Srey Lah

Srey Lah is almost 16. The second child in her family, she lives in town with her parents and four siblings. She’s lucky. She still attends school, which her hard working parents find a priority. She usually has enough food to eat and when she needs a new pair of shoes, they can save a little to buy them. She is well liked and respected in her neighborhood. For a young Khmer woman in this town, Srey Lah is doing quite well.

Compare her with many of her friends. Most of them were forced to quit school when they were about 13. Their parents had no extra money to allow their daughter to attend the higher grades, and since they could already read and write, they were much more useful in the workforce. One of these young girls works like a man, seven days a week on a construction site for 10,000 riles a day (about US$2.50). Together with her widowed mother, her tiny wage doubles the family income, and provides for her brothers and sisters to eat and attend school.

Jobs are scarce, particularly for young woman, and there are not many choices. It seems to me that most of the girls fall into one of two categories.

The first group of girls leaves the Province to find their fortune in Phnom Penh. The relentless garment factories are crying out for employees. There, in the anonymity of the capital city these usually completely unprepared young girls become exploited pawns in a sad but seemingly unstoppable machine. At these factories the girls work for a minimum wage of US$ 50 a month. To get any extra they must work overtime, which usually means 12 hour days 7 days a week. Then, provided they are not sick for even a single day in the month, they might be able to earn up to US$100. Out of this, they will need to pay for accommodation, which is often only possible if they share cramped hostel rooms with as many as 10 other factory workers. They will eat minimally, in order to save as much money as they possibly can, to send back to their expectant families in the province. After all, haven’t they escaped to the place of plenty with guaranteed wages? These girls, already so exploited, are very vulnerable to abuse and even worse, to being lured into other forms of employment which seem to offer money they only dreamed of, but often lock them into a nightmare. Remember that when you next buy a Jag Shirt or an esprit pants. What you pay for it is more than the girl who made it will earn in a month of sewing.

And then there’s the other category of young woman whose families are not lured by the hope of big money in the city, and decide to marry them off instead. By 16, most girls in our town are of marriageable age. Realizing their options are minimal, and not wanting to be “left on the shelf”, many of the girls agree to marry older men, to secure their future. Four years later, and at the ripe old age of 20, they have a few children, and often in the same financial circumstances as their parents were ten years before. If they are fortunate, their husband will not leave to find another, younger bride, and they will manage, somehow, to survive, and provide for their own daughters until they too pass puberty, and the whole vicious cycle begins again.

Srey Lah is about to complete year 9 at school, and her parents have no money spare to afford the huge costs the teachers demand in order to pass through the higher levels of school. She does not want to get married but she is toying with the idea of going to Phnom Penh to work in a garment factory. Her parents want what is best for her.

I am grappling with how I can be a link in some chain that provides hope and offers them something between the two.

Even better, I wish I could provide the whole chain.