Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

So yeah. While my entries before this have mostly been very positive with some challenges thrown in, this one is not positive. It covers some events that were scarring and completely devastating but are a part of Cambodia that must not be forgotten. Just a fair warning, don't feel like you have to read farther.

We returned from our site visits on Thursday March 8th and met together once again in the capital of Phnom Penh as I think I said before. On Friday we reconvened (though many of us were a bit late, as I should have been so I could have grabbed some damn breakfast...) at 8 am to debrief the visits. Many people had interesting stories about housing struggles, teaching classes for absent teachers, and one girl even had to change sites completely due to a massive problem with a school director. However, overall everyone had survived and were excited, feeling that what the faced could be overcome in time. We also had a visit from the U.S. Embassy's security director, who seemed to be so good at what he did (he's been here for 6 years) but was so approachable (he invited us to come play softball with the Embassy staff when we were in town) that it was a reassuring way to start the day.

Then we jumped in vans and headed across the city to the Tuol Sleng museum in downtown Phnom Penh. This used to be a high school, and in the 1970s it was turned into a national prison for Democratic Kampuchea (Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge). Now it is a museum that documents this horrible time in Cambodian history, with the first signs upon entering saying "please do not laugh at any time while in the museum, for respect to the many who died unjustly here."

It was a stark, cold place with no pomp or shield from reality. The rooms were hardly changed at all from how they were found after the regime collapsed. Cells, manacles, implements of torture were in cases - the only deconstruction had been done by the Khmer Rouge when they knew they were losing and tried to hide the fact that it was a prison. Black and white photos were in every room, some displaying mug shots (because of course everyone was a criminal against the state), some death shots kept for K.R. records, and some that documented what was found when the prison was liberated in the end. In the examination rooms were beds, the same beds as in the pictures on the walls, and dark stains remained on the floors. I won't go into the details of many of these pictures because they were horrible and can't be truly described, but it shook me deeply. I saw the eyes of despair staring at out me from thirty years ago. I never went to any of the museums in Germany, or to places like Rwanda, or Darfur where such events are still happening, but it was a terrifying moment of seeing what human being are capable of doing to each other.

In a country full of welcome, love, and smiles, this lays just beneath the surface? We have walked directly into it with our eyes closed at times, that is how deceiving it is. For instance, one evening I asked my host grandfather how many kids he had. ''I had seven, but now five." "Oh, I'm sorry. What happened?"

"Khmer Rouge."

We are such children, fumbling in a language and culture so deep and full and complicated. Everyone has lost brothers, uncles, daughters, cousins... everyone. In a country of around 9 million people, it is estimated that almost 3 million died in this time through purges, disease, famine. And yet here I come from the wealthiest nation on earth waving a flag of "I teach English"... and my host mother refuses to charge me for my bowl of noodles at breakfast because I am "one of her children". My thoughts on so many things threaten to crash into each other in the middle of my head.

I come here to serve these people, but what can I hope to offer a people that have gone through hell and come out smiling?