WRITING IN THE DARK

WHITEOUT

It’s the darkest time of the year. 

I began writing this on December 9 and 10––the two days of heavy wet snow that blocked views of almost everything, mountains, trees, even our road––and that storm was followed by days, no, weeks, of shrouded grayness that weighed down the sky. A single sunny morning was an exception, soon forgotten.   The solstice was still nearly two weeks away.  All day long it looked like early evening.

Everything looked blurry in snow-fog and low clouds.

Much cheerier:  The same view, more or less, just before all the leaves fell.  

While we were away for Christmas the snow melted away in several days of warmth and fog. When the fog lifted and the sky cleared at last nearly all the whiteness had vanished.  The ground lay bare, awaiting 2015 to whiten up again.

More of the same

Nice as it was to see white everywhere, this wasn’t the kind of snow we welcomed.  Sure, it was attractive in the way it coated the trees as if sprayed on–although it would have been really beautiful had the sun shined on it, just once–and loaded the firs so heavily that they looked like the fir trees kids make around sandcastles on the beach by dripping wet sand into little peaks.  Firs seldom look that perfect naturally.  The snow load was a painful burden to other trees:  Higher up from here, in the mountains, you would have heard the crack of limbs and tree trunks for hours through a day and a   And, chances are, you could have been without electricity for as long as five days.  Even the Middlebury Snow Bowl had to close because of the lack of power. Forest trails were closed because of many broken, fallen and partially fallen trees making them dangerous or impassible.  Skinny and flexible trees, like birches, spent nearly the whole period bent over, without a thaw to release the pressure.  Tree torture.  In the valley damage was minimal, only the occasional broken branch. Clearing the white stuff, though, was dispiriting. 

Bent trees hang over Route 17 on the road to Sugarbush

The “here,” as in “nonewsfrom” was whited out, too.  I put it to a lingering aftereffect of our visit to Cambodia and Vietnam, Cambodia especially, where life is so much harder for so many, and where any actual “news” is likely to have a memorable impact on your livelihood, your world.  What happened here seemed trivial in comparison.  Hence, a mental kind of whiteout.  Or blackout, maybe.  

Or just a blank.

CONSIDERING ARMADILLOS

Where was I?  Oh right, the transformation of everything here from white to, well, kind of brown and greenish.  The snow vanished so quickly it was like pulling off a blanket and realizing someone was asleep underneath. Suddenly without cover, rodent trails were exposed everywhere, but most startlingly, near the pond.  Every spring warm weather reveals their wobbly pathways that used to be tunnels under the snow.  On the far side of the pond I had never noticed rodent signs before, and certainly not holes you could actually fall into. I checked the internet for likely culprits. 

Uncovered pathways near the pond

The Center for Wildlife Damage Management (who knew?) suggests one first look to see whether or not there actually is a hole.  Of course I knew there was a hole.  Holes.  That was the point.  Nevertheless, I read on. “If there is no hole and just a groove present, consider armadillos.” 

Okay.  

Next:  Look for a hole that may lead to a burrow.  Measure the hole.  Three inches or less (there were several of those) suggests chipmunk, crayfish (Really? Crayfish?),* ground squirrel, kangaroo rat, Norway rat, skunks, or voles.  Winnowing the list of those from other habitats leaves chipmunks (who prefer living under the bird feeder), skunks (not around in the cold, and even if they were, Skyler would notice), rats (unlikely; no grain lying around, plus they prefer chicken coops).  That leaves voles.

The really big trails and hole:  The tape gives a width of nine inches.  At top  is the frozen pond.

Then there are the big holes.  Holes larger than three inches suggest one consider: badger, river otter, prairie dog, fox, coyote, mountain beaver, or woodchuck.  Of course half these animals are western except for the coyote, fox, river otter and woodchuck.  Foxes and coyotes wouldn’t dream of denning near a house, much less a house with a dog.  It would be nice to have river otters, but unlikely, and a pond is not a river.   There is little doubt that the digger is a woodchuck.  On second thought, make that plural: woodchucks.  Woodchuck holes can be 8 inches wide.  Our holes are at least that.  For the past two years we were pretty certain a family of woodchucks lived under our patio.  Their burrow entrances would appear now and then amid the flowers as piles of dirt or stones excavated from under the cement.  Woodchucks had made homes in our suburban garden in Lexington, Massachusetts.  Woodchucks are everywhere.  I needn’t have bothered looking this up, for it should have been obvious.  (“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk,” remarked Henry Thoreau.)  Maybe they moved?  Or maybe this is another branch of the family.  It could explain why Skyler has occasionally been barking at night in that general direction.  He may not have even seen them as they were under the snow, but he very likely sensed that they were there, somewhere.  

Woodchuck, groundhog, whistle-pig.  (Woodchucks, when threatened wil make a whistling noise to alert fellow groundhogs.)  A major business recently built a factory in Middlebury to turn out Woodchuck Cider. The nearby town of Shoreham has a distillery that produces Whistle-Pig rye whiskey.  Another name for woodchuck is land beaver.  I like that one.

  

That's a woodchuck all right...

But the Whistle-Pig company appears to think a Whistle-Pig is a Pig

*Yes, crayfish do in fact burrow in the ground near water.  Their two-inch burrow openings are surrounded by a ring of mud.  But not here.

VIETNAM: REVISITING FOR THE FIRST TIME

One of many great buildings left by the French is the famed Metropole, Hanoi's iconic hotel, linked with Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, et al in the Vietnam War era, mere celebrities (and us!) today.

Brides and grooms use the front of the hotel as a backdrop for photos

Hoan Kiem Lake in central Hanoi with the Turtle Pagoda opposite

GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!

Above the entrance to the men’s toilet it said “NAM.”  I realized “Vietnam” meant Viet people.  That’s how little I knew about Vietnam, never mind that it was a place I thought I knew all about in the 1970’s.  It’s as if I had been here before in some way, and was here again, but this time for real.  It’s an odd feeling, visiting a country whose history is so intertwined with ours, and not––until very recently––in a good way.  (Those early days are remembered here:  http://www.lexingtonbattlegreen1971.com/)  If I were French my feelings might be equally mixed.  The buildings the French built remain grand.   They lost their war too, in 1954, with the battle of Dien Bien Phu, remembered in a large diorama exhibit at the Military Museum.   Memories, artifacts of wars past are everywhere.

At the Military Museum, Hanoi, remnants of ruined planes, are stacked in a war monument (below).

The "Maison Centrale" is actually the infamous old Hanoi prison built by the French early last
century during their occupation of Indochina.  Behind it, incongruously, there is now a tall apartment complex.

Mannequins stand in for the live prisoners held by the French during their occupation.  The prison was later dubbed the "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam (American) War and housed John McCain, among others.  Shackled Vietnamese like these were mostly political prisoners.  At least they had others to talk to, unlike those held
alone in dark, almost medieval, dungeons to either side.

Instruments of torture and two guillotines, of which one remains, were also on display.

We were not in Hanoi (two words in Vietnamese, Ha Noi) a full day before we met four young people from Hanoi University who were overjoyed to practice their English on us.  Their enthusiasm was overwhelming:  Ken’s blue eyes (“We all look the same!  Black hair, dark eyes!”) caught their attention.  If they wanted to, they said, they could study in China, but where they really want to go is America.  “We love America!” 

Students from Hanoi University.  Why the "V" signs?  No clue, but it's common in China as well.

Students celebrating a graduation at the Temple of Literature, a Confucian center of learning,
dedicated in 1070.  The women are wearing the national costume, the Ao Dai

It wasn’t only students.  Everyone seemed welcoming.  Even people who lived through the US bombing of Hanoi in the 1960’s.  A long-time employee of the Hotel Metropole led a tour of the bomb shelter below the hotel, recently rediscovered when contractors enlarged the swimming pool. Even people like the food vendor who wanted me to buy a sweet, but even as I said no, asked where I was from, and when I answered “America” she reached out and took my arm, gave me a broad smile, and said, “Oooh, nice.”

In Hanoi's old quarter one street will sell only shoes, another silk, another hardware 

In another street, chickens

Vendors everywhere

We noticed this warmth especially in the north, the home of what had been the “enemy.”  I refer to the “American War,” as of course it’s labeled here.  A guy on the street sells zippo lighters with what look like US military insignia.  “One dollar!” (Zippo lighters!  Symbols of destruction––images of troops setting the thatched roofs of farmers’ homes on fire come to mind.) Were they even authentic?  Maybe, maybe not.  In tourist-visited shops there were T-shirts for sale that resemble the Vietnamese flag––a red field with a yellow star:  The Socialist Republic of Vietnam.  They were selling well.  A member of our group picked up a Tee in Saigon featuring heroic Cold War era Communist warriors and read, “Communism–Worth Fighting For!”  It’s obviously made for westerners, but you wonder, does everyone get the irony?   Can we really say we've gotten to that point?

Houses in Hanoi's old quarter

Houses are tall and narrow, 12 feet wide.  Balconies atop catch the breezes and are often quite fanciful.

Typical housing in a typical town main street, much of it fairly new

In a village, a more modest house.  Above the man is a photo of Ho Chi Minh.

Some live on their boat

One of our guides mentioned how after the end of the war (the American War) the victorious new government of the North Vietnamese gave the people of the north and south ninety days to decide whether to move to the south or to move to the north.  This was wrenching for many families.  No one we talked with in the north appeared to harbor bad feelings about the south.  Quite the contrary.  In Saigon (rarely referred to as Ho Chi Minh City), however, our guide, whose father worked for a South Vietnamese general, was deemed to have a tainted resume and said he was forever blocked from holding certain positions. 






A delightfully many-denominational church or temple in Cai Be with symbolism from everywhere (Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, and perhaps others) along the Mekong

The inside is quite spectacular!

Stored next to the church/temple is a funeral compartment built upon a pickup truck–– talk about leaving in style!

We forget, too, that there was another war on the heels of the American War.  (I was unaware there had even been another war.)  In 1979 China launched an offensive against Vietnam in response to Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia the year before.   That was the act that, thankfully, ended the rule of the Khmer Rouge. (Strange alliances:  the Khmer Rouge had once been supported by the US because they opposed the Viet Cong, but by 1978 the Khmer Rouge had the support of China, at the time our potential foe.)  In that short war––it lasted only a month––Vietnam lost another 16,000, according to our guide. 

Rice fields to the horizon.  The rice is about a week or so away from harvest.

We visited the site of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum.  But he was not there to be viewed—the body was off for its annual cosmetic repair.   Ho didn’t actually want his body to be preserved like Lenin’s, preferring to be cremated, his ashes placed in three jars to be scattered in three regions of a united Vietnam.   But that was not to be.  The country was not united until six years after his death––he died in 1969––following the final withdrawal of American troops.  The years following unification were rough economically, and the country began a slow march to some measure of prosperity only after the lifting of US sanctions in 1994. 

The market at Cai Be, a vision of plenty.

The wholesale vegetable section

Innumerable kinds of fish

Fruit on the right, frogs at the left

This elderly woman has been selling food here for many years

Selling in the market draws the whole family

Rats for dinner:  These are "country rats" that ate rice and whatever else, not city rats.
(Note:  Eating of dogs is not approved of.)

I felt that within a few more years the cities, and maybe even the countryside of Vietnam, would look a lot more prosperous.  After I got home I checked the labels of some of my clothes and was surprised how many read “Made in Vietnam.”  We saw several major construction projects that are being financed by Japan.  Korea recently built an immense Samsung complex outside Hanoi.  In the cities electric wires, strung thickly and haphazardly on city poles, attest to constantly increasing needs for power and make-do solutions.  Shops, like the most common housing all twelve feet wide, fill every conceivable niche.  Everyone seems to be an entrepreneur.   

A rice wine with, yes, snakes.  Cobra rice wine, in fact.  We actually drank some.

Making rice "popcorn" involves adding black sand, then sifting it out.  Later something sugary and sticky is added and it is rolled flat and patted into squares.

Workers in this rattan weaving workshop work 8 hours a day to earn $5 per day, and tend to work 7 days a week to make ends meet.  After, say, 10 years or more  of work they will still make $5 a day.  The room is very hot, incredibly noisy, and the equipment looks dangerous.

In Hanoi the bicycle rickshaws fight for space with scooters and cars.  In some pedicabs, rickshaws or tuk-tuks you are propelled from the rear, others from the front.  It can be unnerving to sit in front as half the scooters on the road look as if they’re coming at you from all directions, like so much incoming shrapnel.  In Saigon the rickshaws have already been replaced by even more scooters.**   The city is striving like mad to become the next boom city in Asia.  Its tallest building, the Bitexco, is a replica of Dubai’s Sailboat Hotel with its circular protruding helicopter pad at the top.  In Saigon, however, a helicopter has yet to land.

Saigon's new skyline with the Bitexco Tower, copy of a building in Dubai

The Saigon Post Office, designed by Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel)

As in Cambodia, people worry about the environment.  Dams on the Mekong are on the minds of many, and with the increase of industry, so is pollution.  The entire Mekong Delta area (hard by Saigon) and towns along upper parts of the river depend upon the river for food and for their livelihood––and for drinking water.  The Mekong in flood spreads to fertilize rice fields, as it does in Cambodia.  We were there at a time when the river was relatively low––the hoped-for flooding did not happen this year––but it was nevertheless brown with silt, carrying along islands of water hyacinth at a good clip.  In a month or so, we were told, it will even look blue. 

Small scale fishing traps near a village whose economy is based on fishing

Commerce along the Mekong; carrying sand that will likely be used for fill in construction

In beautiful Ha Long Bay near the border with China coastal development is moving fast.  There are new high rise hotels and a good many tourist “junks”*** that ply the waters.  We had a lovely kayak trip in the bay.  Since our guides were forgetful and not experienced kayakers––they couldn't seem to keep to a straight line––we had an especially interesting trip, longer than the other kayakers in our group.  (For one thing, our mother ship moved without our knowledge to another bay while we were on the water so we were lost for a time, and when we found our hapless guides they managed to lead a kayak they were towing into a situation that caused it to overturn, nearly drowning one passenger.)  Monkeys inhabit the miniature island mountains that offer little access to humans.  We visited a cave there as well, nothing like the enormous caves we've heard exist in the mountains of central Vietnam..

Ha Long Bay, with its limestone mountains, near the Chinese border

Ha Long Bay in the evening, with "junks" in the background

Vietnam sorely needs prosperity.  With the US and Vietnam now becoming fast friends, or at least good trading partners with parallel political motives (for instance, we support their assertion of rights against the Chinese push to claim ownership of the sea near Vietnam), and Vietnam appearing more and more in travel news (the NYTIMES featured "36 Hours in Hanoi on 11/1/14) the future looks pretty bright.   I certainly hope so.  We owe it to them.

                                            *****

*Joan Baez returned to the Metropole for the first time post-war this past spring, presenting the hotel a portrait of a young Vietnamese boy that now hangs in their lobby. 

**The proliferation of scooters, totally out of control, is the unfortunate result of a lack of government support and funding for public transportation at a crucial stage of the country’s development.  Now it’s too late for buses (they would only increase the traffic jams), but Saigon is at least beginning to build a subway system.  No saying how long that will take, but no one is optimistic.  Most of the women on scooters have arms, head and much of their faces covered;  the reason, according to a guide, is less pollution than keeping their skin from the sun.

***They are really only pretend junks, as the ships are quite large and comfortable with no actual need for sails.  

HORRORS AND BEAUTY – A View From the Mekong: CAMBODIA

The Mekong, seen from Wat Henchey

THE FROG IN THE WELL

           

Virak, one of our guides in Cambodia who lives in the town of Kampong Cham, doesn’t know exactly how old he is.  Yet, by Cambodian standards, he is well-educated.  He guesses he is 32, but has no idea of his actual birth date. This made it easy when he was ready to marry. Custom dictates that lovers who hope to marry seek the blessing of a monk at their local monastery to certify the match is auspicious.  As his bride-to-be was born in the Year of the Horse, Virak, free to choose his birth year, slyly picked the Year of the Tiger, a sign he knew would be compatible.  And so they married. 

This lack of data is the result of what happened more than thirty-two years ago when Virak’s pregnant mother, like countless other Cambodians, was in a remote work camp* where she had been transported by Khmer Rouge by night and, like hundreds of thousands of others, kept unaware of the day, the time, or where she was, unable to communicate with the rest of the world in any way.  It was like being “a frog in a well,” a phrase that collectively describes the experiences of victims of the genocidal Pol Pot regime, and a phrase we heard several times.  Imagine:  Over ten years of horrific oppression and turmoil that involved the people of an entire nation.  Worse yet, it was an oppression long unrecognized and unopposed by the rest of the world.  

Virak, holding a rice plant

Virak’s mother and father both survived, as did most of his siblings with the exception of one sister.  It’s not possible to visit this country without being plunged into the country’s horrific and all-too-recent past.  One in four Cambodians, over two million people, died––men, women, children––tortured, murdered, starved, at the hands of the Khmer Rouge during their reign and in the chaos that followed.  Most of the people killed by the Khmer were also Khmer.** 

Our role in this history does not make a happy tale.  America supported a Cambodian general, Lon Nol, who overthrew the King, felt to be too sympathetic to the North Vietnamese, and then sent troops to fight against the Viet Cong, fruitlessly, as it turned out.  This act had disastrous consequences for Cambodia as it involved that country in the Vietnam (that is, “American”) War, and led ultimately to the US’s  bombing of Cambodia, most particularly along the Ho Chi Minh trail (an area we were near), unleashing more bombs than were dropped on Japan in all of World War II.  After the Vietnam War, with the defeat of communism still foremost on our political agenda, the US aided those Khmer Rouge fighters who had fled to Thailand, and supported the Khmer Rouge––rather than the Vietnam-supported communist government––as Cambodia’s representative at the United Nations.  In fact, throughout the 1970’s the US gave them covert support.  In yet another unsavory act, Britain trained the Khmer Rouge in the use of land mines.  To this day there are some million or so land mines remaining in rural areas of Cambodia.  Deaths from these mines, we heard, are down from some 500 per year to perhaps 200, thanks to the actions of the late Princess Diana.  The victims are often farmers, children, and animals.

Chum Mey, survivor of the infamous Khmer Rough Tuol Sleng Prison.  After visiting a German concentration camp in 1982 at the invitation of the German government he wrote, "It was...different from Tuol Sleng because they had many
beds and didn't have to sleep on the floor.  They could bathe too, so Tuol Sleng was worse."

Photographs of those about to die:  Tuol Sleng Prison

The old man just visible inside the stupa that holds the cremated remains of many killed by the Khmer
Rouge arrived here by bicycle some 20 years ago.  No one knows from where.   Each day he cleans the stupa.
He says he plans to die here, with the remains that may include those of his entire family.

The skulls in one side of a memorial stupa in one of the killing fields reach to the sky on four sides.

Braided yarn bracelets given by monks after blessings
are placed at sites of mass killings

Other horrors:  The teenaged girl with the burned face begging in Angkor, the man with flippers for hands and feet in Phnom Penh (not the only one we saw), the woman begging with a tiny baby at her breast (again, not the only one), the frighteningly skinny old woman on crutches.  And too many little boys and girls no older than 6 or 7 selling fans or postcards amid a sea of other places with the same wares.

AND THERE ARE PALACES

One of the complex of temples connected with the King's palace in Phnom Penh
The monarchy has been restored but the current king has little to no power.
He had been a ballet dancer, uninterested in politics.

Stunning architecture in Cambodia results from the heady marriage of gods and totems–Vishnu, Buddhas, cobras–a frenzy of colors, gilt, ornamentation.  Ancient buildings blend into the new or refurbished buildings.  I had expect to see only ruins, but the actual ruins were ones that had decayed centuries ago.  Clearly much has been restored since the destruction of previous decades.  

Stupas and temples at Wat Hanchey

The home of the chief monk (who appears to be living well).  He oversees the school where poor families often send their sons for a few years to be educated.  Some may remain monks.

Not all old temples are looked after, but local monks do their best.

Many, probably most, visitors to Cambodia come to see Angkor Wat, the most celebrated ruins of all.  Actually Angkor is a vast landscape of ruins extending many kilometers in all directions.  It is impossible to see it all in a single day.  (Nor, I suspect, would one want to.)  Originally dedicated to Vishnu but later gaining Buddhist symbolism as well, the complex of temples was built in the first half of the 12th century by the reigning Khmer King.  

Not the main wat, but an evocative complex of towers

The Khmer Rouge occupied Angkor in the 1970's and 1980's, and after they fled it became a home to squatters, refugees from the wars and general turmoil, reclaimed for tourism only in the l990's when it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  One guide said, cynically, “It was costing the government too much money to keep it up, so they were happy to have it declared a World Heritage Site so they wouldn’t have to pay for it anymore.”  Now it is overrun, literally, by tourists from all over the world. 

Every group of tourists is trailed by innumerable children, some as young as five or six,
surrounding you like a passel of kittens: "Buy fan!  Buy card!  One dollar!"  they cry.
They reach to hold your hand.  It is not easy to put them off.

Detail on one of the many wats

Some of the most beautiful sights are those which the jungle has tried to reclaim.

There are endless corridors of doors and steps

A month-long Buddhist festival was about to come to an end in October so there were rituals underway in numerous monasteries. At one monastery where chanting was in full swing as I peeked in a monk turned to me, gestured “Come in” with his hand, and patted the empty space next to him.  I was afraid my presence would be disruptive, but several other monks smiled at me invitingly so I sat and joined them for a while.  The throb of chanting voices was wonderful and I didn't want to leave.  In another monastery we were invited to join in a blessing ceremony:  The monks chanted in Sanskrit, sprinkled us with water and flower petals (I was right in front of the monk doing the sprinkling and got quite damp), afterward tying bracelets of braided yarn around our wrists to carry on the blessing.  I still have mine.

Chanting was, to me, beautiful and mesmerizing.

The florid decorations often include a mix of symbols taken from different beliefs

BUT PEOPLE DON'T LIVE IN PALACES

We were invited into this woman's well-kept house.  Her children work far from home.

This beautifully smiling woman is working in her kitchen. Because of an unknown condition
she has lost her ability to speak.

Outside of nearly every home, no matter how simple, is a spirit house.  Inside there will be a shrine to ancestors.  

Two-thirds of the country is rural and without electricity.  (The government has promised 100% electrification by 2020!)  Each rural family has a few hectares to raise rice and other food crops, one or two cows for plowing, or perhaps a water buffalo if they are near water, an ox-cart, and hand tools.  

Water taken from the river is kept in huge jars as it has been for centuries.
A tablet is generally added to the water to clarify it.

Television often exists where there is no electricity.  Car batteries are the source of power.

Typically, the area beneath the house floor is where the cows are kept.
In this case there is also a loom, and, at left, the family motor scooter.

Women at work in various crafts

Virak’s family were farmers but he and his wife and children are now city people and so don’t live with his wife’s family as is done traditionally.  His wife has only a sixth grade education, not at all unusual for women.  While he works as an free lance guide (like most of our guides) she supplements their income by running a small business, a “cow bank.”  She will buy a cow (the cost of a cow in Cambodia is about $2,000, a major investment), lease it to a “good” farmer and receive the first calf.  The farmer will receive the second.  His wife still owns the cow and will raise the calf, repeating the operation with a number of cows.  They bought their house with the profits of this operation.

 Government officials live in huge houses behind high walls in Phnom Penh

We heard how many acres of farmland (over 770 million to date, according to Wikipedia) have been purchased from farmers by wealthy government officials and others, presumably for future development but in actuality for evading tax and laundering money.***  As a result the farmers who sell to take the profit––perhaps as much as $10,000, an unusually tidy sum for a poor farmer––move to the north where farmland may be available.  This, unfortunately, is also where the land mines are, making the bargain they struck potentially more costly than they thought.  Nevertheless, the migration continues, as the farmers have really nowhere else to go.

A woodworker at his workshop

A silk-making workshop.  The cocoons are put in hot water, and the golden thread
(nearly invisible!) is pulled from each cocoon and turned on the spindle behind.
This art was nearly lost as the Khmer Rouge obliterated the silk-makers.

AND THERE ARE MANY THREATS

The landscape we saw was mostly level, characteristic of the center and south of Cambodia.  But there are forests to the north and along the Thai border.  Many ecological dangers loom.  In addition, of course, to the land mines.  Among the threats to the forest are mono-crops like rubber tree plantations.  The plantation we saw was owned 60% by the company (foreign), 40% by the government.  Our guide told us that the National Assembly recently approved a land concession for a Vietnamese company to grow 2.7 million hectares (nearly seven million acres) of rubber trees.   Chinese interests own parts of other forests.

China looms large in other environmental areas as well.  The Mekong, 4,350 kilometers long, flows through China, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.  There are already dams on the river but China, not a member of the Mekong Commission, has plans for another, as does Laos, possibilities that concern many Cambodians as well as many Vietnamese who depend upon the river for fish and flood waters.

A student at a village school.  There are many grades in this one class.
They are learning English.

Teachers are paid so little that few want to become teachers.  Even though education is free, parents must buy uniforms and books.  In many villages there are no schools.  The teachers themselves seldom have an education beyond high school, if that. Higher education is even more elusive, and most children only complete sixth grade. Yet the future is more promising for this generation than it was for their parents or grandparents who witnessed so much.

The Cambodian people are gracious, beautiful, warm and open.  The gesture that opens and closes a meeting or transaction–hands together with a slight bow of the head–lends dignity and grace to every encounter.   We march into someone’s home (with permission, of course) and are greeted with pride and smiles.  At the marketplace there is no impatience with our endless photography. The children, no matter how tiny, say “Hello, hello,” and wave madly.  From shops along the road people wave as we rumble by in our tuk-tuks or rickshaws

At least there is peace.

A student with his artwork at the ODA school, a place for orphaned or underprivileged children

* All Cambodians were forced to work in collective farms, the idea being to bring Cambodia back to a primitive “Year Zero,” everyone working without pay, separated from family, in rural work projects.  All Western or “elitist” influences were to be removed or eliminated.  Those to be eliminated included intellectuals, educated people, professionals, monks, Muslims, Christians, ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Cambodians with Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai ancestry. Members of the Khmer Rouge were themselves suspected of betrayal, especially toward the end of their reign, and often imprisoned or executed as well.

** ”Survivor, The Triumph of an Ordinary Man in the Khmer Rouge Genocide,” trans. by Sim Sarya and Kimsroy Sokvisal, pub. by Documentation Center of Cambodia, Series 18, Phenom Penh, 2012.

*** A multitude of crimes might involve money-laundering.  The capital Phnom Penh, for one, is a crossroads of corruption, sex-trafficking and drug money.