"Cambodier"

Tarantulas taste like chicken.

Deep fried chicken, and crispy—all eight legs eight crunches of squeamishness. Delicious.

I know this full well; I popped one stiff arachnid in my mouth, after letting a live one crawl on my arm and hand, while at a roadside fruit stand in Cambodia last week. All around me were children in bright, sagging clothing, holding sticky fingers full of pineapple and plantains in my face while I chewed and swallowed. They said to me, “Pineapple? You want pineapple? If you don’t buy, I won’t go to school.” More sticky fingers.

Wedged between Thailand and Vietnam, the Kingdom of Cambodia (or “Cambodier,” to our English-speaking guide, Siranuok) is wrapped in a gauze of heat and wet during summer months. Yellow bushes squat, grumpy, beneath palm trees, which are strung across the plains without pattern. The sky is the underbelly of some giant blue creature, stretching like a circus tent over Phnom Penh and Siem Reap—two cities my group visited for our Spring 2012 Educational Field Trip.

We left on a Wednesday and returned on a Monday, and in between we experienced the country our director calls both tragic and beautiful.

The Tragic

The people are smiles and short, with names like Eang and Keav. Some are a remnant of the genocide that occurred between April 1975 and January 1979, a four-year occupation of a rebel group known as the Khmer Rouge. Over 2 million Cambodians lost their lives to this regime. The story is hidden beneath layers of media coverage for the Vietnam war, disclosing an atrocity reminiscent of the Holocaust and another reason for the world to ask, “how could this happen, again?”

Before the Khmer Rouge grabbed power, a monarchy (followed by a short-lived democracy) led Cambodia politically. The war in Vietnam spread across Cambodia’s borders, however, and American bombs dropped death into Cambodia in attempt to destroy soldiers hiding there. The Cambodian people grew discontented with the government for failing to handle these invasions, and a civil war between the government and the Khmer Rouge ensued. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh to the applause of thousands of happy Cambodians, glad to be free of their incompetent government and excited for the future. Soon, though, things went wrong. As Khmer Communism seeped into the country, forcing a sick sort of equality on everyone, people began to die. First the intellectuals, ex-government officials, foreigners, mixed Khmer and Chinese families, people who wore glasses. Colorful clothes burned, paper money lost all value except for use as toilet paper. City-dwellers relocated to villages to form a purely uneducated, agrarian society. If anyone disobeyed the Khmer Rouge, they disappeared.

In Phnom Penh, my group and I trudged quietly through Tuol Sleng Prison, or “S-21,” the primary holding site used by the Khmer Rouge to torture victims during their reign. The three buildings had previously comprised a school, but once education was no longer necessary, it became a waiting room for death.  Blood still soaks the walls, near the ceiling, and rusted bed frames sit silently, like old men, waiting for peace or escape.  The Killing Fields came after, one ditch after another after another, thirty years ago filled with bodies but now only with flowers.  There is a tree in the middle of the Fields, gnarled and ancient, beautiful, tall. It would be the perfect tree to hug, to climb, to sit beneath, if not for the sign next to it, which reads: “Magic tree. The tree was used as a tool to hang a loudspeaker which make sound louder to avoid the moan of victims while they were being executed.”

Today, the existing leaders of the Khmer Rouge stand trial to be punished for crimes against humanity. Amongst other things.

The Beautiful

Now, Cambodia is healing. Although the Khmer Rouge no longer plagues the country, brokenness still exists in the form of a thriving sex trafficking industry. The International Justice Mission, Daughters of Cambodia, Hagar Ministries, and other non-government organizations work to free and redeem the hearts and bodies of young girls taken captive for the trade. In the middle of Phnom Penh, one such NGO has concocted a beautiful and soft cupcakery, a place where ex-prostitutes can find safety, shelter, and work. The business refuses to advertise the histories of its employers, so the women know, when customers come along, they come for delicious cakes and not out of pity. The shop opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m. so the employers can participate in morning Bible study. Although these hours do not cater to the typical 9a.m. to 5p.m. work crowd, God has been faithful to provide customers anyway. He provided thirty of us all at once, in fact, and our group sampled delicate and rich cupcake flavors—all with the fair trade label—like coffee cake with Bailey’s Irish Cream icing, orange poppyseed with passion fruit buttercream icing, dark chocolate hazelnut, and apple blueberry crumble. My own taste buds smiled through Oreo cheesecake cupcake and red velvet cupcake. All for a good cause, all for a good cause.

In the city of Siem Reap, Cambodia is a vending machine. The exchange rate for Khmer currency, the riel, is 4000 to $1. American money is circulated for convenience, and it seems everything costs one dollar.  One dollar in, one tuktuk (the Cambodian form of taxi, sort of a cart attached to the back of a motorcycle) ride out. One dollar in, one 20 minute “Dr. Fish” massage out (A “Dr. Fish” massage consists of one giant fish tank, and willing participants sit on the side and dangle their feet in the water, only to be swarmed by fish who proceed to gnaw the dead skin, calluses, and bacteria off toes and ankles. Pink, raw, ticklish feet emerge along with “happy people, or no charge!”). One dollar in, one bracelet, or sweet potato, or fried tarantula, out.

Travelers avalanche the country to visit Angkor Wat, one of the seven man-made wonders of the world. The temple is plopped in the jungle amidst other, smaller ruins. Angkor Thom, for instance. Ta Prohm. Banteay Srei. All constructed hundreds of years ago as Buddhist and Hindu sites of worship. Perhaps twas only wishful thinking, but to me, each ruin looked like gobs of dripping ice cream. One, mint chocolate, another cookies and cream, with brownies mixed in. Angkor Wat is dark chocolate, almost black. Deep and mysterious and brimming with carvings, secrets, and cacao.  I learned to plant rice around these ruins, cow brown mud squishing between my toes, water hugging my knees in the rice patties. I sat with a monkey around these ruins, watched him eat Pringles and love them. I rode an elephant around these ruins, thinking of ice cream and giddy to be so close to my favorite animal.

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this land of blue sky, bloodshed, palm trees, elephants, tuktuks.  One day, I think, I will return to love on more people, make sure those sticky-fingered children go to school, rescue ladies by eating cupcakes, things like that. I might even learn to speak Khmer, or eat another fried tarantula. Maybe.