leave her village, and says she "was no good at school." At the time, she was in the middle of grade 7. She picked up and left her small village to work for strangers who lived in a city near Kuala Lumpur. No one trained her for what came next.
"Malaysia was bad, really bad." Kina says. Her first employers demanded she work constantly. "I started at 4 am, and I stopped at 1 am. Cleaning, cleaning all the time. It was never enough." For this, she was paid US$180 per month. "I pay you to work, so you work!" the woman of the house told her. She was trapped with that family. The employment agency kept her passport, so she couldn't leave.
“Malaysia was bad, really bad...In the first month I dropped from 60 kilograms to 48 kilograms. ”
"They didn't give me enough food either, and in the first month I dropped from 60 kilograms to 48 kilograms. I never told my parents," she says. "I didn't want them to worry."
I asked if they hit her. "Yes, but not too badly," she says. I didn't pry. "The first family was the worst," she says. "I was with them for 8 months and 21 days."
Kina asked repeatedly to be be moved, and the employment agency finally relented. She was placed with a second family, who she found equally bad. They "tested" her for a week and she didn't want to stay, so she left without being paid. Then a third family, this time for 10 days - also a "test" with no pay.
Kina was happy, finally, with her fourth family - a kind man who had recently become a widower, with two young children aged 4 and 5. "I loved the kids," she says. "I worked normal hours as a nanny, and helped with cleaning," says Kina. "The father treated me more like part of the family." She was even able to visit home once to have a holiday. It was with this family she learned the near-perfect English she speaks today. After about four years, she left that family to return home - that was a year ago.
"I wanted to come back and help my mother, my family."
When I ask her if she misses the kids she cared for, she immediately gets teary.
As a result of four years working for the Malaysian family, she saved US$7 thousand - a considerable sum to bring back for her own family, which includes six siblings, in a country where many struggle to make US$100 per month. She used the money to help her parents buy the river-side restaurant where she now spends her days.
So, what now? Kina thinks about this a lot. "I'd love to teach English to kids in my village," she says. "This is a dream. I had even set up a class, but it's hard to get them to come when there is no white board." And she says that while her oral English is strong (it really really is), she hasn't mastered writing it yet. "I'm trying to teach myself by watching English programs with subtitles on television."
Kina also thinks about being a tour guide. After all, she lives on one of the most beautiful parts of the lower Mekong river - home to the very rare Irrawaddy dolphins, along with birds, intricate floating forests and spectacular waterfalls. "If I could buy a boat, I would take tourists into the floating forests. I would love to do that."
The mysteriously beautiful "floating forests" near O'Svay. They can be fully explored by kayak.
A cormorant lands to hunt for fish.
1 of 4 Irrawaddy dolphins living in a pool near O'Svay.
It seems Kina would make a great tour guide - with her excellent English, outgoing personality and love for the Mekong. There is a thriving ecotourism movement in her area, drawing people from around the world and bringing much needed income to river communities. But this dream is under threat, most immediately by a dam being built just across the border in Laos.
“Saving the dolphins, the fish and the floating forests will save the humans.”
"For tourism to thrive we need to save the fish," says Kina. "The fish keep the dolphins here." There is real concern the dam will cut a migration route for fish, permanently changing their habitats. Experts also think the blasting underway now, together with pollution from building the dam is already harming the ecology of the area. "Saving the fish, the dolphins and the floating forest will also save the humans," says Kina.
When she was a girl, Kina says she didn't know what she wanted. "When I was 10, I think I just wanted things, like most kids," she reminisces. "Then I thought about being a doctor, but I was scared of blood."
"To be honest," says Kina, it's a bit hard right now to know what to do with my future. I'd like to go back to school. I want my own business too - maybe a shop that sells a bit of everything."
One thing she knows for certain is she wants to stay independent. "I don't want to get married," she says. "I want to be in charge of my life."
