First of a series of multi-media presentations on different walks of life in Cambodia. Here is a day with Moun who sells clay pots and vases from his ox driven cart through the streets of Phnom Penh.
“My name is Moun, I am 20 years old and I come from Kampong Chhnang. For two years now I have earned a living selling pots. I come to Phnom Penh to sell with my younger brother, my older brother, and brother-in-law. Every time we come to Phnom Penh we stay 15 to 20 days. I sell stoves, pots, jars, vases and other things. Some of it I buy, and some I make myself. We put the rice in the front of the cart to pray to the spirit that lives on the cart to take care of us and help us to sell.
200 000 riel (50 dollars) is the best I have been able to earn in a day. Every time I come I can go home with 100 or 150 dollars, maximum 150 dollars. I don’t enjoy this job if there was an easier job I would want to do it but I don’t have a good education and this job comes from my family, it is our heritage. The hardest problem is selling, and asking for water. It is hard to go inside the city; police don’t want us to go down the main roads, or to the city centre, we create traffic jams so we are only allowed in the outskirts. We never come alone; we have to have 3 or 4 carts so we can sleep. We can’t stay alone. In the daytime we can stay alone, at night we don’t dare to.
In the future, for my brothers, I would like to make this business bigger. I would like to ask everyone to come and buy my products so that I can go home quickly.”
