A few hours after we arrive, having checked into our hotel and had a bite to eat, we visit a genocide museum.
Tuol Sleng had been a high school in Phnom Penh, before it was turned into a prison, where thousands were killed. Room after room is filled with black and white photos of those murdered -- row after row, room after room. I am embarrassed that I notice the one white face amidst the thousands of people killed and carefully documented.
Another building has hastily-built brick cells on the main floor, wooden cells on the upper floor, and larger rooms for group detention at the top. The buildings are ordinary, suburban. The grounds are well-kept, with benches, designed around two quads. It would have been a beautiful school, before they put up the barbed wire. The horrors humans perpetrate on each other can indeed happen anywhere; they don't need specially built places.
On the way out, we are given the opportunity to buy postcards, old coins, and books of Cambodian history. Yes, the genocide museum has a gift shop.
Our work at Rahab’s House begins tomorrow, where we shall be destroying a site of atrocities, of a different kind, and helping turn it into a school. Yes. Let's begin.
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