Two Famous Things

Cambodia is famous for two things: Angkor Wat and the Khmer Rouge. I’ve been in Cambodia for five months now. Angkor Wat is everywhere – on the flag, on the most popular beer, and in a surprisingly large number of the examples my students use in English class (Yesterday...Dara went to Angkor Wat. Next year...Sopha will go to Angkor Wat. I have never...been to Angkor Wat). The Khmer Rouge arguably has a much more pervasive influence on 2010 Cambodia, but I’ve talked about it probably less than 10 times since I’ve been here. I’ve never had someone ask me if I ‘sgoal’ (know about/recognize) Angkor Wat – it’s presumably universal knowledge – but I’ve been asked several times if I know about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. This is striking to me, since everyone over the age of 40 has memories of the Khmer Rouge era (1975-1979), and everyone over 30 or so lived through the very tumultuous times in the following decade.

My language isn’t really at a point yet where I can effectively understand people’s memories about the Khmer Rouge, so my conversations about it have been limited. It’s easy to forget what people have been through, because Cambodian people are very happy, at least outwardly, if not always actually. They place a lot of value on not losing face, and getting angry or upset in public would be doing just that.

What I’m getting at – the other day one of the lower-secondary English teachers at my school came over to try and chat. Because of his language level, our conversations are limited mostly to “How are you?” and “What class will you teach?” I was also talking to two teachers who speak better English (lower-secondary teachers make about 65 cents an hour, so the better English speakers teach other subjects in public high school and English in private schools). They were teasing him a little for trying to talk to me, but then they seemed to feel bad. He and his family are very poor, and the other teachers at my school have told me they pity him. Suddenly, one turned to me and asked if I knew about Pol Pot. Yes, yes of course I do. Well, this teacher, they wanted to tell me, had lived in a refugee camp. They explained about the refugee camps on the Thai border (assuming I didn’t know) and said he’d lived there for a few years. 15 years, he said. He answered them in Khmer that I could understand better than his English. He grew up there, and his family waited a long time for their turn to be relocated to America. Their chance never came, and eventually they came back to Cambodia, where he now struggles to make a living to support his five children. It was a quick reminder to me that there is more to many of my acquaintances than I know, and that, while I ‘sgoal’ the words Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge, I probably don’t begin to understand the toll it has had on the people who are around me every day.