Phil: A Cambodian Life

On our first day of visiting the ancient temples of the Khmer empire, such as Angkor Wat, we were getting acquainted with our guide, Dara, and I asked him "How did you learn English?" He began by telling us that before 1975 there was a lot of corruption in Cambodia. He said that one of the common things that would happen is that people who lived near a city and were subsistence farmers would sell their land to developers for a lot of money. Often they wouldn't know how to take care of the money they received and would quickly lose all of it. Some of the people, though, would invest the money in sending their children to school, reasoning that then their children could get good jobs and help support the family. But after they finished their school they had to pass an examination to get their certificate of graduation. And to pass the exam they had to pay a bribe. Often families would not have enough money left to pay the bribe so that their children were unable to officially graduate and get a good job. All of these people would leave the city and go back to the country but with a lot of anger towards people in the cities. Many of these people joined with the Khmer Rouge, the Communists, to overthrow the government.

While I found this interesting, I was also wondering what all of this had to do with how Dara had learned English. But slowly the story unfolded. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government. They went to the cities, told all of the city dwellers that they needed to leave for three days because the Americans would bomb the cities to retaliate for the Khmer Rouge victory and forced everyone out of the cities. Dara's family lived near the city of Siem Riep, where we are staying, and were forced to leave their home as well.

Before this happened, Dara's father worked as a teacher in a secondary school teaching math and English. He received enough income from his work to support his wife and five children. Dara was five years old when the Khmer Rouge forced his family from their home. They were forced to march through the country for ten days and during that time Dara saw many people die, either murdered by the soldiers or from starvation and illness. Eventually they came to a camp where the children were separated from their parents. If a child would cry for its mother and wouldn't be quiet, Dara, at five years old, saw the soldiers kill the children with bayonets, or shooting them or just throwing them until their bodies broke.

The communists separated the parents and children so that the children's minds wouldn't be "polluted" by the education and thoughts of the parents. But Dara said that his father would visit him occasionally and take him into the woods where he would teach him how to read and write. In 1977, though, the soldiers took his father into the woods and his father did not return. Dara commented that he was so young when this happened that he really has no memory of what his father looked like and he has no pictures because the Khmer Rouge destroyed everything that his family had owned. Finally when he was nine, his remaining family was freed from the Khmer Rouge.

For the next three years, they were so poor that he and his siblings would make things to sell by the road to support the family and he was not able to go to school. But when he was twelve, he began primary (or elementary) school. He made rapid progress and was able to go to secondary school as well. Because his father had taught English and because this had enabled his father to support the family well, when Dara was in his next to last year of school he began taking English lessons from a private teacher whom he worked for after school.

But a civil war was still going on in Cambodia between the Khmer Rouge and the democratic forces that were helped by the Vietnamese. After graduating from secondary school, Dara volunteered for the army for three years rather than being drafted into the infantry. He said that the draftees and the good soldiers were sent to the front with just a few weeks of training. The bad soldiers were kept behind, so he became a "bad soldier" and survived the war. After the Khmer Rouge were largely defeated, he quickly volunteered to be released from the army and then began to study English intensively. He would take English lessons from 3-4 different teachers at the same time and his English-speaking skills helped him to be selected for free training to be a guide for the Khmer temples, an occupation he has followed for years. So his English speaking skills have allowed him to support his family just as these skills helped his father to support Dara, his mother and sisters when Dara was a child.

In talking with Dara, I had the sense that he didn't regard his experiences or his suffering as special. Rather it was the life experience and suffering that all of his people had had. He mentioned that even the Khmer Rouge were victims of the murderous times as the older ones were often killed by the younger, newer members of the Khmer Rouge. In many ways, Dara's story reminded me of what I've read about the Cultural Revolution in China and the disastrous impact it had on the country and a generation of its citizens. Rather than looking back in anger, though, Dara seems focused on the future, looking for ways to support his family while also looking for ways to help his people obtain the skills and education that they need to be good citizens and to get along peacefully with each other.