Ophelia's Moments in Cambodia

Cambodia is a melting pot of aching, heartbreaking hope and sorrow. A place of strange serenity and spirituality which echos with the distant cries of French Colonialism and the brutal violence and bloodshed of the Khmer Rouge.

A visit to the mountaintop village of Bokor Hill is a reminder of the contradictions which define the history of this place. Built by the wealthy French as a residential village and holiday refuge in the early days of the twentieth century (the air was cooler there because of the elevation), the winding road upwards is shattered by the gaping holes left by landmines 30 years earlier, when it became a vital strategic stronghold for the Khmer Rouge due to its three hundred and sixty degree views of the surrounding land and sea. Reaching the village, I look around and see the burnt out ruins of a church, and two casinos (the second casino was built because the first one was too close to the edge of the cliff and legend has it that men who had bet too much of their money had a habit of walking to the end of the balcony and never coming back). Standing amongst the buildings, it is a surreal feeling - like being in a ghost town of a past golden age – in my mind’s eye I can almost conjure up the sound of the waltzes and lavishly dressed couples swirling around the old casino’s grand ballroom as I stand there amongst the burnt out ruins, shattered glass and the words of dead or dying soldiers scrawled across the walls.  

Elsewhere, there are children. Everywhere. They are by turns endearing and playful and they cause me to feel a sense of great sorrow. Many of them are forced by their parents to sell on street corners, beg, borrow and steal before they can barely walk or talk. There were many nights that I lay down to sleep and my face was hot with tears of frustration and injustice that so many of them were forced to grow up so early, that they had such an enormous fight just to survive. The sense of personal futility can be overwhelming.

Equally as overhwleming in a different sense is the sheer natural beauty of the place. Just out of the town of Siem Reap are the temples, many in ruins, thousands of years old, whispering secrets, offering up dark passageways and crumbling walls that beckon you to clamber over them, feeling the smooth surface of the rock and touching the intricate carvings that ancient hands inscribed. Some of the temples have succumbed to the forces of nature and the stone has cracked and molded to become almost a part of the enormous trees and above-ground roots which have overpowered the man-made structures.  On the way to the temples further towards the outskirts, driving down dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, after miles of wooden squat houses on stilts and languid palm trees, suddenly a Buddhist wat (temple) rises out of the haze and the monks stare shyly at my white skin and strange clothes.  They are dressed in orange robes with shaved heads. During the days of the Khmer Rouge many of the monks were exterminated and their wats destroyed but they have sprung up again all over the country in recent years, like a wellspring which will always continue to flow. There is a spirituality which seems to pervade this country and I can see it in the wise eyes and gentleness of many of the people I met on my journey there.

My friend Asahel Bush has been working with an organisation called Sustainable Cambodia. It is a nonprofit, grassroots NGO operating in Pursat Province, Cambodia, and with an office in Florida, USA. SC runs a primary and secondary school for children from the poorest local communities in Pursat. It also operates a range of development projects in these communities, including water sanitation (wells and filters), latrines and hygeine, nutritional supplements, preschool and adult education, and livelihood projects (such as animal pass-on, community gardens, irrigation, organic farming, vocational training, and microfinance). SC employs a model of sustainable, participatory development which empowers communities to develop, grow and provide for themselves through education and quality-of-life improvements.

SC is funded entirely by private donations and by funding grants from international aid foundations such as Rotary. In keeping with SC’s model of community empowerment SC’s projects are run by local Cambodian community members. SC’s non-Cambodian staff, inlcuding its directors, are all unpaid volunteers.

For more information, please visit http://www.sustainablecambodia.org/