Submitted by Kerry Snyder on the 2013 winter session program in Cambodia and Vietnam sponsored by the Department of Entomology & Wildlife Ecology…
It’s one thing to explore a new country with a group of students from your own university. It’s an entirely different experience to see the bustling capital of that city alongside those that call it their home. On January 8th, we were given the opportunity to meet several students from the Department of Media and Communication at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. Several of us spoke to a class of students and discussed what we experience every day as American college students. They talked to us about the Cambodian approach to education. We learned that students in Phnom Penh attend class six days a week from Monday through Saturday and often go to work on Sunday. They live at home while they attend school and some have lengthy commutes.
After we had a chance to chat with the students in the classroom, we were given the rest of the day to explore the city with our Cambodian peers. We split into groups and those who knew the city best took the reins, leading us to places in the city they thought we should see. When it came time for us to depart from the university at the end of the day, we were sad to leave. At the same time, we were happy to have met some wonderful people who, despite their contrasting culture, are not that different from ourselves.
January 9th was a day that we will remember for quite some time. After learning about the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide in class days earlier, we travelled to the S-21 prison and the Killing Fields to view the sites where some of the most scarring events of 1970s Cambodia took place. S-21 was a high school in Phnom Penh that became a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime. It was a place of constant torture and slaughter. Over the course of its use, S-21 took in 14,000 prisoners. Only seven of those that were kept at the prison survived to the day it was shut down. Upon arrival at S-21, we met with one of these survivors, Mr. Chum Mey. We asked him questions regarding his stay at the prison and walked with him to the very cell which was his home during those tortured years. Mr. Mey’s immediate family was killed by the Khmer Rouge. He survived in part because leaders at the prison discovered that he was able to fix objects like typewriters and deemed it practical to keep him alive. For Chum Mey to come back to a place that houses so many horrendous memories is truly heroic. What he wants most is for the story of the genocide to be told to the world and he requested that we help to spread his personal story. Prisoners were often taken from institutions like S-21 and transported to killing fields where they were systematically executed. We visited one of these sites near Phnom Penh. A place that was so full of carnage during its use is eerily quiet now. We toured the area with heavy hearts.
On January 10th and 11th, we had the opportunity to visit an NGO called Free the Bears. This organization is working hard to conserve Sun Bears and Asiatic black bears. Bears are poached for their meat and farmed for their bile, which has medicinal properties. As we learned about bear conservation in Cambodia, our activities included feeding the bears themselves. Because Free the Bears is located within a larger zoo, we also had the opportunity to see many species that are native to the region.
After leaving Phnom Penh on January 12th, we travelled to a small town on the Mekong River called Kompong Cham. One stop made along the way provided us with the opportunity to eat cooked spiders, frogs, and quail eggs. Upon our arrival in Kompong Cham, we took a bike ride across a bamboo bridge and through an island village. We waved to the families that we passed on the road. After a stop at a Buddhist temple, we returned to the bridge to watch the sunset over the Mekong.
