Phnom Penh Stories

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2015-2018

Channa – an acrobat with the ‘National Circus School of Cambodia’.

Shortly after the fall of the ‘Khmer Rouge’ regime, the Cambodian government with the help of Vietnamese and Soviet trainers gathered together orphans from around the country to set up a local circus school in Phnom Penh. Channa who is 26 years old from Takeo province has been training with the school for over a decade, he is one of the oldest performers. At its peak, the circus school had over 100 artists but now only 14 artists remain. To make matters worse, a raging storm in 2015 destroyed the roof of the circus venue (opposite the National Assembly), and since then there have been no public performances.

A campaign to raise funds to repair the venue was successful, but the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts in charge of the school has for some reason delayed the much needed repairs. Meanwhile the remaining artists continue to train and conduct workshops with ex-pats in order to survive. I also spoke to Vannak the oldest performer and one of the trainers, he felt pessimistic about the future of the circus, families are reluctant to send their children to become circus performers, the pay is low and there is a lack of prestige. He also lamented the fact that local Khmers are becoming less engaged with the circus, noting that the majority of the audience (when the circus was still holding performances) were foreigners.

Rin (22) & Heng (8) – Construction Workers (Phnom Penh).

Phnom Penh is a landscape of concrete and steel, fuelled by foreign investment, and built by an underpaid and undereducated rural workforce. Behind a beautiful French colonial era building I find children carrying building rubble at a demolition site. I see eight year old Heng operating a large earth excavator. His tiny hands operating the controls. I ask the foreman whether Heng went to school, he assured me he did but I remained sceptical. Poor rural families have no choice but to take their children out of school and send them into the workforce, they become breadwinners.

Three men recite Islamic verses in the Cham language. The Cham people are an Austronesian ethnic minority group, the majority of whom are muslim and reside in Kampong Cham, Cambodia. During the Khmer Rouge regime, the Cham were declared enemies of the state. In the subsequent years, hundreds of thousands were sent to detention centres and killed en masse.