“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Marcel Proust

I crossed into Cambodia from Viet Nam on a bus that cost about 20,000 Dong — the equivalent of twelve U.S. dollars. At the border, a mandatory health check included a digital temperature machine aimed at my forehead. Today’s enemy is H1N1.

Cambodia seemed poor and the roads were dusty, despite a low water table. Many of the rural homes were wooden and built on stilts. Traffic was light with more bicycles and motorbikes than cars. I passed water buffalo and fields of corn and rice and many of the farms had Khmer stone arches at the entrances –similar to U.S. ranches with their log and metal gateways. Small Buddhist shrines set on posts stood in many yards. It seemed a peaceful place.

As the bus entered the city limits of Phnom Penh, the scene changed from rural poverty to urban busyness. At the bus station, I transferred to local transportation, a tuk tuk, a motorized cart with a driver in front, passenger seats in back and open to the air with a canopy on top.

The next morning, another tuk tuk took me back to a horrific time in Cambodia’s past. I knew about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and their atrocities between 1975 and 1979, not only from news on TV, but also from students and colleagues at the Khmer-English bilingual school where I taught. I was here to visit the “Killing Fields” and pay my respects.

It was a hot and dusty ride of about ten miles, making me wish I had done as the Cambodians do and worn a surgical mask. When I arrived at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, however, I forgot my own discomfort. It is here that mass graves were discovered and a memorial of bones of almost 9,000 victims has been built. There are still some unopened mass graves there and they believe they could hold at least another 9,000. This particular area contains victims who were moved from the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh to be eliminated. There are, however, mass graves all over the country and victims are in the millions. Choeung Ek is only one of the “Killing Fields.”

Back in Phnom Penh, I visited Tuol Sleng – a former school the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison. It is now the Genocidal Museum and the victims’ photos, implements of torture and claustrophobic holding cells are pretty overwhelming in their horror. One building had porches on each level wrapped in barbed wire – to prevent prisoners from jumping. Suicide was an easier death.

The purge is reminiscent of the Nazis’ “final solution” for non- Aryans. The Khmer Rouge targeted intellectuals who would be hard to manipulate.

That journey was one of sober reflection about the atrocities committed and it gave me a new appreciation of the ordeal some of my colleagues went through; they escaped being put to death for their intellect but have found the strength to continue as educators in the country that took them in as immigrants — ours.