"In my home village of Kdanh in Takeo province everyone knew each other. There were about 30 families and we were all rice farmers. My family was poor but we were happy, we didn't think about being poor. I grew up with one brother and four sisters. My father was very gentle and never beat us. He always gave me pocket money when I asked, even if he had to borrow it. He loved his children very much. My mother liked us, but she didn't show it.
As a child, I enjoyed playing with my friends. We played traes (pick-up sticks) using chop sticks and a lime, lort antaik (jump rope), buy khom, a game with 10 holes in the ground and snail shells, and but pune (hide and seek), which is especially fun at night.
My mother's health wasn't good and she couldn't help in the farming. She and my older sister wove silk, hol (ikat designs) and phamoung ( a plain silk). I wanted to help with the weaving but my legs were too short to reach the peddles of the loom.
In 1970 the Khmer Rouge soldiers presented a letter to our community announcing that they were coming. The Lon Nol soldiers quietly disappeared and my teacher also left because he knew the Khmer Rouge didn't like teachers. That was the end of my schooling. The Khmer Rouge wanted equality so they organized our village into one class, without poor or rich people. They collected all the dishes from each family and we had one common kitchen in the village.
In 1972, I was sent to live with the children's group in Sla Bat village and put in a work group with 25 other kids. I had to call every adult "father" or "mother" and I saw my own parents only twice a month. I didn't worry about myself, but I worried about my parents because they were living alone and had to do all the house chores themselves, without any children to help. The Khmer Rouge made my parents move to another village in 1973 so they were under a new leader, because the Khmer Rouge were afraid people might refuse to obey if they knew each other. They isolated people in order to control them.
During the Khmer Rouge regime we didn't have enough food, so I boiled leaves and ate them. I was too skinny, especially during the rainy season when there was a shortage of rice and we only had watery porridge. Under the Khmer Rouge we had to work more and eat less. If they would have given us enough rice, they would have gotten better results. The Khmer Rouge forced me to work too hard, planting rice, making fertilizer, digging canals, and build a dam. Even the old people had to work, weaving kromas (scarves)."
"The women in my village wove silk skirts and I wanted to learn how to weave, so I volunteered to help them. I liked weaving and wanted to make it my career, but my family was very poor and we didn't have enough money to buy the materials to build our own loom. I worked for my cousin and she paid me 100 riels for each skirt I wove, which took about three days. That year my family had enough rice, so I was able to save my earnings and buy a loom and silk thread.
In 1983 my father became seriously sick, and even though I bought him medicine, he didn't get better. His health had been poor ever since he was badly wounded by a missile which exploded near our house in 1972 when a Khmer Rouge soldier accidentally fired artillery during training. My sister was injured and my father had metal all through his body, including a piece in his head. I was full of sorrow when my father died. I felt sorry for my mother, because only my two sisters and I were left to take care of her.
In 1985 a cousin asked my mother if he could marry me and everyone in my family agreed except me. I didn't want to marry a cousin, because cousins were like brothers to me. My uncle on my father's side of the family kept asking me if I would marry and I kept telling him "no", but after a while I got tired of answering him and was silent. He thought my silence meant that I agreed, so he arranged the wedding party, but ten days before the wedding I had an argument with my mother and declared that I would not marry my cousin. I told my mother that if I were married and had children, I would not be able to give her enough attention.
I feared that if my husband didn't have a job, he would stay at home and I would have to support all of us, or he might become a soldier and then I would be separated from him. I did not want to rely on a husband, I wanted to rely on myself, and I thought it was better to live on my own. When my uncle found out that I refused to get married he beat me brutally, until I was bruised and bleeding.
There was a drought in 1985 which meant we couldn't transplant the rice seedlings, so I went to live with an uncle on my mother's side of the family in the central part of the province. There I sold cooked rice and snacks to earn money to send to my mother and my uncle gave me a little gold to buy rice for her.
The next year the rains came and I went back home to help my sisters, Rum and Saven, plant rice. My sisters and I worked for a neighbor in exchange for plowing and during the harvest we carried the rice home on our heads and then threshed it by hand at night. We were disappointed when we saw that our harvest was only enough to feed us for six or seven months.
About that time, I heard that people were finding work far away from our province, but my mother said she didn't want me to go unaccompanied. I told her that it was up to me if I was good or bad and convinced her to let me go to Poipet in Battambang province. Once there, I secretly carried things into Cambodia from Thailand. Several of us walked together across the border, sometimes at night, and then smuggled goods back, like medicine or MSG. It was dangerous work and after six months I quit and moved back home.
In 1990, I was overjoyed to learn that my fourth sister, Wan, was living at Site Two refugee camp in Thailand. I traded our pig and chickens for gold so I could pay a guide to take me safely through the jungle and across the border to visit her. We were so happy to see each other. Wan gave me all the gold she had saved and I cam back and paid the debt on my mother's house. Then I returned to Site Two refugee camp and lived with Wan for nearly two years because it was easier to earn money there than in Cambodia. We wove polyester-cotton sampots(skirts).
I moved back to Cambodia in 1992 when the camps were closed. Then in 1993 I came to Phnom Penh to teach weaving at Khemara, a community development organization which helps poor women. I like to teach, but weaving is easier than teaching weaving, because teaching requires a lot of thinking. I need to consider, "What is the best way to make the students understand? How can I teach everything within three months?"
Silk used to be produced in my home province of Takeo, but the Khmer Rouge cut down the mulberry trees that the silk worms fed on, so now I have to buy silk thread from Vietnam. In preparing the thread, I first dip it in water with lye made from ashes and boil it for 15 minutes, then I hang it in the sun to dry. Next I wrap it around a frame, tie little bundles of thread to make the design, and then I dye it. The yellow comes from the Pa Hoot, tree bark and the now we get the red and green from chemical dyes. We are doing research at Khemara so that we can go back to using natural dyes. Warping the loom is the hardest part of weaving because I have to count the threads exactly and if I make a mistake I have to start over.
The pidan (temple wall hanging) is the most difficult weaving to do. It is a silk picture which tells a religious story and is hung in the temple for ceremonies, like Ancestors Remembrance Day or the Cambodian New Year. We have to tie 400 bundles of silk to do the whole story and the weaving is six or seven meters long. I've never done the whole story by myself, just parts.
The pidan picture story goes like this: The king had a son named Vesandor who was very kind and intelligent. He learned about Buddhism and when people asked him about it, he taught them everything he knew. The King had an elephant which was an important symbol of the country and when Vesandor gave the elephant away, the country had a drought. Everyone was so upset that they banished Vesandor.
The next scene shows Vesandor leading his wife and children into the forest. God gave him a palace, Vesandor became a monk, and his wife served him. Then the Buddha flew down as an apsara dancer carrying fruit. When Vesandor's wife went into the forest to look for fruit, the Buddha turned into a tiger and forbade her from going too far. She came home late and while she was gone an old man came to the palace and asked for both children. I can't remember the rest of the story, because there are so many different parts. Sometimes I depict these tales in my weavings and other times I just create my own designs.
This kind of weaving is a very old art and the old woman who taught me learned when she was 14 years old. She told me that if I do the whole story from beginning to end, I need a spirit to look after me. Once, when I made a pidan, I didn't make and offering to the spirit or ask it to guide me, so I became very sick. My mother then set out a hand of bananas, alcohol, cakes and a glass of water as an offering, lit incense, and prayed for the spirits help in making the pidan. After that, my mother advised me to always make an offering, which I did for a while, but later I became lazy and stopped because I didn't believe I needed to. When I want to make a pidan I just do it and I don't get sick, but I don't do the whole story.
I have met a lot of difficulty in my life and I often think there is no happiness for me. I think other people have had better fortune than me. I don't blame anyone, only myself, because it is due to my sin in my last life. I hate the Khmer Rouge and I don't want them to take over our country again because then my life would be even more hopeless. I like this government and I don't want it to change.
I like weaving as big as all my life. I enjoy organizing each step and I feel happy when I finish a piece. When I look at my work and see the bright colors in a good design, I feel satisfied and know I can get a good price when I sell it."