Orientation and preparation

(By Susan)

The front of the Tabitha Office

Today we met Janne.  Janne is the founder and director of the Tabitha Foundation.  A passionate soul who is intent on contributing to (and encouraging others to contribute to) Cambodians building back their dignity.  Janne is a most amazing woman.  She came to Phnom Penh in 1991 during the last days of the Khmer Rouge – Western supported – government.  She spent her first 18 months’ worth of night sleeping in her bath because she woke on her first morning to bullet holes in the wall 10cm above her head.  She stayed, though.  After a couple of decades of building houses for poor, destitute, and fatherless families she has put a roof over almost four million people’s heads.  The website tells me they have built for “463,136 families with 3,705,088 dependents from 1994 to date”.  Gosh.

Janne Ritskes

Janne gave us the orientation address which included some history, a few personal stories, and The Rules.  Recent Cambodian history is not something we knew terribly much about, and it seems unbelievable that the West supported and sponsored Pol Pot and his cronies even after they were initially overthrown and after the first round of UN trials had begun.  It all came to an end only when Pol Pot eventually died in 1998.  We all found that a touch gobsmacking.

Story-telling

She told us the story of Vonne (I’m not sure how it’s spelt….).  Vonne was a child of four when she was separated from her mother after watching her father and 6 brothers being shot in their home by the Khmer Rouge.  From age 4 to 7 she was responsible for a dormitory of babies under 12 months.  Each night, a baby died.  Horribly.  When Janne met her she had severe PTSD, believed she was intrinsically a ‘bad person’ and had difficulty dealing with people in groups of more than 1. Vonne now works with Janne at the foundation.  This was just one woman’s story.  Of course, each person over the age of 45 in this country has lived through a traumatising time for individuals, and for the country as a whole.  It will take a lot of healing.

Cutting and making

And then, when tears had been dried, and we had been reminded that these are a broken people who will benefit hugely from the work that we are about to do, she told us The Rules.

The rules for building the houses in the village are designed not only to be culturally sensitive, but also to be safe, as well as to ensure that we don’t leave any bad feelings behind.  They are many and varied, and the ones I can remember go something like this:

• ·       Do not touch a person of the opposite sex.  This should only happen if that person is the parent of your own still-in-utero child.  It can look as if some people are particularly promiscuous if this one isn’t followed.
• ·       When a person hurts themselves by banging their thumb with the hammer, for instance, do not rush over to see if they’re ok – this is showing weakness, and they already believe that we’re big softies.
• ·       Do not pay any attention to, or admire, a child under the age of 2.  The locals may think you want to take it away as payment.
• ·       Do not leave anything behind in the village, even a tennis ball etc, as it will cause tension amongst the villagers when we leave.
• ·       Do completely finish the bottled water.  Don’t leave half-drunk bottles behind.
• ·       Do dress modestly covering shoulders and knees
• ·       Don’t share your food with the villagers as it may make them sick.  If you accept food from them, it’s your own fault if you end up with crook guts.
• ·       Men should use the convenience of a bush, and not be surprised if others come along for the company.
• ·       Women should only use the convenience of a bush if they would like company and are prepared to spend up to 30 minutes chatting while squatting!  There will be a closed off area prepared for us.
• ·       Do stop every 15 mins for water whether you think you need it or not.
• ·       Do not allow children in, or under, the houses while they’re being built – it could be dangerous.
• ·       Do leave your belongings on the table provided, no one will touch them while they’re there.  Only leave your things elsewhere knowing that they will be taken.
• ·       Do hold on to your emotions.  This is about them, not you.
• ·       Go with grace.

After looking around the shop which was filled with beautiful silks, and products made by the Cambodian women who were in and around the building, we shopped for bits and pieces to have for lunches and snacks during the time we’re away. Many of the women are ex-sex workers.  Another piece of Janne's contribution to community development.

Stitching

We then took in the Museum.  A fabulous building set around a delightful courtyard.  It was filled with antiquities from the Angkor Watt region and seemed similar in style to some of the Egyptian pieces we’ve seen.  It was clearly a complex ancient civilization with engineering marvels created at a time when the islands of Western Europe were still subsistence farming – but more of that later when we’re in Siem Reap.  Certainly a far cry from Pol Pot's goal.

The Museum Courtyard

Tomorrow we begin our journey North for 7 – 8 hours.  There’s little promise of a hot shower or flushing toilet, so any hope of wi-fi will be slim.

Roof detail

We’ll definitely keep it written up, and will upload the next instalments as we can.  See you on down the road!

Separation

(By Rory)

The entrance to Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum

Today was a day of separation.  We were each separated from certain aspects of our lives and to varying degrees.  Susan was separated from her comfort zone as we meandered through the halls of the Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum; a primary school recreated by the Khmer Rouge into a prison for torture and ‘processing’ before inmates were carted off to the Killing Fields.  I was separated from the others and was ‘forced’ to sit on the rooftop of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club and have calamari and beer for lunch.  The view over the river, and surrounding streets, is just high enough to see some order in the traffic which seems so chaotic below, and just low enough to still smell the aromas rising from charcoal grills that line the footpaths.  Dermot, however, was separated from something much deeper within… his breakfast.

Row upon row of photographs

It would seem that dehydration had got to him in this tropical weather and he fainted.  A doctor from a near by tour group came and offered assistance, but Mum gave me the look and we knew it was time.  I reached into my back and removed the revolver.  I proceeded to put in two rounds (just to be sure) and flicked the barrel back into the chamber.  Just then Susan let out an cry! She yanked the weapon away from my sweaty palm and slapped it into her own.  “I should do it,” she said sternly with a look on her face not many had seen before, “I’ve earned it.”

Dermot writhed on the ground saying things like “I’m fine.  Just get me some water,” but it was obvious he’d become delusional.  Susan leant in closely and whispered, “It’s best just to know when your time’s come.”  It was at this point my solo tangent ensued. 

The Rules...

I continued throughout the cold concrete buildings of Tuol Sleng with sadness in my heart and disbelief in my eyes.  Photo upon photo upon photo lined the walls of prisoners (men, women and children) who were tried for crimes of treason.  The laws they had broken were, of course, written by a mad-man and carried out by nodes of his dysfunctional, paranoid, and psychotic dictatorship.

Corridors.  The barbed wire helped stop the prisoners jumping

The prison was set in a primary school where old classrooms became torture rooms, divided into cell blocks, or guard quarters.  The torture rooms were mostly empty except for a single bed in the middle with shackles attached.  The cell blocks still had blood stained tiles and some cells remained locked shut.  In one cell block you could, even now, see mathematical formulas written in chalk on the wall from the time it was a school.  The most confronting area was the final photo gallery.  Paintings depicting the horrors of the camp were on display, as was torture equipment and the preserved skulls of victims (bullet holes and all). 

Some rooms

It was a gut-wrenching experience, truly horrifying.  I think, however, that unless we are shown the truth objectively in this manner, and let our instincts tell us that it is so painfully wrong, we may not see the true harm.  One can only hope that something so awful never happens again, or to so many.

[The photos below remain captionless]

The Killing Fields

(By Dermot)

Detail from the central memorial Stupa

Early on in my tour of Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre my audio guide explains the rationale behind the genocide, “To keep you is no gain. To lose you is no loss”, so went the Khmer Rouge slogan. Pol Pot had deemed those who were killed as having no benefit to Kampuchea.

Between 1.5 and 2.5 million people slaughtered, minority ethic groups, intellectuals, religious people, anyone that might challenge the new paradigm – the paradigm to create a sustainable agrarian society. People dragged from the cities to create farms, without skills or training.  One in four people murdered, many, many more starved to death. This is why the scar is still visible on the people of Cambodia.

Beauty poignantly bloomed along the paths

Meticulously, the murderers recorded their victims. Faces on dingy photographs and brief biographies of the murdered stare out of the walls of the museum. I follow the trail around the park-like memorial, at each stop my audio guide explains the atrocities committed. Around the now shallow pits butterflies flit, birds sing, one ‘book books’ constantly. Small bones are visible around some of the pits. I listen to stories of survivors and of guards. Equally. Gruesome.

Just a fraction of the many shallow pits around the memorial

The Killing Tree, a beautiful, large, tree where small children were swung around and bashed to death against its tall trunk then thrown in the adjacent pit along with the bodies of mothers who had watch the same fate befall their own children. “Pull out the grass by the roots” the slogan went.

The tree, and other sites, were decorated with offerings and remembrances of handwoven bracelets and bands

Detail from the tree

The centre of the memorial park contains the Stupa, modelled on a Buddhist Temple. Within, hundreds of skulls stare out at me from behind the glass. Mostly bleached white. Some darkened and stained. Many display the evidence of blows that brought death. Each skull carefully numbered like a museum specimen. Are they honoured here or are they a mirror reflecting the possibilities that lie within all of us?

The central Stupa

There are no words

Genocide. What makes societies find people within to blame, people ‘not like us’ to whom we can assign guilt and punish for all our ills.

And what about the killers within, capable of killing and torturing hundreds, thousands of people? Slaughtering people until it becomes normal. Why the torture? To take away hope?

Perhaps, for a while, humanity has triumphed here? Perhaps.... The Khmer have honoured their dead and exposed and acknowledged their own ‘shame’. The shame that, amongst their own people, they were capable of this atrocity within this society. This horror was perpetrated by themselves, against themselves. Who among us would admit this of our own society?

Bones.  Fragments.  They still rise to the surface.

Perhaps, for a while, humanity has triumphed. Until the next person rises to point at people who are ‘not like us’. Genocide in the name of a cause whether it be political ideology, religion, wealth .... Cortez, Cromwell, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot... sadly, to name but a few.

The ‘shame’ is that many perpetrators have still not been brought to trial. Pol Pot died in comfort. The major governments of the world, including Australia’s, long recognised his government in exile.

How does it go? Evil happens when good men do nothing?

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.  Edmund Burke.

Offerings

How far from it are we? We can incarcerate refugees in a ‘shit hole’ camp in Manus Island or on a pile of fossil bird shit, Nauru, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – locking up children and refusing entry to independent witnesses.  Label them criminals to dehumanise them. It’s a starting point on the slippery, slippery, slope of pointing at people who are ‘not like us’.

This evening we meandered through the hectic streets of Phnom Penn peering into shanty stalls that create the aroma of smoke and chargrilled food. We end up on the roof-top of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, the former haunt of journalists, now perhaps more of a tourist trap. It’s hard to truly picture what it was like in the 60s and 70s, smoke-filled bars, western correspondents madly filing stories on the war in Indochina.

Life’s a lottery. I’m sipping cocktails contemplating the senseless deaths of 2 million people.

The twists and turns of a tree that has seen too much.