Cambodian resurrection: Land-mine victims forge a new pride in an unforgiving atmosphere

From Straight.com of Vancouver, British Columbia

Cambodian resurrection:
Land-mine victims forge a new pride in an unforgiving atmosphere
By roberta staley
Publish Date: 7-Sep-2006

San Suo hops down the rough wood ladder leading from the doorway of his one-room house, elevated on two-metre-high wood stilts to prevent flooding during the monsoon season. Hop may seem an odd word to describe San�s movements, as the 43-year-old has no legs, just bare brown stumps sticking out of red shorts, the mutilated reminder of limbs that were blown off by a land mine years ago. But hop he does down the grey, weathered rungs, until he is parallel to his wheelchair and can gracefully swing himself with muscled arms onto the wooden seat planks.

It is noon, and the family of six�wife San Nath and the couple�s four children�have been hiding from the 35�C sun inside their bamboo-floor home, roofed with dried palm leaf. Gaunt, almost featherless chickens peck in the dirt yard, and a second wheelchair�its seat a cheap plastic lawn chair�lies at the edge of the yard.

At 2 p.m., when the temperature drops a few degrees, San and hundreds of other villagers of Veal Thom, 100 kilometres north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, return to their 50-by-300-metre parcels of land. They hack with handmade hoes at the jungle roots that threaten to reclaim soil tamed for jackfruit, papayas, and bananas. San�s patch of earth is one kilometre away, uphill. He cannot wheel up the long incline, so his children push him to the field.

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