After the war.

There are two restaurants across from the school that the volunteers eat at almost everyday for lunch. One has been dubbed "across" and the other, "next to". At Next To, there is an elderly man who runs the place. He is Chinese and has lived in Cambodia for more than half his life. I got the chance to talk to him a little bit and learned that during the war, the Khmer Rouge would threaten to kill him but he kept offering to cook for them and that saved his life and his restaurant. Therefore, Next To is one of the few places that remained standing even after the war.

I have been thinking about that war lately. How can I not, right? I am in a place that was particularly devastated. For those of you who do not really know, when the KR overthrew the existing government in 1975, everyone in the cities were forced to move out into the countryside where they were forced into labor camps and the children were taken to war camps to be trained as child soldiers. Soknay, the director of Sustainable Cambodia, was one of those child soldiers. (I hope to find out more of his story.) And since Pursat is a rural town, I now live amongst history. I suppose wherever we are, we live and walk on the soil of history but out here, and this history in particular, seems to hit me so much harder. The scars remain. The lack of government remains.

I want to learn more. I want to understand more.