A few days after the installation of the water pipes across my family’s pond, things began to cool down. But the vivid pictures of people behaving as if they had been a giant grabbing us in their hands stayed within my mind. I remember thinking that these people are like me; we have the same needs for survival. But why do we make war to only have short-term/selfish peace within their own family?

Do not get it wrong that I am still darn angry with them. I’ve just been puzzled or else bewildered by the way they behaved to other human beings. The truth is the way they behaved made me feel insecure about how I will ever survive here if I don’t submit to their needs and wants. What if I had nothing to submit to their greed? Would I be kicked to another dark corner, looking at them hugging themselves with joy over others’ suffering? It’s said that if you give people an inch, they will take a mile. Yes, we did give in at first. We thought that they would take just this, but they’d taken more than they were supposed to.

My parents, whereas, sought help from different sources. Their last answer was to ask my father’s older brother for help. He brought along a friend, a high-ranking official (two-starred general) to our house and chatted for some hours.

My mother said they did have a pleasant chat about the problems, and she did feel hopeful to win afterwards. The day before, the two district officials who cited my mother to file a counter-complaint pressured my mother to slip a rather huge sum of money under the table. In relation to this, days before my mother was cheated to sign a permission letter to let them install their pipes, the same officials came to my home and pestered my parents every day. Can you imagine what a headache to have someone come ask for money with threats every day? Doubtless, I was really annoyed though I wasn’t there. There were many sleepless nights my parents went through.

In such an argument, nobody wins but the officials. They threaten you, they console you, they even entice you into giving some money to them or others. Most likely the money ends up in their pockets. And nobody gets anything but hatred toward each other as till one point each would be willing to give as much as they can to satisfy their anger. In this case, those district officials’ role was adding more fuel to the flame of each side. But fortunately, the flame was put out on time.

My parents told me the day after the high ranking official my uncle brought with, there was quite a big unrest inside the district. I later found out that the official who came was a close friend of the district governor (not the deputy one). The governor made big noises all through walkie-talkie sets, blaming all who got involved in the case. The day after, the men who got themselves into trouble called my parents, offering apologies. The deputy governor who threatened to bring along a truck of military police also had trouble. Another official who was the other people’s side but nice to us phoned to say that he wanted to make friends with my parents. After several days, things were turned up and down. Enemies became friends and friends became closer friends.

I’m happy my parents have gotten over this, but I was left bewildered. My uncle asked if the high ranking official wanted some money for his transportation/gas; the man said he didn’t since he could vicariously feel our suffering and back-breaking job as farmers. I have a big question popping up on my forehead. How many families could get as good luck as this family, having someone powerful behind their back to help them get through difficulties? Well, maybe because it’s clear that we have 100% injustice from the first rule of the deputy governor, we deserve help and support from that man.

For me, I want justice before the court of law. I want every case to be legally settled because this could mean, it will serve as an example to other people who want to cause trouble for others. And, we all want equality, transparency and justice. My parents were asked not to file any complaint. It was unnecessary to file a complaint? I’m losing hope to change. Now ‘good’ is mixed with ‘bad’ and vice versa. You can never be sure if you fall a victim tomorrow until you get up the next morning only to find half of your house is gone. You realize that ‘corruption’ and ‘nepotism’ are inseparable elements in this society and that once or twice in life, you can’t escape this but adapt to this. Sad, huh? If you are lucky enough, you might not have to spend much money but pay an enormous amount of respect for that someone. Yet, at least, justice is returned; however, it doesn’t make all the people involved clearly see that justice is for public in general, not for elites.

It would be an ideal to be a know-nothing type of kid but definitely not, not in Cambodia. I’m writing now with too many thoughts bouncing in my mind. Will my parents get better by tomorrow? Will they be unable to go to bed tonight? Will those good-for-nothing people vanish into thin air?

This evening, our family’s emotions ran very high. The situation seemed very tense at the end. I missed out the peak of conflict because I was still at school, doing my mid-term test. While trying to finish it by all means, part of me yearned to come home just early enough to see the legal argument between my family and the other side. I arrived when it happened.

In 2000, a handful of villagers kneeled in front of my mom, just for her permission to install their water pipes through our family’s pond. After some time of begging and pestering my mother, they succeeded in getting my mom’s permission and compensated my mom at around $200. That was when their vegetable farms were so inundated that they couldn’t grow any more vegetables. My mom thought that this act of kindness could help them understand that farmers should help each other when a natural distaste like flood was our worst enemy. So, she gave in to their begging and of course, though some of those villagers were at some point at a throaty argument with my mom before. She said she didn’t want to destroy the business of other poor people just because of a bunch of very selfish hypocrites. It turns out that almost 8 years later, that bunch of people filed a lawsuit against my mom, although 5 years ago, my mom asked them to replace their old pipes as they were getting old. I remember that they refused to touch anything about that (their businesses were prospering) and ignored my mom’s request. 2008 gave them a few big rains and of course their vegetable farms were again flooded. That was no fault of us or my mom. This time, my mom wouldn’t let the sleeping dogs lie. She said no to their repiping. But since those people got their way to the district government with some thousand dollars, they won the argument. Yesterday, they even pressured my mom to sign a letter which allows them to pump water out of their farms through our pond. My mother unknowingly singed, which she later regretted. All right, they won because they cheated. The period of pumping wasn’t mentioned in the letter. Because my mom bad eyes, she couldn’t read the terms and conditions in the letter very clearly. She signed! Just today they gathered their relatives and swam through my pond and acted like there’s nothing happening around them or the pond belonged to their ancestors. They didn’t respect us, the owner of the pond.

My mom was almost bursting out crying today. I wish she didn’t. I wanted her to show her strength to them that we didn’t want to be corrupt to win the charge. Those people did contribute to the corruption in the country, obviously. Yes, we might not be very smart people on earth, many neighbours say. We could have spent a few hundred dollars to get an official to run the complaint— we could have done much better to win— but so what? We could have still become corrupt “Cambodians.” Clearly, mom didn’t want to settle the problem with bribery because she knew that money was hard to earn and by spending it for a not worthy cause like that, we’d rather lose. And, now one of the officials who was looking for some pocket money tried to coax us into filing another counter-complaint to them. But actually, I just feel that we don’t lose anything, do we?

Now the other side wants to run their pipes on our pond forever (when their farm is flooded). The governor was acting on their behalf– it was clearly unfair– he even threatened to bring along a truck of military police the next day. Oh dear.. what a country it is! Misuse of power and croonies are all too common!!

I’ve been left dumbfounded… I’d rather keep all I want to say in my mind, Saying it out wouldn’t help, would it? This is what I want to say to that governor’s face– “Who do u think you are, to make other people fool around with my property?” All I can do now is to finish this blog post, calm my family and myself down– we want to be kind to people but we don’t want to allow ungrateful people to please their way without gratitude.

This is Cambodia??