Cambodia: a skyscraper over a pit

On Friday, my friend Sheryl was telling me how disillusioned her Khmer tutor has become. A few years ago, he arrived in the city from his province, brilliant and accepted into a university, with lofty ambitions. Today, he feels hopeless, saying that he and his friends – like thousands of others from the province – are now well-educated but have no chance against the spoiled rich kids competing for their jobs. These smart kids from the province are left scrambling to survive, just like the average Cambodian: hoping for a few dollars a day from driving a moto, or working in a factory, or selling vegetables.

Many people on top are just as incompetent as they are corrupt. A generation earlier, his father had to read orders to an illiterate Khmer Rouge general; today, nothing has changed. These rich kids who get the good jobs are usually very poorly educated, having bought their grades all throughout school, and ill-equipped for their positions. Once in power, they freely exploit it to seek their own selfish gain. It makes no difference, though – they will always be hired over someone poorer, with fewer connections.

Sheryl is concerned that her tutor will become a freedom fighter if the occasion arises in the next ten years. While a small Cambodian middle class is developing in some ways, in other ways the gap between rich and poor is widening, and unemployment is an epidemic. Marie Ens, working here for decades, describes Cambodia as “a skyscraper built over a pit:” its glitzy new neighborhoods and showy business districts are so steeped in corruption that they are doomed to collapse. In several ways, conditions are parallel to life just before the Khmer Rouge. At that time, it was disillusioned intellectuals who rallied the peasants and gathered an army to overthrow the rich and powerful. Khmer Rouge leaders Pol Pot and his comrades, while attending university in France, learned about Communism and saw more hope in it than in the rigidly hierarchical status quo. But the only way in which they really achieved equality for all is that millions of rich and poor alike perished under their regime.

A Khmer colleague says that Cambodians don’t like to learn from their mistakes; they tend to be fatalistic rather than closely analyzing cause and effect relationships. So it’s not surprising that Cambodians have largely refused to address the repercussions of this genocide. Most older people don’t ever discuss it or tell their stories, and the government schools twist history to blame the Vietnamese for Khmer Rouge atrocities. Unlike Germans, who almost obsess about the Nazis and bend over backward to avoid any semblance of repeating history, the Khmer often ignore their painful legacy. So Sheryl feels that Cambodia is ripe for another revolution. The only way to avoid it is, she theorizes, if the cultural mentality very gradually shifts. So far, there’s no evidence that it has been, but God’s grace is mighty.

Being here has shown me how little I know about the future: not only for myself, but for my friends and my host country. If a revolution were to break out, my Khmer students would likely be in grave danger: they’re a minority religion, have foreign connections, and are well-educated. Any one of those would have gotten them killed under Pol Pot’s regime. I don’t want to be pessimistic or fearful, but nor do I want to pretend that the status quo is permanent. I just finished teaching 1984 in British Literature, and the most poignant discussion we had was on a Christian’s response to torture. Part of my job as a teacher is to equip my students for the future. All I know how to do is to keep pointing them toward the truth and pray that God will strengthen them to walk by faith, wherever He asks them to go. And I can rejoice that regardless of the short-term, ultimately their future IS secure and glorious: with Him forever!