3LIVES

Fortunes

The shuffled deck of cards is handed back to fortune teller Pou Voleak. She begins to spread them over the blessed red cloth which covers her little trestle table. Like the rest of the small group of fortune tellers who sit under the trees by the river opposite Wat Ounalom, Pou Voleak's customers are visitors to the river. She speaks no English or Japanese. 

Voleak also goes by her "sky name", Preah Neang Chan Keysey. She believes she has been give a gift by the gods. It is both a blessing and a curse. "When I was 17, in 1979, I became very sick, During my sickness, I had a dram. In my dream, the gods told me I now had the gift to see into the future and I had to use it. I became better, and it was true," she say. "I don't like my job, but what can I do? The gods have told me to do it." Originally from Croch Chmar District, Kmpong Cham, she says she is famous not only in Kompong Cham but Siem Reap and Phnom Penh as well.

 
Her most important possessions, she say, are the little religious trinkets she keeps beside her in a small jar. She sells some of these, but will not part with unique pieces like the tiny sword in a sheath which she believes is the only one in the world.

"Now I rent a small house in Russey Keo District with my children -three girls and a boy. The eldest and youngest stay at home. the middle two study. My husband is a farmer in Kompong Cham." Thinking about him, her eyes fill with tears.

 
"I miss him," she says, "and Croch Chmer. But I have to make a business here. Maybe, one day, I can buy a house." Pou  Voleak will not price her work. "I say, 'up to you'. some people have money. Some only have a little. I still help them. Some days I make 20,000 riel. Some days 10,000. Sometimes, nothing." She doesn't know her own future. "I pray twice a day. The gods to tell me what to do. My future is led by the stars. I wait and do what I am told." 

Shoe Shine
 

Hy Piseth is happy. He is working, but shining shoes doesn't feel like work. "this is a good job," he says, rifling through his homemade box. "It is easy and I am with my friends."
 
Learning to say "Hello, shoe shine" in English form an experienced coworker as his only training. His friends - two girls with bathroom scales and a little boy with a dead fish on a string - look solemnly on. 

Piawrh ia 14. He has been doing this job since his family saved enough for his equipment - over a year now. He never went to school. Piseth works the riverfront because there are crowds and a lot of tourists. "They pay more. Sometimes a dollar," he grins. On an average day, he makes between 3000 and 5000 riel for his family. 

 
"They pay more. Sometimes a dollar," he grins. ON an average day, he makes between 3000 and 5000 riel for his family. "There are a lot of gangsters, though. Sometimes they call me, 'hey, boy',  and make me shine their shoes for nothing." Piseth says that's just life. "My father is a cyclo driver. My mother sells pigs' ears to eat. I have 10 brothers and sister, but my parents gave seven of them to other people to take care of, so there is only me, a sister and brother at home. They are very small," he says. 

 
He has finished this pair of shoes. He hands them back, and takes his money and his friends to buy cakes form a nearby hawker. It's nearly lunchtime. There's time to look for more work. Later.

Birds

 
The tortoise woman is trying to muscle in and attract attention, but Phat isn't having that. At 1500 riel each, or less than 50 cents, her birds are much cheaper than the 5000 riel this rival is demanding for her good luck tortoises. And Phat has five children at home in Kien 
 
Svay District to worry about. She swings her cage full of swallows in front of the potential buyer. "Releasing them in pairs is more lucky," she urges, but concedes one is better than none.

Phat has been working at Preah Vihear Onh Dong Ka, opposite the Royal Palace one he banks of the Tonle Sap for a year now, selling birds mainly to tourists to release. "I don't like it much. I don't want this job but I can't find another," she says. "It is hot and hard work to carry the cage around. I used to be a farmer, but not now. The large wire mesh cage is awkward, and there's not much shade. To keep the swallows alive, she periodically dunks them into the river to "bath" them.

 
Phat says she left for Thailand when the Vietnamese first took Cambodia over form the Khmer Rouge because she didn't know what would happen. Now she has returned, the birds are her only chance of luck and prosperity, too. "My husband stays at home. My 10-year- old daughter and 12-year-old son study. I must make the money," she says. Her youngest is two. Today, it is too hot even for tourists.

 
"There is a god here," she says, nodding towards the temple. "Preah Onh Dong Ka. That is why we come here to sell the birds. There are seven other sellers here. I sell two or four birds a day most days, but some days I sell none. "They cost me 400 riel each and I have to go to Neak Luang (on the road to Vietnam) to buy them every day because they come from Vietnam."

 
"Maybe it is because they are cheaper there," she suggests. What happens to the birds after the leave is also a mystery to her. She worries about her family. The birds, she think, are fine. "Maybe they follow the wind. Maybe they go home. I don't know. They never come back. I think they keep living their lives." Words: Bronwyn Sloan. Pictures:"Nathan Dexter, Jon Bugge.

wtoqz.com
#170 Norodom Blvd. Phnom Penh 12301, Cambodia
Tel: (855) 23 21-2004, Fax: (855) 23 21-2005, US Fax: (209) 828-3242,