dispatches from the new world of work

A Renaissance from the Ruins

Hello to Tom and to all from Quang Tri Province, Vietnam. I recently said goodbye to the student/teacher/parent group I was leading across Cambodia. I will now spend the next two weeks here in Vietnam working on updating a beneficiary database of those recently injured by bombs and landmines left over from a war that ended here thirty years ago.

While still in Cambodia, we visited with an old friend of mine that I met while attending a boarding school in Maine in the mid 1980s. When we met he had just recently escaped from the Khmer Rouge and had been rescued from a Thai refugee camp by a man who would later adopt him. I was fifteen years old and had no way of knowing that this boy, whose flute playing of Khmer Rouge propaganda songs saved him from a certain death, would impact my life in such a drastic way ... and 20 years later would be one of my closest friends.

Arn Chorn-Pond is an emerging Cambodian icon. He has won a closet full of well-deserved humanitarian awards and in the year 2004 was the subject of an award-winning PBS documentary called "The Flute Player". The film documents his imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge, the murder of his family, how he learned to master the flute to save his life and his eventual escape (by foot to Thailand) from the front lines of a war in which he was a frightened child soldier forced into fighting the Vietnamese.

The latter part of the film shows how Arn has returned to Cambodia to help resurrect the performing arts that the Khmer Rouge nearly destroyed. Artists and intellectuals were high on Pol Pot's list for destruction in his quest to create the perfect communist society. As Cambodian arts were traditionally passed on from master to student by oral tradition, and not via any written methods, Pol Pot and his murderous followers nearly succeeded in wiping them out forever.

When Arn returned to Cambodia a few years ago, he went in search of any remaining masters that may have worked with his father who was an opera star. He was heartbroken to see those who were not killed had become alcoholics and cigarette vendors on the streets. These were people that once performed for royalty and were famous across Cambodia. He found them forgotten and living out the remaining years of their lives in the gutters of Phnom Penh.

Since then, Arn has formed Cambodia Living Arts. This program has gathered masters of opera, traditional music, and dance to teach young children the arts so they can keep them alive for future generations. This is not done in theater with a stage, or even in a high school. These gatherings of students and teachers of Ancient Khmer (Cambodian) culture take place in a squatter slum community surrounded by garbage piles and dilapidated apartment buildings.

I witnessed four classes amongst the most some of most severe poverty I have ever seen. The contrast was stunning, if not overwhelming: a wealth of culture taking bloom in such extreme squalor.

Sadly, these people that have nearly nothing are threatened with having even less. The government is poised to kick them off the land and this threatens to destroy the budding renaissance of arts arising from the ashes of Pol Pot's sickening legacy.

There is beauty here amongst the fetid garbage heaps and corrugated steel homes. The one thing Pol Pot could not destroy, the resilient, enduring nature of artistic expression, is thriving somehow and because of that, an ancient culture will live to see another generation.

James Hathaway posted this on 03/03/05.

Comments

AND LETS REMEMBER THAT THE FABULOUS Nike Shox TL2 running shoes are made in Vietnam - that is important.

Posted by Mike at March 3, 2005 7:14 AM

Folks all over the world are "just folks". No matter what they might have been through - if you go and meet them and talk to them - they're just folks. Maybe we forget that sometimes when we see "those people" on CNN.

Posted by dale at March 3, 2005 10:10 AM

James, I like the work you are doing and the stories you tell us. I have included your site in my Blog. Hope there will be more stories in the future.

Posted by felix gerena at March 3, 2005 10:45 AM

Hi Dale-

It seems, perhaps, trite that "people are the same wherever you go". But truly, we all love our kids, we all want to be happy... we all gotta eat.

I have found my best friends among those that are supposed to be so different from me.

We are all "just folks"... some just happen to be born under a different flag and under much different circumstances.

Posted by James at March 3, 2005 10:54 AM

Hi Felix...

So long as Tom (that grouchy, old Vermonter) lets me post, I will ;)

JH
PS> thanks for the link!

Posted by James at March 3, 2005 11:02 AM

James, I'd wondered when we were going to get news from you again. You add a great deal to our blog, with this view from the other side of the world.

Thank you.

Posted by cathy at March 3, 2005 11:29 AM

FYI.. James and his crew have been bloggin at this site..
http://www.cpi.org/cpiblog/

I am following CPI's travels and blog posting by the volunteer kids and its an inspriation to take the RSS feeds.. I find this crews postings extremely powerfull and a whole new insight into the expereences that they are going thru..

my advise.. take the CPI RSS feed (yeah.. I tweaked it and now it works) . If you dont use a RSS reader.. then darn you ..but at least bookmark their site on your Favourites listing .. ITs Well worth a little time spent on their blog/site !!

James, good to see you on TP.Com once again..w/c back :)-

Posted by /pd at March 3, 2005 4:36 PM

James/Jamie is an old pal, and I am thrilled that he's been so kind as to share his observations with us. Tom/Grouchy Old Vermonter (Is there any other kind of Vermonter?)

Posted by tom peters at March 3, 2005 7:25 PM

Anyone trying to understand VT will have to cope with the fact that our ... Republican Governor ... is supporting "Independent" Senator Jim Jeffords in '06. VT ... home to Truly Independent, Uncategorizable Thinking!

Posted by tom peters at March 3, 2005 7:28 PM

buy viagra online usa VERMONT IS A JEWEL OF A STATE - I prefer the fabulous state of Idaho - Boise has an outstanding year round climate - and the people are wonderful.

Posted by Jack at March 3, 2005 9:29 PM

I guess there is the "grouchy, young Vermonter" but after that you have pretty much covered it.

Yes, you have to love that Vermont has the only "independents" in both houses the House and Senate!

I do want to speak quickly to the climate issue... it is COLD here in Central Vietnam..... noone ever talks about that. Hot... rainy...yeah... but COLD... never.

Tom, my mother is traveling with me AND BLOGGING! http://cpi.org/cpiblog

Peter, thanks for your help in configuring cpi.org and the kind words as always

Cathy. thank you for fixing my weird font issues in this last post... :)

Best to you all-JH

Posted by James at March 4, 2005 1:39 AM