I am on one of my writing breaks in Silver City. My host loaned me this book. Although most of the time I choose to read fiction, I flipped through this book reading only the sections that caught my eyes.
Here I confessed that I have not been to Cambodia. Although my church Sunday School teachers have been to Burma, Laos and Cambodia for years, I have not thought of spending my hard saved funds to travel so far. While I lived in Silver City, I have been to Southern and Northern Thailand a number times teaching English in Camps for orphans. Now that I reside in the capital, my efforts have been diverted to Borneo.
I do have a cousin who have been to Cambodia yearly for at least ten times. She had served in every possible capacity on mission trips: teaching, speaking, encouraging, visitation, child care, food preparation, cooking, washing dishes, praying... When I asked her why Cambodia, she had to think for awhile before replying: she loves the gentle and simple people there.
Here in the above book I read that Cambodia not only went through successive wars and genocide, even after two years of UN peacekeeping and transitional governance, the entrenched corruption still went on. While it was possible for Japan, Germany, and South Korea to rebuild and enter into democratic and stable rule; it did not work for Cambodia. At the time of publication of the above mentioned book, Cambodia was the poorest country in Asia. Yet, by the turn of the 14th century, Angkor was then the largest city in the world. This city, the seat of the throne then, had a population approaching 1 million people living on a tract of land more than twice the size of Los Angeles.
No comments:
Post a Comment