Cambodia journey opens teenager's eyes and heart

NJ.com

Posted by Barry Carter
Star-Ledger columnist
April 05, 2009

Unless you were there, Lily Bahramipour says, it's hard to put into words what she experienced in slum villages of Southeast Asia.

An elderly Cambodian woman cried softly as she told the New Jersey teenager she was blind from atrocities in the holocaust that swept through her country, killing more than 2 million people. Other women she met opened up to her as well. They had been victims of sex trafficking.

Patti Sapone/The Star-Ledger
Lily Bahramipour, a junior at Newark Academy in Livingston, with Arn Chorn-Pond, a human rights leader she met in Cambodia who came to speak at the school.

In urban areas and rural provinces, Bahramipour remembers the children, many who lived on the street, others from an orphanage where she worked. She can't forget what they said before she left to return to the United States.

"Don't forget me! Don't forget about me!"

And then there was the flute player, Arn Chorn-Pond, a human rights leader who inspired Bahramipour to make a difference in the world after she learned how he survived Cambodia's genocide and how he strives now to preserve the music and art of his homeland.

It was not a typical summer for any teen, but it's how Bahramipour, 16, spent last July.

She wanted to be away from friends, family, the confines of home in Montclair, and have a different experience. In a rare firsthand way, an Iranian-American teenager learned about horrors of genocide and how an ancient culture was nearly obliterated by the Khmer Rouge, a military regime that turned the land into the infamous "killing fields" from 1975-79.

Bahramipour knew she would have a different experience when she signed up for the Global Awareness in Action Program sponsored by Putney Student Travel, a small, family-run organization in Vermont. The group Bahramipour found on the internet has been offering opportunities for high school students to explore the world for 57 years.

For one month, a Cambodian community became Bahramipour's home where she learned about the people and their culture with 13 other U.S. teens.

She worked in an orphanage, sleeping next door on a mattress laid out on the floor of a stone building that sometimes didn't have water for a shower. Eating was just as basic. Noodles for breakfast every day. Rice and some kind of meat and vegetable for lunch and dinner. When it was over, Bahramipour felt she was forever changed.

"I was desperate not to forget," she said. "I haven't forgotten -- and I don't ever want to forget. The intimate moments I shared with these people sincerely touched my life, and I strive not only to keep those memories with me every day but to share them with others."

Bahramipour, a junior at Newark Academy in Livingston, and her teacher have started ARTcreates, a project that sends art supplies to children across the world. The first package has already arrived at an orphanage Bahramipour worked with closely during her stay.

But Bahramipour wanted to do more. She writes often to a child she befriended there, and she explained to school officials that her classmates could benefit from her trip if they heard firsthand the story of Chorn-Pond.

The school, through its Global Speakers Series, helped arrange for Chorn-Pond to spend a day with students last week. For several hours, Chorn-Pond went from class to class and spoke to a large assembly, recounting how he endured the torture of his people, the death of family and friends, the near extinction of his culture when traditional Cambodia music was banned.

Chorn-Pond's past has been chronicled in a documentary -- "The Flute Player" -- but listening to him was much more riveting.

He captivated the high school audience, sometimes with humor, but mostly by recounting painful memories of how his childhood was destroyed. He was 9 years old and one of 700 children the Khmer Rouge imprisoned in a labor camp. They worked from 5 a.m. to midnight in rice fields and were given little food, hardly any water. Many starved to death, including his sister, whom he watched die slowly.

"I had to walk away," he said. "That was hard."

Chorn-Pond managed to stay alive when soldiers picked him to learn music and play propaganda songs for their entertainment. He learned the flute quickly, figuring if he was good enough, they would give him food.

But his captors, however, would later make him a child soldier at age 12, forcing him to fight and kill when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979.

When he couldn't take it anymore, Chorn-Pond escaped into Cambodia's jungle. He caught fish with his bare hands, and followed the monkeys, eating fruit they would eat so he wouldn't pick something poisonous. He learned not to move when snakes slithered across his body. He grew weak at times when leeches latched onto him as he slept at night, sucking the life from his 40-pound frame. At times, he found himself hallucinating, not wanting to continue.

"I wanted to kill myself," he said.

Somehow he crossed the border into Thailand, where Peter Pond, an American refugee worker, found him on the ground. He brought Chorn-Pond to rural New Hampshire and became his foster parent.

After attending Brown University, Chorn-Pond returned to Cambodia in the 1990s and started Cambodian Living Arts, an organization that locates former music masters who survived the genocide. They are encouraged to teach, record and perform traditional Cambodian music that was on the verge of extinction.

It has been estimated that 90 percent of Cambodia's master musicians were killed when the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, came into power after the Vietnam War.

Since then, Chorn-Pond has received numerous international awards as a crusader for children's rights and world peace.

In Bahramipour, Chorn-Pond sees a leader because she wants to learn about the lives of others. He praised her for wanting to know about his people, and for coming there on her own. He remembers her visit, how she hugged the children, how they were drawn to her kindness.

"I feel a lot of caring from her," he said. "She is very powerful. She reminds me of an angel who fly from far away. She feel powerful to save the world, to go across the world to help."