I look at myself today and see someone whose eyes have been opened to the world...

“I look at myself today and see someone whose eyes have been opened to the world. Open to seeing what privileges I am honored with and those that others are lacking. Open to understanding myself to an incredible degree. I am a new person. I have grown in so many ways. The people that surrounded me fostered a new sense of self discovery that has truly opened doors for me. I have gained the highest degree of self confidence I have ever experienced.”

Khmer Rouge

I didn’t know my heart could break for so many people who I’ve just met. But it has. I find myself surrounded by noise. Cows groaning their neck bells jingling as their led to the next place. Half dressed children, boys naked from the waist down screaming as they play together. Motos zooming by, honks and bell dings signaling they want to pass a slower vehicle. Everyday life surrounds me, but at the same time everything is still, quiet, empty.

I didn’t really know about the Khmer Rouge before I came to Cambodia. Almost nothing really. 2 million people slaughtered for having knowledge, for having questions, for being unable to do hard manual labor all day everyday on nothing but a few grains of rice. How could I not know?

I’ve made a connection with my homestay sister, Darline. The strongest, fastest connection I’ve had in these many weeks in Cambodia. Every morning I leave her asking when I come back from studying at teacher Mara’s house. Every morning I’d reply, at lunch, then we can spend time together. One morning at Mara’s house we met Khmer Rouge survivors from the village we were staying in, Prek Pdao. We had been living with them this whole time.

Guessing at their past, but never strong enough to ask. But now here they were allowing us to ask the questions we’d always wanted to. I kept asking myself why is it so hard to hear them talk? People were dragged away from family, from life on the very spots I walked and sat everyday. People I saw and knew and spoke with, at a time in their past could only trust themselves and feared everything in this village I and they called home. This was 40 years ago. How is life so normal? How are these sounds of business, farming, childhood, filling my ears, trying to fill the pit in my stomach the survivors’ words had created. Had Darline been born forty years early would she be sitting here in front of me or not?

The thing that struck me the most is they were angry. Of course they were. They wanted revenge. Why had I never realized the acute pain? Of course they do, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Before they walked away Mr. Von one of our homestay fathers said sometimes the memories are so painful he wants to never come back to the village. He said this before getting up and leaving concealing the tears he had begun to shed.

I want to cry too. I want to hug him and take his pain away. I want to share my broken heart with Cambodia and help each other mend. But it’s already happening. Life continues because it has to. Tribunals, new techniques for teaching history, monuments erected on killing fields, museums like Tuol Sleng. Cambodia is finding its own way to cope. Now I have to. Hopefully we can do it together.