Sunday, February 14, 2010

Cambodia's national trauma

Cambodia, Sihanoukville, Victory Hill,
14-02-2010.

Kingdoms may come, empires rise and fall, rulers emerge and beaten again by foreigner powers but the bloody work of the horrible things done in the name of Pol Pot's reign of terror has left his country with a national trauma where everybody my age and up was either a crazed killer or the victim....

I see it in the eyes of the local selling me my beer late at night out of a dusty and chaotic shed that is supposed to be a shop, the motorbike taxistas trying to convince me a ride in the dark to chickenfarm street would really help me out and fill their pockets as well as those of the Mammasan of whatever farm of my liking...

Underlying it all is a fine line of hatred brought about by the unexpected pleasure of slaughtering fellow human beings during the years of killing....or left over from being abused by the same neighbors you nowadays share your village with...

Hatred that will consume your heart if let off its restrcitions, a monster that has been raised by the fire raging inside your very being, a bit like trying to control the monster that once was and has got to be contained for the sake of survival...

It also feel a bit like these people have lost the lustre for life itself, like they have come to a different mental layer of understanding once all the madness was over and they had to learn to live again...somewhere along the line something happened to their braincells - wheter they were culprit or victim - that made them realise that life in its very basics isn't really worth living, or at least not for us the crazy human race...too bad that suicide is such a messy affair!!!

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