Chapter Forty-Seven - On the Brink: of a Dark History

Cambodian travel guide Tek Leng grew up in a country devastated by war, genocide, and poverty.  He works now taking tourists through old prisons and mass graves turned into memorials and museums and he preaches a Buddhist mentality about acceptance and letting go of the past so you can face the future.

Tek Leng, 45, was born soon after the end of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide in Cambodia. His, like every family in the country, lost loved ones to the killing fields. He grew up in the countryside along the Mekong River amidst staggering poverty and mass PTSD. Schools were not operating, teachers, like doctors, engineers and government officials had been mostly all murdered. He has talked extensively  with his two teen-aged daughters  about what he calls the Dark History of Cambodia and he earns his living as a licensed guide taking tourists around mass graves and old prisons converted now into museums and memorials. He calls it a passion to share the terror and the rebirth of his culture with others. English was the key for Leng. After Cambodia reopened to the world following 1993 elections, sponsored by the United Nations, he began learning English in bits and pieces, even biking for 40 miles a day for six months to take lessons in a city school. For his country, he maintains, Buddhist therapy has been the salvation. Cambodians, he said, have had to move on and leave the horrors of the past, leaving aside anger and longings for retribution.