The beginnings of an adventure

This trip began almost a year ago. The Northern Light gave me my first story; write a feature about Dr. Jesse Owens, a professor who had won an award. Eager to start, I called Owens and scheduled an interview. He told me it would be easiest if I’d meet him at his house in Palmer. The afternoon before the interview, I googled Owens and found out that besides teaching at UAA, he was also an inventor and did philanthropic work in Cambodia. 

I had just completed Bill Myers’ history of genocide class, in the spring semester of 07.  The Cambodian genocide in particular had both horrified me and peaked my interest.  Shortly after the Vietnam War, a political group called the Khmer Rouge seized control of the country.  The Khmer Rouge, led by the infamous Pol Pot, was a communist group that rejected all ties to the west.  In order to bolster the countries economy, the Khmer Rouge forced Cambodians into slave labor camps where they labored in rice fields.  The regime exectued anyone with ties to the west.  This included all educated people; doctors, teachers, lawyers.  It also included people who wore glasses, or who opposed the regime.  Over a million were killed or allowed to starve to death.   I had a vague, under developed idea of turning the article into a piece focused on the genocide. 

When I arrived at Owen’s house, I quickly jotted down a few prepared questions to ask him and went to the door. His house, among several inoffensive, average houses, was vibrant purple.  The yard was littered with mechanical contraptions. A wheel chair ramp led up to his home and the a dog let out baritone barks from inside. Owens, in a wheel chair, answered the door and introduced both himself and Ferlin, one of the largest dogs I’d ever met.

I felt comfortable with Owens immediately, although it was my first time conducting an interview. He spoke easily and was fascinating to listen to. He told me about how he had taken up inventing after he had been paralyzed as a young man. His inventions were designed to help him regain access to the wilderness. He had had much success in this; with the assistance of his Kilikart he had climbed Mount Killimanjaro. 

As fate had it, the article was very much intwined with the Khmer Rouge. Owens won the award for an invention designed to assist parapelegics in Cambodia. Land mines, a side effect of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian genocide, have disabled thousands of while chemicals, like Agent Orange, are responsible for cripling birth defects. Without proper infrastructure, also a side effect of the Khmer Rouge, the nation is ill equiped to assist these people. They live as parasites, without access to medical attention, food or employment.  Owen’s invention was designed to give poor people in developing nations mobility. 

After the interview, Owens and I discussed at length the genocide and how the Khmer – Cambodians – were recovering as a culture. He invited me to have dinner with his friend Jim Gollogly.  Gollogly runs a surgical clinic in Cambodia, Children Surgical Center. The clinic is an Alaskan NGO based in Cambodia that provides free surgeries to children. I thought the dinner would be a great opportunity to learn more about the country I was becoming inthralled with. 

A week later I met Owens, Gollogly, his wife Kanya and a few of their friends at a house in Wasilla. I listened as they spoke about the challenges Cambodia is facing. They discussed political corruption, the poor population and lack of buerocratic infrastructure.  At the end of supper Gollogly invited me to spend a few months in Cambodia as a volunteer. I excitedly told him I would love to, without any thought of what I would do, how I would get there or what the trip would entail.

And here I am. A year has passed and I’m sitting at a computer in Jim’s house; sweating and tired. I will be working for CSC until July. My job is to produce the litterature that CSC sends to potential contributors and benefactors. Also, I’m publishing articles in English-Cambodian publications. But primarily, I’d like to examine how a dehumanized society recovers and how Cambodia has rebuilt since the Khmer Rouge set the clock back to year 0. 

I will not pretend that this is at all possible in 6 weeks. This trip is only an introduction to Cambodia culture.