Today I explored the village of Banteay Chhmar.
I started the day with tours of two textile workshops. Watching women weave vibrant strands of silk with complex wooden contraptions, I admired both how smoothly their bodies synchronized with their machines as well as the pride the women appeared to take in their labor. Picture a Khmer woman in her mid-fifties pushing pedals up and down with her feet while passing a spool side to side with her hands, with a calm expression of half-closed eyes above a soft smile not unlike that of the several Buddha statues dotting the village.
From there, a tractor took me to Banteay Chhmar’s rice milling machine. Living in service-centric Los Angeles, I rarely encounter agricultural machinery. So when the milling machine whirred to life, I climbed to the top of it, where a visceral grasp of the physics I study in school struck me like a grain of rice hitting a metal pan. A single motor turned dozens of axles in different directions using a combination of perpendicular pulleys and twisting rubber bands, an enormous conversion of electricity into rotational kinetic energy that fed an entire village.
Another tractor ride away lay the village’s cassava farms. Bumping along a dirt road, I surveyed the landscape around me: the light from the cerulean sky scattered across lush fields skirted by distant power cables would have made for a fine Impressionist painting. To me, the whole farm and its stewards represented a rare remnant of a lost world. In the fields, I helped harvest the cassava, which consisted of tugging at a thick stem until an enormous potato-like plant burst through the red soil with a sound not unlike the croak of a frog. At first I found the process strangely satisfying, but soon felt sobered by the realization that my “fun” was the farmers’ daily labor. It is unfortunate that most tasks are enjoyable when they can be done but dreary when they must be.
In the afternoon, I spoke with two elders of Banteay Chhmar: the village chief and, incidentally, my homestay father. A couple moments in our conversation stood out. First, when asked whether Banteay Chhmar’s weather had changed during their lifetimes, the chief resolutely responded that the village had grown more hot and arid with consequences for its crops. I have long had an academic understanding of climate change, but meeting people who had experienced its impacts firsthand added a human dimension to that understanding. The second response that the elders gave that I pondered answered the question of what one thing they wanted to impart to the village youth. Likely influenced by their experiences of witnessing and surviving the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, both responded that they wanted the next generation to understand the importance of living a moral life, defined by values like tradition and hospitality. Doubtless some nuance died in translation, but I did see the chief gesturing with her hands clasped in the form of a respectful greeting.
Before dinner, I wandered around the remains of the Banteay Chhmar Temple. If the cassava farms could have constituted an Impressionist painting, then the temple could have constituted a Romantic one: The ancient stone ruins illuminated by a golden sunset and torn asunder by towering green trees recalled the setting of a Caspar David Friedrich painting. Alternatively, one could perhaps read the ruins as a Cambodian embodiment of Shelley’s Ozymandias: The Banteay Chhmar Temple once enshrined King Jayavarman VII and his son’s victory over the Cham invaders, but Nature and occupying armies over the centuries brought down the King’s mighty display. Power is fleeting; all is temporary.
-Brendan
