One Brave Woman!
Chrauk Tiek/The Grady Grossman School: A woman handed me a letter today after a community meeting at the school. The letter expresses her deep concern about her communities lack of water, lack of income opportunity, lack of health care and lack of law enforcement. Her name is Tou Cham Soka. She is pregnant and she is brave.
The letter details the overthrow of the good community leader Bun Vanna by a local corrupt authority, the newcomers who have come to the cut down the trees, the bribes taken from oxcart and wood truck drivers carrying tree trunks from the illegal logging. The parade of trees out of the forest goes on day and night. At night the bribe payments are less, so the poorest oxcart drivers work in the night.
The newcomer houses are easy to spot, there are piles of neatly stacked hardwood in measured units of 3 meters by 2 meters; a harvest for which the family earns $2.62.
At meetings with the schoolchildren and villagers we ask for more letters we can take to the Ministry of Environment or WildAid, or some one who will listen. It’s amazing to me 
that no one has come from the conservation organizations working in Cambodia to speak to the people living here. The Aural Wildlife Sanctuary is the most imminently threatened region in the country at the moment and there are many local people who want to protect the forest. They know their future is at stake. They know how valuable the trees are to retaining water during the rainy season for slow release during the drought season. They feel powerless to stop the destruction. Many are afraid to write the letters and state the real problem. Except one brave woman. It is a start.
We will begin here at the Grady Grossman School with the Abundant Forest training center, to teach the children how to plant a diverse number of species to produce food and
generate income, to conserve water and grow trees. We hope to win over many people. People who want to stop participating in the problem but they have no choice. Transporting wood to the city is the only current way many know to get enough to feed their family everyday. They live hand to mouth. Most villagers ask me for a water pump to help grow their farm. The community leaders are asking for the government to fix the dam at the nearby Peam Levia Lake to provide better irrigation. The government does not respond.
We drove to Peam Levia yesterday, through the forest in the back of a wood carrying truck. During the dry season the water is low and most of the wide open area is marshy, but it is beautiful green with many waterfowl. Andre, a trained ornithologist, says the birds are the most amazing species he has ever seen—and he was trained in the Amazon! In the distance, mostly obscured by a haze of smoke from the burning forest, I could almost make out Aural Mountain, the highest in Cambodia.
The teachers harvested giant snails from the lake. Boiled and grilled over a fire it was best 
the escargot I’ve ever tasted. We ate picnic style and talked. Community leaders explained the problem again. Vong Sovann, the truck driver, asked me to buy him a video camera so he can monitor and document the perpetrators burning and cutting the forest, although he is available for hire to transport wood. With no choices he
needs the income to feed his family. Like most of the people living here, he is very willing to change if there is another option.
The children are waiting in the big truck to take me swimming at the “stream water”. I must go, now.
It is difficult to express the extreme urgency to support this village. Their future is doomed if we don’t. What is happening here now effects everyone on the entire planet. We all need the trees to fix the CO2 produced in industrial nations and the United States. There is a diverse array of endangered species living in the Aural Wildlife Sanctuary that our planet will lose forever, and most of all the people need water and soil to grow food. Without the trees, we have nothing.
The villagers understand this, but they need our help and they need it now. Reward Tou Cham Soka for her bravery!
Please buy Bones That Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia and Spread the Word.
Go to www.BonesThatFloat.com to order pre-publication hardcover copies at a discount price of $20 (+tax & shipping). 25% of the proceeds benefit the Friends of the Grady Grossman School, Cambodia.
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exasperations have increased to a hearty “Holy Shit!� The road is an absolute mess, made much worse in the rainy season by the transport of logs and charcoal. We passed 20 moto trailers carrying charcoal and 16 vans and mini-trucks carrying hardwood in one afternoon, all on their way to Phnom Penh. They stop at several checkpoints along the way and pay their bribes to the forest rangers. A fancy red sports car is parked under the house near the Forest Administration building; along the roadside, whole families covered in soot tend their kilns.
In the morning, the children come to school with their parents for an assembly to meet us. It is the first time I get to speak to them one to one, without the pomp and circumstance of the government officials who usually accompany me on my visits. I tell them I am proud of the hard working teachers and students, especially the soccer team. Our teachers taught the children how to play soccer and they won second place in the district tournament. It was their very first sporting event.
computer so that more children can study in Din Narith’s class. When I asked who would like to take a music class, everyone raised their hands. I had discussed with Arn Chorn-Pond about bringing a master from his Cambodian Living Arts program here, so the children can be exposed to the traditions of their own culture. The only music they ever 
hear is Chinese style love songs blaring from the karaoke shop in town. Arn and I want the children to learn the foundation of Cambodian music, so they can write new songs and communicate the message to save the forest through music and dance.
After the assembly, the children played games in the schoolyard and the community leaders gathered to talk to me. My old friend Bun Vana, former community chief, Ek Chun, the Souy village group leader, Prom Thommmacheat, a monk praying for the forest, and Nou Nuon the new Deputy Head of Commune. They are all desperate to stop the forest destruction, especially for the Souy people whose ancestors
are forest spirits. Bun Vana was evicted from the community chief position last July in a secret meeting between four higher-ranking officials, and replaced with a newcomer, Vy Sok. The forest has been burning ever since. They feel powerless to stop the destruction.
I asked the children, “who wants to save the trees?� and everyone raised their hands. I asked the community leaders to have everyone in their villages write a letter. The ones who can write can sign their name and the ones who cannot will thumbprint letters written by their children. The children will draw pictures. I asked the Head of Commune, Nou Noun to ask all 7,743 families under his jurisdiction to participate. I don’t know where I am going to take them, but I promised I would not stop until someone takes action.
In the afternoon, the teachers and elders took us to see Buddhism Srei Puos, the forest temple. Thirty monks are praying for the fires to stop burning every night. They tie saffron robes around the trees to make them holy. The monks and community leaders fight the fire, thrashing large branches of green leaves to the ground. We choke on the smoke and our feet are blackened by soot.
wounds with monks praying all around it.
biomass, made from material collected from the forest floor. With the briquettes as the basis of an inquiry based science class, we hope to create problem-solving leadership in our students. For the first time we will connect what the students are learning with the world they live in. Students can collect raw material from home, bring it to the school, and spend time working the decomposition and production of briquettes.
French doctoral student, offered excellent input to assist the first stages of our project, the lessons of quality control they’ve learned from their attempts to introduce improved charcoal and cooking stoves to reduce raw wood consumption. With the vision in mind to one day sell our briquettes as a sustainable, income-generating product for our school, they can test the products at home with their parents, take notes to gain valuable 
feedback for improvements, and then consider marketability of their product. The secondary effect is that we get the parents to try something new without having to buy something, and begin their conversion to sustainable use. The students take their feedback data and create materials to educate people about the use of their product.
I’m talking to him about using music to communicate our message of forest conservation to the children. We are both excited to lend our support to each other. I am especially honored, as Arn is a personal hero. His life story is detailed in the PBS documentary 
much about my clothes, meds and battery chargers; I can get by without those and find replacements at local shops. But the 60 pound duffle of donations for the school containing books, art supplies, puzzles and English learning games, are precious. I hope they will be found.
have learned so far.
uneducated people whose have never received the education before. They cut down the trees to sell for exchanging rice and some for money. They don’t think about the future consequence for the children. Before they just cut down the best timber for the houses and for the furniture and this year they cut all kind of the trees even though they are saplings for the charcoal and wood sticks for cooking everyday. Each day they are destroying thousand trees and hunting the wild animals without any authority stops them in this action.”
