In 1984 I was 21, an undecided college co-ed who desperately wanted to be a good steward of the world. I had wended my way through the University of MA @ Amherst to a little branch of the Education Dept. known as Human Services. I had already done one service learning project (Boltwood), met w/ a Peace Corp representative on campus, and was looking forward to a new experience. The TEAMS Tutoring Program was just being started by Professor Bob Malloy, and after applying, I was selected as one of I think six to be in the Pilot Program. An older student, Dan Hillerbach was to be our coordinator.
I recently looked to see if it was still operating, and it was!
A whole page of their own w/ twitter and facebook attached. Now that's living out loud!
Here is the website:
From that site:
UMass Amherst has a rich history of advancing community service and service-learning. There is evidence of several early initiatives to build community service-learning pedagogy and practice among faculty, administration and students; the chronology, titles and oftentimes the goals of these projects are not well-documented. Two early efforts, however, still continue today. The Boltwood Project, founded by Professor Merle Willmann of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning around 1970, has been placing students ever since in programs for disabled individuals in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties. The TEAMS Project (Tutoring Enrichment Assistance Models with Schools), founded in 1984 by Professor Bob Maloy in the School of Education, has helped UMass students learn about inequality in education through tutoring K-12 students in schools across the Pioneer Valley.
So let me tell you this, the program was well-designed, the learning and training intense, it was for me one of those few transformative experiences that my young brain grabbed ahold of and has been ever present in the recesses for all these years since. Too bad it wasn't well-documented.
I'm here to testify.
I knew next to nothing about emigration, immigration, refuge, nor what genocide meant. I barely understood what we had done to the Indigenous peoples in my own country and here I was learning about a place almost 9,000 miles away on another continent.
Southeast Asia was such a distant place and I barely could discern the difference between Vietnam and Cambodia. I hated war, didn't understand anything about the Vietnam War (why did we go there to fight, maim, and kill? Tell me again, I just don't get it), and was amazed to learn that the same peoples that we went to fight had also invaded Cambodia. What I did know was that in the time preceding my entry into College, Southeast Asia was a bloody mess. By 1980, many of those fleeing this mess were looking to the US for escape and 35% of immigrants coming to the US were from Southeast Asian countries.
Cambodia is relatively small w/ approximately 14 million people and a land mass of 70,000 sq. mi (equivalent to one of our states, say North Dakota, or Oklahoma in size). In the Khmer Rouge period of rule w/ Pol Pot from 1975-1979, 2 mil. people in that small country perished. Mind boggling then, mind boggling today. 1/7th of the country murdered, massacred- gone. Now that's genocide, plan, simple, and horrifying. No wonder whoever could, did indeed flee.
Because of the large numbers of immigrants from a part of the world with a very different culture, there was a change in US salad. Amherst, MA was one of the places that was helping to learn about and assist our newest members. The Cambodian Crisis Committee did a wide range of things for the new members of the US fabric, one of which was partnering with churches, and there were 7 in WMass that hosted Cambodian families in the early 1980's. Of that number, 5 were from Amherst directly, and I believe we then partnered with the local Lutheran Church (there's that service and community thing going on). We had packets (such as "Khmer Mini-Course") and handbooks that detailed the history, culture, religion, family structure, and values of the Cambodia people we were going to serve.
For example, customs and accepted public actions are explained in a short informational packet:
To show their respect, Cambodians will bow their head in front of a superior or an elderly; kissing in public is not acceptable; up to three or four generations live together in one home; spiritualism is dominant in the society; man is supposed to live in harmony with nature, not to dominate nature; Cambodians seldom express openly their true feelings of and emotions, except between very close friends or relatives; time is flexible, there is no need to be in a hurry or punctual except in extremely important cases.
Most importantly for us young college students, we had eagerness to listen, learn, and teach/tutor. The Cambodian Crisis Comm. also created “Guidebook for Teaching Cambodian Children," and our Professor Bob Malloy was at the same time creating our TEAMS tutoring program.
"Bearing Witness" is a term I thought I'd heard from some early black church goings, but after hearing a powerful testimonial or story from a 15 yr. old Cambodian boy I was to tutor, I think the term took on a whole new meaning. We sat quietly in a small room in the School of Education. I think it was an office sort of deal because we were on couches and comfortable chairs, not at desks in brightly lit classrooms. This quiet young man sat still, composed, and incredibly, he calmly told a horror story. I had never experienced anything like this. My packet teaching had told me that Cambodians seldom express openly their true feelings of and emotions, so I sat there with the largest, hardest lump in my throat, gut, and soul as I listened and tried not to cry. I began to burn inside with anger and rage. I hated Pol Pot! I hated the Khmer Rouge! I would will my anger and rage toward Cambodia and find those murderous boys and men and I would karmicly kill them back. I did not understand this young man's composure, I would later learn about those in the local Cambodian community that could cope, acculturate, assimilate (the youth), and those who could not (the elders). We didn't yet have language to describe or treat these folks. PTSD was a few years down the road.
What we did was tutor the young adults who had come to be resettled in Amherst through Lutheran Services. It was incredible to me how studious the boys were. And smart. They struggled mightily with English though and so that was where we did most of our tutoring. These kids didn't talk much, but were very polite and gracious. However, by the 2nd yr. of the program (I was one of the few returnees), it was amazing to see how much acculturation had occurred. The clothing was totally American teen, as was the love of McDonald's. Some of the girls had developed crushes on a male tutor and they would confide in me or come to my session to giggle about him. These girls seemed like your average adolescent teens. The boys, well the boys just seemed to be very mature. The were fastidious and frustrated over the lack of skill in English grammar. They were whizzes in Math and Science.
Years passed, I always wondered about this group. How was the project going, how were the folks finding their way in? My next intersection with Cambodian folks was through my work at a Social Service Agency that assisted individuals with disabilities to live as independently as they could in the community. I was shocked when the first case came to me. It was the mid 1990's, and now we were talking PTSD. We were talking about an ageing population of traumatized adults, some widowers, many with health problems and almost all unable to speak but a rudimentary few English words. We were meeting with and getting information from their children, from some of the young adults I had less than 10 yrs. before tutored! This subgroup of Cambodian folks had not faired well in the resettlement. The had difficulty with the language, the culture, the food system, and now healthcare. What I was seeing was indeed a typical trajectory of new immigrants to our affluent Western Civilization. The hardy, intelligent folks who assimilate and acculturate quickly and successfully, and those who don't. The familiar "have's" vs. the "have nots." Some of the "have's," figuring it would give them a leg up, had started their ascent back in the camps of Thailand when they attended Christian services. These folks came to America w/ a bit of background and knowledge and a great desire to achieve or "make it" here, and for this small group from the Amherst area, they did.
Those who didn't, the broken, the traumatized, the soul-stomped elders, were lonely, depressed, and sick. Many family members had perished, and they mourned- for years. I could see the pain reflected in their quiet eyes. Eyes that never quite looked at you and when they did it was to silently implore you to "just let them die." Leave me alone and get out of here were angry words that adolescent children ashamedly told me were being flung my way. "I want to help," I always flung back. These housing projects were now spread over the Hampshire County area, but almost all the households looked the same. Half Americanized, half Khmer culture remnants mixed in. Family was still important, but fitting in and making money was a chief goal among the young. So my goal was to figure out how we could help the elders without hindering the youngers. We were attempting to create a community for the "lost" folks. Attempting to reconnect them to other Cambodian folks in the area and also to reach out to employ as many people we could who could speak Khmer and so thusly be paid to help these sick elders.
Nowhere in my early interactions was there a dialogue about Khmer Buddism, and I was too afraid to ask. These folks were too busy trying to survive to sit and have idle chat with me about the things I was interested in. And back then I was very much interested in Buddhism. Robert Thurman was still a professor at Amherst College and a rising star (and expert of course) on Tibetan Buddism. I was heavy into him as well as Joseph Campbell and his works on various religions. I was searching, I was curious, and now I had something new to wonder about- Khmer Buddism. I really didn't/couldn't understand how a largely buddist country could be a part of a genocide (I had yet to even look to the South at Indonesia).
What we did was tutor the young adults who had come to be resettled in Amherst through Lutheran Services. It was incredible to me how studious the boys were. And smart. They struggled mightily with English though and so that was where we did most of our tutoring. These kids didn't talk much, but were very polite and gracious. However, by the 2nd yr. of the program (I was one of the few returnees), it was amazing to see how much acculturation had occurred. The clothing was totally American teen, as was the love of McDonald's. Some of the girls had developed crushes on a male tutor and they would confide in me or come to my session to giggle about him. These girls seemed like your average adolescent teens. The boys, well the boys just seemed to be very mature. The were fastidious and frustrated over the lack of skill in English grammar. They were whizzes in Math and Science.
Years passed, I always wondered about this group. How was the project going, how were the folks finding their way in? My next intersection with Cambodian folks was through my work at a Social Service Agency that assisted individuals with disabilities to live as independently as they could in the community. I was shocked when the first case came to me. It was the mid 1990's, and now we were talking PTSD. We were talking about an ageing population of traumatized adults, some widowers, many with health problems and almost all unable to speak but a rudimentary few English words. We were meeting with and getting information from their children, from some of the young adults I had less than 10 yrs. before tutored! This subgroup of Cambodian folks had not faired well in the resettlement. The had difficulty with the language, the culture, the food system, and now healthcare. What I was seeing was indeed a typical trajectory of new immigrants to our affluent Western Civilization. The hardy, intelligent folks who assimilate and acculturate quickly and successfully, and those who don't. The familiar "have's" vs. the "have nots." Some of the "have's," figuring it would give them a leg up, had started their ascent back in the camps of Thailand when they attended Christian services. These folks came to America w/ a bit of background and knowledge and a great desire to achieve or "make it" here, and for this small group from the Amherst area, they did.
Those who didn't, the broken, the traumatized, the soul-stomped elders, were lonely, depressed, and sick. Many family members had perished, and they mourned- for years. I could see the pain reflected in their quiet eyes. Eyes that never quite looked at you and when they did it was to silently implore you to "just let them die." Leave me alone and get out of here were angry words that adolescent children ashamedly told me were being flung my way. "I want to help," I always flung back. These housing projects were now spread over the Hampshire County area, but almost all the households looked the same. Half Americanized, half Khmer culture remnants mixed in. Family was still important, but fitting in and making money was a chief goal among the young. So my goal was to figure out how we could help the elders without hindering the youngers. We were attempting to create a community for the "lost" folks. Attempting to reconnect them to other Cambodian folks in the area and also to reach out to employ as many people we could who could speak Khmer and so thusly be paid to help these sick elders.
Nowhere in my early interactions was there a dialogue about Khmer Buddism, and I was too afraid to ask. These folks were too busy trying to survive to sit and have idle chat with me about the things I was interested in. And back then I was very much interested in Buddhism. Robert Thurman was still a professor at Amherst College and a rising star (and expert of course) on Tibetan Buddism. I was heavy into him as well as Joseph Campbell and his works on various religions. I was searching, I was curious, and now I had something new to wonder about- Khmer Buddism. I really didn't/couldn't understand how a largely buddist country could be a part of a genocide (I had yet to even look to the South at Indonesia).
What I did find strange, but now it makes perfect sense, was how many Cambodians joined the Christian churches. When searching for community or assistance from a kind soul, in our culture there is always the Church. Supposedly welcome to all, but I have my doubts (BIG doubts). However, they certainly have come to the aid of many a refuge +/or immigrant, so I can't knock that. I do recall though, that there was in the early 21st century, a scandal at the Congregational Church in Easthampton w/ a pastor who had been mentoring young Asian boys and... well, I don't need to say anymore. Exploitation happens everywhere, right? There certainly was that, too. Long hours at our few remaining factories was work some from the Cambodian community found. Collectivistic existence was also a way of life for many. Large extended families living together, pooling resources, and trying to get by. Yet and still, I never learned of Khmer Buddism.
The next time I encountered Cambodian folks was through my own children. They went to school with and befriended children who were Cambodian. However, these children were largely assimilated to Western culture, and the most my son learned was that they were good at martial arts. The other thing he learned was how many individuals were inter-connected to the Cambodian community in our area. I too was learning this through yet another Social Service Agency I was working at. Healthy Families was set-up to assist pregnant and parenting teens. We had a young Cambodian couple who were referred for services. The young adult male was well into college and this out-of-wedlock birth was a wrench in his and the families plan for him. However, this couple had incredible family support. Like the whole famiy rallied around the young man and his child. If anything, it was the young mother who seemed to be struggling with the incredibly submissive role she seemed to be forced into.
And then again I came to yet another place of intersection with Cambodian youth. This time it was in a residential charter school for kids in state care. The model was unique to MA and a pilot/experimental venture overseen by Boston University. The pilot failed + the school was dismantled, but the faces of the two Cambodian youths I met still linger. One was male and the other female, and they looked so dissimilar I was surprised to learn that they both were Cambodian.
Memories, such strange things. Surreal movies that play in a minds eye. Some flicker like the old black and white silent films, others pop like the new age digital wonders happening now. Not sure where my memory of the Cambodian boy fits. A drama of undeterminable rating. He came to the system as a hardened and gang-involved offender youth placed in foster care for what or why I had not the information to. But after initial shyness or standoffedness, he was very sweet and always smiling. He seemed to accept where he was and was moving through it with grace. He was tall for a Cambodian person, a new learning for an ignorant me- oh people can come in different sizes and shapes!?!
I was teaching a unit on food insecurity in preparation for a Hunger Walk I was approved to run for the school (despite the fact that the org. that ran it was religious). I was working hard to reach these kids and engage them in a dialogue on what it meant to go to bed hungry. I knew some (all?) of these kids had seen some tough stuff, but I wasn't expecting Steve's response.
Steve (obviously not his Cambodian name, so many of them Anglicized their names) was not from Happy Valley. He was from the once proud and productive streets of Lawrence and Lowell, MA. In the post-industrialization age however, those cities mills stood hauntingly silent, exceping for a few, and of those there were the ones that held the cities current economy- serving the poor. Social Service agencies abounded in the area- everything from nutrition thru literacy. But black market economies proliferated too. Lowell had the highest percentage of Cambodians living there in the entire US, and gangs were formed and banged about. Steve was sort of hiding in state care. From a struggling, poor Cambodian family, he had stepped up in a way that was part of the invisible communities that exist in urban slum cities. He became gang-involved.
So that day, in a 10th grade class full of noisy, insolant teens who didn't want to listen, didn't want to care started just like any other. Teacher struggling for control of the class and trying to get a lesson in. "Food Insecurity," I said loudly above the adolescent din, "who knows anything about it?" "It's being hungry dude," came a sarcastic reply from the back. A few chuckles and some loud laughs. "Okay, let's go with hungry," I began. "Damn straight I am," another quick retort that produced laughs. "But let's talk about sustained hunger, hunger that comes from not knowing where or when your next meal is coming or if it will be the only one for a while. I could feel the class settle and try to take in what I had said. "Anyone know that type of hunger?" I was pushing them and by the nervous and edgy laughter I knew I had hit a spot. A vulnerable spot because I just knew some-all of them probably had felt this hunger pang. Parents poor, parents addicted, parents gone- all of it led to this sort of food insecurity I was talking about. Then Steve raised his hand. "Yes Steve?" "I have," came his quiet reply. Stunned and nervous eyes turned toward him. Steve! Our silent and strong leader with the giant smile, I could almost read the kids minds.
"When my family first moved to Lowell and we were all still together we lived with relatives," he began to unpack this painful memory. "No one had jobs and we all sort of did what we could to stay in the apartment. I don't know who it was who taught me, but I do remember it was something everyone in my family did." His far-off look and pained, unsmiling face silenced us all as we waited for him to continue. "We dumpster-dived," he simply said. I swallowed my shock. I had never heard the term. I struggled to pull from a mental file cabinet a memory loop that played the scene. Blank, just black and blank. It was okay, for Steve had a picture story to paint. He explained how the family went out, picked dumpsters near restaurants, waited for the right time, then sent the right team in to do the diving. Because he was an unusually tall Cambodian, he was a good picker. Sometimes there would be good food simply tossed out, other times the garbage truck beat them to it and they missed the dumpster swell. Those were the lean days, those were the hungry times and that was the folly of the whole operation. It was all about timing and garbage didn't wait for them. "And it sucked," was his equally quiet ending. Just like that. And it sucked. I and some of the other students were stumbling for a foothold on our emotions, fighting back tears and lumps in the throat. "Thank you Steve," I so wanted to hug him, but hugging 18 year old committed youth in a quasi state-run residential facility was frowned upon, so I just kept nodding my head head and saying stupid stuff like, "that was so brave of you to share, thank you Steve." The tears dried up, the lump dissolved, but the memory and associated mental film never did. For years when I drove around I always looked behind restaurants to see if I could see "dumpster divers," and I never did. But somehow Steve and his family and his swelled population/enclave of struggling Cambodian folks in Lowell and all the rest of the refugees stayed in me so I could hold on to the resolve to someday go to Cambodia and spit on Pol Pot's grave and send the biggest dislike karma anyone could possibly send through the energy I would carry when I got there.
Well, exactly 30 years later I GOT THERE! In an awful snowstorm that closed schools for two days and wiped out most flights on the Easter coast, my husband and I set out at 3 a.m. on silent, snow-covered roads to begin a journey of a lifetime. Valentine's Day 2014 for those who like smarmy rememberances, our little 6a.m. flight out of Hartford Ct. was delayed by only 15 minutes, so off we went. From there to Chicago, Chicago to Seol South Korea, and finally- 22 hours later Siem Reap Cambodia at 11 p. on some day that was not quite the same day we headed out. That's when the strangeness began and I'd say just about now, some 10 after returning, the strangeness seems to be receding. It all was a whirlwind and almost unbelievable to me now excepting the glorious, full technicolor memories (always augmented these days by photos) that were imprinted into my brain.
Impressions? Whoa. Difference. You know, I spout this term so much- "Difference is good," a phrase I drilled into my kids their entire lives. But despite some sprinklings because we live in a college area, our American culture is pretty homogenous. Difference is traveling to places you can't imagine, watch on t.v., and/or rarely get glimpses into.
It was so different. We so stood out. We were the minority, we looked weird, we sweated while Cambodians were sometimes in winter garb, and we did not speak their language. We gawked and they gawked right back. We were foreigners and the most they knew about us was that we had spare currency that they wanted. Period. Tourist dollars were-are helping this impoverished and struggling country. So we gave them up. That's what we were here to do. Give it up, as much and as often as we could. So we could gawk, visit ancient places that boggle, befuddle, and bewilder the brain, and try to be the most respectful and gracious tourists that we can be. AND, lets not forget...AND, find, travel to, and SPIT ON POL POT'S GRAVE!
I realize it was wholly a folly. A symbolic and some would say childish thing to do, but I did it anyway. There were 2 places in this trip that made my gut clench, heart squeeze, and breathing difficult. One was a forced visit to the landmine museum (apparently and perhaps wisely the hotels book tours to include this uncomfortable visit wrapped into a days journey to wonderous things so we get a good little reminder of what we and others did to this forsaken country), and the other was our sought out and paid for private ride to the Thai border in search of Pol Pot's grave. Did we find it? Who knew, for so much of this country's history is shrouded in propaganda and war and atrocities and lies that it is very difficult to know. There are no (or very few) old people to carry thru the stories, the history, the truth. I walked away understanding this: People venerate. Who and what they venerate changes (from Hindu mythological stories to Buddhist philosophical beliefs). Alliances form, alliances fall apart, and most of all, yes most of all, POWER corrupts. And in rapid secession, money does too. Period. And to the victors goes the spoils. Only this country has not had very good karma in the past several centuries, so they lack in spoils. Even ownership of their ruins are still being desputed by Thailand, and because of UNESCO status other countries are rebuilding the ones they do own, and now North Korea (longtime buddies) is trying to get in on the tourist dollar by pushing (or who knows, maybe being invited in) in to this country.
If you care, which most out there don't, which is fine by me as this was a personal journey, I put the pictures up on my fb page (integration, although I have tried for years to do, does not seem to be a skill set I have conquered-YET). My repository place for my fading brain. I so hope fb doesn't ever go away, because I still don't know what cloud I am on, and if I ever have to go cloud hopping, I don't think my old joints will be able to handle it.
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