Day 3 - HFCA - Choeung Ek

Bloggers: Alice, Yenyiyani, Sophie and Christine

HFCA (Happy Football Cambodia Australia) is a local soccer club that provides an opportunity for disadvantaged and homeless youth to be involved in amateur athletics. As part of their program, HFCA sends a team to the Homeless World Cup, which is being held in Santiago, Chile this year. 

The CIS excursion regularly supports HFCA because we believe what the UN believes...
The UN recognizes play as the right of every child. Play is NOT a luxury; it is a tool for education and health. It can bring entire communities together and inspire every individual. The game of football can teach children about cooperation, tolerance and peace. Play helps teach important life lessons and develop skills like cooperation, leadership, and teamwork. This is why CIS supports HFCA. 

Today, the CIS Grade 11 students met up with the HFCA players and had a friendly match. Although it was a short match, it showed that the children excel in soccer. Their ages ranged from 10-22. Some of the children who participated in the friendly match were also from the People Improvement Organization School, which CIS has supported for many years. 

Though they won the friendly match, we still enjoyed it very much because we got the chance to play with kids who are happy and grateful for what they have. We think that being able to be part of HFCA allows us to learn to be thankful for what we have because many others like the children in HFCA worked really hard to be where they are today.

Choeung Ek, located just outside Phnom Penh,  was one of the many "Killing Fields" throughout Cambodia where executions were carried out during the reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979.  It now serves as the primary memorial for men, women and children who were executed by the Khmer Rouge.   We examined the mass graves, interpretation centre and the memorial stupa which contains thousands of human skulls of the victims of this extermination site.  We completed a self-directed audio tour which allowed us to complete the tour at our own pace.  We chose to listen to the audio tour in either English or our first language, which in the case of this year's group had individuals listening in French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Malay and Korean.  Our level of reverence for what had occurred at Choeung Ek could not have been any higher.  We walked, observed and listened in a focused, attentive and respectful manner.  

 We got really emotional during 
the tour because the things we saw were shocking. There were bones buried all over the place. We learned how the Khmer Rouge killed the victims as it was all shown in the stupa and museum. There were several ways used by the Khmer Rouge to kill their victims, such as using a bayonet, an  axe, and a hook knife. Although there were guns, the victims were not killed using guns because bullets were expensive and the Khmer Rouge decided to torture them first and killing them slowly by cutting their throats and ears. From the Killing Field, we found out that the Khmer Rouge regime created a really horrible impact that still haunts the survivors and the rest of the Cambodian society until now. From what we saw, we concluded that Pol Pot was really a harsh and cruel leader who executed millions of people, most of whom were innocent. 

What we felt at the Killing Fields is the same as what we felt yesterday at Tuol Sleng.  From these visits, we can see how Cambodia has grown into a strong community with a strong bond in the approximately 40 years of recovery from the past. So far on this trip we have learnt 2 different things:

1. How people living in poverty can be happy even when they have much less than we do.
2. The pain and hardship Cambodia has endured in order to restore peace and harmony in their community.