The Vietnamese call it the river of the Nine Dragons; once across the border, it becomes the Great River. On the Mekong and along its margins live those who move to the rhythm of the waters: anchovy fishermen who follow the shoals along the coasts of Vietnam, traders at the floating market of Can Tho, men who convey bamboo rafts. In Cambodia, where trade has taken to the road, Indian mosquito-net sellers go from village to village, and whole families head up into the forest of Ratanakiri to look, at the bottom of wells, for a few semi-precious stones.
The Mekong flows through six countries; Christophe travels up it from the China Sea to Cambodia, to reach different worlds.The journey begins at sea, on a boat hailed from the shore the way you hail a taxi. Its men fish what is called rice fish here: true sea nomads, who follow the shoals along nearly three thousand kilometres of coast. Christophe joined them at Mui Ne, “the refuge”. The captain announces three- to four-metre swells offshore, little chance of coming across fish; they head out anyway. At three in the morning, about a hundred kilometres from the coast, among a hundred or so other boats, one sweep of the searchlight is all it takes: the rice fish is none other than anchovy, fished by lamplight. Fifteen hours at sea, seven hours hauling them aboard, two hours of sleep stolen at dawn. In the morning, they count four hundred baskets of twenty-two kilos, sold for about 120,000 dong a basket; half goes to the boat’s owner, the rest to the captain and the crew. They go out only five months a year, when the sea allows, moving as the abundance dictates.
“That night, the sea turned out to be docile and nourishing”: the anchovies were hauled in from midnight to seven in the morning.In the delta, Nai, a shrimp fisherman, takes Christophe out in his boat and has him cut the bait, a centipede that keeps wriggling in pieces. He comes here seven days a month, at high tide, five months a year; the rest of the time, the water is too salty. Some days he catches nothing, and he earns on average 500,000 to 600,000 dong a month. At sixty-two, an old farmer can no longer do the heavy work: he fishes, keeps the fish for himself and brings his wife the money from the shrimp. His house is near Ben Tre, twelve kilometres away, but he prefers the calm of the boat, which his children gave him. Dinner comes with Vietnamese whisky, and sleep on the planks. Further up, at the floating market of Can Tho, boats are hooked up to power lines and the television aerial. Christophe goes aboard with a family of pineapple traders: Kha, about nine years old, gives him his first lesson at the helm. Her mother lives seven to eight months a year on the water, to pay for the children’s schooling, and because there is “no routine in this job”. A single room serves as kitchen, dining room and bedroom; the rest is for the pineapples. “You see, there’s everything in my boat.”
Nai’s biggest shrimp weighed four hundred grams, “as big as my arm”; he has caught only five in his life.
With no wind, the kite is slow to rise; it ends up “playing lookout” above the pineapple traders’ boat.In Cambodia, a bamboo raft has come loose from the bank and the whole village has had to go and fetch it back. Its owner invites Christophe to dry off at his home and to have dinner with his family. He cuts and sells bamboo: a single boat carries as much as two lorries, and in Kampong Cham, where there is none, bamboo replaces wood that is too expensive, for baskets, walls, bed bases. The next day, Christophe cuts with them among the thorns. On the raft, his host quotes a song: “When I am on the river and I see everything around me, happiness fills me.” The police check the load: the planks you sit on are of precious wood, a banknote is enough. On land, Christophe follows Mr Singh, head of the mosquito-net sellers of Kampong Cham: three thousand Indians in Cambodia, most of them from Himachal Pradesh. Three to a motorbike, they sell, they cut prices from 3,500 to 1,000 riels. His elder brother arrived eleven years ago and taught him the routes; he covers 120 kilometres a day and moves on every two or three months. “I love the Cambodians, I love the language.”
With the rise in the price of oil, bamboo alone no longer makes the journey pay; on the river, the police turn “into a simple toll booth”.
“I’m happy we’re all here together.” Usually, bamboo rafts go down the river in convoy.
The Indian mosquito nets arrive in a region where malaria is seriously rife; the day’s round includes sixty kilometres of prospecting.The Boï Loï mine is on no map: it is four months old. The other mines in the province are exhausted. Two hundred people live scattered in the forest, families from the other end of Cambodia, alongside minorities come down from the highlands, in the hope of finding a few stones, mostly zircon. A prospector from Bokeo, near the Vietnamese border, where there were no stones left, was among the first to arrive: “The forest was silent and I was afraid of the animals.” He slept near the fire. The earth is hauled and sieved in water. But it is at the bottom of the wells that you go to dig it out, five metres down, far from the light. The miners take turns down there every hour, so exhausting is the heat. The stone goes mainly to Thailand, hence its name of Thai diamond; red when found, it turns blue or yellow when heated. Fear, says one of them, disappears with habit. Christophe goes down in his turn: at the bottom, very few crystals, and hellish heat.
The newcomers don’t bother the first prospectors: the more people, the more chances, and some have already picked up thousands of stones.
The smallest stones are sold by the kilo; only the biggest, and rarest, will end up set in jewellery.
Christophe ends his journey at the bottom of a hole in Ratanakiri: find enough to pay for his ticket home, or dig through to the other side.“If you come back with them, they are welcome in my home.”Nai