Planting the Kapok Tree
Culturally torn between India’s piousness and China’s overwhelming confucianism and Maoism, Cambodia has been the subject of intense pressure, molding it into what it is today. Its trauma, may it be physically or ideologically violent, has shaped how the country sees itself in the context of South East Asia and the world.
The denial of identity, and plundering brought on by French colonialism brought the country politically and economically to its knees. Coupled with rampant corruption, ground was fertile for the advent the Khmer Rouge. Funded and enabled by communist China, the Khmer Rouge came to be the perpetrators of one of the worst genocides in modern history.
“Plant a kapok tree” is what parents used to tell their children, brothers to their sisters, uncles to their nephews, when they were pushing back against Khmer Rouge insanity. Dam doeum kor. In khmer, kor also means mute. Be quiet.
Cambodia today feels like a mute country. A country where trauma is very much alive, where the clothes and bones of the dead, buried in the killing fields, still literally push themselves out of the ground, as if to say “we’re still here. don’t let us go mute“.
Much is to read between the lines, through the red dust enveloping its roads, in the ruins of its temples. It is also a very proud country, rebuilding itself through the grandeur of its past empire. Throughout its many ordeals, Angkor Wat has never left the national flag.
Through its lush forests, systemic poverty, ancient ruins and killing fields, Cambodia pushes against itself constantly.