OBOC - Cambodia

Looking back on the 30+ countries I've completed, I realized that most of the stories are not necessarily what one can call as "light reading". War, Genocide, Poverty, Colonialism all form the undercurrent for many of the stories. Cambodia is no exception.

"First they killed my father" is the moving autobiography of Loung Ung who survived the killing fields of Cambodia, and moved on to become an advocate against violence for the UN. What is powerful about this story is how a 5 year old can dig deep within herself and find strength to survive brutality, hunger, and tragedy in the midst of absolute despair.

Under the Khmer Rouge millions of urban residents were forcefully "relocated" to rural Cambodia in an attempt to rid the country of loyalists to the previous Government. Urban dwellers were also viewed with suspicion as they were deemed to be "polluted" with capitalistic ideas. Walking for 8 days from the capital Phnom Penh Loung's family seeks refuge in one camp after the other, hiding their identity (Loung's father worked for the previous Government). The family gets separated and unfortunately not all of them survive - losing her dad, her oldest sister and her mother and her baby sister, it was a miracle that Loung survived.

Her experiences as a child soldier in the work camps, witnessing of the execution of a Khmer Rouge soldier, escaping rape, narrowly escaping death from hunger, infections and bullets, working in leach infected waters - makes you wonder how can a child ever recover from these harrowing experiences. Finally reuniting with her surviving siblings, she escapes to Thailand with her oldest brother - Meng and his wife Eang and from there gets a ticket to the US as a refugee.

Throughout the 5 years under the Khmer Rouge she and her sister Chou faced similar atrocities and being of different temperaments they each coped in their own way. Leaving Chou behind in Cambodia, must've been overwhelming for Loung as she must've been consumed by guilt. I believe this prompted her to write her second book "The Lucky Child".

While the book is a story of the victims of the Pol Pot regime it is still very much a story of a survivor and is one of hope. This is a story of someone who has overcome the childhood scars and survived in an alien nation and then made their life one of purpose. To think that all these happened not too long ago only shows  the need for the world to learn more from these stories and makes one more appreciative of Loung's role in the campaign against landmines.

As a small aside: I wanted to read more about how Loung wrote this book as she could not have possibly remembered every small detail as she was 5 years old at the beginning of the invasion and was only 9 or 10 when she moved to the US. I am no psychologist, but wouldn't blocking these memories out be one of the chief ways of coping or were the scars too much that even a child that young remembers and recollects everything that happened? I don't know. Hey at 5, or even 9 my biggest concern was getting through school and the only violence i had experienced was the simulated ones on some badly made Tamil movies ! How can I even pretend to understand what she must've gone through!