Monument to Horror

• Cambodia Blog 15

Monument to Horror
February 12th, 2011

Today we finally made the pilgrimage to the Killing Fields -- a few acres of grass and trees made famous by the blood that has soaked the dust when the Khmer Rouge used it as a site to massacre thousands of civilian prisoners. It was a strange experience, something between horror at the indescribable atrocity and anger at the obvious exploitation of the torment the dead went though, all held together by complete incomprehension. When you look at 17 story stack of bones, how do you understand the life lost in each empty skull? You cannot. All there is is darkness.

The Cambodian government obviously used the site to toot their own horn about how hard they are working to bring the Khmer Rouge leaders to justice, sickening, considering Former Khmer Rouge leaders are still in government today. So I cannot really write a normal blog about that place. The multiplicity of emotions that ran through me made my impression of it very fragmented, but here are the most vivid of the images that stayed with me:

• Incomprehensible contrasts. The beauty of the trees and the lake and birdsong as we walk over scraps of clothing left from the dead. The utter silence of tourists in the exhibitions and the laughter and joking of young Khmer people as they stroll through the graves. 
• Dirty bones and wilted flowers that visitors have piled on top boxes of exhibitions by the graves.
• The story of the man who found the ‘killing tree’ still covered with blood and brains from where children’s heads were bashed against it. 
• The absurdity of the chickens scratching in the pits left by mass graves, a strange mockery of the farms surrounding the site. 
• Momentary shock when, on the way home, I see a shirt the same color as a child’s shorts left in a pile of clothes of the dead. 

The temple stacked with bones. 

Half a skull left on top of an exhibit by a visitor. 

The gorgeous Cambodian countryside surrounding the killing fields. 

Family

Cambodia Blog 14
Family
February 12th 2011

Another brilliant week is drawing to a close. It’s weird how quickly time passes here, and even stranger to think I have now spent more than half my time here in Cambodia. My weeks grow more precious by the day.

I have begun to stop resisting the pull back to NFC I feel whenever I leave work, and staying overnight two nights a week. Somehow sharing sleeping space brings my relationship with the kids to a new level. I am a teacher and friend, but for as long we have each other, we are family. In some ways I feel dishonest, painfully conscious of how soon I will leave. But I have to believe the times of real happiness -- talking about ghosts and monsters, or reading bedtime stories as the girls snuggle down into their blankets, are worth it. Every day they amaze me more. Weather it is letting me use their towel, or putting the best bits of prawn-sauce soaked egg on my plate, they always find ways to share with me.

This week I have also begun to feel really satisfied with my teaching. My most challenging and rewarding job at NFC is teaching English to a group of five 10-14 year olds. I plan my own lessons and create my own evaluations, and teach the class alone. It has been difficult at times, the kids are not used to discipline or having to pay attention in class, so for the first month or so it has been a real struggle. But I realized how far we had come when I took the class outside to play a game in the middle of class and no one lost concentration or tried to wander away or even complained about going back to lessons. I have learned so much from them. I can only hope that they have truly learned from me, but I know what I have learned from my time as a teacher I will carry with me my whole life.

So yes, a normal, idyllic, beautiful, ordinary week. :-)
Today we went to the Killing Fields, but that is a story for a different blog. One will be up very soon.
Next week I will be going to Ratanakira province in Cambodia with my friends! We will ride elephants and swim in volcano craters and play in waterfalls. Check back next Sunday for stories!

With Sokha, one of the students in my class, on her 12th Birthday!

Shhhhh... we are hiding! 

Hoping for Peace

Cambodia Blog 13
Hoping for Peace
February 7th 2011

By this time you may have heard about the fighting on the border with Thailand. We first heard about it on Friday from a somewhat scarily excited tuktuk driver, but only today does it seem to have caught international news. Here is what I have gleaned from watching the news and snooping on the internet:

• There is a temple called Preah Vihear that stands on the Thai-Cambodian border. The United Nations declared it part of Cambodia decades ago, but it can only be accessed from Thailand. The Cambodians started to build a road in Thai territory to reach it, and this started the tensions. 
• Each side blames the other for starting the shooting.
• Five troops have been killed, and a few taken prisoner.
• The Cambodian prime minister is calling for the United Nations to step in and resolve the issue.
• Thai people are protesting in Bangkok, demanding that Cambodian troops be ejected from the area.

These are the facts, as much as I can find out. My analysis is this situation has no danger to me or anyone not in the immediate area. We are all a bit worried about escalation. The Thai and Cambodian people have a long and unpleasant history, and right now Cambodia is in the position of being the bitter, poor, and fiercely nationalist underdog. This is not a good position to be in, especially for a country were saving face is extremely important. However, anyone with half a brain cell can see that antagonizing the much richer and more powerful Thailand is ludicrous. International pressure to maintain peace will be great, ad the two countries are also very dependant on tourist dollars, which will dry up immediately if the regions become even vaguely dangerous. So there are a lot of really compelling reasons that this won’t become a problem, but still we will be watching the story closely. If you are the praying type I hope you will pray that no more lives are lost in this stupid conflict.

Here is a map showing the fighting (marked with red) relative to Phnom Penh were I live (marked in purple), practically as far from it as I can be! :-)

Dragons, Weddings and Palaces!

Cambodia Blog 12
Dragons, Weddings and Palaces
Sunday February 6th 2011

I have decided to actually force myself into some discipline and post a blog every Sunday evening (or morning for those back in the states) for the rest of my trip. Feel free to write me angry mail if I miss a week, I need the motivation :-P

This week was a really great one. It was incredibly busy, but filled with really fun things! This week was Chinese new year, a surprisingly big deal here considering the Cambodians have their own new year in April. Still, school was off for the week and the streets were filled with the crash of drums from dragon dancers! We were invited to a see a dragon dance at someone’s house, and it was really fantastic. The coordination of the 12 or so dragon dancers all manipulating one long puppet was stunning. The lions were also great, their blinking eyes, wagging tails and fondness for heads of lettuce made them seem so real!

Later that night we went to the wedding of two of the staff at NFC -- Pown, a caretaker, and Mr Roon, a handyman/administrative assistant type person. The party was held at Pown’s family house, a traditional Khemer farm house hours away from Phnom Penh in the countryside. We drove about half an hour across raised dirt roads over rice fields, during which time the poor beleaguered NFC bus broke twice! It was a great party though, a really happy rollicking affair with lots of food and dancing. Our friends were so happy! The atmosphere was entirely different from the awkward and generally sad arranged marriage we went to last month.

Yesterday I finally made it to the Royal Palace with Kester, a volunteer at NFC from Britain.. The Royal Palace spirals into the air like a giant bird. There is something light and uplifting about Cambodian architecture that is very different from the heavy western esthetic. Towers lift bright colors into the sky while the paintings and ironwork closer to the ground curl into stories and figures of Khmer mythology. Dancers and flying monkeys, magical birds, demons and giant fish building bridges are frozen in the frescos along the walls of the silver pagoda. The detail, and the expressiveness of the characters in this intricate legend was breathtaking.

This week has been beautiful. There seems to be no end to the adventures to be had in this amazing country!

Detail of the aforementioned fresco

A gate

Me with the royal palace and some monks

Being the Hero - Or Not

Cambodia Blog 11
January 20th 2011
Being the Hero - Or Not

What would you do?

The gap between what *would* I do, in my head, and what I *did* do, in reality, is an uncomfortably large one. Cambodia forces me to stare into this void far more often than I do in America, where we have a functional social safety net to keep us from looking our responsibility to one another in the face. So the question I pose in this blog is this: what do you do when you see someone who needs help, and have absolutely no idea how to help them? My dear reader, I do hope you will reply.

Today on my way home from dinner I passed one of the strangest and saddest things I have ever seen. Coming out of a nightclub/hotel parking lot was a large expensive car, the kind so popular with the pretentious rich here with ‘LEXUS’ scrawled across the sides. But the car was stopped halfway into the road. A woman blocked it’s exit, completely naked, the resigned desperation on her face lit by headlights of the thick cloud of traffic crawling by the scene.

She needed help. I don’t know why she was there, the only reasons I can guess at are horrific. But the reality was: she was naked in the middle of the street and no one was helping her. I had no idea what to do. When I got home I shoved a dress, a bathrobe and my leftover pizza in my bag and went running back. But, of course, she was gone. My chase to help had come and gone in the few shocked seconds after seeing her and realizing she needed help.

So what to do? In those seconds, do you get off the moto or out of the car or out of your way and try to help, even if you don’t know what to do? Do you collect your thoughts and come back too late? I know there is little I can do, with my resources and my experience, but I refuse to accept inaction. And yet still, I don’t know what to do.

What would you do? What should a decent, caring  person do when faced with immediate need? Thank you for your thoughts.

An extraordinary day

Cambodia Blog 10
An Exceptional Day
January 16th 2011


Hellu everyone!

I have been a bit tardy with the blogging, but I figured that today was such an incredible day I will ignore the backlog of things I have to write about (like our adventures in Thailand last week) and tell you about a more typical, but no less incredible, day in my life.

Today marked the first of my 6 day work week, something I am quite happy about. This day gives me a chance to tutor some of the kids who are struggling with school but too busy during the week, and I also have a chance to help out with homework. This morning Tim, Niamh, Kester (lovely new volunteer from England) and I all went in early and took two Tuktuk loads of kids (which is 12 by the way) to a playground near a beautiful temple. We all went into the temple and then tumbled around on the playground until the kids were exhausted. Back at NFC we broke out the paddling pool we bought for them for Christmas. I got to spend the afternoon teaching to the sounds of shrieking splashing delighted children, which was wonderful!

While we were waiting for Tim to finish teaching French Kester and Niamh and I took a rest in the library, which turned into reading books to the various children who wandered in, which rapidly turned into a tickle fight, which quickly became all out war. This was a war we did not win…. The three of us were soon barricaded in the library surrounded by small children doing (I kid you not) war chants. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever heard! We were completely overpowered, and held hostage in the library by half a dozen orphans half our size. Fortunately Tim came to our rescue and we all escaped with minimal casualties ;-)

I am writing this right before going out to eat some really really awesome extraordinarily cheep Indian food with my friends. I am completely in love: the children, this day, this country. I could never have imagined a life this good!

This is Ronika, our youngest. She is a terrifying fish.

Happy 2011!!! 11 'You're Not in Kansas Anymore' moments

You Know You're Not In America when...
January 4th, 2011
Phnom Pehn, Cambodia

Happy New Year everyone! We celebrated by watching fireworks and dancing on the riverfront. It was a great way to bring in the New Year! I hope everyone else had a great night as well.

To celebrate the beginning of another great year, I shall provide you with a list of some of my favorite Dorthy moments from the trip so far. These are from Hong Kong, Brunei and Cambodia! Enjoy!


You know you’re not in America when:

• The convince store sells ‘Instant Jellyfish’
• A sign on the door reads ‘These Door Handles are Disinfected 8 times a day’.
• The signs around the grocery store warn you to ‘Maintain safe distance from monkeys’
• The airline cheerfully informs you that the country you are entering will execute you for drug smuggling. 
• The favorite local delicacy involves no chewing. And it’s not a soup. 
• The list of things it is illegal to bring across the border include ‘boutique sarongs’
• The mall advertises it’self as the proud home of the country’s only McDonalds
• The maximum occupancy of a motobike is five. 
• A motobike is considered a logical means of transport for: mattresses (up to five at a time), chickens, pigs, large sheets of glass. 
• Adult men sing ‘Baby’ by Justin Beiber with no apparent sense of shame.