The tuk tuk drivers here in Phnom Penh are always trying to offer us rides, probably because we stick out a little. Sometimes they come up to us holding a big card covered with bright pictures of different temples and attractions around town.
“Two hours, take you around the city, very nice things to see.”
But it still catches me off guard when they ask with enthusiasm “Been to killing fields?”
In 1975 the Communist Khmer Rouge army at the orders of their leader Pol Pot captured control of Cambodia when they took over the capital of Phnom Penh. It was almost 4 years before the Khmer Rouge was finally taken out of power by the Vietnamese army. In that short time they managed to brutally murder 25% of the population, between 1.5 and 3 million people.
We did go to the killing fields. Thousands of people were murdered and then buried there in mass graves. Bones still surface after heavy rain.
And to Tuol Sleng which was a high school before the Khmer Rouge turned it into a machine for torture and death. Only 12 of the 12,000-20,000 people who went in are known to have come out alive. We walked into rooms where an unthinkable number of people’s blood still stains the floors. We looked at their black and white pictures on display in the rooms they’d been chained up and died in.
There was a man sitting at a table in front of a pile of books on our way out of Tuol Sleng. He signed and gave me his card. Then he showed me the scars on his arms as the young man at his side told me that this man was Bou Meng, one of only 2 survivors from this place who’s still alive.
I wanted to cry, not buy a book. I wanted to say something to him, something that mattered, but I didn’t. I was in shock. I just sort of stood there with my mouth open.
My mouth still hangs open a little when one of the men on the street tries to sell us a trip to see this stuff. I think about how I may have seen one of their relative’s pictures in one of those rooms. It’s hard for me to reconcile.
I think I’m writing this because it doesn’t seem real. I walk around and imagine some of the horror that walked these streets such a short time ago. It’s so hard to picture.
I know the country is rebuilding. The people here are so kind and invested, but they have a long road ahead of them.
I don’t have a good way to end this. I’m just letting you into the place I’m sitting right now and the things I’m seeing. The only thing I’m sure of is that I have a God who cries when people are hurting and who knows what to do when someone shows Him their scars.
