Kampong Speu, Cambodia - After the war, scrap metal
was hard to find, until resourceful Cambodian artisans like Jay Ny
found that spent copper bomb and bullet casings could be recycled to
make their traditional musical instruments instead.
In doing so, they unwittingly created one of the country's more
popular tourist curios - gongs and bells made from Khmer Rouge-era
munitions.
But Cambodia's continued stretch of peace after 30-years of civil
war has finally brought that industry to an end, according to the
craftsmen and women. Ny, 36, said Thursday her family had run out of
bombshells.
'I haven't seen a bomb casing for nearly four years,' she said
from her modest home about 50 kilometers from the capital. 'The days
of bombshell gongs are over.'
A second family in the bombshell gong capital of Batdung district
also said the discarded waste of war had dried up. Their father,
formerly the chief bombshell artisan of the family, had retired to
pursue a career in music, they said.
A third family which had once made a living forging cow bells from
M-16 casings said even when those could be found, they were now too
rusted to be of use and they, too, had turned to more conventional
scrap to work with.
Delicate bells and tuneful gongs are still sold as genuine at
markets in the capital to tourists eager for a memento of the war,
and at a mark-up of up to 500 per cent on the seven to 10 dollars Ny
charges per 30-centimetre gong. Ny said it was possible, but highly
unlikely, they were still genuine.
The genuine souvenirs had long fallen victim to the outbreak of
peace and a successful campaign to curb small arms and weapons
ownership in the community, she said, but few people besides the
tourists would be sorry.
'I am the only person in the country still turning out these gongs
to my knowledge, and I use copper off rolls that I buy in the
capital. I have to say it is a lot easier to work with than
bombshells. I don't have any regrets,' she said.
The ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime fell to Vietnamese-backed
forces in 1979 but the movement conducted a protracted guerilla war
from mountain areas such as Kampong Speu until as late as 1998.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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