McGee Blog - Kampot

We are in Kampot now, a little village in the South of Cambodia that sits on bay that comes from the ocean.The guest house is on stilts over the river and we have been lazing around in hammocks on the balcony watching all the fishing boats head out to the sea for the morning fishing. The river also totally pongs but we have been smoking cigarettes to fend off the pong.
The view from here is totally stunning. Across the river are layers of hills, indistinct with a low mist. Palms line the banks, interspersed with tall, boxy houses on stilts.

Both Josh and I were really affected by our last few days in Phnom Penh. We took a bus from Seam Reap which as Josh explained is kind of torturous, not because of the roads or the bus but because of the relentless presence of asian Karoake in all its synth glory.

At one point we got off at a little market town for a rest stop and Josh and I were totally unprepared for it as we got off. We were hit by a throng of people selling, begging, tugging at our clothes. We stepped into the shade of the bus for a cigarette but instantly several kids surrounded us demanding " you buy mango! you buy pineapple! Only 2 dolla!"

There were a lot of beggars, many with no legs or no arms. We felt stifled and anxious by it all and tried to ignore everyone and just smoke but it soon became overwhelming- the heat, the dust, the people.

Trying to get back on the bus we had to fight of the sellers. Out of the corner of my eye i ssw this little boy, maybe 5 or 6. He was scrawny and his hair and clothes were filled with dust. He put his hand out for some money and i shook my head. Then i realised that he was leading man, his father or his grandfather mybe, and the man had no eyes. I don't mean he was just blind, I mean he had no eyes. Just these rough hewn mass of scars where his eyes should have been. Shocked i shook my head again and got on the bus.

As we drove on to Pnomh Penh I just watched the countryside pass by. I felt guilty and wilfully ignorant for not giving that kid something. Like my fear had just propelled me onto the bus before my humanity could jump in with some compassion. I thought about this man with no eyes a lot. How had he lost them? It had to have been an act of violence of some sort. Was it torture under the Khmer Rouge? Was it a mine? I just thought tht t some point in his life he could see and then he must have endured some terrible violence- deliberate or accidental. And now this is how he makes his way- this tiny kid and him begging money off rich tourists passing momentarily through their lives.

It's the same with so many people we meet here. The violence and trauma is everywhere. Beggars with no limbs, a woman in the market selling postcards with scars that have melted her face, shoulder and arms.You would think then tht the people here would be suspicious and fearful and yet culturally everyone here is so open. As Josh said to me one night, as soon as you get talking to the kids they are just like every other kid. They want to be entertained, their attention moves from one thing to another and they are delighted by new things.

Phnom Penh was this dirty, colonial glory of a city faded by war and dust. Its probably the most dangerous city we have been to and you felt that walking through the streets. It gave us a chance to learn more about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The crazy thing is tht he was only in power for a few years but the damage he did in that time was beyond comprehension. 2 million died, either killled or by starvation. He evacuated all the cities, including Phnom Penh and moved everyone into co-operatives in teh countrywhere they were to farm rice that was exported to China even as half the country starved to death.

Pol Pot was, basically, a genocidal nutcase with a dream for communist Utopia. He believed that the taint of the old world had to be completely eradicted and so he killed everyone who was educated, who lived in cities with professional jobs, who spoke more thn one language. Even wearing glasses could have you killed.He also believed that you had to destroy the rotten tree you had to kill the roots, so he also killed everyone in the family, babies, kids and grandparents.

The Toul Sleng museum that Josh wrote about is the most brutal of the 'security centres' that these people were sent. Called 'S-21'20,000 people passed through and only 7 survived. Here they were tortured with calculated,efficient brutality. They were numbered and photographed and their confessions recorded for posterity. Now, the main building is an eerily peaceful museum that still feels like the school it once was. Some of the rooms have been left as they were. Stark and disturbing they contain bedframes, shackles and shell casing. On the wall of each cell is a huge photograph, maybe a metre and a half square, of someone who was tortured and died in the room. They are bleached with age, the dark spots of the starved, brutalised bodies look like bloodstains on overexposed film.

One floor of one building is simply rows and rows of stands set up lengthways down the halls. On each one are hundreds of small photos in black and white. These are the photos they took of each person to come through. Each is a different face, some are old, many are children. Some of their eyes are wide wtih fear, but surprisingly few. Most are just blank, or haunted or numb, depending on how you interpret. Walking through these long corridors of faces, the simple horror of it is overwhelming. Sometimes you stop, pick a face and just stare. Trying to see past the picture and into the life of this person, into their death.

After Toul Sleng they were taken to the Killing Fields. This dusty parcel of land is so banal. Just dust and trees and the huge indentations of dirt that mark the place where thousands of bodies were dumped. I was a bit of a mess within a few minutes of being there, just looking at the piles of skulls in the stupa. So matter of factly organised into 'female- 0-20 years, female 0-30 years' and so on until at the top level are the oldest. Walking around we scuff over human teeth jutting out of the ground and thousands of bone fragments that have been pressed into the hard dirt. I think its maybe the worst thing i've ever seen in my life.

We have definitely fallen in love with this country, and its tragedy just makes what it is today even more contradictory. It's by no means a happy country, the corruption is immense and the poverty is everywhere. There's also a strange disconnection to its history. Kids aren't even taught about the Khmer Rouge in school- maybe because some of them are still, i do not lie, high in the government. Still, moving on from here is going to be a relief though i will never forget that stupa with its skulls or those thousands of faces at Toul Sleng.