The Opposite of Hitler

The theme of the day is genocide, gentle reader.

I'm in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I was really afraid of coming to Cambodia. People kept telling me how unsafe it is, how smelly, how dirty.

I am finding that it is all three.

I am lucky that I joined a group of really cool people I met coming here from a really awesome 2-day trip down the Mekong River Delta. We took boat after boat after boat, saw villagers (the tour guide started every sentence with "the local people" in his staccato English, which delighted us much more than it should have) who lived on floating houses doing their daily work. The boat tour brought us into Cambodia.

The best part, by far, was that in each passing of one rural village after another, the children, and even the adults, would run to the edge of the water, jump up and down, smiling, waving. We took great pleasure in waving back. Every single time.

The tour, run by Sinh Cafe, a very reputable company that conducts tours all around Vietnam, was great, but we never really seemed to understand the itinerary. They would pass us of from one boat to the next, one guide to the next, and everything that we did took a good 1/2 hour to 1 hour longer than we were told.

"Trust the system," I told everyone. "It seems to work."

We said this many times to each other, laughing the whole way.

When we finally got to Cambodia, the boat driver tells not to let anyone touch our luggage, as they will either steal it, or take it and sell it back to you. My luggage is huge at this point, and Sebastian and Nao (traveling with me) take pity on me and carry it for me. The tour brings us straight to the guest house that we will all be staying at, so we don't pull into the center of town and have to deal with all of the thieves and street children. Who are also thieves.

The guesthouse is packed full of people, watching a movie, and we are too tired to bother to find a good place to eat, so we trust in the food menu there. It was pleasantly delicious... US$3 (the de facto currency!!) bought me "Fish Amok,"which is the greatest name for a dish. I've never had anything like it. It was like a very thin chartreuse curry, but instead of tasting like curry, it was strongly scented and flavored by lemongrass. I pass out soon thereafter. A heavy dishlike this was a shock to the system after two weeks of light vietnamese food.

We meet at 9 am for the popular double-header of genocide: S21 and The Killing Fields.

I won't go too much into the history, Wiki it in greater detail if you like.

But here are the lowlights, if you will:

• S21 was school in Phnom Penh that was converted to torture chambers for prisoners.
• Then, entire families were taken to the "Killing Fields," an ex-chinese cemetary, for execution.
• The Khmer rouge figured out that bullets were too expensive, so they invented crude, slow ways of killing their victims that were cheaper.
• Every time it rains now, teeth and shattered boned from the mass graves rise to the surface. They are everywhere.
• Young children had a special form of execution, they were held by their feet and their heads were thrashed against a tree. It was called the "Magic Tree."
  
• Everything was done in secret and silence. Most of the world had no idea. Most of Cambodia had no idea. They played loud music in the killing fields to hide the sounds of screaming.
• This all happened about 15 years ago.
  
• Pol Pot died of old age, and his main men are alive, and have not yet been tried. The criminal court is very expensive, and Cambodia is trying to raise the funds.
  

They killed anyone who was educated, as Pol Pot wanted to create a working class society that would not challenge him. Interrogations were conducted so that prisoners would help the regime find their families. For, if one member of the family had some brains, then the rest of them might have some brains, too.

So, he was the opposite of Hitler.

Hitler wanted to create a perfect race with the most pure qualities. Pol Pot wanted a race of slaves that he could rule.

Our guide's father was a simple farmer. He was left alone.

We were all affected in some way. Corrinne nearly vomited. Tanya couldn't take the second half of the spectacle; she went shopping instead.

I was sad, no doubt- incredulous. I guess I had used up most of my sorrow is Vietnam, inundated with images of War. The most shocking part to me, today, if I had to pick one, was that this event was SO RECENT. The people passing by me in the street, people my age, witnessed this. They were victims. There are people everywhere who are missing limbs, or are otherwise physically deformed. There was a man that passed by that had a goiter as large as his head protruding from his neck. There were children eating food out of the garbage. Everyone alive either experienced this genocide or have parents who did.

And yet, Cambodian people are always smiling.

I wonder how that can possibly be.

I am so happy to have come.