-^-for posterity-^-

we drove on the motorcycle to the tri ton district again. jack wanted to see the two million dollar hill and i wanted to see a shrine erected in the memory of some of pol pot’s victims.

we drove and drove and drove. the lower half of my body was completely numb. the engine would moan and agh and scream. the traffic was chaotic and i was, on one level, shocked we survived.

the scenery on the drive is breathtaking. we follow long, straight canals with boats chugging up and down. the green rice paddies stretch on and on and disappear into the horizon. children play in old tattered clothes. old men sit on the side of the road and smoke. they wear small bandanas tied around their head. i wonder what all they have seen in their lives. women work tirelessly. everyone seemed to be drying rice along the sides of the road.

there comes a point in the trip where two large mountains appear on the horizon. at first they look like giant cumulous clouds in the distance. they take shape quickly and stand in contrast to the surrounding smoothness.

two million dollar hill hadn’t changed much. there were no tourists today and i didn’t want to climb it again. i sat at the bottom, bought a tour guide a cup of coffee and chatted about the history.

how many soldiers fought on this hill?
i don’t know. a lot.
oh. what year did the fighting start?
humm. around seventy five, i guess.
isn’t that when it ended?
oh, yea. let me ask someone. (goes off and asks the man selling coffee) he says it was in sixty eight.

he didn’t seem to know much about the hill. we moved from there to the memorial commemorating the victims of pol pot’s invasion. the drive was beautiful. we ended up passing between the two mountains. the fields stretched out from the sides of the road. the rice was a lush shade of green that seemed so very alive. there was nothing but paddies until the foot of the hill. that’s where the ground decided to stop being flat and decided to arch up to the sky. the beauty was overwhelming.

the memorial was made out to be more than it was. we drove through ba chuc and had a cup of coffee. we asked directions and they pointed just down the road towards a large tree. there was a sign on the tree saying that it was three hundred years old. i wondered what it had seen in its life.

around a small, octagonal shaped building were about twenty or thirty people. we were swarmed with vendors. they told us we had to buy things in order to pray for the victims. we bought some incense from an older woman who wasn’t too pushy.

the memorial is made up of human bones. each side of it is covered with skulls and each skull is grouped into age and sex. we walked up to the top and couldn’t see anything. there were too many people trying to sell us too many things. we were told we had to buy more incense. we were told we had to buy plates of rice for the dead to eat. we were told that we had to buy lottery tickets. you’d be much luckier if you bought them there. they would not stop harassing us. they were vultures and continued to circle the dead.

jack moved to one side of the memorial and i had a moment away from all of the vendors. i took some time to stare.

the skulls are all toothpaste white and stare vacantly. the bones that run from their skull down to their cheeks past the outside corners of their eyes are so slender and ghostly. some of the skulls had small holes in them, about the size of a quarter. that’s where the bullets went in. some of the bullet holes came out the other side. some of them went in at angles somewhere near the crown and came out somewhere above the ear. some of the holes were right above the eyes. some of the skulls had been smashed with something. i wondered if that was how they died.

it was all absurd. the mountains were in the distance and we were on a bit of a hill. the view was magnificent. i wondered how people could do this. how could you take away so many lives. how could you shoot a small girl in the head. i stood facing the wall of female skulls ranging in age from 2-15. i looked at the small girls selling lottery tickets. they were about 8. i couldn’t imagine killing someone so innocent. i tried to count the skulls on one side. there were about thirty five.

people seemed to ignore the suffering. they were making money to feed their families because of it. the thought of being hungry seemed to push the reality of the massacre out of their minds. maybe they saw too much to care.