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.