Tuol Sleng

This was a former secondary school that was turned into a detention and torture centre during the Khmer Rouge rule. It's the infamous prison where inmates were tortured badly. Out of the 17000 people that went through the prison, only 12 survived.

We went there on the 2nd last day, during our R&R in Phnom Penh. Because I've read about this place in Time/Newsweek, I was actually quite excited to go. 2 of my team members elected not to go because they felt they won't be able to stand it. On the other hand, it was a must see for me.

We went around 4+ in the afternoon, when it was getting a bit dark and windy. It's eerily quiet, with tourists walking silently. The first block of building was were the inmates were tied to the steel beds and tortured. The Khmer Rouge imprisoned anyone they suspected of treason, including their own soilders, children, pregnant women. The first to be killed were all the educated people, where anyone who wore spectacles would immediately be executed.

Prisoners are chained to the steel beds and beaten, whipped or tortured a slow death...there are still blood stains on the floor.

As I walked on and looked, I felt the sense of death becomeing stronger. My team member was saying she felt nauseous, because she could see blood stains on the floor. The pictures of the tortured prisoners were so revolting, you couldn't even recognize the human bodies. It just looked like burned sticks...
Even children were imprisoned and tortured. In the killing fields of Choung Ek, the babies were smashed against tree trunks..or thrown in the air and used as practice targets for gunners.

Then we entered another room where it was rows after rows of pictures of all the inmates. The men, the women, the children...the black and white pictures with multiple pairs of eyes looking forlornly back at me...you wonder, what were their stories?

How much fear did they feel? Just walking there I could already feel the fear of death and doom...what more if I was a prisoner?
Could I have heard the rest of the prisoners screaming in the next room? Or smell rotting corpses? The pain of being seperated from my family? Or the even greater fear for my family, the fear and worry that they would be tortured as well.

The girl in the picture is Debbie. She's reading the framed picture and narrative of a prisoner. Each frame tells the story of a prisoner. As you can see, the classroom is deathly quiet and run down, just like how it was originally.

Next block was a empty room in the 2nd floor..with pictures and a short narrative for every prisoner pictured. I saw the pictures of the prisoners before they were imprisoned, when life was normal. Some girls with the 70s hairstyle, smiling..guys posing with their military uniforms..looking macho and hopeful. Students, medical assistants, farmers, wives, fathers, labourers. Then you read the stories, how some of them joined the Khmer Rouge for ideology, some to provide food for their family, some because they had no choice...and how they were arrested, brought here and just go missing, pressumed dead.

I felt very uneasy..because the whole place is so quiet, the building is really old and fading, and the pictures just make you ask so much questions about the prisoners. I realized from the happy time pictures that they were not much different from me now. They had their dreams, their fashion styles, their hopes for the future. Reading the stories, in the classroom where torture took place and added with sounds of children laughing from outside the museum, the wind blowing, the sky going dark outside.....really gives a dreadful, coming from deep in stomach kind of feeling for me.

Top: individual cell, just large enough for one person to stand. 3 pictures: Instruments of torture

Then it was the torture block. The individual cells were so small, you can't even lie down. I saw the leg chains, and unwisely stepped into one of the cells just to feel how it was like... and oh man, I felt the strong feeling of despair and quickly stepped out! I just can't imagine being a prisoner, chained there!

Most of us didn't even want to read how they used the instruments of torture. You can still see chain holders drilled in the floor and the original instruments used. I didn't even want to touch any of them! One of the ways of torture was to gorge out the eyes and pour salt. I saw a skull driller too..and a chair where they tie you down and electricute prisoners.

Then we walked on, and I really hated this particular block. When I read the description of the building, I really felt, sad, angry, shocked, grief, fear....and just though, ugh, God! how can man do this to their own fellow man? The building was covered with a huge sheet of rusty sharp barbed wire spanning from the 3rd floor to the ground floor. And you know why?

They covered it in barbed wire because they didn't want the prisoners they tortured to commit suicide! Imagine, they won't even let you kill yourself, but want to kill you slowly, painfully, gorging out your eyes, beating you, letting you scream in pain......and won't even permit you to end your misery early.

I mean, if you really think that this prisoner is a traitor to the country, won't that save you trouble and time to kill him if he kills himself? But no, they would not let you do it. They want to have the fun of killing you to intimidate others! It's almost as if the prison guards enjoyed employing different methods to prolong death and practice their "experiements" on humans, their fellow countrymen.

The worst, worst part of the whole museum for me was this particular room.
If you know me, you'd know I'm not really the kind that gets scared that easily. I'm not afraid of spiders or any other creature, nor of heights or dark. Even after having two accidents I don't have a phobia of cars, I'm very gung-ho about visiting new places. I love to try new experiences, I don't balk at a challenge.

BUT! I was really, really afraid to enter this room alone. At first, I just walked in...but when I saw what was in the room..I quickly walked out...and then only waited until Joel came..and told him.."eh, go in with me."

In the room was a huge Buddhist shrine, and 2 cupboards that span from the ceiling to the floor full of skulls and bones. It's not the skulls that scared me but it was the atmosphere of the room. Especially since we were on a mission trip, the "off, something's not right kind of feeling" of that room made me hesitate to go into the room alone. The room was filled with a heavy Buddhist atmosphere...the shrine was a huge bell, 1.5 metres tall, and there were joss-sticks were some tourists had lighted and prayed.

In the Buddhist culture, it's symbolic of praying for the dead. And added with the skulls.....I really didn't feel comfortable, so much so, it's the only place I where didn't take any photographs. I didn't even want to store any pictures of the room in my camera! That was how off and weird I felt about the room.

Look into my eyes. See my baby. What did I do to deserve this?

Even that night before I slept, everytime I closed my eyes..I could see the black and white pictures of the prisoners! I was even a little fearful to be in the dark alone. The stories just kept playing in my mind when I was in the dark.

It served me right for being over-enthusiastic for wanting to go to the museum. You see, since I am normally not affected by horror movies or gross pictures I didn't really prepare myself before I went into the museum. I went in with an attitute of "nothing will scare me or shock me" because hey, I was a medical student who's seen drown corpses etc.

And I learnt my lesson that spiritual atmospheres are real and shouldn't be taken lightly. I told God, "Okay..I should have prayed more and not be so confident of myself." Thankfully the fear and picture flashes went away after that.

But I'm glad I went because it helped me, helped us (my group) understand the people, the land better. There is almost no family in Cambodia that hasn't been affected by the Khmer Rouge. The scars go deep, and I will never be able to comprehend or share even a little of the pain they have been through. The suffering the land has been through and is still going through with the corruption and oppresion is heavy.

Yet, there's hope because of Jesus! Two out of ten of our Cambodian pastors were former Khmer Rouge soilders. Ps Kim and his wife used to plant land mines to blow up tanks. And Ps Rom used to be a store house keeper for guns. We saw the pastors there united in prayer and fervant for God's work. Some pastors run 3 to 4 churches each at different villages, travelling in their motorcyle to preach. We were so encouraged by their love for each other, for their people. When one leader was pouring out his frustrations in one of the pastors meetings, with tears running....some pastors also cried along with him! And when you see them sing in Khmer, singing about Cambodia for Christ...wow, it's just so magical!

What did we do there? Medical work

For the first two days, our team travelled to different villages around the Baray district since the youth camp had not started.

The CMS (Cambodia Methodist Services) actually employs a doctor 3 days a week. They also have a dispenser and medication. It's really very well organized.

We would normally stop at a village, step up "clinic" underneath a person's house. The patients would register with a pastor, get a number, see the doctor, get a prescription, go to the dispenser's table, and after dispensing there would be another pastor there to pray for the patient. The rest of the pastors would talk to the patients while they are waiting and share the gospel. So in a sense the medical work, is a platform for the pastors to get to know people from villagers that have not heard of the gospel.

Doctor, operating from the space beneath someone's house. In the back is firewood for cooking.

Dispenser

The doctor would be really busy. In 3 hours, he would normally have to see 70-90 patients!
Well, since I was there, they asked me to set up a table, as in, I would become the 2nd doctor. Of course there would be a translator with me.

For starters I really didn't want to because I am just a 3rd year medical student. And I can't read the medicine labels or know what medication they stock because all the medication labels are in FRENCH. (Cambodia was a former French colony, to study medicine, you need to know French). The only French I know is Bon Jour, Petite, Amore. Ha, hopeless.


But the crowd was just to big! And so, I stumbled along. The 1st case was some UTI case. When you start seeing the patients, you realize how desperate is the need for healthcare in Cambodia. There are government hospitals but again because of corruption, the doctors won't treat you unless you pay a significant amount of money. So most people go to "pharmacists." Which aren't really pharmacists because a lot of them are not qualified. And they sell to the patients, antibiotics; IN THE AMOUNT OF 2 TABLETS! Meaning, each time you think you are sick, you go to the "pharmacy" and get 2 tablets of antibiotics and hope to get well.

Then there are patients with scabies, and for the life of me, I don't know what to prescribe. Next was a woman 5 months pregnant who has not felt her baby move and feel pain in the night. It's bad enough that I don't really know how to palpate a pregnant woman, added with the fact that there's no bed, you must try to palpate while she's sitting and you have to rely on a translator. The sad thing is that she went to the district hospital and the doctors can't do anything because there's no ultrasound in the district, she would need to go to Phnom Pehn 2 hours away if she wants an ultrasound.

Then a guy with TB, and we don't have any TB drugs. Next someone with suspected malaria.

In the end the dispenser also couldn't figure what I was writing as all their drugs are in French, so I told them, never mind I'll just help take BP for the patients.

Ah, I look so garang here....! Concentrating la..haha
Surface to say, I've never taken BP for so many people in 1 day, and it sure triples or quardaples the number of times I've taken BP in CSU, clinic or every other senario in my whole life. I think it must have numbered 130+ and it's really good training because you learn to hear for Korotkoff sounds while chickens are squacking at the back, and 50 other people crowd around you, punctuated by the moos of cows.

It can be hard to hear the Korotfoff sound especially among women because some of them are so aneamic and have low pressure with the added medly of background sounds. In Cambodia, it's either your BP is normal, too low (around 70/50) or too high (hitting 190/140 or 200+/170)!

Something interesting is that, most of them have muscles! Even the women have biceps muscles. It's because of the hard labour they do in the fields. And in the midst of hearing and hearing and hearing for BP in the heat, something came to mind. I felt, that God was saying "hey Sarah Ong Kai Li, don't just hear mechanically to record the BP and make it like a task okay, but hear with my ears.... the heartbeats of the people...beating to know me, to know of my love and my gentle touch for their wounded hearts."

The call?

There are so many things we take forgranted, or at least I take forgranted in Malaysia.
Of course since I'm studying medicine, it's always interesting to find out on how the healthcare in other countries are like.

Some of the things I hear and see in Cambodia are so shocking that you won't even think that such practices exist.

Chern-chern and Yew On are dentists formerly from DUMC and now teaching in the one and only dental school in Cambodia. They are under the OMF and have been serving in Cambodia for 7 years. Chern-chern is an orthodentist and both of them can make a really comfortable living if they chose to practice in Malaysia. But they are here in Cambodia, receiving less than 1/20th of what they could earn, staying in a humble aparment above the market, staying and working in Cambodia to train up young Cambodian dentists. It's a sacrifice especially to raise up 2 boys in Cambodia, accepting a much lower pay and an uphill battle to change the bribing culture in university.

They were sharing some of the things they have experienced in Cambodia.

Do you know in Cambodia, you can bribe for someone to sit the Year 12 exam for you, then pay USD 7000 to get a place in Medical School? You can bribe all the way to passing your university.
And if that's not worst to make you question the competency of doctors, some medical and dental students only study for 1 or 2 years, and then quit school to set up their own clinics!!!!

I can be a super qualified doctor there, being a 3rd year medical student!
Imagine, 1st year medical students practicing as full fledged doctors! And the health ministry doesn't clamp down on these clinics, but allow them to operate. I won't even want to see a "doctor" in Cambodia if I'm ill!

The country is so poor that even in Baray, which is not a really small or far province, most children don't get even the basic immunization jabs. There's no health checks for pregnant mothers, you give birth at home yourself.

And if you don't have money, you can just wait to die if you are involved in an accident. No doctor would treat you unless you pay, even at the government hospitals. It's not just because the doctors are being cruel and money minded, but unless they do that, they can't even afford to support their families with the pay that they receive from the government.

Children die from diarrhoea, a simple treatable disease. People get paralzyed by polio. And of course, from the remnants of the Khmer Rouge a lot of men have only 1 leg. We have 10 local pastors there, but they only have 18 legs. 2 of them have both loss a leg each.

Chern-chern and Yew On were dating when they were studying in UM when they felt the call of God in their final year, and after marraige they went over to Cambodia.

The impact they are making there is wonderful. They have bible studies with the dental students, teaching them about Christ-centred marraige..where even non Christians join because they are interested to learn. Chern-chern and Yew On also raise up compassionate dentists. The powerful way how their expertise is used and multipled many folds because the students they teach would then pass it on, and impact the rest of the nation as they return to serve in their provinces once they graduate.

The Day

Disclaimer: this is not a post to highlight my birthday cuz I don't like to be reminded I'm getting old anyway..haha, but just the events that happened. :)

Of all the parties and presents I've ever had or received, I dare say this birthday would be one of the most significant. Although not the kind who is sentimental, the day before the birthday, it did struck me, that I'd be celebrating what people call the "significant" birthday of turning 21 away from family. And since, we were really busy with the youth camp and thus I didn't expect anything.

Julia's birthday was also on the same day as mine. Right after one morning session in the youth camp, they called us upfront and sang for us the birthday song. Well, the really great part was that, all of the youths then prayed for us! It's a feeling you get when you see people of different language, people whom you think lack so much in terms of quality of life..yet people who can stand in God and bless you in return.

Then the pastors lead Julia, Aaron and I (Uncle Aaron's birthday was on the 13th) to a table, which they specially covered with red cloth...and there was a birthday cake.

This is the cake. Really, it doesn't look like much. It's just a simple sponge cake. But you know what, they had to go to Baray town just to buy this cake. No one sells cake in the village, a majority of people, the youths and pastors have never tasted cake.

And yea, that cake..cost..USD15! (FYI, teachers earn only USD30 Per month)

I quote from my friend's blog

One day, the local pastors celebrated some of our birthdays, which happened to be during the youth camp. It was an eye opener to see what their ‘birthday cake’ looks like. It is a large version of the egg bread the Chinese use for prayers. No icing or toppings. Just plain. And that alone costs US$ 15. We were so touched by their graciousness. We managed to cut the cake to share it with 180 people. While serving the cake to the youths, they thankfully took a piece each and some were shy to take it because like I’ve mentioned before, it is rare for them to have such a nice thing to eat. To us, it probably looks unappetizing and we’ll probably react like, “What on earth is that?”

The most "touching" moment for me was what I saw later in the afternoon. Ps Samreth actually saved up his portion of the cake, wrapped it up in paper and when he saw his young daughter, he unwrapped the cake and gave it to her.

To them the cake was that precious. So much so that the father would not eat it, but save it up for his daughter.

Honestly that cake is not of Secret Receipe standard. It's plain, looks like a big pau, and it soggy and sticky at the bottom (not baked properly).

But it's only when you're there in Cambodia seeing a father save a piece of cake for his daughter because it's so special, then you realize how much I've enjoyed in life. I mean, how can anyone NEVER eaten cake before? It's really a mini "shock" to me.

Especially because we didn't really live with the Cambodians their level of poverty didn't really sink in to me. And plus, we ate good food there, the equalivent of their feast was to us, normal lunch or dinner. It was until then when I actually realized how much I had compared to the people there.

And I began to see the local pastors in new eyes. I saw how much they loved their people. How Ps Kun would sleep in the church with the youths, so that he could go to the village with another youth the next day to invite his friends. How Ps Rom would carry water to fill the stone filter for the youths, even though he only has 1 real leg..and one prosthetic one. How Theara would shout and strain his voice when translating so that the youths can hear, although he has a history of TB and is actually endangering his health.

How Ps Kun and Ps Rom actually don't receive salaries because CMS would only pay salaries after a trial period of 2 years...yet they are there to preach, to go to villages, to be at the camp...and then go back home to tend to their farming and pigs..so that they can still feed their family (they get love gifts which is a basic "salary" but it's really not enough to feed a family)

I am just so thankful to God that my 21st birthday was spent among the Cambodians in Cambodia. If given a choice between having a big party with some fancy dinner in some hotel or sharing a cake with 200+ people, learning to love them, being blessed by them, I know which one I'd choose. No doubt!

And although yea I was far from family and friends, I was around people who accepted me, and treated me like a star! ahahhaa. One girl gave me some grasshoppers, the kind where you fold from coconut leafs. Another boy, Daniel, gave me a small woven thing..and a letter in broken English.

I will not trade this experience for anything else. And I guess to a certain extend I caught a glimpse of what it means to be following God's will.

It may never be extremely comfortable (just like being in the hot sun in Cambodia, with no electricity, no aircon party or frosted cake) but it's always better and fulfilling (being prayed for by the youths, sharing cake with them, being honoured and treated with such a precious cake).