When I went came to Cambodia in 2011 we did all thing normal things that you do when you come to Cambodia. Mission work, Angkor Wat, Cheung Ek and Toul Sleng. And I realized when I went for the second time 2 days ago that I never wrote anything about my visits to these pillars of remembrance to the genocide that happened in the mid to late 70’s. If you know nothing of what I’m talking about then take a moment to visit my team mate Jeff’s blog.
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Trust me.
We started our morning(or mid morning) by asking our tuk-tuk driver to take us to these two places. He agreed but asked us to pray for him and his people when we got there. It was still hard over 30 years later to bring any non-Cambodians to these places that displayed the hate, destruction, and madness of the Khmer Rouge. We arrived just outside Phnom Penh to a gated off field. We climbed out of our tuk-tuk and gathered around our driver Saman and prayed over him. It was an incredibly sweet moment. We walked in the gate, paid our fee, got our headset and started our journey. Now I knew what was coming, I had been here before. And one of the big reasons I decided to come back to Cheung Ek and Tou Sleng was to talk with my team mates and see what they gathered from all this. We walked the path from the drop off point for the prisoners to the killing tree, the mass graves where bones and clothes are still to this day resurfacing. We listened on our headsets of stories of survivors who had lived through the atrocities. I stared into the empty eyes of hundreds of skulls all who had at one time been people with life, and energy, laughter, a story and a future.
We climbed back into our tuk-tuk grabbed lunch at a cute little cafe called the Tuk-Tuk Restaurant. As we were sitting there Devin pointed out that “The school is right there” Sure enough the cafe faced the backside of Toul Sleng. After lunch we took the 2 minute walk to the front of Tou Sleng, again paid our entry fee of 2 dollars and stood face to face with a sobering moment in history. For a moment we stood there and let it overtake us. Feeling like we were in a time machine letting time rewind and being there 35 years ago and watching it all happen around us. We took our time, split up a bit and wandered all around the school. I let myself return to when this was my first time. The things I wanted to see again to know that my memory hadn’t tricked me. My wall, the beautiful flower tree, the cells that were so small that my shoulders and hips almost couldn’t fit through the doorway. And just like the last time my mind was flooded with questions. How can we do this to each other? Where does our humanity stop? Are we ever unbrainwashed? Father, where were you in all this? All those that died who never heard your name, are they really burning in hell? What does Heavenly justice look like?
I don’t have answers. But small stories. One of the audio bits was a man talking about how his mother had a dream that one day he would be somebody. This man lived through this tragedy. He lived to tell his story and help other people tell tell theirs. Somehow it fits in. Somehow it’s an answer. But I don’t think the point is to get an answer. I don’t think that’s how He works.
It’s no coincidence that after Cambodia we head to Rwanda who had their own battle with genocide back in 1994. I hear in the back of my mind “Never again.” The thing we say when we talk about the Holocaust of the 1930’s and 40’s and I can’t help but give a sad laugh at the saying. In the last 100 years there has been at least 4 major events when mass-extermination and genocide have been the goal. Still more whispers of things that we don’t like to talk about in the States. Our disbelief over never once hearing about the Khmer Rouge in school or in the States in general was a theme of our day. How did we not know? How did our government have an indirect involvement in this? How did our country, that likes to pretend we’re the savior of the world, not step in?
One of my team mates said something about my wealth of knowledge(I’m not not naming you Bug, I just can’t quite remember what you said). It’s true, I’ve read a lot. Before I get here the first time my goal was to learn all that I could about what happened here. Same with Africa, I didn’t read a 900 page book on 9 different African countries for nothing. The more I read, the more I chose to become aware of what happens in our world everyday the more questions I have and the more questions I have the more rambling blog post there are.
