Mr. Seng's Homecoming
One Khmer Rouge Refugee's Journey from Rhode Island to Rural Cambodia
Koh Kong, CAMBODIA--1974. For Americans, the long Indochinese nightmare is finally over, but war rages on across the rice fields of Cambodia. Corrupt officials receive tons of bombs and millions of dollars in military assistance from the United States, but battle hardened remnants of the Khmer Rouge tighten control over the countryside and threaten the capital of Phnom Penh. Amid the suffering, tens of thousands of families abandon their homes and take refuge across the border in Thailand.
Seng Phok was one of the lucky individuals who escaped Cambodia just in time. At age 26, Seng fled from his fishing village and made the perilous journey to a Thai refugee camp. Soon after he left, the hard-eyed teenage soldiers of the Khmer Rouge emerged victorious, inaugurating a brutal reign of terror that culminated in the Cambodian genocide.
For three years Seng waited in Thailand, hoping the political situation would improve, but horror stricken refugees limping across the border did not bring encouraging news.
The Khmer Rouge had enslaved everyone in work camps. Monks, teachers, doctors, writers, musicians, dancers and lawyers were being rounded up and killed. Crying at night, smiling at the wrong time or eating a handful of rice without permission were all offenses punishable by instant death. Those who escaped execution were dying of overwork, starvation and malaria. Cambodia was being systematically destroyed.
In 1977 Seng boarded a plane for the far side of the world and settled in an American city called Providence.
Seng built a new life in Rhode Island. He learned English, worked in a machine shop and raised seven children. But he never forgot where he came from, and in January of 2007, he finally made the long journey home.
I met Seng in Andoung Tuek, a dusty village on the new road between Phnom Penh and Koh Kong, the provincial capital of Cambodia's mountainous southwest frontier province.
The road to Koh Kong is almost finished, but the bridges are not. Andoung Tuek is one of four places where clunky ferryboats haul rattletrap cars and trucks across the pristine estuaries of rivers that originate deep in the rain forest of the Cardamom Mountains. The rivers cut broad channels through the jungle before spilling out into a vast web of mangrove islands that fringe the shore of the Gulf of Thailand. When the bridges are finished in 2008, development is expected to take off along this new roadway, but for now, tigers stalk the forest and rare crocodiles discourage the locals from too much swimming.
I was hitchhiking through Andoung Tuek with a photographer named Ryan Libre. Ryan and I are collaborating on a book called "The Lost Coast of Cambodia," a pre-development portrait of the wild southwestern frontier. Despite, or perhaps because of its remoteness, the Lost Coast is not lacking in characters. Over the course of our expedition we encountered corrupt officials, sex tourists, landless peasants, nomadic fishermen, at least one axe murderer and a private eco-army paid by Angelina Jolie. When we met Seng, we were on our way back to civilization, not looking for more stories. We didn't find him - he found us.
We were waiting for the ferryboat when Seng approached, a broad-shouldered man in a striped polo shirt and khakis with a Sony camcorder hanging from a strap around his neck. Despite his Cambodian features, Seng's manner was poles apart from that of the easy going Khmers bantering on the riverbank.
Simply put, the man was a nervous wreck.
"Hey, do you guys speak English? My name's Seng, S-E-N-G, Seng. Can you believe the way they drive in this country? No license, no safety, just jump on and go! I tell you man, this morning, I was so scared. Coming out of Phnom Penh a car smashed into a woman on a motorbike right behind me. Maybe she died, I don't know. I mean if something happens out here how you gonna get to a hospital? I thought maybe I never see my family again."
We took a table in a riverside restaurant and drank cold glasses of fresh-pressed sugar cane juice. Seng began to relax.
"This is my first trip abroad since I went to America," he said, using a handkerchief to wipe dust from his glasses.
"I was traveling with a friend, but he got sick and stayed in Phnom Penh, so now I'm alone. That's why I'm so happy to find you guys. I've almost made it. Prateal, my village, is just a few miles down river from here. My nephew came up on a motorbike to meet me, but I wasn't about to get on one of those things, so he went back to find a boat. That's when I saw you and thought, hey, Americans! I can talk with them!"
By the time his nephew returned with the boat, Seng had invited us to join him for the last leg of his long road home.
The boat is a worn fiberglass shell that buckles like jelly as we bounce down river. White egrets panic at the engine noise, flying from their perches in the mangroves as Seng's nephew pilots us through the estuary. Shafts of light drop through gaps in the cumulus over the open waters of the gulf. Seng sits in the stern, gripping his suitcase like a life preserver.
"How do you feel?" I yell to him over the wind.
"Excited," he shouts back. "33 years! I made it! I'm excited, man!"
Seng's nephew eases the boat up to a rickety dock that connects a line of weathered houses on stilts over the water. No bright Welcome Home banner or teary-eyed group of long lost relatives awaits, only a middle-aged man who takes our bags and introduces himself as Seng's brother in law.
"I lived in Providence too," he says. "But I wanted to retire in Cambodia. I moved back six months ago."
Seng sinks into a wooden chair, looking less like a triumphant returnee than an exhausted man far away from home. Wanting to give him some privacy, Ryan and I head down the dock to explore the village.
Prateal's main drag is a red dirt trail that winds among coconut palms and rice paddies. Men and women play cards in the shade of their farmhouses, water buffalo cool themselves in muddy ponds and barefoot boys and girls chase after indignant chickens and skinny dogs.
Word of our arrival travels fast. Before long, the police arrive and subject us to a grueling interrogation.
"Hello, what is your name? Where are you from? Do you like to sing karaoke?"
Bao is a heavy-set young man in his early twenties who speaks excellent English. Originally from Sihanoukville, a boomtown up the coast, he was posted to Prateal after graduating from the police academy.
"It's boring out here, but I'll be able to move on after a few years," Bao tells me. "There are nine police in Prateal, but only forty-five families in the whole village. The people are poor. We don't have a lot to do. Our salary is only $20 per month but in bigger towns we'll be able to make more money."
A drunken old man stumbles up the trail babbling to himself. "Oh, Granddad, where do you think you're going," says Bao kindly, putting his arm around the old man's shoulders and leading him back to his house.
I like Bao. He is an intelligent young man with a good heart, but in a country as corrupt as Cambodia, his best bet for a secure future is to do nothing – to bide his time on a tiny paycheck until he attains enough seniority to claim his own piece of the pie. On the trail back to the water we meet Seng and his brother in law coming from the opposite direction.
"My family's land was right here," he says, pointing to a hut bordered by a scraggly vegetable garden.
"I don't recognize anything. When I lived here we had a big wooden house. It must have been torn down."
A hunchbacked old woman emerges from the hut.
"My father's cousin didn't leave with us," Seng says quietly. "The Khmer Rouge shot him. This is his widow. She lives here alone."
The old lady never spoke. She just stood very close to Seng, squeezing his hand.
Dusk thickens as we walk back through the village, past families gathered around cooking fires and small boys driving white cattle home from the fields.
"This is real life," says Seng. "Real life. Everything these people have, they make for themselves."
"You gotta see it with your own eyes to understand. I want my children to come here, I want them to know Cambodia. In America, kids wake up in the morning, they don't want to eat breakfast, they want to watch cartoons. These kids work for their food and they know where it comes from. No supermarkets, no McDonalds. Real life, man."
A great feast is waiting for us back on the dock. The village headman, Seng's brother in law and three other men sit in a circle around dishes of fried prawns, grilled shellfish in tamarind sauce, crab soup with onions, steamed shrimp and fragrant lemongrass soup. Dessert is sweet coconut rice wrapped and grilled in banana leaves.
We wash down the seafood with cold Angkor beer. The lights of squid boats dance on the horizon and countless stars vibrate in the sky above. Bao comes up to the end of the dock and sits with his legs hanging over the water. Since Seng and his hosts are speaking Khmer, I go over to join him.
"Do you know the constellations?" he asks me.
"A few. Orion. The Big Dipper."
"Same with me. You can't see stars like this in Sihanoukville. Too many lights."
Bao goes quiet for a moment.
"In Cambodia, we say that when you know all the stars in the sky, your life is complete. It's time for you to die."
The generator has shut down, and the village is dark and still. I lie on the dock and listen to waves splashing over the mud flats below. Seng is still awake, a silhouette in the starlight, looking at the sky.
Photos by Ryan Libre.
© 2007 The Common Language Project
