Am I my brothers keeper?

I left Laos feeling wonderful and inspired. In my penultimate post about Laos, I even questioned the link between wealth and happiness. What school boy musings those seem now. From Shangri-La (which Laos was once called), I went to the painful realities of the world. I feel emotionally threadbare after only a day in Phnom Penh.

Driving from the airport into the city center, I knew that this city was different. The sun beat down much stronger and the dust and dirt seemed grittier. The traffic was heavier and the drivers more intense. Moto’s (we would call them scooters) weaved around cars , trucks, and tuk-tuks like fish through an never ending stream of city traffic. The people themselves seemed hungrier and more wiry and alert.

Amid this backdrop I began my walking tour of Phnom Penh. I started by Wat Penh, the only hill in the city and the site of Phnom Penh’s founding myth (Penh is hill in Khmer… the language and predominant ethnic group of Cambodia). The myth basically states that the Mekong washed 3 Buddha statues and one Vishnu statue to the home of a young girl named Penh. She used these statues to create a temple on the site now called Wat Penh (Phnom Penh translates to Penh’s Hill). The structure itself was nice enough, but it was surrounded by beggars… many missing a limb from landmines. One term I learned while preparing for this trip is “UXO” which is short for unexploded ordinance… land mines. Parts of Cambodia are still covered with them. Children and adults alike set them off every day. Unfortunately Cambodian society does not take care of these people and many are left to beg (though some due try to make a living selling books and water).

I went on to visit Was Ounalom (which contains an eyelash from the Buddha… Siddhartha Gautama), the National Museum, and the Royal Palace/Silver Pagoda. It was this later visit where I met a young girl Tsee-ree-ah (or at least that is how it sounded). She was a beautiful girl of 8 years old who was selling water. Even with a rotting front tooth, her infectious smile warmed me and we had a chance to speak for a little bit before her young friends and others came to beg or sell me things. She attended school but would not tell me more about her personal life. She asked me where I was from and what America was like. How could I answer that question? Lamely, I replied “It is very nice there.” I bought water from her on my way in and out of the National Museum. Somehow I am not content to hope or pray for her safety and happiness, but have this big brotherly urge to do something to help her. Makes me sad and angry and motivated all at the same time.

Despite some these very emotional encounters, nothing could prepare for my next stop… Tuol Sleng Museum. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge converted this one time high school into Prison Security 21 (S-21). They have not touched much and many of the torture devices and cells remain intact. They also have a gallery of all the mug shots of the people who had been tortured there. Young boys and girls, old men and women, the mentally challenged, new mothers still clutching their childs… no one escaped Pol Pot’s scourge. I am not ashamed to admit that as I walked the halls of pictures I puddled up more than once (and even as I write this I can fear my eyes watering). Such horror. The people in the pictures looked directly into the camera and so looked directly at me too. The shots of the children were particularly haunting. No child was smiling… they knew what was coming.

While I had planned on coming back to see it, I felt this immediate need to go to the Killings Fields outside of Phnom Penh. I had to rip this emotional band aid off at once and could not let it linger. I took a moto ~10km out of town to see it. I was met with a Stupa of skulls. Thousands were killed here (including many from the S-21). The field itself is quite small… much smaller than a football field… but what horror. Mass graves and signs indicating the building or shack that had once stood. Surrounding the Killing Field are farms… an eerily peaceful setting. This is not ancient history… this was going on only a year before I was born… a tragedy that was repeated before (Holocaust among others) and after (Rwanda, Kosovo). How do we do this? How do we let this happen again and again? How can we be silent and not hear the screams of the slaughter of the innocent? I have never been surer that there is no God and I have never wanted to believe in a God more.

On the ride back to town, a funny thing happened. I looked around. People were still tending to green fields. Children still smiled and played. People were still eating dinner. Despite the horror people had found a way to find normalcy and even smile. Even my friend Tsee-ree-ah smiled and played with her friends after I left her company. With so much horror and darkness in the world there is still good and still light. I wish I could offer some final conclusion, but I am still trying to understand this myself.