Cambodia Calling ; Humble explorations

Cambodia Calling, by Richard Heinzl (John Wiley & Sons), 272 pp.

http://www.hour.ca

April 10th, 2008 MJ Stone

Founder of Médecins Sans Frontières Richard Heinzl chronicles his time in CambodiaCambodia Calling: A Memoir From the Frontlines of Humanitarian Aid, written by Canadian founder of Médecins Sans Frontières Richard Heinzl, chronicles the physician's adventures in rural Cambodia. Although readers interested in an in-depth study of the workings of Doctors Without Borders may be left wanting by Heinzl's memoir, travel enthusiasts will appreciate the author's insights into Cambodian life, post Khmer Rouge.

Both in the book and during my interview with the modest doctor, Heinzl played down his humanitarian role in Cambodia. "The job provided me with a wonderful adventure," he said.

He told me he needed to write about his encounters with Cambodia and its haunted people. "I was so blown away by my experiences overseas, I just had to write about it. I needed to make sense of the experience. I wanted to write it right away, but I was too close to the experience and required some time to allow it to percolate through me."

Amongst the first wave of Westerners to arrive in Cambodia following the Viet Cong occupation in the early '90s, Heinzl has written a memoir that attempts to make sense of the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge against its own people a decade earlier. The author said that Cambodians are a genuinely happy people who are living the local Buddhist way, and that he was surprised at how well adjusted they were when he arrived. "I remember seeing a lot of people living in dissociated states, people who were freaked out and living in denial. But the vast majority were able to pick up the pieces of their lives so quickly speaks volumes about their resiliency."

When asked to elaborate on the haunted sensation he felt while in Cambodia, Heinzl said that it was peculiar. "Cambodians are ancestor worshippers and the vast majority believe in ghosts.

The Khmer Rouge left Cambodia feeling very haunted. Almost everyone I'd met had lost a brother, sister, or father or mother. They all spoke of the ghosts."

Cambodia Calling is intrepid travel writing. Heinzl writes with panache. The good doctor confessed that he hopes his next book will be a novel, but then laughed about the idea of venturing into fiction: "My enthusiasm may be tempered when I get into the thick of it," he said.

"The late nights, the endless cups of coffee... but I really feel like I have a writer's temperament."