On Returning from Cambodia January 2010

I want to come back to Cambodia,

where my elegant six-story hotel stands beside a thatched hut with a rusting roof of corrugated steel. To drift again after dark past bright-painted wooden houseboats exuding the glow of battery-powered televisions. Back to the sudden interruptions of cell phone music in villages without electricity or running water. I want to go back and peel vegetables at the farm, sitting on grass mats among our beautiful Khmer hosts from whose ears protrude cords connecting to ipod nanos. And to lash an old viewfinder to a cheap tripod and run around with a sharpie-marked PVC pipe—and a space-age GPS—to survey the land:

This land spread wide and flat, with

room

For my spirit to fly out

To the Red sun

That sets in the Bluing

Green hills.

Here, I met a farmer who proudly showed us his biogas generator-fertilizer maker-toilet-garbage can. And while he may have learned how to build it from a westerner, we westerners could all learn from him the courage to stake his livelihood on the hope that full-out caring for his land and using its resources sustainably might actually improve his life as well.

I want to come back to Cambodia, where I am leaving my Khmer sisters and brothers: Ratany, Tiffan, Boren, Leanghy, and Sil from Bethany Global University, Navy and Ravy from churches near Siem Reap, and Thavry, Sana, and Boral from Genesis Community of Transformation. All of them are about my age, and in Christ, truly feel like siblings, taking me in as a sister. They lead amazing, faithful lives of sacrifice to serve their God and fellow man:

Leaving family behind,

Working twelve hours a day on top of classes,

Studying harder than they ever had in school,

Memorizing the book of Romans in English,

Praying for the Buddhist mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers

who are persecuting them for their faith, and

Giving their lives to revive their country.

They have beautiful, golden-brown skin, and which they are ashamed is so dark. They apologize for their English, which is light-years ahead of my Khmer, are patient with my poor capacity to understand them, and delightedly and graciously teach me to count and say my alphabet in Khmer. They beg me to come back to Cambodia and teach English, and they take down my email so they can practice by writing to me. I want to come back so I can help and encourage them in the small ways that I can— teach English, computer usage, calculus?—and find my faith bolstered, surrounded by their open, passionate communion.

I want to come back to Cambodia, where American bombs cocked the rifle that shot forth Pol Pot’s unthinkable Khmer Rouge, rivaling Nazi crimes against humanity. Where,

Had I been born thirty years earlier,

and Khmer,

my education and

smooth, uncalloused skin

would have sent me to Tuol Slang for torture,

then to the killing fields to be knocked out and buried alive,

along with every doctor,

lawyer,

teacher,

engineer, and

monk

that the Khmer Rouge could find.

Or, escaping this fate,

where I would have been worked

and starved to death,

watching my family and neighbors fall around me.

Even now in Cambodia, I’d be lucky to live to age five, and even luckier to escape my run-in with appendicitis at age 17 –

A legacy of massacred doctors.

I would be beyond fortunate if my family could afford to send me to school long enough to graduate middle or high school, let alone college –

A legacy of murdered teachers.

I want to come back to Cambodia because it makes me sick

to live in a gorgeous renovated Calvin apartment

with clean, free running water

and no worries

about food

or healthcare,

as I absorb a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of education.

I ponder Jesus’ command to his disciples in Luke:

Sell your possessions,

give to the poor, and

lay up treasure in heaven.

And I wonder if an earthly savings account might really make me a rich fool.

Or I read John the Baptist’s call:

Give food to the hungry if you have it; give

1 cloak to the naked if you have

2. And then I get up, open my closet, and count at least

7 items which could count as a “cloak.”

I want to come back to Cambodia so I can share my education with the one who has none, but at the same time, I want to go back to Cambodia to earn a better education than I can get at Calvin.

I want to come back to Cambodia, but I try to hope that soon, no one there will need me any more than I need them. That’s good development, and it reminds me of good parenting, especially as I watch my parents slowly release me into the world. And as they bless me by letting me see their weaknesses and asking my advice. Likewise, we have a lot to learn from Cambodia. And there’s a lot to do besides coming back to Cambodia. The first thing that we have ever been asked for is prayer –

Prayer for water,

For leaders,

For electrical power,

For teachers and writers of English,

For computers,

For wisdom and success in the work NGOs are already doing,

and especially for awareness among our church communities –

To procure more prayer!

But as we pray, we also have to ask ourselves:

Can we be the answer to our own prayers?

For myself, I want to come back to Cambodia – teach English, help write grant applications in English, use my Engineering education, and encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ. But beyond a longing to come back, Cambodia has added substance to my ideas about development, no matter where I go. Finally, in Cambodia, I’ve felt even more peace in the idea that I just need to serve –

Let God decide

when and

where and

how:

Maybe in Cambodia when I graduate,

but definitely

Right here,

right

Now.