The water sprit said:’The dam will not be built before five years’… That is what the chamane told the Poum Thmey villagers gathered at the spirit house on the banks of the Srepok river, near the rapids where the Lower Srepok3 dam’s construction is planned. They took their longboats, zigzagging upstream through the rocks hidden […]
Poum Thmey, squeezed between a land concession and a flooding river (see here) will have to cope with the consequences of the possible construction of the Lower Srepok3 dam, just a few km upstream, where a barrier of rocks creates a series of rapids in the river. A feasability study was conducted by a Chinese […]
To reach Phum Thmey village along the Srepok river it takes a car ride on the wide road being carved through hills and forests by the Chinese to connect Ratanakkiri and Mondulkiri, a bumpy ride on a side road, a river crossing with a ferry and a walk through the forest. It is remote. It […]
A few kilometers from Kbal Romea, the Phnong village which will be flooded by the Sesan2 dam, the Siv Guek Investment co. LTD has cleared a 90 hectares stretch of land in the forest, a small part of the 10,000 hectares of the concession granted by the Cambodian government. The company was bought by the […]
The other big village besides Sre Kor (see here) which will be drowned by the 335 square kilometers of the reservoir of the Sesan2 dam which was approved by the Cambodian government recently is called Kbal Romea. It is a Phnong community, stretched out along a dirt road covered by big trees, with the river […]
In 1989 I flew to Banlung with a helicopter (see here). As far as I remember there was nothing there: a few indigenous people’s longhouses, a hospital with one patient but no nurses or doctors, a school with plastic flowers on the teacher’s desk, a bunch of soldiers who must have reached the age of […]
All the photographs I took until now (well… the better ones only) about the ‘Three Rivers Dams’ project are available BIG in the latest update of my website at this link. While you are reading this I will be on the road to Ratanakkiri and Stung Treng to continue working on the story. Do not […]
The music wasn’t good enough. At least Kro Hom Kor, the red-necked spirit from the Sesan river wasn’t really satisfied with it. So he visited the body of the shamane only one time out of the three attempts. All the attire was ready though: the roasted pig’s head, the little bowls with rice, the jossticks, […]