MotherLand Cambodia, Place I Can Not Forget

Yesterday I, krishna and Leng met my friend who just came from Phnom Penh for his long vocation. He started his conversation with what a horrible mess our traffic system was and how bad the electricity supply was. His nose up in the air he went on rambling about all the political and economic chaos our country is going through. Then with a smug smile he continued with how wonderful everything is in Russia and America.
I felt stung with the negative remarks about Cambodia, my beloved country. However, I agreed with him and then simply said,

“I know all the problems are there but still it is my motherland and I love this land.”

Meeting him ( my friend ) that day and listening to his remarks about my motherland set me thinking about how deeply I love this land. I love my motherland just as I love my mother. If my mother is sick, if she is in trouble I will not leave her or turn my back on her. Now that my country has its hundreds of problems do I just vanish from the scene because it is in a bad shape? Will that be my way of thanking the country where I was born?

Te, that cannot be. For I love this soil, my motherland. This is the land that has given my birthrights. This land has given me my freedom to live as an individual. I breathe its air, I use its land, its water and I sleep under its star lit sky. It is this land that has given me honour and love. I was born free and enjoy my freedom within its boundaries. What else does a man need? Freedom, the greatest gift needed to live the life to its greatest height is given to me by this land !
I adore my villages and my towns. The serenity of the green villages as they roll one after another beneath the blue sky touches my soul. I feel a pang of affection for the poor people who live there. They may be poor but their poverty rouses in me the desire to help them.

When I was in my motherland I sometimes went for a walk alone. I saw the Mekong river flowing by. I sat on the bank and thought of the floods that would have them swelling and washing away the poor people’s lands. My heart cries for the loss the people will face. The towns of my country are beset with traffic jams, unplanned housing and poor drainage systems. The cities are over populated and have hundred other problems. And yet I will say that no place in the world feels homely as Phnom Penh does. The capital city reeling under its troubles has given my home. I feel the pain for my motherland just as I feel the pains my mother goes through. Mother, motherland and mother tongue, all seem to be bound to my heart through an invisible thread. When any one of them is well my heart sings amd feel relief but when any one of them is in pain my heart cries.
Love and honesty compliment each other. And I know my country is at the present riddled with problems. The prices of essentials are getting beyond the reach of the common man. There is the desperate need for transition to democracy. The frequent electricity failure makes life hazardous. The long queues of traffic makes one feel like growing wings and fly over it all. Speaking of problems we can go on adding to the list. Maybe the list of the good things done in this land will be shorter and yet does it all make me feel like leaving this country and migrate to a foreign land? No, never. If my motherland is in trouble I have to step in and try to help it, not run away. How can I? Is this not the very land where I was born, the land that has given me its soil to live?

I love my country from the sky above to the bottom of the riverbeds. I love the sky through all seasons. Summer adn raining seasons, I breathe freely under this infinite blue. My heart marvels at the sight of the seasonal flowers and fruits. Rainy days i stood in the pouring rain as if to mingle my spirit with the nature. The smell of the “Malis and Angkeaboth” flowers pierces through my heart and lights the eternal flame of love for this land. I know that soon the summer in october will come and I wish that the blue sky would find me sitting beside the lake staring for long hours at the “Lotus” flowers while they dance with the wind in a pond. I feel a close kinship to my land, to its soil when I am with nature. Every sunrise and sunset that I witness seems to fill my heart with glory, I feel as if I am in heavens just because I witness them in the sky of my motherland. My soul finds life anew and awakes with the sun rising in the horizon. At night a mesmerized me stares at the full moon with the countless stars in the cambodian sky. I am in heavens! I tell myself. How peacefully and how contentedly I can watch the beautiful sky. With all these aesthetic feelings comes a feeling of belongingness to this whole world just because I happen to be in my own motherland. This land is my love, it holds my destiny. I feel my very roots holding me to this land. It is like the umbilical cord that tied me to my mother before I was born.

My country has given me the gift of my mother tongue Khmer, the language through which I laugh and cry, the language that gives me the freedom to read, write out my heart and to speak all want i want to say. Especially, a phrase i once talked to a girl ” I love you. I want to give my faithful love to you. I want to care you. I am happy to see you live in happinese around my hands”. If I did not have a language to express my thoughts and emotions freely how suffocating life would have been! How dearly we have paid for our language and independence! Why did your language martyrs and our freedom fighters lay down their lives if I leave my country to live in another foreign land because it offers me more comforts and luxuries of life? Will I be doing justice to the millions who have given their blood for this country? If I want to live a worthy life will I not contribute a little to my nation? If each and every citizen contributed his or her part to the cause of nation building would we not be a stronger nation?

Socially, politically and economically we are challenged. And so the dire need of the hour is that we, each and every citizen stand in unity to help our country- Cambodia. Patriotism cannot be only dreamed about, it has to be there, in our actions. There are people who offer lip services, some who remain unmoved by the tears of their country and some who flee for their own benefits. The country, my beloved Cambodia needs its people, people who can come forward and help it overcome its hurdles. Can we not overcome obstacles that lay on the way of our nation’s prosperity? We have won our freedom with sheer strength of unity and surely we can win another war, the war of standing with our head up among the other nations of the world?
It is said that the deepest feelings often remain beyond words. Although I can go on about how I love my country. However, I feel that the exact feeling for the pang of love that clutches my heart for my country is beyond my words. To my friend the ease and comforts of America and Russia are more important. Of course he has all his rights to choose his happiness. But to me life comes on a different path, through the roots that binds me. I felt welcome and happy and yet I just could not leave my motherland and settle down there. My happiness in my small, poor country is greater. This happiness makes me feel like a bird that soars up in the infinity of the sky. And at times I feel like a proud hen. All my chicks are under my wings and I live, clucking on my own soil; my very own Cambodia. How happily I sing,
“ Romdoul Angkor” ! or ” Proud to be Cambodian ” !

Now even I am far away from my beloved country, yet my heart, my soul and my memoir is in Cambodia, where my family, relatives, friends and people are living with pride. I decided to leave my country for finding higher education because I love my country ! I want to help this small and poor country ! I never regret with my decision to left her this time. I will come back when I finish my higher education in this country ( Russia ) .

Peakpich Mae ( Mother’s Advice )

Son, the light of my life !

You’re living far away from Me, your Dad and Our Warm Family. I think that It’s the hard work, son !

Anyway, my little boy ! You should think that it’s not the obstacles ! It’s not the frontier to stop you from reaching your bright future !

  Son,

 You have to stand up by yourself !

 No one will stand for you.

 No one is suitable for your place, position and name.

  Everyone will never know the potential power in your mental and spirit, son.

 Only you !

 My belove, If you don’t know how to stand up-

 Just stand up right now ! You will see the beautiful and wonderful world.

                                                                                             Mum–

                                                           

Discussion Between Uncle Sam and Chao Sorn On International Issue

             In a village in Kampong Cham province, located in the center of Cambodia living a farmer his name is Uncle Sam**. Everyday Uncle Sam  works in his rice paddy. Before, Uncle Sam was a parliamentarian in the Sangkom Reasr Nyum, leaded by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. After the coup d’etat mastered by general Lon Nol and prince Sisowath Sirik Matak, Uncle Sam worked as ambassador to Cuba. During the Khmer Rough regime ( Kampuchea Democratique ) Uncle Sam was forced to left from Phnom Penh, capital city of Cambodia to Kompong Cham province with other Khmer people. After the Khmer rough regime was defeated in 7 January, 1979 by Cambodian army with the help ( political interest and Invasion ? ) of Vietnamese soldiers, Uncle Sam still living in the province. Because of some reasons he didn’t want to continue his political career. However, Uncle Sam like discussing with farmers in the village about politics. Especially, Uncle Sam always share his knowlegde to  young boys when he has free time from working in the farm about national problems and International issue.

Chao Sorn, a small cow boy in the village. After finishing his study in school, he has to feed his two oxen on the hill near the rice paddy of Uncle Sam .  Chao Sorn like listening to politics especially international issue decribed by Uncle Sam.

           This morning he didn’t have class. Chao Sorn decided to take his two oxen to the hill in order to meet Uncle Sam  and listen about politics.

Below is the discussion between Uncle Sam and Chao Sorn:

Uncle Sam: Come on…, Chao Sorn ! Today what topic we discuss ?

 Chao Sorn: How do you do, Uncle Sam !  Why don’t you tell me about the accusation of Thai government over the Prasat Preah Vihear.

Uncle Sam: Ah, good ! Let’s we have discussion.

                     

Uncle Sam: firstly, I want to tell you about the history of the temple. Prasat Preah Vihear  Thai called this temple that Prasat Khao Phra Viharn is a Khmer temple situated atop a 525-meter cliff in the Dangrek Mountains in Cambodia just across the border from Thailand. This temple was built during the six-century-long Khmer Empire. It was built in 11th & 12th Centuries CE by Cambodian people leaded by the king Suryavarman I (1002-1050) and king Suryavarman II (1113-1150).

Chao Sorn: Uncle Sam, this temple belongs to Cambodia. So why today Thai government accused that our country,Cambodia, illegally occupied the temple  Prasat Preah Vihea  ?

Uncle Sam: Good question ! Let’s me tell you about this.

In modern times, ownership of the temple was disputed by Thailand and Cambodia, leading to an international crisis and a decision by the International Court of Justice, commonly known as the World Court, in The Hague.

The court proceedings focused not on questions of cultural heritage or on which state was the successor to the Khmer Empire but on technicalities of border demarcation work carried out in the early 20th Century by Thailand, then called Siam, and the French colonial authorities then ruling Cambodia. In 1904, the two sides formed a joint border commission. In the vicinity of the temple, the group was tasked to work under the principal that the border would follow the watershed line of the Dângrêk mountain range. In 1907, after survey work, Siam requested that French officers draw up a map to show the border’s precise location. The resulting map, which was sent to Thai authorities, showed Preah Vihear as being on the Cambodian side.

In 1954, Thai forces occupied the temple following the withdrawal of French troops from newly independent Cambodia. Cambodia protested and in 1959 asked the World Court to rule that the temple lay in Cambodian territory. The case became a volatile political issue in both countries. Diplomatic relations were severed, and threats of force voiced by both governments.

Arguing in the Hague for Cambodia was former U.S. secretary of state Dean Acheson, while Thailand’s legal team included a former British attorney general, Sir Frank Soskice. Cambodia contended that the map showing the temple as being on Cambodian soil was the authoritative document. Thailand argued that the map was invalid, was not an official document of the border commission, and violated the commission’s working principle that the border would follow the watershed line, which would place the temple in Thailand. If Thailand had not protested the map earlier, the Thai side said, it was because Thai authorities had practical possession of the temple, due to the great difficulty of scaling the cliff from the Cambodian side, or had not understood that the map was wrong.

On June 15, 1962, the court ruled 9 to 3 that the temple belonged to Cambodia and, by a vote of 7 to 5, that Thailand must return any antiquities such as sculpture that it had removed from the temple. In its decision, the court noted that over the five decades after the map was devised, the Siamese/Thai authorities did not object in various international forums to the map’s depiction of the temple’s location. Nor did they object when a French colonial official received the Siamese scholar and government figure Prince Damrong, founder of the modern Thai education system as well as the modern provincial administration, at the temple in 1930. Thailand had accepted and benefited from other parts of the border treaty, the court ruled. With these and other acts, it said, Thailand had accepted the map and therefore Cambodia was the owner of the temple. The court declined to take up the question of whether the border as shown in the 1907 map corresponded to the watershed line.

In conclusion, It’s absolutely right ! To say that Prasat Preah Vihear temple belongs to Cambodia ! Any declines made by the neighbouring country  or some  extremists [1] is Unacceptable !

 

  (** Note: Surely, Uncle Sam is 75-year-old. But people in the village usually called him Uncle because he works hard like adult, in the middle age)

 [1]: Thai Extremist Leaders ( Thai Opposition Party Leaders, Stop Your Daydream, Khup ! – Please do not take Preah Vihear temple as your Political Interests or Political Advertising ! Preah Vihear temple belongs to Cambodia !

* References: The Civilization of Angkor. University of California Press

                      The international relations. Author : Ph.D Khieu Thavika

                        And others….

Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda( 1929-2007)

       Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda (1929 – March 12, 2007) was a highly revered Cambodian Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, who served as the Patriarch (Sangharaja) of Cambodian Buddhism during the Khmer Rouge period and post-communist transition period of Cambodian history. His Pali monastic name, ‘Maha Ghosananda’, means “great joyful proclaimer”.

He did not believe this could be done through grand temples or enclosed institutions. Certainly he could have gone that way. Like many others he had been a dek wat, a “temple kid”, washing the monks’ dishes and carrying their alms-bowls. Unlike others, he became a monk and remained one, getting all his education in temples and eventually gaining a doctorate in Pali, the scriptural language of Theravada Buddhism. He was a polymath and an intellectual. Yet he could not stay out of the world. Rather than devoting himself to monastic scholarship, he built hut-temples in the refugee camps and handed out dog-eared photocopies of the Buddha’s Metta Sutta, or Words of Love:

                                   With a boundless heart
                                   Should one cherish all living beings:
                                    Radiating love over the entire world
                                    Spreading upwards to the skies,
                                    And downwards to the depths…

On his walks his message remained the same. It needed no complication. The work, he knew, would be slow: “step by step”, as he liked to say. It would continue as long as Cambodians felt divided from each other and brutalised by their past.

After 1980 he was made much of. He represented the Cambodian government-in-exile at the United Nations, and was influential in the peace talks; in 1988, he was made Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia. Several times he was nominated for the Nobel peace prize. He founded more than 50 temples across the world. Some he spoke at; but his first priority lay elsewhere. It was to appear, birdlike, out of the Cambodian forest, to surprise a man digging or a woman washing; to remind them that the power of love was stronger than the forces of history; and then to move on.

                                      For the pure-hearted one
                                      Having clarity of vision,
                                      Being freed from all sense desires,
                                      Is not born again into this world.

                                               

           I’d like to express my deeply respect to the spirit of Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda. He helps to pave my way and builds the firm confidence in my thought. I’m walking step by step with my strong hope and confidence to my dreams with his advices. I understand, Now there are still important challenges facing Cambodia- poverty, corruption, a narrow political base concerned with making money rather than providing service. Yet thanks to people of compassion such as Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, as he would say,” listen carefully, peace is growing in Cambodia, slowly, step by step.”

By: Heng Krishna

Emotional Story About Family and Work

A man came home from work late, tired and irritated, to find his5-year old son waiting for him at the door.

SON: “Daddy, may I ask you a question?”

DAD: “Yeah sure, what is it?” replied the man.

SON: “Daddy, how much do you make an hour?”

DAD: “That’s none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?” the man said angrily.

SON: “I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?”

DAD: “If you must know, I make Rs.100 an hour.”

SON: “Oh,” the little boy replied, with his head down.

SON: “Daddy, may I please borrow Rs.50?”

The father was furious, “If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I work hard everyday for such this childish behavior.”

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door. The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy’s questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think: Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that Rs.50 and he really didn’t ask for money very often. The man went to the door of the little boy’s room and opened the door.

“Are you asleep, son?” He asked.

“No daddy, I’m awake,” replied the boy.

“I’ve been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier” said the man.”It’s been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you.. Here’s the Rs.50 you asked for.”

The little boy sat straight up, smiling. “Oh, thank you daddy!” He yelled.

Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills.The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.”

Why do you want more money if you already have some?” the father grumbled.

“Because I didn’t have enough, but now I do,” the little boy replied.

“Daddy, I have Rs.100 now. Can I buy an hour of your time?Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you.”

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness.

It’s just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts.Do remember to share that Rs.100 worth of your time with someone you love?

                                 * Quoted from: VAN-ISHING 

High School Feeling

          In high school I became fearing about what others think of me.

          My mission in life became too small and not being embarrassed.

          I was afraid to look bad, that’s why i didn’t make myself to take risks.

          Most people designed their entire lives based on what other people think of them.

                                                 But

          It’s what I review myself:

     ” Why should the way I feel depend on the thought in someone else’s head.”

Thank brother that gives this holy thing to me ! It’s changing my life.

 

Happy Khmer New Year

                                                         

                 To My Readers,              

                                                Happy Khmer New Year !

              We hope in the coming year on April 13,2008 , we can all come closer together and make a better world for ourselves and the future generations. We hope that we can become better people by acting more responsibly towards one another. We hope in the coming year we come to a better realization about preserving our family, our country and our planet Earth.

             Finally, in this fabulous occasion I am one of Khmer students in Russia wish each one of you and your families a very Happy Khmer New Year. A Year filled with joy, happiness, health and hope !

                  By: Chao Sorn