Deep fried spiders. Cooked tarantula.
As you can already tell life here in Cambodia has been pretty eventful. I love it here and I’m enjoying teaching english even though it has been a huge challenge. On Tuesday the class that I am planning and teaching on my own will begin. I admit I’m a little nervous about it and I honestly don’t know what to expect. All I really know is I’m going to be helping them work on how they pronounce certain english words and sounds. Having never done anything like this before it’s a struggle to come up with ideas that I can work with but I am confident that I can figure it out and comforted by the fact that if I can’t get it figured out it’s only 2 weeks of my life. Ultimately I know that God is in control and no matter what it’s all going to work out alright.
As I’m attempting to teach Cambodian children how to read, write and speak english Cambodia itself is teaching me a lesson. Over the weekend my team was in Phenom Phen to apply for visa’s in India and Vietnam so we took a side trip and visited the Killing Fields. No one really knew what to expect, we knew the genocide that occurred in Cambodia only 30 years ago was bad but I don’t think we fully anticipated what we were about to witness.
We entered the park rather light hearted, joking around like we normally do. We seen the large tower in the middle of the park housing the 8000 skulls collected from the massive collection of mass graves that surrounded the building but we didn’t realize what it was at first. As we approached it someone in our group said, “Guys, those are human skulls…” and from that moment on we hardly spoke a word.
I can’t really describe the feelings that arise when you approach that monument, 10 large shelves filled with human remains, most of them skulls. It’s surreal. In a strange way it’s like walking through the aisles of Walmart around Halloween and seeing decorations but these aren’t fake and that realization, that you are literally looking at what was once a dismembered human head, is difficult to process.
We walked through the park and we took pictures as we observed things like bamboo plants with razored edges once used by the Khmar Rogue to slice the throats of those who got in the way of their communist agenda. People like doctors, only 40 doctors survived the ordeal, a major factor in the need for medical staff in Cambodia today.
Through all of the darkness it’s difficult to see God here. But within the greatest difficulties lies the brightest opportunity and I must believe that although terrible and horrific events have happened here there is a hope that will not be extinguished. The children in the village are so bright and they work so hard to english. The future is in their hands and I am honoured to be a able to encourage them to rise up and change the face of their nation for good.
