ONLY ONE PERSON

I was thirty years old when Anna Marie and I decided to give away all our accumulated wealth and start over. We decided to start listening to a different drummer and restructure our value system. I decided to give the best of my life for the rest of my life helping other people be better off. That was the best business decision I ever made. That one decision set into motion unforeseeable consequences and an exhilarating adventure full of challenge and reward. That adventure took me to nearly every corner of this earth and taught me time and again, as someone has said, “To the world you may be only one person, but to one person you may be the world.” 

One day my travels took me to Madras and Salem in the southern part of India. Project C.U.R.E. had promised to deliver donated medical goods to needy orphanages and medical clinics in the region. When I finished my agenda in India, I traveled on to Singapore. My next venue was Hong Kong, where I had meetings scheduled with a number of nongovernmental organization leaders operating in mainland China. But in Hong Kong I had a most memorable meeting that had absolutely nothing to do with either governmental or nongovernmental agencies.

Upon arrival at the Hong Kong airport, I hailed a taxi and rode to the downtown Kowloon Hotel. Once settled into my room, I made my way to the dimly lighted restaurant and ordered dinner. Minutes later they seated a white-haired gentleman at the table next to me. He was trying to read the menu in the near darkness, and he had apparently forgotten his glasses. I knew exactly what he was going through. So, without saying a word, I took off my glasses, leaned across the chair, and laid the glasses on his table. It caught him so by surprise, he stumbled all over himself thanking me for noticing his plight. He admitted that he was about to randomly point to something on the menu and hope for the best. We began to chat, and after I had finished my dinner and was finishing my tea, he invited me over to his table.

My new friend lived in New Zealand and was a successful businessman, coming to Asia often in his line of business. He had been buying and selling umbrellas for more than twenty-seven years. He inquired about what I did, and I shared with him about Project C.U.R.E. He asked a million questions, and my answers kept getting more involved. He looked directly into my eyes and surmised, “You can’t do what you are doing without being a deeply religious man.” I told him that once I wasn’t, but several years before, everything changed. That opened the flood gates of emotion for him.

He told me that just three weeks prior, the diagnosis had been confirmed that he had cancer—the same kind that had taken his mother within a span of ten months after her diagnosis. They assured him that he would not have even the ten months to live. I went through two more cups of tea as I simply sat quietly and listened to him pour out his heart. He had pretty well figured out what he was going to do with his business, but he painfully struggled as we discussed the effects his death would have on his wife and his grown children. “My wife begged me to not take this business trip to Hong Kong. But I absolutely knew I had to travel from New Zealand to Hong Kong and check into the Kowloon Hotel. You reached over and loaned me your glasses, but you did more. You allowed me to use your vision and see through your eyes to discover hope and confidence and a future for my family.”

I left the restaurant that night very humbled just to think that God would bring one man from New Zealand and one man from Colorado all the way to Hong Kong in order to strike a match and kindle a flame of hope and encouragement in the heart of a needy traveler. “To the world you may be only one person, but to one person you may be the world.”
 

PROBLEM SOLVING (Part 2)

It seems to me that the true mark of wisdom is being able to see miracles in what everybody else sees as problems. That requires a new set of eyes. Norman Vincent Peale used to say, “How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself—so always think positively.”

Problem solving is, in reality, only one part of a larger issue. Before you can arrive at the problem-solving function, it’s necessary to correctly identify the problem and then accurately define the problem. Without identifying and clearly defining the problem, you won’t be able to move from a given state to a desired goal. Most people would agree that problem solving, sometimes referred to as a higher-order cognitive skill, is one of the most complex processes of the intellectual function. Acquiring this skill usually requires concentration and hard work, because our normal tendency is to get so busy trying to mop the floor that we ignore simple acts like shutting off the running faucet.

An adage of the eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire has been an encouragement to me: “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” Perhaps that philosophical approach inspired Albert Einstein to offer this observation about his problem solving abilities: “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

People sometimes ask me what I was doing in Brazil before I started Project C.U.R.E. I was engaged in the exciting adventure of economic problem solving. My prior economic commitments in the countries of Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela acquainted me with the concept of debt-for-equity exchanges, sometimes referred to as “debt swaps.”

When I went to Brazil, I began working directly with Brazil’s president, José Sarney, and his chief economist, Antonio Bacelar. Brazil was experiencing runaway inflation of nearly 3,000 percent. The country had borrowed millions of dollars from US banks and was incapable of repaying those loans. Brazil was in real trouble.

Our first two steps in problem solving were to (1) identify the problem, and (2) clearly define the problem. Once we had accomplished that, we could start solving the problem. Identifying the problem was simple: Brazil had defaulted on its loan obligations. Defining the problem was a bit more complicated.

The US government, the World Bank, and the United Nations had coerced many US banks into making sizable loans to foreign countries for economic relief measures. Instead of our government simply handing over large sums of money to the United Nations, who in turn would hand out the monies to needy foreign countries, it pressured our banks to make the loans directly to these countries. That sounded like a great problemsolving strategy to bypass the inefficient United Nations and World Bank.

The banks, following prudent underwriting procedures, insisted that the sovereign countries sign promissory notes guaranteeing the repayment of the loans. Perhaps the United Nations or the World Bank could have allowed the foreign countries to default on the loans by just writing them off as “bad debts.” But individual banks in America were under the tight scrutiny of the US federal bank examiners and federal agencies like the FDIC and couldn’t just write off their bad loans.

Under the Nixon administration in the 1970s, when the US economy was cut loose from the gold standard, banks were allowed to use foreign sovereign debt instruments as credits toward their necessary fractional reserves. But it was considered high risk to make foreign sovereign loans, and it would spell utter disaster for US banks should those foreign loans ever go into default.

Not surprisingly, by the mid-1980s, many of the foreign countries were in default to the US banks. Some South American governments simply shrugged their shoulders and said, “Sorry, we can’t make good on our loan repayment commitments.” Once the foreign loan instruments were declared nonperforming loans, the US banks had to start writing them off. If they had counted the loans as part of their fractional reserves, the banks’ total lending ratios would have shrunk by approximately twenty times the amount of the nonperforming loans. Then the banks’ assets and lending powers would have begun to implode. The other part of the problem included the fact that the US banks couldn’t accept and hold foreign assets to satisfy the loans.

Now for solving the problem. Brazil’s chief economist and I poured our efforts into putting together the Libra Proposal for Brazil that utilized the concept of debt-for-equity swaps. An outside group of individuals, or an entity, would agree to purchase a bad loan at an attractive discount from a US bank, and the new note would heal the bank. Thereupon, the new holders of the foreign note would take the note to Brazil’s government, which owed the debt, and agree to swap the note for some of the country’s assets to settle the debt. Those assets could include governmentcontrolled exports; natural resources such as oil concessions, mineral rights, and raw land; real estate, government-owned buildings, fishing rights, rights to ports and harbors; or any other service or commodity of equally agreed-upon value. Simply put, the indebted country could use its own assets to settle the debt when it couldn’t come up with the cash to pay. And everyone was better off.

The key to problem solving is to focus on identifying and defining the problem with new eyes of creativity until the solution becomes apparent.

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PROBLEM SOLVING

Albert Einstein once said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This rang true for the vast majority of countries in which I worked for more than three decades. Most of these countries were in dire financial straits. There were observable and definable reasons why those financial problems existed. Long-standing patterns of economic and cultural abuse impeded financial growth and failed to alleviate poverty. Nearly all the dictators promised free health care and rural electrical service for the masses, but none sufficiently delivered on those promises. As a rule, most constituents were confined to subsistence farming and lacked access to markets. To break the shackles of dictatorial bondage, a different kind of thinking was required.

In the past several decades, some very creative ideas have been applied to those age-old economic problems. The implementation of cottage industries and microlending programs made a significant impact not only by facilitating market access and individual involvement in enterprise but by alleviating poverty as well.

Prior to founding Project C.U.R.E., I was involved in the investment and real-estate-development business. My success in earlier business ventures had partly resulted from a childhood understanding and use of the basic, old-fashioned concepts of countertrade and barter. As I alluded to earlier, the fundamental principle at the heart of a successful barter transaction, and in fact, the basis for all successful free-market endeavors is that everybody in the deal must end up better off.

Based on the barter-and-trade concepts I included in my first book What’cha Gonna Do with What’cha Got?, I received an invitation to speak at an economic gathering at the Ambassador West Hotel in Chicago on April 17, 1984. The purpose for the closed meeting was to explore ways to increase market share into lesser developed countries through international countertrade and barter. We hoped that as a result of our deliberations, we could find a way to bypass the unfair manipulation and corruption of the dictators and their cohort governments, who were skimming revenues off the top of their countries’ economies through exorbitant inflation and phony currency exchange rates. In attendance were top US leaders of commerce and international business. I shared with the group what I knew about the subject and then listened very carefully as others discussed their experiences and needs.

There was such a great need for what we were trying to accomplish in the global economy! We were endeavoring to use a different kind of thinking to solve economic problems that had been created with flawed thinking.

Many of the issues we were trying to resolve reminded me of what Armand Hammer, one of my entrepreneurial heroes, had encountered as an international businessman. Creativity and ingenuity would be the answer to working around the greed, corruption, and bureaucracies of markets and governments in the developing world.

About halfway through the guarded sessions, I began to realize that I wasn’t there so much because I had a lot of magic bullets to offer, but because I needed to hear what was being said and consider the concepts being proposed. My thinking began to change during and after that Chicago meeting.

Shortly after the gathering, I was invited to attend a special economic focus meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. During the welcoming speech, we were told, “You are all economists, and we have brought you together to brainstorm how to develop practical economic models for lesser-developed countries. You are asked to be as creative as possible, using such economic components as countertrade, barter, cottage industries, microlending, incentive credits, or anything else you can think of. There are no holds barred as you put your economic models together.”

The meeting leaders went on to explain that the people living in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) would remain in bondage as long as they were controlled by the economic practices of repressive and manipulated governments. Changes would need to take place to free people from the systems of closed and oppressive economies. In other words, we couldn’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking that was used when they were created.

We were divided into teams; seated at large, round tables; and instructed to get to work. We began by reviewing such classical economic concepts as scarcity, choice, and cost; land, labor, capital, and the entrepreneur; supply and demand; methods of fiscal responsibility; and closed economies versus free markets. We discussed the need to have a responsible government that could guarantee the enforcement of contracts and agreements. We included the necessity of having exclusive rights of private property to hold or transfer, and free enterprise with the possibility of personal incentives and profits. At our table, we included anything else we could think of to work into the mix.

The result of that meeting in Indianapolis was extremely significant not only in its application to future programs in the LDCs but as one of the touchstones in the developing economic philosophy of an organization that eventually became known as Project C.U.R.E.

To this day, we at Project C.U.R.E. are realizing in even greater measure that we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

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CAMBODIA JOURNAL - 1999 (Part 7)

Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Hong Kong: Monday, November 15, 1999: Sally and Pitou arrived at the hotel early to take me out to breakfast, far away from the hotel’s chicken-giblet porridge. Sardm Mey, a man with the ministry of transportation who is in charge of railroad safety in Cambodia, drove us in his car. He’s part of the CMC team but wasn’t available to join us yesterday on our thirteen-hour road trip. Yim Youdavann, the other ministry lady, also joined us.

When we got to the restaurant, guess what they had for breakfast? That’s right, chicken-giblet porridge and deep-fried bread. I asked if I could just have a simple bowl of noodles.

I didn’t have to be at the airport until about 3:00 p.m., so the morning was quite relaxed. Pitou wanted me to look at some articles of metal and some carved wooden furniture and rattan items for possible export to the US. If a market for any of the items can be identified, then Pitou will take it on as a project to possibly get the rural people involved in cottage industries to make the items to sell in the US. I told him my time is really packed full with the medical demands of Project C.U.R.E., but I would be happy to keep an ear open for any obvious possibilities.

I had to admit that the sightseeing and shopping in Phnom Penh did get a little out of hand, because I found exactly what I’ve been looking for to give Anna Marie next summer for our fortieth wedding anniversary. But since this journal entry is in advance of our anniversary date, I won’t disclose what I purchased for her.

While we were riding along, I couldn’t help reviewing the subject of Pol Pot’s ruthlessness and the fact that the incredible crimes of his regime have been ignored and the criminals have never been brought to justice. As we rode, Pitou added more bits of information to the story that he hadn’t already shared with me.

It amazes me how quickly I’ve become close friends with Sally, Pitou, the CMC team, as well as Setan, Randa, and Dr. Yutheasa. At the airport, they hung on to me as if I had also escaped from Cambodia’s terrible nightmare. Perhaps the even stronger bond we have is that of mutual love as we share in God’s grace and love.

As I flew back to Bangkok, Thailand, and caught a taxi to the Rama Gardens Hotel, my mind drifted back to everything I’ve learned on this trip about the rise of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s bloody regime, and the horrors of the killing fields of Cambodia. I don’t want to run the risk of redundancy but I do want to review in my own mind and capsulate in simplicity what I have learned about the dark history of Cambodia. I want to remember what I have learned.

Setan explained to me that the Khmer Rouge flourished and controlled Southeast Asia from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. It was deeply rooted in the cultural and political soil of Southeast Asia and China. The Khmer Rouge built the Angkor Wat temple, the world’s largest religious building, which is still Cambodia’s most cherished national symbol.

During my conversations with Dr. Yutheasa, I began to understand that the French colonization of Cambodia in the 1860s didn’t do away with the pure Khmer ideology. Maybe it only tainted the ideology, and the Khmer deemed it necessary to purge it from Cambodia.

It also makes sense to me that when Cambodia was granted independence from France in 1953, Prince Norodom Sihanouk devised an ambitious plan to reunite the Khmer empire. But Pol Pot and his radical Communists overpowered Prince Sihanouk’s monarchy. They terrorized and purged the Cambodian society from 1975 to 1979, until Vietnam invaded the country and cut short the Khmer Rouge’s aggressive plans to expand the old empire.

When Vietnam withdrew in 1989, they left an intact government, with Hun Sen as prime minister. Hun Sen was also a Khmer Rouge member, as was Prince Sihanouk. In 1990, Hun Sen, the Khmer Rouge, the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, and supporters of Prince Sihanouk agreed to adopt a United Nations plan that created a Supreme National Council as an interim government and arranged for free elections to be held in 1993. The elections would be fair, peaceful, and free and would decide the new leadership. Four and a half million voters turned out and elected Prince Sihanouk as their leader, and he wasn’t even running as a candidate.

In a compromise, a new constitution was drawn up that declared Prince Sihanouk king of the kingdom of Cambodia with no administrative powers and granted Hun Sen and Sihanouk’s son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, shared administrative power as joint prime ministers. Since then, Hun Sen has become the only prime minister, and the prince has become speaker of the legislature. All the confusion spurred Pol Pot to restart his purging machine through guerrilla warfare in five of the twenty-one provinces of Cambodia.

Eventually government troops quelled the guerrilla gangs, and Pol Pot was declared dead in 1997. But strange as it may seem, before he died, he threw his support in favor of the prince and the Khmer Rouge.

My curiosity about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge will keep me searching for answers in the future. It’s no wonder that when I asked Dr. Yutheasa or Pitou or Setan about those years, they just rolled their eyes and said, “From the outside, it’s hard to understand the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian people.”

It’s as if everyone is still a cotton tree, seeing nothing, thinking nothing, and saying nothing. But it makes a lot of sense to me why nothing has ever been done about the torture and murder of three million Cambodians in the worst kind of terrorism. And it makes sense to me why no effort has been made, or ever will be made, to bring the criminals to justice. No one wants to start unraveling the mystery or opening up the past, because even today the king, the prime minister, and all the other power centers are Khmer Rouge and are still closely tied philosophically, if not personally, to the Khmer Rouge organization throughout Southeast Asia, including Thailand and China. Everyone seems to understand full well that an investigation would implicate not only Pol Pot but nearly everyone else who is currently in power. Every Cambodian leader in some way bears some responsibility for the killing fields, and no one wants to open it up and reveal the level of involvement or the guilt associated with the atrocities committed between 1975 and 1979.

As one person said to me, “There has been too much bloodshed, there has been too much violence, and there has been too much sorrow and grief. Now is the time to forget everything and move on. Trying to dig into the past would only start the process all over again. It’s time to move on and live life and just put the killing fields behind us.”

Monday, November 15–Tuesday, November 16

After spending the night in Bangkok, I caught United flight 2 at 8:05 a.m. to Hong Kong. We changed equipment and were scheduled to resume the flight to Los Angeles at 12:10. But lo and behold, our Boeing 747 sprang an oil leak, and our flight was delayed and rescheduled to leave for the US at 7:30 p.m. By the time we actually departed Hong Kong and arrived in Los Angeles, we were well over eight hours late.

I know it might seem narrow-minded and quite impossible to believe, but United Airlines didn’t volunteer to hold my connecting flight from Los Angeles to Denver for those eight hours. Therefore, I had to play the standby and wait-list games to make a Denver connection and work my way back home. I must admit I was quite exhausted by the time I reached home and my own bed.

Cambodia is an extremely needy country, but I have confidence that God is going to allow Project C.U.R.E. to do a significant work in that shattered land in Southeast Asia.

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CAMBODIA JOURNAL - 1999 ( Part 6)

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Saturday, November 13, 1999: I was up at 4:30 a.m. Pitou, Sally, and I were going to try to cram everything we’d planned for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday into one day. I grabbed a little breakfast at 5:30 a.m. My stomach just wouldn’t respond positively to the thought of chicken-giblet porridge, so I settled for a pot of hot green tea and some good french bread with jam. Pitou and Sally wanted me to meet their team, so we arranged to take a thirteen-hour road trip together.

On our way out of town, we picked up Yim Youdavann, the government ministry lady who went with us on Wednesday to Takeo and to Angkor Chey. Sally’s brother, Sam Victor Thong, from Long Beach, California, also joined us. He escaped to the US with Pitou and Sally in 1975 and returned to Cambodia for the first time a year ago. He decided to join Sally and Pitou to help improve the lives of his countrymen.

As was explained before, Sally and Pitou’s experience with the Khmer Rouge wasn’t quite as traumatic as Setan’s and Randa’s. They were both in Thailand when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took over the country, so they traveled directly from Thailand to the United States, where they were given political asylum in California. They lost everything and were separated for many years from family members, but Pitou was able to find employment as a civil engineer in Long Beach right away and was employed with the same department for twenty-five years before he retired with honor. They both became US citizens and returned to Phnom Penh for a visit in 1989. Both agreed that one day they would return to help the rural people of Cambodia. They both accepted Christ at a church in Long Beach and are now wonderful Christians. It was interesting to see that now other members of their family, like Sam Thong, are joining them in their efforts to help the Cambodian people.

The doctor who is a friend of Pitou’s and went with us to assess the military hospital in Phnom Penh, accompanied us today. His name is Dr. Hai Loewy Kauv, and he is part of Pitou’s medical team. Rounding out the team are Sary Som from the ministry of interior; Bun Thoeun Sao, a safety officer with the police department; and Chhoeuy Meas, a teacher at a Phnom Penh high school. The team goes by the name CMC (Cambodian Methodist Council).

Three other men, all of whom are Koreans, work with Pitou and Sally but aren’t part of the CMC team. Pitou and Sally refer to them as their Tapioca Team. Jay Shin is a professional tapioca buyer; Nam Pyo Hong lived in Hanoi, Vietnam, for fifteen years and is currently an overseer at a factory in Phnom Penh; and Se Ha Yoo represents a bulk-commodities shipping company in Phnom Penh, SK Shipping, where he works as the general manager.

One of Pitou’s projects is to coordinate contracts between tapioca farmers and buyers. He gets buyers to sign a purchase contract and then gets rural farmers who have already agreed to work together to sign a contract to grow the tapioca. In the past, after the farmers had grown the crop and harvested it, the buyers would either cut the price so drastically at harvest time that no money could be made from the sale, or sometimes the buyers didn’t even show up to take the crop, and the farmers were left with spoiled tapioca and no money for the year’s efforts. Pitou’s plan to coordinate the production and sale of the tapioca should benefit everyone in the deal.

The Tapioca Team was joining us today to get acquainted with Project C.U.R.E. and view some of the tapioca farms.

There were too many of us for one van, so Pitou hired another van and driver. Our route took us south and east out of Phnom Penh toward Vietnam through the province of Kandal. Once out of the heart of Phnom Penh, it didn’t take us long to run into more Grand Canyon roads. The motorcycles were actually traveling much faster than we were because they could more easily swerve around the washouts and huge potholes.

About 11:00 a.m., one of the van’s engines threw off a fan belt from the water pump and generator. The diesel engine quickly overheated, and the driver was forced to pull to the side of the road. Spare parts aren’t readily available in rural Cambodia, so we were stuck. Sally had brought along some steamed rice and meat, and we had plenty of drinking water, so about fifteen of us sat alongside the country road and had an early lunch.

Then the team members fanned out and went in search of a properly fitting fan belt. Since I didn’t know how to say, “Fan belt for Mitsubishi van” in Cambodian, I stayed with the vehicle.

About two hours later, a belt was located, and all the male helpers managed to repair the problem. But when the driver tried to start the engine, he found that a couple of the valves were sticking because the engine had overheated, and the van wouldn’t even pull its own weight, let alone all the passengers.

From that point on in the journey, we all got real friendly and cozy and very well acquainted. All fourteen of us, plus the driver, piled into one van, and we proceeded on our thirteen-hour journey. I forgot to add that there was no air-conditioning in the van.

When we arrived in the town of Neak Leung, we waited to cross by ferry over the Mekong River. We picked a national-holiday weekend for our trip, so hundreds of people were packed in the backs of trucks and trailers headed for other towns to visit family and friends. The ferryboats were crossing the wide river as fast as possible, and the town was crowded with vendors selling their steamed shrimp, roasted bananas, cooked chickens, fruits, cakes, fried breads, and Coca-Cola. The vendors carried big platters on their heads and sold to the hungry people in the trucks waiting to cross the river.

The three men from Korea all speak very good English. They asked some leading questions about Project C.U.R.E., and I, without blushing or shame, took outright advantage of their captivity inside the van. I told them all about the eighty countries into which we are shipping donated medical supplies and equipment, and how we procure and distribute the goods.

Then they asked the leading question. “Well, Dr. Jackson, if you don’t receive any salary for what you’re doing, why do you leave your home and travel all over the world to do it?”

Bingo!

I started telling my story from the very beginning about the change God brought about in my life, and the fact that I’m the happiest man in the world. They just sat in shock and said nothing. I decided to interrupt the quiet time and tell them that I needed them to help me. I needed Se Ha Yoo, the shipping man, to introduce me to people in the industry who could start shipping containers around the world at no cost for Project C.U.R.E.

I suggested that Mr. Shin and Mr. Hong find organizations, industrialists, and businessmen to get involved in helping us finance the operation of Project C.U.R.E. The slow, hot, crowded ride wasn’t turning out so badly after all.

From the ferryboat crossing at Neak Leung, we headed almost straight north to the city of Prey Veng. About thirty minutes out of Prey Veng, a rural area with about four thousand families and no health-care facility, the Tapioca Team agreed that if Pitou can secure the supplies and equipment, they will build a nice clinic. The health ministry has already agreed to staff the venture if the facility is available.

After viewing two alternative sites for the new clinic in Prey Veng, we continued our trip northward to the province of Kampong Cham via the city of Chup. As we headed west at Chup, we traveled through miles of land where the jungle had been cleared years ago, and rubber trees were planted. The trees are very mature now and have probably been producing rubber for a long time.

Once again we ran into the giant Mekong River meandering its way through the country to the South China Sea. At the town of Tonlé Bet, we waited in line in the hot sun for a ferryboat to take us to the west side of the river.

During our time together, individual team members wanted to talk about Project C.U.R.E. and my strange story of giving away my accumulated wealth to follow God’s leading. I could tell that the story bothered them.

The shipping manager said, “How could you possibly do that? I spend every minute of my time trying to earn money for myself.”

My response was simple, “And just what do you plan to do with it all when that’s all you have and nothing else?”

By that time darkness had fallen in the jungle and over the rice paddies, but vivid memories were stuck in my head. In my mind as I closed my eyes, I could still see against the blue Cambodian sky, the silhouettes of thousands of simple thatched- and tin-roofed houses built on stilts. I could still see families sitting in their covered-table areas close to the road as they entertained family members and neighbors. Some rural family members hand-thrashed the stalks of rice by beating the rice heads against a slanted board, which caught the rice and directed it to the ground. I could still see the big black water buffalo wallowing in the harvested rice fields and munching on the stubble.

In my mind were pictures of old women spreading the rice on mats alongside the road so that the breeze from passing cars and trucks would blow away the chaff. I could see literally thousands of small Cambodian children swimming and diving in the muddy water in the rivers and ditches. And of course, I could still see countless motorcycles streaming past me, and the many miles of pothole-ridden roads built on top of the rice-field dikes.

To be able to be in Cambodia mingling with the people, not as a tourist, but as someone who has come to help them in their time of need, is an inexpressible privilege. For some reason, God has placed a deep love and concern way down inside of me for the hurting people in his universe. I never dreamed I would fall in love with the Asian people, who have so many needs and whose lives are so complex.

The cities of Vat Nokor and Skuon rushed by in the darkness, and off in the distance, I could see the lights of Phnom Penh. I’m happy and thankful that I followed through with the last-minute plans to travel to Cambodia. Maybe I will return someday, or maybe I will just live with vivid memories locked inside my head. But by being obedient and traveling to Cambodia, something has been set into action, and once Project C.U.R.E. containers start finding their way into this country, the health-care system and the lives of hurting, needy people will never be the same. On this dark Cambodian night, I wonder what the future will hold in this exciting, ongoing adventure.

Next Week: Trying to draw lines between the dots so that I will never forget Cambodia

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CAMBODIA JOURNAL - 1999 (Part 5)

Genocide Museum: Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Friday 12,1999: The first thing Setan and Randa wanted me to see after lunch was the genocide museum. “If you don’t see the museum,” they insisted, “you’ll never understand the Cambodian people or the challenges of the gospel ministry in Cambodia.”

The museum, which is housed in a former high school, was located on a Phnom Penh side street. When Pol Pot took command of the Khmer Rouge and began rounding up the “enemies of the people,” he commandeered the high school as his prison and torture chamber. The idea was to have a convenient place where his enemies could be taken for ruthless inquisitions that would force them to implicate and give evidence against others, who would then be put on the list for annihilation. Not many of Pol Pot’s suspected enemies were just conveniently shot without first being run through the torture chamber to incriminate others who might secretly like music or own books or magazines or attend a temple or be related to a monk.

If the Khmer Rouge wanted to eliminate someone, they simply needed to find the least bit of evidence against that person. Or they would use death threats against a man and his wife or children to force him to confess that another person was an enemy of the people. Then that person would be arrested, interrogated, tortured, and eventually killed.

Pol Pot started his murderous campaign with his own friends and those in any leadership position. At the beginning, in order to document and justify their actions, the Khmer Rouge took photographs of every person, recorded the words and evidence gathered against them, and documented their deaths. Later they didn’t bother with all the formalities and just got straight to the business of killing three million people. Their uncontrollable thirst for killing escalated, and in just four years, the atrocities grew to unbelievable proportions.

At first Setan and Randa quietly guided me room by room through the old, three-story high school situated in a lovely campus setting. There were about five main buildings, all with three levels. Some rooms contained the beds, shackles, and instruments of torture, and even pictures of the tortured, dead victims.

Holes had been knocked in the walls at the ends of each classroom to allow the guards and prisoners to move from one room to another without using the outside porch entrance. Bricks and concrete had been used to construct four-by-four-foot holding pens inside the classrooms. There were about thirty holding pens inside each classroom.

Pictures of the inquisition teams, the torture teams, and the execution squads were proudly displayed in the hallways. Even Pol Pot’s picture with his closest men taking part in the killings was displayed. Each person would pose with a big smile displaying the confidence he felt about doing such a great and honorable thing for the advancement of Communism and a perfect society. The grand inquisitor even had his picture taken at the torture area with his wife and baby.

Wall after wall in the old high school displayed the photos of those rounded up and brought to the prison. Each male and female prisoner had a handwritten identification number pinned to his or her shirt. Babies were imprisoned with their mothers. Pictures showed how, under interrogation, a crying baby would be ripped away from the mother; then a guard would toss the baby into the air, and another guard would impale the child on the bayonet of his rifle as the baby fell. Babies were also taken outside with the mothers who were being tortured. A mother’s hands were tied behind her back, and a rope was thrown over the old chinning bar, which still stands in the playground. Then the mother was hoisted up to the top of the tallest bar by her wrists, which were still secured behind her, and they made her hang there while they smashed her baby’s head against a nearby tree.

It’s my understanding that over two hundred thousand people went through the high school prison and were ultimately killed there after the Khmer Rouge extracted any useful information from them.

We quietly proceeded through the school until Setan showed me a picture of his family doctor and another picture of one of his closest childhood schoolmates. Then the talk began flowing nonstop. Randa, with tears in her eyes, told me how her father, who had two PhD degrees and was the president of the University of Phnom Penh, was arrested because he was educated, and he was tortured and killed while her mother, brothers, and sisters fled the city for safety.

We walked past the air-conditioned building where Pol Pot and his men reviewed the information gleaned from the enemy prisoners and made up their lists of who should be eliminated next. The fiendish orgy of torture and killing increased in momentum and intensity from 1975 to 1979. No one really knows what would have happened had the Vietnamese not invaded Cambodia and driven Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge into hiding in the mountains.

The instruments of torture, the drowning tanks, the electrical shocking apparatus, and other devices are still on display in the high school for curious and horrified visitors to see. In the final room were pictures of skulls and bones that had been unearthed in the killing fields. The government of Cambodia tries to downplay the number of victims by saying, “Somewhere around a million people were killed,” but the records pretty well speak for themselves, and the numbers displayed on the walls of the old prison testify that at least three million people were killed.

The best Cambodian leaders, the best teachers, the best musicians and artists, the best actors and actresses, the best historians, the best mathematicians, the best in the medical field, and the most educated civilians were all brutally murdered in the name of atheistic Communism. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were convinced that all they needed to do was reengineer society, and everything would be just right.

Setan and Randa were in a bit of shock when we left the premises. They had just relived the horrors of their teenage years one more time. As we were riding back through the streets of Phnom Penh, Setan asked if I would like to view the videotape of their involvement during the killing-field years. Just last year, Trinity Broadcasting Network engaged Christian actors and actresses to reenact Setan’s and Randa’s stories. The documentary will be shown not only in America but also throughout Cambodia as a Christian-outreach tool. I told Setan and Randa that I’d be honored to view the hour-long video. So we drove to their one-room office/apartment/ministry headquarters, which is located above a storefront.

The video picked up the story at the time when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge came to power. Setan was a medical student, and while at home at a party, the young radical Khmer Rouge troops rolled in with military trucks and automatic weapons and killed some of Setan’s friends right on the spot. The survivors were rounded up and sent to the Khmer Rouge’s agrarian work camps. Part of the work-camp objective was to use cruelty and exhaustion to break the survivors down emotionally and mentally so they would become obedient and compliant.

The video picked up Randa’s story as her father hugged her and told her he was going away. He told her that now she was responsible for the well-being of the family and must take care of them while he was gone. She protested, but her father slipped away.

For three years the killing went on before their very eyes as they were forced into slave labor. Setan related to me how the Khmer Rouge gathered several thousand teens in an auditorium and warned them that they should become cotton trees that never saw anything, never thought anything, and never said anything. The military was very serious about impressing on the teens that they must obey in every way and completely embrace Pol Pot and the Communist ideal. They emphasized their point by having a twelve-year-old get up and speak about how great Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and Communism were. The twelve-year-old was then given an AK-47 automatic machine gun, and as he was talking and waving the gun around, the military brought out his own parents with their hands tied and sat them on chairs in front of everyone. The boy shouted how his parents had given him physical birth, but that was nothing compared to the enlightenment and good society Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were giving him.

Setan said that the twelve-year-old aimed the automatic weapon at his own mother and father and shot them to death in cold blood. The generals then got up, praised the boy, and said to those in the crowd, “If our young soldiers will shoot their own parents gladly, don’t think for one moment they will not shoot you if you disobey or stand in the way of the social revolution.”

The young military commandos in charge of the work groups were especially brutal and had the authority to kill at will. At one point, a young military girl overseeing the work group caught another teenage girl trying to give Setan a small crab for additional food. As Setan protested, the female soldier placed a plastic bag over the head of the guilty girl and suffocated her in front of everyone.

At one point, a young Cambodian Christian named Pastor Paul presented the gospel story to Setan out in the jungle, and Setan became a believer. A couple of years earlier, when Setan was about to be killed, he had called out for help from the God of the universe and promised that if his life were spared, he would serve God forever.

The video of Setan and Randa continued through their efforts to escape over the border to a refugee camp in Thailand. Finally they were successful, and they were able to locate and reunite with members of their families. The story also included Setan and Randa getting married in the refugee camp in the first-ever Christian wedding.

The video ended as Setan was preaching at the refugee camp. The female soldier, whom he hated for cruelly suffocating the girl for giving him something to eat, was in the audience. He stopped preaching when he recognized her and went over to her. In front of the group, he took her by the hand, told her he was sorry for the hate he held in his heart toward her, and forgave her. The woman prayed for Jesus to forgive her and then left. Neither Setan nor Randa have seen her again.

The video carried a tremendous message of salvation and forgiveness. I could tell that visiting the genocide museum and watching the video with me exacted a toll on them.

After the killing fields, Setan and Randa moved to Denver, Colorado, where Setan graduated from Denver Seminary. They still live in Colorado, where Randa cares for their two teenage children while Setan travels back and forth to Cambodia, overseeing their evangelistic and outreach ministry to their countrymen. I assured both of them that Project C.U.R.E. will be working with Dr. Singleton in Denver and Setan’s uncle in Battambang to send their people the desperately needed medical goods and perhaps some medical teams to work in Phnom Penh and Battambang.

Next Week: Welcome to the Tapioca Team

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CAMBODIA JOURNAL - 1999 (Part 4)

Ancient Buddhist Temple: Cambodia: Thursday, November 11, 1999: A peninsula of land jutting out into a pink, water-lily-covered lake is the setting of an ancient Buddhist temple. Cut stones from a quarry a great distance away were hauled by elephants and slaves to the temple site in the early eleventh century. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the grandeur of the temple fortress. The huge stones measuring about five feet in length and three feet in width all have holes drilled through them, two holes on each of the four sides. Over the years, enemies managed to ruin parts of the fortress, but the beauty of the place is still well intact.

As we walked around and drank warm Coca-Colas, Dr. Yutheasa started talking about a little more recent history. “When Pol Pot was killing so many people, he stuffed all the Buddhist temples full of bodies. They were left there to decay and turn to skeletons.

All the religious people were killed because they couldn’t be trusted, and usually because they were educated enough to read.”

I then asked him to explain the mystery of the Pol Pot regime. “It seems to me that the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was part of a popular philosophy. There are so many similarities between Pol Pot’s actions and what took place in China’s Cultural Revolution. All the intelligent and culturally inclined people—except for the leadership intelligentsia who planned and carried out the whole terrible genocide—were accused of being ‘enemies of the people.’ They were tortured and executed, and their holdings were confiscated and divided up among the killers.”

“You understand quite a lot, Dr. Jackson” was Dr. Yutheasa’s reply. “Anyone who might ever be a challenge or a threat to the Khmer Rouge in action or philosophy was targeted for death. Somewhere around three million of Cambodia’s best people, including businessmen, doctors, teachers, and community leaders were killed off between 1975 and 1979. Then when Vietnam invaded Cambodia, Pol Pot’s slaughter stopped, but even more people were killed in the war with Vietnam. Pol Pot concentrated much of his killing around Battambang and Phnom Penh.”

“Why,” I asked, “do you think Pol Pot’s atrocities have never been punished? No one even seems to care about bringing any of the murderers to justice. In my lifetime, I have watched the Jews hunt down every prison guard and every Nazi military person involved in the genocide Hitler perpetrated on the Jewish people. But no one even seems to care about seeking justice for the three million innocent people killed in Cambodia during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. Why?”

“It’s all too complicated for a person to understand, especially one from the outside. It’s very possible that Pol Pot isn’t dead even now. Seven different times, the government has claimed that he has died. He was an old man with gray hair. But the last man they cremated as Pol Pot had very black hair. They wouldn’t allow any investigation or autopsy. Within three hours, they burned the body and destroyed all the evidence. But it would be very hard for you to understand all that, Dr. Jackson.”

The doctor became more and more comfortable talking to me about sensitive things regarding Cambodia, but he also made very sure we were out in an open spot away from buildings, cars, and other people when we talked. Even at that, his eyes were constantly moving past me to the surroundings nearby.

I asked one final question before we headed back to the van for our trip back to Battambang. “Dr. Yutheasa, you are a doctor. Why didn’t they kill you?”

He laughed nervously and kind of rolled his eyes at my personal question. “I learned to become like the cotton tree” was his answer. I left it at that.

This evening at the Teo Hotel, my mind kept working overtime comparing the hospital at Battambang and the military hospital we toured in Phnom Penh. I felt uneasy about the military hospital but felt very clear about moving ahead and helping Dr. Yutheasa in Battambang. Over the course of my unorthodox life, I’ve learned to pay close attention to gut-level feelings about people and situations. Some might attribute that to my survivor skills. But I know God has blessed me with a certain perception, and in the past, things have gone a whole lot better when I don’t ignore those insights.

The Battambang hospital was clean. The doctors and staff were happy people working hard with the little they had. Even though they were using makeshift IV poles, had no mattresses for the beds, and had to treat some of the patients out on the porches, the patients were getting love and personal care.

The military hospital in Phnom Penh was very different. In the recent past, it was Pol Pot’s military hospital and then became the Vietnamese military hospital. Now it’s the government’s military hospital. Something seems to be wrong there, beyond just not having any supplies, equipment, ambulances, or nurses. On my assessment tour, I was ushered right into the operating room while surgery was in process. The room wasn’t sterile, the doors to the hallway were left open, and people were walking through the operating room with bare feet and civilian clothes. And as I toured the postoperative rooms and the wards, it appeared that no one really cared and no one was really in charge. 

Before I went to bed, I determined that Project C.U.R.E. will help Dr. Yutheasa at the Battambang Provincial Hospital, and we’ll collect more information on the Phnom Penh hospital. Donated goods worth $400,000 wouldn’t be safe or used efficiently in an institution where people have a bad attitude and no accountability measures are in place. We could send a container of good medical supplies to such a facility, and a week later, the patients would be no better off, but the officials would all be driving new cars and motorcycles.

Friday, November 12

This morning as I ate my breakfast of chicken-giblet soup and noodles and a nice helping of french bread, I was curious as to whether Setan Lee would be at the airport in Phnom Penh when I returned to the city. As I picked most of the repulsive chicken skin and giblets out of the bowl with my chopsticks, I was pleased with the thought that I confronted him regarding his inconsideration. At least he knows my evaluation and interpretations.

Dr. Yutheasa and his driver took me to the airport. The propeller-driven airplane scheduled to take us back to Phnom Penh had experienced trouble and was over an hour late arriving at the Battambang Airport. Once we finally boarded and were in the air, I realized that it had been a while since I had flown in a commercial airplane with seats constructed of curved pipes with canvas material stretched over them. I sat behind the engine in a seat with a view out the little, round porthole windows. Again, I was amazed at how much flooding Cambodia is experiencing in the flat, central part of the country.

My questions were answered about who would pick me up at the airport in Phnom Penh. Pitou and Sally Lao were there, and so were Setan and Randa Lee.

Pitou and Sally had scheduled a full day for me, but a very repentant Setan was there to try to amend for messing up. While waiting for my luggage to be unloaded from the plane, I pulled out my Cambodia files and systematically walked with both Setan and Pitou through the chronology of Project C.U.R.E.’s Cambodian involvement over the past eighteen months. Fortunately I had all my documents, applications, and correspondence regarding Dr. Singleton’s requests and the arrangements for the entire trip. With my calendar open, I asked Setan and his wife if they were aware of each step, if they had received my e-mails, and if they were aware that I’ve been in the country since November 8 at their request.

About halfway through the questioning, I became convinced that Setan is an evangelist, not an administrator. I also concluded that Jim Groen and Greg Groh of Worldwide Leadership, who are coming from the US to Phnom Penh next week for a missionary conference, had unfairly overloaded Setan and Randa with details and expectations far beyond their capabilities in order to make their missionary conference a booming success.

Instead of being upset with Setan and Randa, I began to feel empathy for them because they had been placed in a difficult position. There was no way they could be expected to accomplish what they were assigned to do. I assured them of my support and prayers and told them I didn’t need to take any of their precious time, but that Setan’s uncle, Dr. Yutheasa, had shown me everything I needed to see in Battambang, and that I had a good report for Dr. Singleton upon my return to Denver.

But Setan and Randa insisted on spending a little time with me as a courtesy and as an act of appreciation for Project C.U.R.E.’s commitment in Cambodia.

Pitou and Sally made the situation easier by offering to postpone their plans until tomorrow and Sunday so that I could get acquainted with Setan and Randa today.

With all the interpersonal relationships smoothed over, we all headed to lunch—more boiled chicken, which had been hardened by a life of trying to outrun the motorcycles on the rural dirt roads of the province and compete with the wandering pigs for broken grains of Cambodian rice. Colonel Sanders of KFC never had it so good.

Next Week: The proof of unimaginable horror   

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CAMBODIA JOURNAL - 1999 (Part 3)

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Wednesday, November 10, 1999: The Cambodian hotel telephone systems leave much to be desired—like working! As soon as I returned to the hotel, I began trying to call Setan Lee on his cell phone. I then tried to reach Pitou Lao, thinking perhaps he could reach Setan. But I couldn’t successfully get a line out of the hotel to even reach Pitou.

I needed to make contact with somebody tonight because my flight to Battambang is scheduled to depart at 7:00 a.m., and I need to leave the hotel no later than 6:00 a.m. to catch the flight. I really expected Setan to contact me and arrange for someone to transport me to the airport. After all, I’m his guest in Cambodia! But he has made absolutely no contact with me since I arrived. I know he’s busy with a training conference, which begins next Tuesday, but it’s beginning to seem ridiculous that I traveled halfway around the world and am in the same city where Setan is, but he has never once tried to contact me at the hotel.

Finally things began to narrow down, and I purchased with US cash dollars a nonrefundable airline ticket from Phnom Penh to Battambang for tomorrow morning. But I decided to give Setan the benefit of the doubt and figured his schedule must be so very exacting that he hasn’t been able to call. The last instruction I had was that he will meet me in Battambang tomorrow. But it all does seem quite strange. Now I needed to figure out how I’ll get to the airport in the morning. So before I went to bed, I had the desk clerk schedule a taxi to pick me up at the hotel at 6:00 a.m.

I set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. so I’ll have time to pack and check out of my room.

Thursday, November 11

As I walked to the front desk in the morning, there was a call waiting for me. Pitou was worried about me and had been unable to get a telephone line through to the hotel last night. He informed me that he secured a car and driver, and he and Sally would be at the hotel in a matter of minutes to take me to the airport and see that I got off to Battambang all right. I told him that would be wonderful. I hung up the desk phone and instructed the clerk to cancel my taxi. Pitou and Sally were so gracious, and I departed on time on my President Airlines flight to Battambang. To answer Pitou’s query as to whether Setan ever got in touch with me, I answered no.

I made the trip to Battambang in an ancient twin-engine prop plane. We flew low and slow, but that gave me a good opportunity to view the rice fields, Cambodian jungles, and waterways from the air.

The touchdown and taxi to the small air terminal was uneventful. I walked down the rickety metal ladder from the plane, across the tarmac, and into the terminal to wait for my luggage. Once inside, I looked through the windows separating the baggage room from the waiting room, and I spotted a man holding a sign with “Dr. Jackson” written on it. I figured I would at last meet up with Setan Lee.

When I collected my luggage, I proceeded to shake the hand of the man holding the sign. “Hi. I’m Jim Jackson. At last I meet the elusive Mr. Setan Lee.”

“Uh no” came the staccato reply. “I’m Setan’s uncle. He’s still in Phnom Penh and won’t be able to get here until sometime tomorrow or Saturday.”

“What?” I demanded as my voice not only intensified but jumped a number of decibels in volume. “He said he couldn’t meet with me until today in Battambang, and now I’m here and he’s still in Phnom Penh? How can I talk to him immediately?”

Setan’s uncle just happened to have a cell phone with him, and within seconds he had Setan on the line.

“Setan,” I shouted, “you’ll need to explain real fast just what is going on. I have flown halfway around the world and burned up two weeks of my life being jerked around by you. Talk fast before I stop listening. Just what’s your problem?”

I thought I would take the nondirective pastoral-counseling approach and let him know that he’s okay and I’m okay, and there really aren’t any absolutes, and any choice of behavior is fully acceptable in this world, where we don’t use words like accountability or responsibility or consideration.

“Well, Dr. Jackson, I think we’ve just experienced a little bit of miscommunication.”

“Miscommunication, nothing,” I replied.

He had just crossed the threshold where tolerance begat Scotch-Irish wrath. I started at the very beginning and went right down the list to where I canceled the other trips to reschedule his, and how the e-mail I sent him back on November 5 detailed everything explicitly, and how my purchased tickets had me arriving in Cambodia Monday, November 8.

Then I stepped things up a notch, “But since Dr. Singleton in Denver said you just couldn’t meet with me until November 11 in Battambang, I got busy and located a couple I’d never even met before to pick me up at the Phnom Penh Airport and host me for three days while I waited for my supposed host to conveniently arrange his schedule to meet with me. Then I had to ask my surrogate host to contact you and confirm that I should purchase tickets to Battambang for our meeting today, only to find after I paid the money and arrived in Battambang, that my real host just didn’t find it convenient to show up but decided to stay in Phnom Penh until who knows when. No, Setan, we don’t have a bit of a communication problem. We have an entirely different kind of problem.”

His reply was, “Well, it’s your fault because you were trying to call the wrong phone number.”

“I’ve been in your town since Monday,” I replied, “and you knew where I was staying, and you never even tried to make contact with me. And it’s my fault because I was trying to call a wrong number?”

I continued, “Don’t come here. I’ll see you at the airport tomorrow morning. And since I’m here, I’ll do the honorable thing and perform the Needs Assessment Study on the Battambang Provincial Hospital if you will inform your uncle to take me there.”

When Setan’s uncle and I got into the car, I joked with him and apologized that he ended up in the middle of a distasteful and unnecessary situation. I passed a piece of paper to him and asked him to write down his name so I could remember it.

He took the paper and wrote Dr. Sim Yutheasa. When he passed it back to me, I recognized the name from the original Request for Assistance form in our office, which Dr. Jim Singleton filled out eighteen months ago.

“You’re Dr. Yutheasa? You’re Setan’s uncle?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“You’re just the man I’ve been needing to meet. Setan never said who you were or that you were the doctor I came all this way to see. If I had known how to get ahold of you, I would never have needed to rely on Setan. Are you ready to take me to your hospital?”

The whole pile of lemons that had been dumped on us was suddenly transformed into a large pitcher of lemonade. The rest of the day went just beautifully. I spent most of the day at the Battambang Provincial Hospital, where I met the hospital director and all the department heads and toured every hallway, surgery room, and patient ward. We hadn’t had just a bit of a communication problem with Setan; we had experienced a major faux pas. But God miraculously helped to iron it out so that good could be accomplished.

Dr. Yutheasa helped me get checked into a very clean, modern hotel in Battambang. The Teo Hotel was built in just the past few years and is the place where most of the city’s international guests stay. I tried not to show any signs of shock or disbelief when they told me the price for staying at their hotel would be ten US dollars per night. The price of their meals was nearly as reasonable.

As quickly as I could deposit my luggage in my room and hang out my shirts and pants to unwrinkle, I climbed back into Dr. Yutheasa’s van, and we made our way out toward the rural countryside. A lot of the Battambang Province people have abandoned their ox carts, buffalo-drawn carts, and pony carts in favor of the motorcycle. Most of the motorcycles are made in Thailand and come into Cambodia illegally through Vietnam. Not much is done to correct the problem because the government leaders benefit from the game.

A motorcycle, even if it is well used, represents a huge investment for the Cambodian people. In the city I asked one of the young men at the hotel restaurant how much he’s paid. He told me that because he can also speak English and some French, he is paid pretty well. He has to be at work at five o’clock each morning, and he serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He gets off work at 10:00 p.m. but has been able to negotiate one hour off per day to attend English school. So he puts in sixteen hours a day on the job. The other restaurant workers have to work seventeen hours per day. For that labor he receives eighteen US dollars per month—not per day or per week, but eighteen dollars per month! And his rent is ten dollars per month.

Of course, the rural people who raise and sell rice or ducks or chickens make a whole lot less than that. So when I saw a family of five riding on a motorcycle, I knew that family made a tremendous investment in that piece of machinery.

The road we took out of Battambang followed the top of a water-retention dike built for the rice fields. Nothing has been done to maintain the Cambodian roads. Travel was very slow as we picked our way through or around the ruts and craters. Eventually we arrived at our destination. Dr. Yutheasa told me the story behind the name Battambang. Somewhere in the province, a mythical warrior lost a baton or battam, which is a fighting stick. The bang part of the name means “lost.” So Battambang means “lost baton.” I personally surmise that the warrior lost his stick in one of the cavernous ruts in a Cambodian road.

Next Week: Trusting God to give me insights and wisdom.

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CAMBODIA JOURNAL - 1999 (Part 2)

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Tuesday, November 9, 1999: Sally and Pitou came to my hotel to pick me up at 8:00 a.m. It took me no time at all to finish my breakfast—a medium-sized bowl of rice soup with chicken livers, skin, and onions in it. Along with warm green tea, I considered it a real “breakfast of champions.”

We drove a couple of miles from the hotel and picked up a lady government worker who helps Sally and Pitou in their work. Our first stop was the Preah Khet Mealea Hospital on Street 47 in downtown Phnom Penh. It’s a government hospital that the military had commandeered in the past.

About the time I think I’ve seen all there is to see in the world of medical institutions and misery, reality hits me upside the head. That was my experience at the Preah Khet Mealea Hospital in Phnom Penh! It was awful. It was disgusting. It made me sad. It made me angry. It made me cry.

After an hour meeting with Dr. Pvom Kan, the chief of the hospital, we conducted our walking and photo-taking tour. The facility was once a French-style hospital, and during colonial days, it had eight hundred beds. Now it’s the pits.

In recent years, government control of the hospital has changed three times. Anyone is allowed to go to the hospital, but no one gets any medical or professional attention. There are no supplies and no instruments. I didn’t see one ventilator, respirator, EKG machine, defibrillator, monitor, or even a blood-pressure cuff in the whole place. There were almost no nurses, and all the doctors were congregated in one surgery room doing a procedure. The fact is that nearly all the doctors, nurses, and secretaries in Cambodia are dead. They were educated, and to Pol Pot that meant treason. Khmer Rouge soldiers killed off their own medical community to achieve a pure Communist society!

The hospital laboratory was pathetic, with just one working microscope and a sterilizer that works only part of the time. The X-ray machine in the radiology department is over fifty years old, and the technician showed me how they had hung up an old lead vest to shield the radiologist when he fires up the radiation-zapping machine. The roofs all leaked in the campus-style hospital buildings, and even the surgical theater had plaster falling from the ceiling. 

When we finished the tour, we stood outside, and I leaned against an old ambulance, which was an inoperative relic from a bygone era. As Pitou, Dr. Kan, and I talked, it seemed like a good plan to bring a group of doctors and nurses from the US to spend about three days out in the villages and refugee camps doing general-practice work. Then the team could spend another three days at the hospital working alongside the few doctors and nurses there. The Americans could be a great encouragement to their Cambodian colleagues. They could also bring donated medical equipment like EKG machines, monitors, and defibrillators with them and train the Cambodian hospital staff to operate the machines. There are lots of details to be worked out, but my eyes are being opened to the tremendous needs in Cambodia.

My hosts wanted to take me next to a new village south of Phnom Penh in the province of Kandal. Some NGOs had persuaded the government to set aside a small plot of land out in a rural area about an hour’s drive from Phnom Penh. People who fled their homes during the killing years settled in the mountains on both sides of the border with Thailand as well as in Vietnam. Now the refugees have been moving back to Cambodia, but they have nothing left and no place to go. Those who arrive in Phnom Penh can’t find any employment or housing, so they collect some bamboo and banana leaves and make squatters’ shelters to get their families out of the weather.

Hundreds of thousands of such refugees have been flooding back into the cities since the political climate became safer. But the refugees are creating big problems for the cities. The plot of land we were going to view was designed to hold three hundred families in little side-by-side bungalows consisting basically of one room and an outhouse. There is just enough room to live, but not to plant anything.

When we arrived, I was told that the land was made available in late August. In a little over two months, more than one hundred of the potential three hundred families have already settled there and are in the process of constructing their dwellings out of whatever they can find. The city of Phnom Penh is supplying some leftover bricks for them to use.

I met and talked with the new self-appointed mayor of the settlement. He showed me where they marked off a spot for a school and a medical clinic. They have no idea how to build or equip a medical clinic or staff a school, but the government promised to furnish them with a nurse if they can get their clinic built.

I spent some time taking pictures of the people and trying to talk to them. They all seemed very happy and excited to think they’ll soon have a roof over their heads. But with no place to plant food for their families, most of them will have to ride a bicycle or walk to and from the city each day to find work.

To show me the other side of the refugee problem, Pitou, Sally, and the government lady took me back to Phnom Penh, and we walked the muddy paths of the shanty communities and the back alleys where people are staying wherever they can set down their belongings. The people are dignified, and I could sense their embarrassment. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that they once had extended families, jobs, and accumulated possessions. But they fled for their lives to escape the murderous rampage of Pol Pot and exchanged all they formerly possessed to survive.

Near the river’s edge, where the shanty dwellings were built out over the water, we came upon a young couple with two small children. The man had a bicycle rickshaw. He wasn’t riding the rickshaw but was in front of it pulling the carriage through the mud. Inside the rickshaw were piled all their belongings. The wife was carrying two green plastic chairs and helping to push the rickshaw from behind. The two little kids ran and played along behind them.

Pitou helped interpret for me. We asked what they were doing, and they said they had settled in the squatters’ area after returning to the city to try to locate other members of their family. He had obtained the rickshaw to try to earn money pedaling people through the streets of Phnom Penh. But just a few hours earlier, the authorities came by and ordered them to move away from the shanty area or be thrown into jail. They are leaving, but they have no idea where they will end up. The sun was setting, and in the haze of the Cambodian evening, all I could read in the eyes of this refugee family was fear and frustration as they tugged on the rickshaw, slowly moving it through the sticky mud.
 
Wednesday, November 10

When Sally and Pitou picked me up at the hotel at six o’clock this morning, they presented me with an extensive proposal for locations that desperately need medical supplies and equipment. They even requested an entire mobile clinic from Project C.U.R.E. that will enable teams of doctors and nurses to travel to all the nooks and crannies and villages throughout the country.

The travel agenda for today was, I thought, aimed at giving me a firsthand look at the situation in the provinces surrounding the capital city. Pitou and Sally also invited another Cambodian doctor to travel with us.

It rained last night, and everything was cool and fresh as we started traveling south. They had warned me about the conditions of the roads and said it would take us over two hours in some places to travel twenty-five miles. I found early on that their warnings weren’t exaggerated.

By heading out at 6:00 a.m., we ran right into a sea of motorcycles with commuters heading into the city for work. The cycle density in Phnom Penh isn’t quite like that of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, but the city is rapidly catching up. A new sight for me was to see the way the Cambodians transport their large loads of produce and commodities to the local market. They don’t have the capital to invest in trucks, so they’ve come up with an innovative way of building a metal trailer about ten feet long, with motorcycle wheels and heavy duty springs beneath. Then, like a fifth-wheel setup, they attach a ball hitch to the motorcycle, positioned just above the center of the seat. Then a goose-neck hitch is welded to the front of the trailer to pull the unit.

It looks like a miniature semitruck with a large 250-cc to 300-cc motorcycle pulling the rig. I blinked twice when I saw the first machine, but my admiration for their ingenuity grew as I watched how useful the apparatus really is. Out in the rural areas and jungles, I saw them using the same rigs as buses. They just placed boards from one side board to the other to make benches. There were at least twenty people in one such open bus being pulled by one motorcycle.

We continued on our way to the provinces of Takeo and Kampot. Both provinces are coastal and are largely made up of rice fields and jungles. The people are rural agrarian farmers, and most live in houses raised on short stilts to keep them elevated during the May to November rainy season. I can’t tell you how very much I enjoyed the two-hour trip to the Angkor Chey hospital and clinic deep in the heart of the Cambodian jungle. I knew at each bend in the horrid road that my eyes were seeing things only a smidgen of the American people ever see. And conversely, not many people out there in the jungle have the chance to catch a glimpse of an American in their part of the world.

Water is very plentiful in Cambodia. The Tibetan Himalayan mountain-glacier runoff settles right into the heart of the country, where Tonlé Sap Lake stores the water before many rivers, including the large Mekong River, carry it to the sea. Nearly every house is close to a rice paddy, and pools of water and irrigation ditches are everywhere. The water is muddy, but that in no way deters the children from diving in and swimming. Even little kids who are hardly old enough to walk enjoy playing in the pools and ditches. The ladies wash all their dishes and clothes in the same water. Because the water flows toward the sea and isn’t stagnant, the menfolk throw their circular nets from the banks in hopes of catching some large bass and catfish for the dinner table.

Dr. Khek Vantho, the director of the Angkor Chey hospital, and his deputy, Dr. Prum Daracham, helped us with the Needs Assessment Studies. The hospital draws from an area of about nine hundred square kilometers and a rural population of about eighty thousand residents. As we walked through the simple, almost archaic, and terribly inadequate facility, I felt that Project C.U.R.E. could make a significant difference in the health care for the entire area. No one else is going to be there to help. But we can go with acts of love and deliver terribly needed medical goods in God’s name.

The medical staff gave us coconut milk to drink and sent coconuts home with us. I watched the staff perform several emergency procedures on patients who had been involved in motorcycle wrecks on the rutty jungle back roads.

Our trip back to Phnom Penh took us much longer because we visited several more villages in the two provinces. I still had airplane tickets to purchase and arrangements to make for the trip to Battambang tomorrow. Cambodia has already been an incredible experience.

Next Week: “We don’t have a communication problem – we have a crisis.”

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CAMBODIA JOURNAL - 1999 (Part 1)

Hong Kong and Bangkok, Thailand: Saturday, November 6, 1999: My United flight 1247 left Denver Saturday morning. I needed to be at the airport at 7:15 a.m., and Anna Marie’s flight to Boston was scheduled to leave at 2:00 p.m. So she took me to the airport, drove back to Evergreen, and then returned to the airport, left her car there, and boarded her flight in time to make it to the conference.

My United flight left LA International Airport at about noon and touched down in Hong Kong at ten o’clock Sunday night. That was a long flight. Now granted, I crossed the international date line en route, and I completely lost a day. But still, the actual flight time, sitting in one seat in the airplane, was sixteen very long hours. I remember when planes once had to land and refuel somewhere along the route to get to Hong Kong.

From Hong Kong, I reboarded the plane and flew a couple more hours to Bangkok, Thailand. After clearing customs and passport control, I took a taxi to the Rama Gardens Hotel, where I’ve stayed several times on previous trips to Chiang Mai and Vietnam. It was well after midnight when I finally got to my room.

Monday, November 8

I’ve visited the countries surrounding Cambodia a number of times, but this trip will be my first time to spend more than a week in the kingdom of Cambodia. Cambodia has been subjected to some pretty harsh political and economic treatment, especially in the past fifty years.

In 1953, Cambodia was granted independence from France after about one hundred years of colonial rule. In 1970, Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s monarchy was overthrown, and in 1975, tragedy swept the country. An ultraradical group of Communists, known as the Khmer Rouge, gained control under the despotic leadership of Pol Pot. Pol Pot and his gang of thugs wanted to show China, Russia, North Korea, and other Communist-controlled countries of the world just how a pure Marxist-Leninist country ought to be run. He had watched the brutality of Stalin and learned from the bloody Cultural Revolution of China, where millions and millions of people were purged.

Pol Pot decided to outdo them all and go down in history as the sole Communist dictator who perfected Communism in the shortest amount of time. He decided to radically return Cambodia to an agrarian, communal society. Everyone would be a simplistic, obedient farmer living under his control, carrying out his every whim and expectation. He would show the world how to do it!

Within a period of four years, Pol Pot systematically murdered every person who was educated, right down to the children in grade school. All university professors and every teacher met a brutal death. Death didn’t come quietly or quickly to the victims; it was a spectacle of bizarre brutality. Pol Pot had something to prove to the world.

Every person educated or disciplined in the arts was slaughtered. All people of religion were murdered because they could read, think, and speak. Only farmers and those willing to live in a commune or serve as Pol Pot’s stupid soldiers were spared.

During that four-year period, Pol Pot murdered nearly two million people. Approximately one out of every four living human beings in Cambodia was eliminated. All the systems of education, health, transportation, government, and commerce were ruined. There was no formal economy or structure except for the Khmer Rouge’s arbitrary rule.

In 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and halted the carnage. The Vietnamese installed a government with Heng Samrin as president and Hun Sen as prime minister. Pol Pot’s genocide stopped, and he fled the country.

But at that time, Vietnam was considered an enemy of the US, so we condemned Vietnam’s actions. As Vietnamese troops fought the guerrillas who opposed Hun Sen, the US and the United Nations recognized the government in exile and supported Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, along with Khmer People’s National Liberation Front and the remnant Prince Sihanouk’s supporters.

Finally in 1990 the United States withdrew its support of the government in exile, and all factions agreed to adopt a UN plan calling for the Supreme National Council to run the country until elections could be held. Prince Sihanouk, who was in power after Cambodia gained independence from France, returned to head up the council as interim leader. In 1993, more than four and a half million eligible voters turned out for a peaceful, free election.

Prince Sihanouk wasn’t a candidate, but the people elected him. Hun Sen, who was a candidate and had been the Vietnam-appointed prime minister, threatened to reject the results. So a compromise was worked out.

Prince Sihanouk became king of Cambodia with no executive authority. His son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was named first prime minister, and Hun Sen became second prime minister. During the first few years of the unusual coalition, the king was greatly honored and revered throughout the country. More and more, Hun Sen filled the role of the first prime minister. The ailing Pol Pot, who was hiding out with about two thousand guerrilla soldiers, ordered the execution of his top military leader, Son Sen, which caused even his most loyal followers to rebel against him.

Afterward, an occasional skirmish broke out between Prime Minister Ranariddh’s followers and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s followers, but no one expected any major unrest or civil war. The lasting sadness of Cambodia’s history is that a country could so quickly lose all its top leaders, all its educators, all its medical professionals, all its religious and moral leaders, all its performers, and anyone else who showed the least bit of ambition or potential.

Cambodia will continue to suffer the effects of Pol Pot’s devilish experiment for generations to come. It has been extremely interesting to live my life at a time when the social freaks of this world have had full sway to carry out their godless experiments of social reengineering. With unchecked freedom they’ve slaughtered hundreds of millions of innocent lives in an effort to raise men to the level of God and lower decency to the level of a poisonous snake. Hitler and Pol Pot killed their millions, Stalin and Mao killed their tens of millions, and Idi Amin, Kim Il-Sung, and other despots drained the blood and brains in their countries in the name of Communism and social reengineering. Yet I’ve also lived to see those experiments carried out to their fullest extents and utterly fail. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Engels were all flawed thinkers, and their premise was false. Once again Project C.U.R.E. is bringing help and relief to a country that continues to pay the fiddler long after the dance has ended.

My Thai Airways flight from Bangkok landed in Phnom Penh at about 5:00 p.m. As I entered the passport-control area, I spotted an older couple holding a sign with my name on it. That’s always a welcome sight. Pitou and Sally Anne Lao were at the airport to meet me and brought with them one of their friends, who is connected with the government in some way.

As we got acquainted, I told them I needed to apply for a visa for Cambodia, since I didn’t have enough time to apply for one through the Cambodian embassy in Washington, D.C.

Pitou said, “No problem” and told me to give my completed application and passport to his friend, along with twenty-two US dollars in cash. I did as requested, and within minutes I had my passport back in my hands with an approved, stamped visa. The other people who were standing in line waiting to receive their visas just looked at me and raised their eyebrows.

Pitou and Sally were both born in Cambodia. When Pol Pot began his killing spree in 1975, they happened to be in Thailand. So instead of returning to Cambodia, they emigrated to the US, and the US government placed them in California. Both would certainly have been killed in Cambodia, since they are highly educated and were community leaders.

Just recently Pitou and Sally quit their California jobs and returned to Cambodia to see if they can help their countrymen rebuild their lives. They are now spending all their time without pay helping the refugees and displaced citizens.

The Laos and I became friends at first sight. They already made reservations for me at a hotel in a busy part of Phnom Penh. They had just returned to Cambodia on Friday after a month’s trip back to the US, when Dennis Catron contacted them and informed them of my visit. They dropped everything they were doing to be my hosts while I’m in Phnom Penh.

As we drove across the city to my hotel, I had a good feeling about my trip to Cambodia and Pitou and Sally Lao. It will be exciting to see what adventures God has in store for me in Cambodia.

Next Week: It was disgusting. It made me sad. It made me angry. It made me cry. 

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