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I have a wonderful invitation to a wedding in August in Cambodia. What a joy to hear from our lovely friend Tooch Van whom we met when cruising around Halong Bay in Vietnam last August. We kept in touch with Tooch, he is such an affable, cheerful and delightful man. Interesting too. He was completing his studies in Law and Diplomacy at prestigious Tufts University in the USA with plans to hopefully represent his country as an Ambassador one day. We talked about so many things but didn’t touch on his family background. But his joy in getting married and starting a family of his own is very important to him and now I understand.
He thinks he was born in 1975, a bad year as the Khmer Rouge communist insurgents had taken control relocating inhabitants to the cities or rural labour camps and took over all forms of personal property. The smallest symbol of education – a pen, reading glasses – could lead to death. A blood bath ensued from ‘75-1979 when nearly three million Cambodians were massacred. His first years he had loving parents and nine siblings, yet one morning aged three he awoke alone. The Khmeer Rouge had taken all his family and shot them for being educated. He toddled to a neighbour who took him in. No one knew his name so they called him Tooch which means small in Khmer. They too were sent to a forced labour camp.When the Vietnamese invaded in 1978 and opened the camps, survivors began to walk home. He was with 300 people and it took months. In Phnom Penh he was put with a foster family who abused him so he lived on the streets with other orphans. It’s too long a story here of how he struggled to improve himself, signedd up for school borrowing a friend’s surname of Van.
My life has been enriched knowing his story, and I will be sending him much love and hope the future of the current corrupt Cambodia changes with the likes of Tooch.
Cheers.
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