Friday, October 30, 2009
(Posted by CAAI News Media)
SILVERDALE —
It was a glimpse into evil that occurred millions of miles from their homes and decades before they were born.
Perched on a small stage in the Central Kitsap High School library on Friday, Daran Kravanh told students the story of how in the mid-1970s Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed his entire family and took the lives of three million more Cambodians. The Khmer Rouge ravaged Cambodia and nearly took Kravanh’s life too.
“I had a very deep visceral response,” senior Tommy Pfrimmer said. “It was so out there and so different than what we live in. It was intense.”
Pfrimmer echoed the sentiment of Elizabeth Blandin, a teacher and librarian at CKHS. She invited Kravanh and Bree Lafreniere, who told his story in the book “Music through the Darkness,” to speak to CKHS students.
“We want to bring in speakers that will expand our kids’ knowledge of the world and of other cultures,” she said.
Today the 55-year-old Kravanh is a social worker for the state of Washington and a Tacoma resident. He’s also a candidate for Cambodian prime minister with the Cambodian Anti-Poverty Party. The election will be held in 2013.
He and Lafreniere, a social worker for Head Start in Bremerton, are trying to get Kravanh’s story made into a movie. And they talk about it whenever they get the chance.
“The message that we want to bring to you today is to love and keep peace always,” Lafreniere told the students.
Kravanh’s story begins during peaceful times, before the Khmer Rouge, when he taught himself to play his older brother’s accordion. The accordion isn’t exactly a traditional instrument in Cambodia, Kravanh was drawn to it.
The Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975. Cities were emptied; intellectuals, artists, government officials and educated people were executed. If you wore glasses, the Khmer Rouge labeled you as “educated” and you were immediately killed. Books and musical instruments were destroyed. Music was illegal. Children were trained to spy on and turn in their parents for misconduct. Everyone was forced to be educated into the “Angkar” or “Big Brother” way, Kravanh said.
After his family was killed and he fled his home, the 21-year-old Kravanh spent eight months in the forest trying to survive. Near death from starvation, Kravanh and other survivors turned themselves over to the Khmer Rouge. One day, Kravanh was assigned to chop up log for a Khmer Rouge leader’s house. When he finished, he walked into the nearby forest. Unbelievably, he found an accordion on a tree stump. Playing the instrument soothed him in the ensuing years.
In 1978, while Kravanh was working as a grave digger for the Khmer Rouge, he was told that he would be executed. That night, despite the ban on music, Kravanh began to play every song he knew. A Khmer Rouge soldier sent to kill him heard the music and asked Kravanh to teach him how to play. Kravanh did and the solider left without killing him.
After the Khmer Rouge’s reign in Cambodia ended, Kravanh spent several years in a refugee camp in Thailand. He made his way to the United States in 1988. He and Lafreniere met in 1990 when she worked with refugees who were served by Catholic Community Services in Tacoma.
On Friday, Kravanh played several songs on an accordion for the CKHS students, tearing up and unable to speak after one piece he wrote honoring his dead parents. One student asked whether it was the accordion he found so long ago in the forest. No, Kravanh said, after more than 30 years it’s not usable anymore. But he still has that instrument at his home in Tacoma.
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