Wild Boar Creek - Prek Chrook Cambodian Village Page

Prek Chrook is located about 6 miles from Phnom Penh, in the Pea Reang district of Prey Veng province. The village is situated along the Small River, a tributary of the Mekong River.

Although not terribly far from the city, it takes about 1 1/2 hours to reach Prek Chrook by motorbike and 3 hours by car. Except in unusually dry years, from September-December the roads are under water, so one can only reach the village by boat.

Prek Chrook was so named generations ago because it was frequently a river-crossing point for wild boars.

Approximately 150 families live in Prek Chrook, which is a typical rural Cambodian village in that virtually everyone is a subsistence rice farmer.

Villagers get what little money they have by selling rice, reed that they plant in their fields, or fruit (e.g., bananas, papayas, mangos, jackfruit) that grows from their trees; bartering is common at the village level.

As is the case throughout rural Cambodia, there is no electricity in Prek Chrook and no running water. Some families are fortunate enough to have a rechargeable battery, which enables them to (i) have light after sundown, and/or (ii) listen to a radio if they have one; few families have a television.

For most, drinking and cooking water comes from the river. Villagers also bathe themselves (and their draught cows) in the river. Only a small handful of families have a drinking water well; it is extremely expensive - about $100 - to drill a well.

Mobile telephone service became available in Prek Chrook in 2002. Few families, though, can afford a telephone.

Many families do not have a motorbike or even a bicycle; during the dry season, it costs $2-3 to travel to Phnom Penh by motorbike taxi (one way); during the rainy season, it costs about 75 cents to travel there by boat (one way).

There is no doctor in the village; the nearest medical care is in Phnom Penh.

The villagers struggle every year with the weather; enough but not too much rain during the growing season means a decent rice crop; not enough or too much rain means a bad, sometimes a disastrous rice crop.

Those fortunate enough to have one use a water pump (powered by gasoline) to irrigate their rice fields; a decent water pump costs $150-200, and a liter of gasoline costs about 50 cents.

Most families are very large, with at least 3-4 children and often as many as 6 or more.

A desperately needed new schoolhouse was built with private money and opened in mid-1998; the children, however, have no textbooks and no school supplies.

The schoolteachers also are rice farmers; their monthly government salary is a meager $25.

For generations, the villagers of Prek Chrook have made beautiful reed floormats for their personal use. (People throughout Cambodia sleep, eat, sit, and pray on reed mats.) Reed is planted at the end of the rainy season and grows in abundance in the fields of Prek Chrook. Mats are woven, primarily by women, after the rice crop has been harvested.

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Everyday life in the other villages with which Wild Boar Creek works, indeed everyday life throughout rural Cambodia, is much like it is in Prek Chrook.

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