Taster

Today has been a taster day for churches wanting to know more aboout what Agenda 1 is. We spent the night in a very comfortable guest house and were up and out by 7 am as usual. I dropped the cold shower this morning. There is no hot water in guest house rooms. There was however an unusual problem, somone had completely blocked our minibus in. This is how the men in our team solved the problem; by pushing the offending vehicle out of the way, moving the bus and then returning the other vehicle to its place.

 

The hotel carpark, spot the white minibus blocked in.





The street outside the guest house



Off to the street cafe for breakfast, I had marinated pork with rice and a cup of tea in a dinty handleless asian cup

 

The taster day wasn't really a day, it was from 8am - 2pm. Steve, Tom Kenneth and I shared the teaching. Both Anne Kate and I were cold today yet the temperature was 28 degrees (feels like 40 says the app) with 88% humidity! That does not bode well for us when we get back to Stavanger in November brrrrrr!



 



Feedback from groupwork.

One church group prays for another.

 

 

 

Once were finished here we headded back to Phnom Penh where we checked into another comfortable guest house before heading out into the city. We started by going to the memorial of the reign of terror and the genocide by the Khmer Rouge, this is a hugely moving place and not as painful to visit as it could be. There is a kind of quiet peace there despite all the violence comitted to thousands of innocent people. If you wore glasses, a sign of being able to read and therefore educated then you were executed with the rest of your family "just to be sure there were no survivors able to point the finger." If you has "soft hands" then you were not a maual labourer and therefore a threat to the Khmer Rouge and you were executed, most people were tortured first. Executions were with any heavy or sharp object rather than guns since bullets were expensive. This was done during the night while loud speakers played very loud propoganda music to drown out the victim's screams. Even small children and babies were executed.

 

Babies and children were executed against this tree by being held by the feet and swung at speed towards the trunk where their skulls were shattered. Their bodies were thrown into the nearest mass grave.

You cannot help but be moved when you og to a place like this but it is important both not to forget what happened and to better understand the Khmer people today.

 

We have been travelling around the city this afternoon by tuctuc. On heading back to the city centre we got caught up in a terrible gridlock which meant we had to drop any ideas of going either to Daughters of Cambodia (see previous posts) or the Russian Market.

 

 

We went straight to a favourite restraunt of mine the Khmer Surin and had a lovely meal before headding for our beds.



Mango cooler.