Heart breaking and wide eyed

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So i shall warn you before you start to read this that this entry is no where near happy and exciting as some of my others have been. In fact, it is the complete opposite. It is disheartening, very upsetting, and mind boggling. I don't plan on down playing this either because this is an event that I didn’t know about, and I am sure that some of you may not either, and I will probably cry as I start to tell you all about my experience yesterday in the killing fields. I wasn't really in the best of shape to write this yesterday so I had to wait till this morning, because I was a complete mess yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday morning we all went to this former prison here in Phnom Penh called S21. It is now called the Tool Slang Genocide Museum. Yes you can see where this entry is going.... It was the former security office 21, and was directed by Pol Pot, in april 1975(to 1979). It was designed for detention, interrogation, inhumane torture, and killing. Prior to this, it was a high school for many students in Phnom Penh

An insight as to who Pol Pot was. He was a former leader here in Cambodia, who had studied and believe strongly in Caral Marx's beliefs of a utopian society. He had a plan to turn the country into an agriculture utopia through a very extreme regime. This was known as the Khmer Rouge takeover. Literacy, arts, music and religion were all abolished, and left even the monks without a place to live. Any person who was considered educated was instantly executed and families were separated based on their beliefs. No person was allowed in or out for Cambodia during this time...

When we got to the prison yesterday, I honestly did not know what to expect. But it quickly became VERY apparent to me that what i was about to see was going to make me very uneasy. With the high wall, heavily surrounded with barbwire and a big metal gate, that is just what it did. Our guide first explained to us what i just did to you about Pol Pot, and how he ruled. And then we went into building A that was used for detaining those who were accused in leading the uprising against Pol Pot's revolution. They were provided with a bed, a "blanket", cushion and mat. They were also given a metal tin and a plastic water container to dispose of their bodily waste. It was horrifying. It was just like a school, but with this in a room, and in each room, a different photograph of how each individual was tortured... There was blood stains and splatters on the roof, walls, and the ground. It was absolutely disgusting because i cannot understand for the life of me how another human can do that to another.... They would be cut open and then left to bleed to death. Or cut in multiple places and then the cuts were filled with poison... and there was more but i cant write about all of them or i will start to cry again.

We were then taken to building B where there were photographs of every prisoner who was in there....some with repeating tag numbers because the individual who had the number previously had been killed, so it got "re-used". and around the corner of a set of men, there was a wall of children’s photos... and that is when i lost it and left the place and went and sat with Erin and had a coffee... there was much more to see in there, but i didnt need to be any means... that was enough for me.

Oh and there was this other torture device where they would hang the person by their feet and dunk them in sewage infested water until they confessed who was in their family, and where they lived.

Some people ended up having to kill their families because they had to do what they were told, and just sorry, I cant write about it all.

Then we got back on the bus, and we went to the killing fields. The place where people were taken bus by bus and were tortured and killed. This I have problems telling you about as i have started to cry just thinking about it. When you walk in there is a Memorial Monument with over 8000 skulls that they had found on the premise. Arranged on levels by age, ranging from infants to over 60 years old... And that is not even an 1/8 ov the people who were slaughtered here. There were multiple "pits" Ones for people who were beheaded, one for just men, ones for women and others for children. And it is when i got to the one where they killed the children that i broke down and cryed to the point that i was heaving and couldn't breath... I have to tell you this because yet again, it is important for people to know what happened here , but if you read on you will be just as disturbed by it as i am... they would crank music so that others would not hear what happened, and they would use kids as a baseball bat against the tree until they died...I can't really explain it any other way.... but that is where i will have to end this because i will start to cry harder...

But you want to know that the neat thing is in all of this? The Cambodian people want people to know about it! And for that, i think that they are amazing. Because walking down the streets here, you would not know that over 30 years ago, over 1.7 million people were mass murdered. But to know what some have seen just breaks my heart.

Yesterday afternoon was a hard one that is for sure. and when i got back i went for a massage at a blind massage place, and it was the best.

Last night we went for dinner at a place that helps out all of the street kids here. And i had a Tracheal... yepp i ate a piece of it. just its leg.

But i will write more about yesterday afternoon, when i am not so jittery after that last part.

Love always

Taylor

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