Genocide. What a strange thing it is. The need to wipe a group of people off the face of the earth! What a barbaric concept! Yet the last century has seen multiple genocides that have resulted in the loss of millions and millions of lives in the most horrific ways. We imaginative humans seem to come up with ever more ingenious ways to kill each other, in ever greater numbers.
I was in Cambodia for a volunteer house build with the Tabitha Foundation, the recipient of funds from the last FAWCO Target Project, which funded the digging of family and community water wells in Cambodia. Tabitha also has a program through which volunteers help build houses in needy communities. Yolanda Henry, who nominated Tabitha for the Target Project, led the house build -- her eighth such trip.
The genocide of the Pol Pot regime ended 40 years ago, yet in many ways Cambodia seems mired in the past both practically and emotionally. Pol Pot intentionally and specifically targeted and eliminated educated Cambodians, attempting to create a country of farmers, and in many ways he was successful. On the surface, Phnom Penh is bustling and Siem Reap (for better or for worse) has grown by leaps and bounds due to tourism. But beneath the surface, lingers abject poverty and an appalling lack of medical care for the average Cambodian, especially women and children. With the death of so many of the country’s intellectuals also came a regression to more traditional cultural practices, which include dramatic gender inequality. A proliferation of charities and NGOs seek to address the problems in Cambodia and have made some progress, but real change is challenging.
On our first day in Cambodia, we visit the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek hoeung Ek, nine miles from Phnom Penh, one of thousands of sites around the country where the Khmer Rouge practiced genocide during the late 1970s. This killing field is one of the largest, with over 10,000 victims of the genocide buried in a mass grave. An excellent guided tour takes visitors through a myriad of haunting sites: a tree against which the Khmer Rouge banged children to death while their parents watched; the leaves of a particular type of palm tree that are so sharp they were used to stab people to death; the Memorial Stupa that contains over 8000 skulls of men, women and children killed at this location. I am particularly moved by a single tooth which has surfaced from a mass grave and lies on the ground--intact but lonely.
Equally disturbing is the Tuol Sleng Prison, which was used by the Khmer Rouge, as a detention and torture center and is now a Genocide Museum. The tiny cells, instruments of torture and ghostly photos of former inmates, make one shudder at the thought of the atrocities that went on in this place. I read that two million people were killed in the genocide, and I cannot wrap my mind around this number. How many people is that really? How big a space would it take to hold two million people? I see that a quarter of the Cambodian population died! I try to imagine one fourth of the population of the US being killed in a few years! It’s inconceivable to me. And then I see the faces in the photos in the museum and suddenly it is not two million people who were killed. It is that handsome Cambodian boy that I bet used to make the girls swoon. It’s that young man whose haunted eyes reflect the horrors he saw. It’s the woman holding her baby, surely awaiting torture and/or death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The two million people become real people with real families and real stories and real pain.
On the second day of the trip, the personal aspect of the genocide becomes more apparent when we visit the Tabitha offices to hear from Janne Ritskes, the founder of Tabitha. Janne speaks passionately and unabashedly about the traumas that women faced during the genocide and continue to experience in its aftermath. She talks of the women in Tabitha’s sewing program who have been given an alternative to surviving by selling their bodies. I wander around the rows of women working hard at their sewing machines or sorting fabric, asking if I can photograph them. I wonder whether they are grateful that I am there or resentful that I am eyeing them. I hope that their shy smiles and nods of approval to my camera mean that they are happy to see me. I hope that something in my manner let’s them know what tremendous respect I have for their willingness to fight through the obstacles against them to make a better life for themselves, despite still facing such difficulty.
But nothing compares with hearing the story Janne tells about one of her fellow team members, Dara (not her real name), who was a young child when Pol Pot began his rampage. On April 17, 1975, a day, like any other, Pol Pot declared that all people living in Cambodian cities must abandon their homes and possessions and move to the countryside. Dara’s family was typical of families who couldn’t really grasp what was happening and failed to leave that day. The Khmer Rouge come to Dara’s neighborhood as to all others in Phnom Penh, and choose one family from each neighborhood to set as an example. Dara’s father and brothers are murdered before her eyes, and Dara, her sisters and mother flee the house immediately. They end up at a work camp, where, because she is so young, Dara, just a young girl herself, is put in charge of the infants. Inevitably, a baby dies from malnutrition, since the children are given very little food, and Dara is told that she is responsible! Another baby becomes ill and when she succumbs to the illness, since there are no medications to treat her, Dara is told that she is to blame! A soldier comes into the nursery and smashes a crying baby into the wall to shut him up, and Dara is told that it is her fault! For years, Dara finds it too painful to tell Janne her story, and when she finally does, she can barely speak the words. As Janne prompts her to release the demons, Dara keeps saying, “I am bad! I am bad! You don’t understand. I am BAAAAAD!”
As Janne tells this story, I cannot hold back the tears and struggle not to weep openly. After all, this is not about me, but this story touches me in a place that others have not. I have heard a lot of sad and horrific stories, but this one is beyond the pale. To put a young girl in charge of babies with no resources and then tell her she is bad because they die seems the epitome of human degradation. Yet I realize that, in just as tragic ways and in more subtle ways this is what happens to women all the time. We are raped, and we are told that it is our fault—that we asked for it—that we are BAD! We speak up for ourselves, and we are slapped down and silenced and told that we are BAD! We dare to step out of the boundaries set for us, and we are criticized and shunned and told that we are BAD! The challenge for us, as it is for Dara, is not to believe what we are told but rather to trust what we know to be true about ourselves and to stay true to that knowledge!
The house build takes place in a small village in the northeastern part of Cambodia, a bumpy two-hour drive from the nearest decent-sized town. When we arrive in the village, we are told that the residents have been nervous that we would not come and are overjoyed when we do. The one-room houses are primitive—no running water, no electricity. The roof and framing are already up and our jobs are solely to nail the floorboards to the joists and the corrugated metal wall panels to the framing—straightforward but hard work. Since we are a team of all females, the men of the village assist us and we are able to complete 10 houses in one day! The day ends with a ceremony to turn over the houses to the new residents and present them with a quilt made by the artisans at Tabitha. The reward comes in seeing all the smiling faces and knowing that we have made it possible for these families to sleep with a roof over their heads that night.
As I sit in my hotel room, waiting for my car to the airport to leave Cambodia, I can’t help feeling sad that I am departing--Cambodia has crept into my heart. While I feel heavy with the pain and sorrow I have witnessed, I try to focus on the amazing resiliency of the people, the happy faces and incredible gratitude of the people we served, and the many, many blessings most of us take for granted. I wish for Cambodia a better day.
