Wounds take a long time to heal here

Wounds take a long time to heal here.  A scratch on the skin of my strong and healthy children used to heal within a day or two in the United States.  Here, it’s at least a week, sometimes more.  Perhaps it’s the air quality as thousands of cars, motos and tuk-tuks pump unregulated toxins into…

It was three years before I visited S21

Crystal’s recent reflections on visiting Tuol Sleng have had me thinking about my own experience. I lived in Cambodia for almost three years before I visited Tuol Sleng. I saw Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch) in person before I set foot in the place where he committed his most horrible crimes. This will be a…

Tuol Sleng

This afternoon I visited Tuol Sleng, the torture prison set up in a former high school during the Khmer Rouge. Through an audio tour I learned about the Khmer Rouge’s goals, methods, and finally their fall from power.  Similar to the concentration camps in Germany, the documentation of the people who were “processed” is abundant,…