As we enter into Laudato si’ Week, the Jesuit Service Cambodia Ecology Program will be moving into our new home with much hope and eagerness to reestablish our base, finish our new nursery, and eventually resume our full support to the restoration efforts of our partner communities.
In July 2019, the Ecology Program was asked to move out of Banteay Prieb. Not having much time on our side, we moved quickly. The first thing we did was to try to save all the trees from Banteay Prieb before the bulldozers came. The Banteay Prieb students helped us replant the trees on the Jesuit land in Kombol District, with all of us hoping and praying that the trees would grow and survive the relocation.
It was heartbreaking to witness the destruction of the structures the team and our friends and volunteers had lovingly and painstakingly built. It was also upsetting to see the trees we planted in front of the school violently removed or run over by a bulldozer. August and September last year were physically and emotionally difficult months for us. It was distressing to see everything buried under a metre and a half of earth very quickly. By the end of September, nothing was left of the old nursery and the whole area was lost underground.
But towards the end of 2019, the situation was beginning to show some light. We began to rebuild the nursery in the same place where we transferred the trees, in Kombol District, in what we have started to call the new Banteay Prieb. Through the generosity of our donor partners, we were able to prepare the land, remove landmines and unexploded ordinances, raise the ground by filling it with soil, and start construction. Little by little, step by step, we built two simple grass-roofed structures. And as 2020 began, construction work moved faster, thanks to our friends and donors who provided the resources we needed. Our team continued to be actively involved in the construction, chipping in wherever we could. Slowly the structures were taking shape.
We wanted to keep the memory of Banteay Prieb, so we reused the wood from the students’ house and agricultural classroom. We also built the nursery to be as eco-friendly as possible, considering natural light and wind direction.
The nursery is still a work-in-progress, as the construction slowed down a bit with unexpected occurrences, including Covid-19. But we are happy that soon we can set up our temporary office at the nursery and hopefully within the next couple of months we can again nurture indigenous forest tree seedlings. It is also worth noting that we have named our nursery after Chut Wutty, a leading environmental activist here in Cambodia who was gunned down in April 2012 while investigating a logging site. It is our desire that this new home will renew our hopes and our mission to serve local communities in Cambodia in protecting the gifts of God’s creation to all.
Liesl C Lim is the programme manager of the Ecology Program of Jesuit Service Cambodia. She is a volunteer from the Philippines.