Craters in the earth

I'm in Cambodia! Arrived safe and happy without dangerous gangsta action or harrowing traffic close-calls. My AC Bus left Saigon at 9am with 6 people on it, one of whom was a 20-something Canadian woman just finishing up a few months of solo travel, so there were nice chats. Of course, I slept on and off -- buses make me tired! -- and so maybe missed the best of the countryside, but such is life. I nevertheless have a profound respect and awe for the Cambodian countryside, just based on the few glimpses I had.

Monument to honor nothern Vietnamese women and children

Seen from across the Ben Hai river, dividing line between N and S VN
I've been heavily pre-occupied by the events of the war over the past few days. The literature I had finished, the countryside, a tour of the heavy-fighting and mining areas, interaction with American Vet sentiments and Communist framing of the war. The DMZ tour was a 12-hour day in a non-AC Bus; we drove for hours with the front door open, past stilt houses and old military bases. Light clay roads and resurgant vegetation. Good lord, it was hot. So hot. Damn hot. I don't mean to be crude, but I've never sweat so much in my life. Ever. More sweat than skin. And the monuments, the museums, the war relics and battlefields. It was a hazy, dehydtrated, sun-spotted excursion, to say the very least. And the peace of these places. They're so calm now. You're told about the brutality and the combat. But what's left is heat and dust and profoundly-worded monuments. There was a 'guestbook' at one of the museums on Khe Sanh Marine Base, a pretty gruesome place if I understand correctly. And the guestbook was full of diverse remarks, in language and subject matter and feeling. But a number of American soldiers wrote things like "I can't believe I'm back. This is not the place I remember," or "This was a Hell, and now it's a museum. Thank you." It was so shocking and so simple. I have never lived in war. I have never experienced that terror, and I probably never will. Reading books, hearing stories, seeing pictures and feeling sorry, I will never know war. I will never know what war does to people, I will never touch their experiences. I empathize, I conceptualize, I feel. I work towards an understanding of my freedom as the freedom of others. I work to see more deeply, to really comprehend. But I do not know war. These reminders are not war. They are reminders of war.

I do not think that is enough.

The mountains of the DMZ

We went into the tunnels at Vinh Moc. Entire villages lived underground for five years. Sleeping, peeing, praying, giving birth. Seventeen babies were born in the Vinh Moc tunnels. They are all alive today. Our tour group, of which my friend Kate and I were the only Americans, went 60 feet underground in these tunnels. The system as a whole is hundreds of kilometers long, three different depths, spanning the whole DMZ, linked by trenches. Pictures of the land at that time are terribly beautiful -- the Earth was so full of craters, it looked like the surface of the moon. The dirt came off the walls on our hands and shoulders, bent over and shuffling in the brown darkness. They had oil lamps, they had bandages. They had guns. And not much else.

Scratched graffiti on a tunnel wall

We visited Peace Trees the next day, an organization which de-mines and plants trees all throughout Quang Tri province, which is home to the DMZ and the most brutal battles and traps of the war. The visit was like candy, it was so sweet. Tragic, yes, as the mines that were left behind ended up claiming almost exclusively the lives and limbs of local children. But Quang Le, a beautiful man with a powerful story, has been working there for almost 12 years now, after decades of work in the US and at refugee camps in Thailand. He got out just after the war, but his wife and children were held by the Communist regime for years after. He says he did his work just to "keep his mind busy." Now, he's instrumental to the cause of "reversing the legacy of war." Building schools, educating de-miners, and children who live in mined areas. Giving scholarships, planting trees. He was a true boddhisatva, he really took care of my friends and I when we visited.

Peace Trees!

This land was barren just 11 years ago
Thank you, for being here. More on Cambodia tomorrow or the day after. And my impromtu Vietnamese homestay last night! It's a brand new world, and there's so much to learn.

Until Next Time, "Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged."
- Rudolf Virchow, 1848