Karen Coats; 23/12/07
They shovel salt, sell trinklets, plant rice, process fish, pick through garbage, make bricks Had I been born as Roeut Sokang, who is precisely my age, I would have three kids, aged 14, eight and five. For the hottest four months of every year, my family and I would live together in the salt fields of Kampot, in southern Cambodia. We would make the journey from our small farm, in Svay Rieng, many hours away, to camp in a wooden hut with dozens of others. The families here would come in droves, driven by necessity but never choice. I would dream of a time when my kids could go to school uninterrupted. All of my neighbours would share that dream. My youngest child would play around the house, hunting for recyclables, still too young for the fields. But the rest of us would toil in the shallow ponds beneath a non-stop sun.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cambodias-culture-of-child-labour/2007/12/22/1198175409303.html
