My in-country coordinator, Sophak, and I visited the Choeung Ek memorial yesterday. It is perhaps the best known of the hundreds of “killing fields” throughout Cambodia. A dusty 10-mile tuk tuk drive from the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the memorial site is now an almost bucolic area of fields and trees. There is little tangible evidence that the area served as an execution facility: buildings were torn down immediately after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and bodies and bones were excavated. Marked shallow mass grave areas provide the only natural evidence of the grisly past.
The Killing Field at Choeung Ek
A towering stupak serves as the visual center of the Choeung Ek memorial site. It is filled several stories high with bones of victims. Nearly 8,000 skulls are neatly arranged, appearing to peer out at visitors. I notice that visitors approach it warily, upon noticing its grisly internal display.
Memorial (stupak) to the victims
8,000 skulls are interred in the stupak
Visitors (mainly international tourists) wander from station to station listening with headsets to a recorded history of the horrors at Choeung Ek. Apparently, most victims came from the Building S-21 detention, interrogation and torture center in Phnom Penh. They were brought at night and often executed the same evening – after assisting in the grave digging. Because bullets were in short supply, farm implements and other crude tools were used to carry out the executions. The narrator suggests that many of the victims welcomed death by that time, after months of interrogation and torture at Building S-21. Upwards of 300 people were killed per day.
If our morning visit to Choeung Ek was largely about death and the past, then I’m happy to say that our afternoon visit to the Wat Opot Community was about life and the future. I had the honor of visiting with Mr. Wayne Dale Matthysse, the co-founder of the Wat Opot Community. The Wat Opot Community is essentially an orphanage for children infected with or affected by HIV (e.g., lost both parents to HIV). It is in a rural area about 30 miles from Phnom Penh. On a five-acre swath of land, it has catfish ponds, chickens, pigs and gardens. Sixty children live there, receive schooling and otherwise live contentedly in the company of staff and volunteers. Many of the children are HIV-infected and receive daily medication. Several have now transitioned out of the orphanage and have gone on to college or professional careers, of which Wayne is undeniably proud.
But it is more than a simple orphanage, here’s a brief passage from the Wat Opot Community website (www.watopot.org):
What is special about Wat Opot? It is rare, and perhaps unique in Cambodia, for HIV-infected and non-infected children to live together as family, sharing homes and meals and playing together. This sets an example for the community, and its effect on increasing tolerance and diminishing fear cannot be overstated. Many orphanages are simply holding tanks, where fortunate children are either adopted out, or warehoused until they come of age. Wayne sees Wat Opot as a loving extended family, a place where children will want to return to visit after they have left to live in the larger community. It is open to everyone, the poorest of the poor, the most rejected and abandoned, regardless of religion or past experience, and to young and old. Money is tight, but Wat Opot Project runs on the less quantifiable energies of love and kindness, service, faith, and commitment.
I felt a renewed sense of optimism after visiting Wat Opot. This helped carry me through the arduous 90-minute tuk tuk ride back to Phnom Penh.
dougincambodia 
Thank you for sharing your journey with us…I’m sad to hear about the children but glad that there is such a wonderful organization to support these children.