From the long, dusty village road which cuts through the green rice fields of Kandal province in central Cambodia, a turn into the gates of the home of VisionFund client Bo Phon is a welcoming sight: a clean-swept, spacious, friendly atmosphere, with an energetic buzz – three people twisting fresh white noodles into baskets, two people leaning over a large kettle over an open fire, a boy studying his school books. Bo Phon flashes a winsome smile and apologises that she cannot stop her business while talking. It’s important that the noodles get finished in time rather than soak too long and spoil.

Fifty-seven-year-old Bo Phon has been making Khmer Noodles, or num banjok, for 25 years, nearly half her life. She learned the skill by watching a neighbor’s family in her home village not far from here, and she first made num banjok for a living when her family was deported to a distant province in the late ‘70s, during Pol Pot’s genocidal regime in Cambodia.

Phon was fortunate to survive that cruel era. Her relatives from the countryside, like herself, fared far better than those from the city, because they had built-in survival skills. No doubt her sheer strength of will also helped her make it through the hard times – a determination which can be seen in the way she has pursued raising a family, running a small farm and a business, in the temperamental climate of Cambodia’s countryside.

When the family returned to Kandal province and made their home in Kap Ambel village ten years ago, Bo Phon and her husband, Phon Phat, acquired a 1.4 hectare plot where they farmed, sold second hand clothes, and made rice noodles by hand, selling them to the village market and to special order customers. Phon’s reputation grew because of her commitment to fresh, quality noodles, but working by hand she was limited to producing only enough to earn about 5,000 Riel ($US1.25) per day.

But Phon is a woman of initiative. She borrowed money from relatives for a $US100 rice grinding machine that helped them expand their business by producing more noodles. Then, when she learned about World Vision Cambodia’s micro enterprise development (MED) loans three years ago, and she recruited her relatives in a neighboring village to form a foursome, the number required for a solidarity group.

Phon first took out an agricultural loan of 50,000 Riel ($US12.50). With a second loan of $US250 through VisionFund Cambodia, she was able to pay back the loan for the grinding machine. Through increased production, she is able to sell between 60 and 100 kilograms per day, and earn an average of 20,000 Riel ($US5) per day.

Moreover, whereas when she was making noodles by hand, her production limit was 300kg, she can now make up to 500kg of noodles for special functions. This increased production is quite important, says Phon, because in the last two years her village has seen prices of food and gas rise enormously; in fact, her family spends half of the daily noodle earnings on food now.

Access to VisionFund loans has not only expanded her business but also enabled Phon to maintain the quality of her noodles, a matter of pride for her. “This is the cleanest place in the village,” she boasts. Many steps are involved in the noodle making process, and Phon takes care in every step, beginning with preparation of ingredients: buying good rice, cleaning it well after an overnight soak, crushing it to milk-like consistency, drying it in the sun for hours, boiling the dry meal, and grinding it into flour.

Afterwards, she turns it into noodles with a homemade press that squeezes the flour into noodles through a sieve and drops them into boiling water, then soaks them again in cold water, before they are taken out and laid in lovely spirals, ready for the market or for customers who come to her home and place large orders. She sells what she makes each day, and she doesn’t keep rice soaking more than one night, to ensure each batch is fresh.

All this hard work has paid off. Her debt to family members and to VisionFund is paid. In addition, Bo Phon and Phon Phat have rebuilt their house, bought a motorcycle for delivering noodles to the market, and acquired a bicycle for the children to ride to school. With four children married and three children still at home, Phon’s goal is to maintain this level of business until all of the children have graduated from school.

Regarding the business itself, however, she doesn’t want to pass it on to the children. She hopes they can do something else besides this heavy, labour-intensive work. One thing is sure: what they most certainly will inherit from their parents is an industrious and can-do attitude, an example worth more than any amount of business profit.