e to find another job as a laborer in Phnom Penh, for example-or the wife manages to supplement their income by selling fruit, cloth, or cigarettes in the local market. Most Cambodians live below the poverty line and struggle hard to find enough food for themselves and their children. The difficulties are intensified because in the late 1980s a large proportion of the rural population-statistics are not precise, but perhaps as many as one in four-consists of families headed by women widowed in the wars of the 1970's and 1980's.
             Women have always worked hard as or harder than men in agricultural tasks, but usually alongside them, and today Cambodia suffers from a shortage of able-bodied men. Tens of thousands of other men are drawn away from productive work by service in the army and labor battalions along the Thai-Cambodian frontier. In some ways, of course, it's easier to be poor in Cambodia than the West. First, there is the warm weather. Houses are not expensive to build, heating isn't needed, as people don't wear heavy clothes. In the second place, rice is cheap to buy, and for much of the year supplementary foods-fish, fruit, and vegetables-are easy to grow, catch, or barter. Third, the country is not yet overcrowded, at least in the east and the northwest, and there is still unoccupied fertile land that can be brought under cultivation.
             If it is difficult for Cambodians to freeze or starve to death, it would be wrong for us to think of Cambodia as a tropical paradise. A Cambodian farmer, a widow, living in Phnom Penh, or a day laborer usually has no savings or any valuable property. The state has almost no way to help them. In an emergency-an accident, a sudden illness, or a fire-death is much closer for such people than it would be for most North American, and the possibilities of their raising money, or receiving proper medical care, are much more remote. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians live on the edge of sur...