I spent the past two months doing a load of nothing - fulfilling my filial duty as the eldest daughter while rebelling in whatever inconsequential means possible. The days, or nights rather, were spent watching the Food Network Channel in attempts to learn how to saute vegetables, reading the random books strewn across my room, going out to the city for random meals and shenanigans like a hooligan, and searching for ways to get back to Asia.
But I've come to realize that my desires to return aren't as strong anymore and are based on superficial notions of wealth and socializing. There's been some thought about my times in Hong Kong, but rarely any of the weeks I did in Southeast Asia. Honestly, I've blocked it out for good reason. Until tonight.
While celebrating H's birthday in a semi-inebriated stupor, the conversation turned towards the Peace Corps and the correlation of aid on the different scales in terms of value. Basically, there was a drunken argument about whether change is more efficient by personally volunteering time and skills (aka your life as to be dictated by the Peace Corps) or by donating huge amounts of money to promote change. And it made me think about Cambodia. Not because of a direct 'people need to go here and make a difference,' but through a convoluted remembrance of a society so rooted in its own shit. Although, that may not be the best word to convey the actual connotation I'm looking for.
Of the four countries I traveled through, Cambodia runs as the top contender for changing my life the most. It also disgusted me the most. Not the disgust in the physical sense of grim, which there was a fair amount of, but in reference to the gripping hold it had on my mental and emotional state while I was there. Even the background knowledge I had on the country could not prepare me for what I experienced.
During my freshman year of college, one of my courses focused on violence - the class was literally called 'Violence, Terror & Trauma.' Every week was spent learning about a different sociopolitical situation and its aftermath - Cambodia included. To this day, I can recall reading the historian's accounts of the tactics employed by Khmer Rogue and the anthropological interviews of the soldiers in Pol Pot's silent army. It seems strange how much the concept of 'face' could compel someone to murder another person. It also baffled me how these leaders were able to orchestrate modern day genocides after the consequences of World War II. I also particularly remember how I thought that these events were so completely removed from my own reality that I wondered about the pedological reasons for learning it at all. And then I saw it in person.
Phnom Penh was rampant with poverty - children begging for food and money, men missing various limbs from land mines, and families literally sleeping on the streets. Despite all those years of seeing the homeless in New York, it was completely different in this lonely city thousands of miles away. Walking through the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum made me want vomit in my own mouth. There seemed to be blood everywhere, stained in the classroom tiles for more than a decade. I always thought that blood would wash away from wherever it was split. It doesn't. There is a room of tiny wooden cells that is connected by open doorways to more just like it. As I stood in one of the doorways, I looked down the dark and narrow hallway into the adjacent room. There was enough uniformity in the cells that it seemed as if the string of rooms would never end. In one of the large photographs, there is a Khmer woman holding her baby. At that moment, I wondered if I was staring into the eyes of woman who knew she was going to be tortured and murdered.
In Cambodia, I saw the core reasons of why people volunteer years of their lives to help others; the purpose of these programs finally made sense. But, at the same time, the complete and utter despair I felt in my short duration of this Southeast Asian country was only a minor reflection of how it has actually impacted Cambodian society. It makes me think that one, two, or a thousand people going into these places can't really change a thing; but it also paradoxically makes me realize that a small effort of difference is still a change.
The despair and empathy I felt for the Khmer people in S21 was upturned as soon as we left the school gates and we were once again reminded of our foreign status. How quickly I went from sadness, shock and then anger and disbelief amazed me. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to understand and accept the actions of the people because they've been afflicted by such horrors of the past or if my then once again altered views were justified by the reoccurring events of personal offenses.
Cambodia was just a contradiction for me.
