H.O.P.E RECONNECT — Tonlé Sap & Roads Around
Tonlé Sap & Roads Around · 2007
Day 5. On the lake and the roads that lead to it.
Tonlé Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia — a body of water so vast it doubles in size with the monsoon, and shrinks back when the rivers reverse. Floating villages move with it. Entire schools sit on stilts above the water. Markets drift between houses on wooden boats.
I spent the morning on the water. Children paddled up to my boat, holding cans of soda and bottles of water above their heads, calling out prices in three languages. Fishermen pulled nets from the lake. A floating market shifted slowly between stilt houses. Mothers cooked rice on small stoves at the back of their boats. Younger siblings sat tied to older ones with strips of cloth, both watching me from the same hammock.
Then the road. Dirt tracks between rice paddies, villages where the day's work was already done, market stalls along the way back to Siem Reap. Children running barefoot beside the tuk-tuk. Adults pausing to watch the foreigner with the camera. Faces I will never forget — and faces I now hope to find again.
The children in these photographs were between three and fifteen years old. Today they are young adults in their mid-twenties to early thirties. Some may still live near the lake. Some may have moved to Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, or further. Some may even be working at the floating villages now, with children of their own.
A note on these photographs. Many of these images are still in colour — and that is intentional. Sometimes a face is hard to recognise after twenty years. But the colour of a fishing boat, the pattern on a sarong, a familiar cooking pot, the corner of a stilt house — these can trigger a memory that a face alone cannot. And the adults in these photographs matter just as much as the children. A fisherman. A mother. A market vendor. A grandparent. They may recognise themselves first, then help us find the children who once stood beside them.
If you recognise anyone — a face, a boat, a village, a corner of a road — please fill out the form below. Every identification matters.
© Ludovic Cazeba / CAZEBA 2007 — All Rights Reserved
Do You Recognize These Children?
You scrolled through the photographs. Did you recognize someone? Fill out the form — it takes two minutes. Every name helps us reconnect.
