The small village by the muddy brown, slow moving river was dominated by a large open sided corrugated iron roofed structure. Looking down the street toward the girder bridge spanning the river people could be seen ducking under the long rusty roof, supported at low head height, by rough tree timbers. Inside, seen dimly at first, the area was filled with hundreds of huge round jars, big wooden tubs and large rectangular concrete tanks. As we moved quietly into this extensive shed, instinctively covering our noses with our hands against the pungent smell of fish, a head popped up between the tubs.

This is where the local Prahoc was made. Prahoc is a fish paste, a famous staple food which is eaten, in one way or another, by the bulk of the population. One of Cambodia’s problems is that fish harvesting is seasonal. When the rains in the Himalayas engorge the Mekong River the waters rush through China, Thailand and Laos and into Cambodia. There the water inundates the great Tonle Sap Lake until the flood waters cover more than half of the country. Here the fish prosper and spawn. When the waters recede in November, millions of small white fish migrate back up the Mekong. This is when they are harvested, making Cambodia the fourth largest fresh water fishery in the world. But what do you do with millions of tonnes of fish? How do you spread this natural bonanza out over the year?

One answer is Prahoc. But the methods used to preserve the fish as Prahoc were really very crude. The heads we watched popping up as we entered the sheds were women squatting down gutting the small fish on the ground. They smiled as we chatted and they explained that the gutted fish, washed in river water, were put into the big pots and jars with layers of salt. Sometimes garlic or other spices were added to vary the flavour. The full tubs were then covered with old plastic sheeting or polypropylene sacks and weighed down with big stones to compress the paste. There the Prahoc sat for six months to a year until it matured. The brown liquor which oozed out was sometimes used as fish oil.

One of the problems, the Prahoc girls told us was worms in the Prahoc. The customers didn’t like the worms. Talking later to our Fisheries colleagues we think they were taking about blow fly infestation. Naturally with tonnes of fish piled on the ground waiting for processing, piles of fish bones and innards around and something like 50 tonnes of ‘maturing’ fish paste in temperatures of 32oC there were also swarms of flies. So we could see that worms and maggots could be a problem.

Getting used to the smell, we chatted to Chima, a lady who arrived on her bicycle. Chima was a market stall owner and had come to buy several kilograms of Prahoc to sell on her stall. First she stood on the scales to check them. She knew her own weight. Only then did she accept the weight of Prahoc, dug out of a tub with a spade, and negotiate the price. Chima told us that people sometimes bought the Prahoc as a cooking ingredient, chopping it and then cooking it in a curry. Occasionally however finely chopped Prahoc was served raw, to be spread on bread. The Prahoc from here was also exported over the border to nearby Thailand.

Part of our work is to help the Cambodian Fisheries Department to set up local Information Centres to give advice to people about food hygiene. In time this will improve health, increase shelf life, decrease spoilage and waste and raise the price good producers will get for well made Prahoc. No we didn’t sample any Prahoc that day.

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