History alive

"...Vietnam menceroboh Kampuchea pada tahun 1978 dan menjatuhkan kerajaan Khmer Rouge..."
Buku Teks Sejarah Tingkatan 5.
This is a short line from a very short paragraph in the History text that I teach about the role of Malaysia in ASEAN and the ZOPFAN (Zone of peace, freedom and neutrality) concept.

As a teacher of History, I look for ways to make the subject interesting and alive. So choosing Cambodia as a holiday destination is quite natural for me as Chapter 3 Form Four History covers the agrarian government of Angkor with a few paragraphs on Angkor Wat. I was looking forward to visiting The Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum when I was in Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge was mentioned in the Form 5 text and I remembered Pol Pot from the news report when I was young.

I was warned that the visit the Killing Fields can be depressive and I need to be strong. I had been praying before the trip. I marched into the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide with my camera...all ready to take pictures home to show my students. The museum is a big school compound. The classrooms are converted into prisons, torture chambers....divided into small dark cells. Pictures after pictures of people who were tortured there. I chose not to enter many of the classrooms to see the exhibits because it was too overwhelming. I sat at a bench outside and cried as the reality of the horror the Cambodians went through in the 1970s crept into me. In my state of shock I did not take a single picture.

Next was the Killing Fields. I expect this to be worse. It was indeed. No guide needed as a very comprehensive recording is prepared and the visitors just need to carry the recorder around. With the voice talking into my ear, bringing to life the whole place and the possiblities of seeing teeth, bones floating in the water or in the dirt, I could almost picture the horrifying sight of torture and killing. Visitors moved around in hush awe....maybe shocked by the exposure of such gruesome happenings and also in respect of the dead that is all around.

Ponds, sunken grounds of mass grave were labelled and pointed out. I can't get the the Killing Tree out of my mind. It's a big tree where the soldiers just swing the babies and young kids to it and then throwing them into the dump next to it. It's awful....

Then the Magic Tree....I could almost hear the songs being played loudly and the screaming of the tortured people and the same time. It was a most humbling and traumatising experience.

A stupa is erected to house the skulls and some bones of those killed there. I had seen and heard enough to know what went in that place during those time. I didn't enter the stupa but sat under the tree outside and reflected on the sad state of the human race. Power and greed have made mad men out of the leaders and turned them into animals.  "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss". This is the motto used to justify what they did. If my family had lived there that day, we would not have survived because we fall into the category of literate people...wearing spectacles and having soft hands.

I am so thankful to be alive where I am today. This visit just fills me with gratitude to God for all the things and goodness He has blessed me and my family. It is a reminder to me again of my role as a teacher in school....to teach my students to love and not hate. To pass on goodness and rub kindness to the students around me with the hope that they will remember to pass it on the the next and the next and the next generations.