Here Lies Pol Pot

“Pol Pot was cremated here” the sign announced. The remains of one of the most famous mass murderers of recent history are located high up in the hills on the Thai border in Cambodia’s remote north. I stood looking at a roughly build shelter about a metre in height made from old wood and rusty galvanised iron. There is no doubt he died nearby, because he was under house arrest enforced by his own cadres. His body was quickly cremated and his demise announced to the world. Pol Pot’s agrarian revolution of the 70’s was a disaster which left millions dead through either direct killings or the dreadful neglect of starvation and sickness.

As we arrived a woman was tending the incense and offerings left daily by the local people weighed down by the bad karma of having such a shrine in their community. I wasn’t sure what to expect. What does one feel visiting the grave of a mass murderer? There was no overwhelming sense of evil. No compelling sense of justice in his death. Rather the understanding that he was just a man who lived a life and then died.

I thought about the decisions he made during his life and the devastating results of his actions. We are constantly making decisions in our lives. What are the values and attitudes that shape those decisions? I found myself thinking of what we Christians have to guide us. I couldn’t go past these words Paul wrote…But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Letting Off Steam

‘There! Found one!’

In the oven like sun I weaved my bike between motos, carts and pedestrians across the road stopping next to the man with the key cutting machine. Fumbling with my sunglasses, I rummaged though my bag, found the keys and, with sweat drenched helmet hair, blurted out my request for two new sets of keys. I held up two fingers and the keys as props in case my foreign and bedraggled appearance distracted him from listening to the actual words I was saying.

Once the message was made clear he cheerfully got on with the job, grinding metal against metal. As I waited beside him I took in more of the scene before me. Behind him on the cracked footpath squatted a young woman rhythmically swinging a sweaty baby back and forth in a makeshift hammock tied between a fence post and the key cutting cart. They had a piece of cloth on the ground that looked like their ‘camp’. The heat was almost visibly rising off the concrete. There was no shade to speak of and the exhaust fumes and dust from the road combined with the nearby rotting pile of rubbish made it a particularly unpleasant place to wait a few minutes let alone spend your days. I wondered where, if anywhere, this family went home to at night.

Their seemingly quiet acceptance of the heat, noise and pollution made me reflect on my own nerve fraying struggle though this year’s hot season.

From March until June every day felt like a battle with the heat induced exhaustion and the constant dampness of hair, clothes, and anything I sat on. But there were some days when the addition of incessant noise from traffic, dogs, construction and outdated aerobics music from distorted loudspeakers just about tipped me over the edge. On those days I didn’t want to be here anymore. I longed for the cool, calm, peace and quiet of suburban Adelaide. I dreamt of the autumn colours and beautiful gardens and parks.

When I looked around at how many here were living - no fridge, no fan, no ice, no air-conditioned café escape time – I could clearly see my own privileged position. I know that’s supposed to make me grateful but mostly it just made me feel disgusted with myself and magnified my own pathetic self absorption and desperation to be else where.

The feeling of being close to ‘the edge’ is not just about heat and noise but actually the combination of numerous cultural stressors and the transition grief common to moving into a foreign environment. The experience, however, has certainly helped me see clearly that, left to myself, I can’t do this. I really do desire a clean, orderly and pleasant life. Only Jesus can make me want something else. Thank God he is always at work in us, shaping and empowering us for his purposes (Philippians 2:13).It’s not just down to me.