Carol Wagner‘s Search for Soul Survivors in Cambodia

Cambodia is half a world away from Petoskey, but the horrendous events which overwhelmed the country from 1975-‘79 make it seem much farther. Out of the 7.5 million Cambodians who lived in the country during that time, close to 2 million were killed by the Khmer Rouge, starvation and disease.
It was in the bleak aftermath this nightmare that Carol Wagner made her first visit in 1991. The former director of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, where she served for four years, Wagner was one of 12 Americans who visited Cambodia while on a citizen‘s diplomatic mission to Vietnam.
In her new book, “Soul Survivors: Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia,“ Wagner says she found the countryside stricken by floods and deserted, while the capital of Phnom Penh was in ruins. Only a few begging children in rags would dare approach her group.
“I was devastated by how poor Cambodia was and this was 12 years after the genocide had ended,“ she recalls. “So my heart went out to the people there.“

TOUCHED
In the days that followed, Wagner was able to see Cambodia through the eyes of a young guide, Saroan, who‘d been sent to a Khmer Rouge labor camp as a child, where he learned that his parents had been executed. Escaping the camp at the age of 12, Saroan had travelled through the jungle to the refuge camps of Thailand. From there, he was accepted into several foster families in the United States, eventually working his way through college to earn a degree in computer programming. Despite his success against desperate odds, Saroan decided to return to Cambodia to help rebuild his country.
Wagner writes that the story had a deep impact on her. “I had never met anyone who had experienced so much suffering, and I was amazed that he had retained so much goodwill toward humanity. His story touched me deeply, and I carried it in my heart when I returned to the United States.“
It was a story which served as the genesis of her book, because returning to Cambodia with photographer Valentina DuBasky, Wagner began collecting the oral histories of 14 women and children who survived Asia‘s holocaust. Starting in 1992, she also began working with Cambodian women‘s groups, helping them to market their handicrafts in the United States.
Although she no longer lives in Petoskey, Wagner still has ties to the area. Today, she lives in an international community in Scotland, and has also spent time in the San Francisco area as the director of a center for non-violence. At present, she‘s promoting her book and working with women‘s and humanitarian organizations in Cambodia. She also leads educational tours to southeast Asia, and was a U.N. observer in Cambodia‘s last election.

SURVIVORS
In *Soul Survivors* you‘ll find the stories of Maline, a housekeeper and victim of one of the millions of landmines sown throughout the country who lost her leg as a child. Here also is the story of Bopha, a child who saw her neighbors beaten to death or buried alive, and was forced to become a prostitute to survive. Another story is that of Daravuth, an orphan who cannot recall his childhood because he suffers from memory loss which is common to trauma victims.
Collecting the stories was a hazardous endeavor because the war between the Khmer Rouge communist movement and the Cambodian government resumed in 1994; Wagner and DuBasky operated under death threats against all Americans, French and Australian citizens. “Widespread violence made it dangerous to travel in most of Cambodia‘s rural areas,“ she writes, “and when I did, I nervously pulled a *kramar* (traditional Cambodian scarf) over my head in a feeble attempt to be less conspicuous.“
Today, on a book tour through Northern Michigan, Wagner can look back on four trips over the past 10 years, during which she‘s seen the country edge towards democracy and hope.
What was the Khmer Rouge? Wagner says it was a communist movement born in the 1940s as an outgrowth of the divisions in Cambodia between the dirt-poor peasantry and the ruling class. When the French-educated extremist Pol Pot took over leadership of the Khmer Rouge, he decided to destroy every shred of the middle class so that the country could begin anew.
“Pol Pot‘s idea was to create complete equality in the country by killing off anyone with an education and starting all over as peasants,“ Wager says.
Thus began a campaign of executions of the country‘s doctors, lawyers, teacher, scientists, engineers -- anyone with professional skills -- in a campaign inspired by, but more savage, than Mao Zedong‘s Cultural Revolution. Despite a war with neighboring Vietnam and the infusion of 22,000 United Nations troops to prop up the Cambodian government, it was a campaign of terror which ended only with Pol Pot‘s death in 1998.
Today, as Wagner‘s book shows, the violence has lessened but the scars run deep. Cambodia‘s troubles include the aftermath of Richard Nixon‘s “secret war“ in 1969, which killed 150,000 civilians and created a million refugees through a bombing campaign that dropped half a million tons of bombs -- or the equivalent of 25 Hiroshimas -- on the country.
Then too, Cambodia is littered with between 4-6 million landmines “stepped on by women planting rice, men gathering firewood, or children tending cows.“ One out of every 236 Cambodians is an amputee; half of those who step on a mine die.
Cambodia also has the fastest-growing incidence of AIDS in Asia; more than 40% of its prostitutes are HIV-positive.
And finally, Cambodia is a place where genocidal murderers and their survivors live today side-by-side. What is the fate of a nation whose children were raised without love under the most brutal conditions imaginable?
All of the above are scenarios which Wagner wrestles with in her book.
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