Water of Life
by Phil Blattenberger on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at 10:07pm
Fresh from Laos and an all-too-brief exploration of Cambodia's spectacular Angkor Wat, I arrived in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was all sleek, polished glass and steel, a city center rising past the gruesome history of the country; but it stood alone, far from the pulsing lifebeat of everyday Cambodians struggling to forge a living. I was to become well acquainted with it. Ancient Angkor Wat But first, a brief Cambodian history lesson here for those unacquainted with the vast tomes upon which this storied nation draws. Cambodia was at the height of its historical influence between 1100 and 1350 AD, when the Khmer kingdom was founded and expanded at Angkor Wat. Angkor was (and remains to be) the undying symbol of Khmer glory. Premodern Angkor was a force to be dealt with, and until its defeat at the hands of the Siamese in the mid fourteenth century, it was one of the most notable cities in the world. When London was but a filthy hamlet of fifty thousand souls, Angkor was a brilliant, technologically advanced city teeming with close to a million souls. Fast forward a few hundred years, if you will, and we arrive at the French colonial era, a period of great unrest and internal struggle for Cambodia. As part of French Indochina it had fallen victim to the imperial graspings of a France in desperate competition with Britian, then at the height of its power. The second world war saw France lose much of its Southeast Asian interests, and quickly thereafter revolutionary sentiment exploded. The Communist Khmer Rouge, led by Saloth Sar - we know him now as the infamous Pol Pot - took up arms and led his forces into Phnom Penh. The streets of the capital, once one of the classic Indochinese centers along the Mekong, was a scene of utter chaos on that day in 1975 as the Khmer Rouge drove every man, woman, and child from their homes. Phnom Penh became a ghost town. Skulls of Khmer Rouge victims And then began the slayings which so brutally highlight this period. Pol Pot, with designs of an agrarian society centered on a massive peasant class, systematically set out to destroy the echelons of society which were seen as an obstacle. Death camps were set up throughout Cambodia - renamed, under Pol Pot, to the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea - and a four-year period of horror was unleashed upon the country. Doctors, lawyers, professors, politicians, musicians, writers, artists... anyone with an education was slated for death. Simply wearing glasses or speaking a foreign language was enough to get you killed. And in those four years the majority of educated Cambodia was demolished in death camps rivaling any of those found in post-Hitlerian Europe; scarred and crippled trees against which executioners beat children to death in front of their mothers pay homage to the madness of the regime. It is estimated that over one million people perished in this four-year period; to this day undiscovered mass graves are washed open with the coming of monsoonal floods, and the tragedy revisited, scars ripped open once again. Vietnam invaded and drove the Khmer Rouge out in 1979, and Pol Pot died in 1998, ending the insanity once and for all. The country opened to tourism shortly thereafter, an influx of foreign cash that has proved vital to Cambodia rising from its ashes to put on a nice face first and repair internal wounds second. It is the nice face that tourists romping through the epic monoliths of Angkor see; it is the deep gash of terror visited upon a populace that is visible in the haunting eyes of survivors. It is they, and the various NGOs (non-government organizations) that see the hidden face of Cambodia. And that's where organizations like Water of Life come in. I met Jonathon and the team from Ohio at the airport in Phnom Penh, and together we piled into a tuk-tuk headed into town. Water of Life is not exclusively an orphanage (though some residents have been orphaned) - it's a boys home, a place for youths aged thirteen to eighteen (many stay beyond that as leaders and organizers vital to its upkeep.) Randy Fleming, upbeat and jovial, runs the house, which, at four stories, houses a little over thirty boys and a number of the older ones who are now in college. Our mission here is a little less "mission-y" than these sorts of things are predisposed towards being. People hear "missions trip" (I hate that term a lot) and are automatically assaulted by images of orphans and mud-splattered babies with hepatitis B and no clothes. I confess to being a prisoner of such preconcieved notions at times (and, perhaps, rightfully so, as extreme destitution is a huge problem in many Asian countries; those images are taken to heart by a great number of organizations who are wonderfully dedicated to serving those very people.) But much of our time here will be spent in the role of discipleship. We are to build relationships, to shape and mold. Bumpercars with the boys And so the week goes. Cambodia is missing an entire generation - the older veterans, the leaders, the educaters - an entire generation has been wiped out, and the void is felt deeply. Many of the boys here - remarkably self-sufficient though they are - are in deep need (as are any youth) of positive role models. Randy is phenomenal, but one busy man stretched over dozens of teenagers can only go so far. In light of this, our first couple of days felt more like simply hanging out than "doing missions work." One day we took some of the boys out to a park in town, another time we took them to the mall and hung out and did bumpercar rides, and we went out to a park and played soccer (at which I was found thoroughly lacking) and American football (at which I was far more grounded, and the boys went bonkers over.) Teaching English class Evenings were fairly structured (possibly the only real structured part of any given day, largely because it was summer and school was out for the boys.) At 5:30 the boys and other students from surrounding organizations packed the downstairs floor of Water of Life and had an hour-long English lesson, usually from Rith, a 24-year-old college student who'd grown up in the home. A healthy number of the boys were fully fluent in English because of these lessons - Rith, Rin, Bora, Pin, and Long, to name but a few, were outstanding (and starving for American colloqial, the delivery of which was always entertaining.) Dinner followed, usually consisting of a vast bowl of rice endowed with a portion of meat and vegetables that varied depending on the night. Long and the band practice for worship Following the packed, boisterous spectacle that was the evening meal was worship and Bible study. At seven thirty the boys headed downstairs and a number of them led worship, at times rotating duties (the musical talent of some of these guys is absolutely brilliant, I might add.) Worship was a joyous, dancing affair similar perhaps to charismatic worship in America, but without the restrictive ties that denominational bindings tend to bring. No one sat, no one simply stood - they jumped and yelled and ran around and head-banged and break-danced in an open-hearted proclamation of love for Jesus that puts to shame the meager and half-hearted mumblings of our singing at home. A message followed, given by someone on a rotational basis. If the message was given in English there was someone translating in Khmer, and vice versa. Massive brothel complex While our time there was largely discipleship, a significant amount of outreach was present as well. On the morning of our first day there a group of us went to an infamous section of town, a large, dilapidated strip of concrete known simply as "The Building." It was the epicenter of Phnom Penh's child prostitution ring. Young teen girls and boys were the established norm, and the presence of a blue tarp on the outside window - or children's colorings on the walls of the interior corridors - signaled the availability of young children for sale. Catering to the nefarious ordeal was a large hotel a block away, where the buyers of young flesh usually stayed. It is an outrage, a horror to behold, particularly when noting the Cambodian government's corruption and lack of willingness to exact measures to end these travesties. Smiling face and a bowl full of rice Churches in Ohio had donated a thousand dollars towards the purchase of rice, and one of the major activities of the week was distributing it. Massive sacks of the stuff were divided into hundreds of smaller bags and loaded onto a rig for distribution among the poorest of the villages outside Phnom Penh. Due to a monstrosity of a stomach bug I was unable to accompany the team on this particular trek, but I am told it went extraordinarily well despite a flat tire and dead truck battery. In a country where a few dollars in a peasant's hand can mean the difference between a good year and a bad one, the delivery of a months' supply of rice per family had an exceedingly overwhelming response of gratitude. The last couple days of my time in Phnom Penh and with the Waters of Life boys was undermined by that above-mentioned stomach bug, a nasty virus that gripped me for several days' time and drained most of the vitality out of me. Nevertheless it was the last two days during which I felt most effective (a laughable term, of course, when it is not I who decides when and where I am being "effective," but God.) I taught the daily English class on Friday, something asked of me at the last moment - my initial unpreparedness quickly gave way to the joy that is teaching, and I found myself fully engrossed in the details of dictation, recitation, correction, and the ever-present round of applause when a student nailed a sentence perfectly. Leading worship with Andy and Samantha On my last night I led worship with Andy and Samantha, two of our team members, which was a phenomenal experience (and the first time to date I'd played guitar with a live mic in front of my face.) I'd been slated to deliver the message that night; it was the weekly Saturday youth group, jam-packed with Water of Life boys and other random kids who were Buddhist and were just seeing what the hype was about. Despite my weaknesses (my shaky bowels, in this case, being one of them, and a rather significant one at that) I managed quite well. With Rith as my Khmer translator and God giving me words with which to speak - a number of verses which I had not come upon in my preparation leapt to memory verbatim in perfect instances, molding my message to a theme fitting the mold of youth outreach nights - I delivered the message and then retreated to my air-conditioned room to chug water that had seeped out of my pores in the intensely hot room. And just like that it was over. I packed my things the next morning and said goodbye to everyone I'd come to know and love in the week-and-odd-day I'd spent there. These boys are truly the future of Cambodia - they are the first of their kind, a generation of educated young men with the heart of Jesus. It is they who will turn their world upside down, and I am proud to have been the smallest part of their lives. Heading off to the bus station alone was something to be grappled with - parting was such sweet sorrow, and an attachment I hadn't expected lingers still. I expect I will return, and I anticipate that day.
No comments:
Post a Comment