Stories from Tubigon: Mom vs. Encantado

“Mom, do you believe in encantado?”

“No! … mmm…. no. Mmmmm …. maybe.”

My mom moved to Cebu to take accounting at the university there when she 16 years old. Near the end of her first year, she and her friends went into the fields with food and drinks. They lay their blankets down in the shade of an enormous acacia tree and they had a picnic.  They were young and energetic; they laughed and joked, someone started singing, dancing may have ensued, and no one was louder than my mom.  It was dark by the time they packed up and went home.

My mother woke up the next day to find her bottom lip had swelled up to three times its normal size. She couldn’t open her mouth. She couldn’t eat. She could hardly fit a straw in her mouth to drink. She went to the doctor and they gave her medicine, but after three days, the lip only became more painful and more swollen.

Weakening, she went home to Tubigon. My lola (grandma) was a nurse, and she didn’t know what was wrong with her either so they called in a witch doctor. The witch doctor gave her medicine too, and it helped enough for my mom to be able to take some food. They soaked bread in milk and squeezed the milk into her mouth because that was the only way she could get any food.

Two weeks in, things were getting serious: my mother’s lip was still just as swollen as before, she still couldn’t eat and everyone was getting worried. I like to imagine my tiny teenaged mother lying on a rattan bed in the old house near the window surrounded by her small army of scabby cats and dogs and watched over by Catholic saint tokens and tiny bottles of holy water from this and that crying statue; witch doctors giving up, nurse friends of lola bringing mentholated oil, lola herself washing and rewashing everything my mother comes in contact with as if to cure her daughter by cleanliness alone, various ratty-looking kids climbing fences to stare at her mutant lip, neighbours’ whispered speculations about the local wak-wak families and their nasty curses. Someone finally remembered that my mother’s primary school principal claimed he had an encantado friend … invisible, of course.  In fact, my ma had come into contact with this encantado once before … long ago …

* flashback waves  and accompanying harp music *

Ling and I were sick when I was really little, maybe six years old. The quack doctor couldn’t help, and maybe we couldn’t find a real doctor. The principal of my school had a friend who is an encantado and he said he could help. 

We went to a small room and it was a little dark. We stood on one side of the room, the principal stood on the other. He said to us, “turn around and don’t look back no matter what you hear”. Then the door was closed and we turned around. We were alone – just Ling and me and maybe another sick kid and the principal. I heard him start talking to his friend, explaining our sickness. I was scared when another voice replied. 

While they were talking Leling wants to turn around and see. Before she can turn around, we hear, “Don’t turn around!” right in our ears! We were scared. Ling didn’t turn around. 

Later, we were healed.

This same man was now the superintendent of the entire island school board and he still had the same encantado friend. They managed to get an appointment with him to see if his friend could help heal my mother’s swollen lip.

They sat in an office and talked. Sometimes the superintendent addressed an invisible person who was walking around the room, sometimes he listened to that invisible person speaking inaudible words. According to the superintendent, the encantado friend told him that my mom had seriously pissed off some powerful encantado with her noisy sunset shenanigans. Rule number one of coexisting with encantado: do NOT disturb the peace at dusk near an acacia tree. My mom brought this upon herself, she was told. (She agreed.) Mr. Friendly Encantado agreed to travel to these entities to apologise on her behalf. In the meantime my mother was directed to apply some oil blessed by this encantado on her lip.

She went home and applied the oil.

The next morning, she woke up to find her lip had crusted over completely. It had turned into a nasty, full-lip scab. It was hard and painless, but she still couldn’t open it. She kept applying oil.

On the second day after meeting the superintendent, she woke and sat up in bed. She brought her hand to her lip, and it fell off in her hand.

Her entire scab-lip fell off!

Underneath was a new lip, soft and supple … and moveable! My ma could eat again! The only catch was that her new lip was not symmetrical; it was thicker on one side and a little crooked in outline.

To this day, my ma’s bottom lip is crooked.  She’ll show you. Just ask.

You should be having nightmares about acacia trees tonight.

Choeung Ek Killing Fields

Now you too can feel like you've ridden a tuk-tuk.

The day after I went to Tuol Sleng, I visited the Choeung Ek killing fields. I believe it’s called the Choeung Ek Genocide Museum and it lies 17km outside of Phnom Penh. It’s not hard to get to and tourists just need to find a moto/tuk-tuk driver who’ll agree to take them there (again, not hard.) I got a good deal of $8 for a tuk-tuk there and back because Vana the driver deals with Alice and Siena frequently and was guaranteed work the next day to drive me to the airport.  We left at 9 because he had prior arrangements, but I would visit earlier if possible.

Before the horror, here are some images of Phnom Penh roadsides. Enjoy your virtual tuk-tuk ride!

These arches lead to a pagoda. Driving around Cambodia, you'll see dozens in a short ride. Check out that naga! Raaaaaad.

Don't be late!

A typical roadside store.

A quick and colourful glimpse into a wedding or engagement party.

Phnom Penh isn't very big, and immediately upon leaving the city centre corrugated metal houses and rice paddies dominate the landscape.

The ride takes around 40 min by tuk-tuk if your driver is trying to conserve gas by driving in 2nd the entire way (like mine.) It’s pretty dusty because of big trucks passing constantly, so if you’re afraid of dust, maybe invest some extra money in a car taxi.

When we arrived, Vana pointed out where he’d be waiting in the shade, and I skipped up to the ticket booth. I had decided to hire a guide this time because I wasn’t sure how well things would be marked. I thought it would just be a free-for-all like most of the other museums I had seen (I also hear Angkor Wat is like that: climb whatever you want to!) If I were to do it again, I wouldn’t spend that $6 on the guide. He had a few interesting things to say that weren’t on the signs placed around the fields, but I had done some prior research and in hindsight … meh. Maybe it was just my tour guide. In any case, here’s what I saw.

The Choeung Ek stupa (a Buddhist mausoleum,) built in the 90s to house the ~8900 bodies unearthed in the excavation of less than half of the mass graves. Before this was built they were sat on wooden shelves in an open-walled building.

There are 16 or 17 "stories" in the stupa. The lower few hold skulls grouped by age and sex. The upper stories hold other bones grouped by type. They have an entire storey devoted to pelvises. The very bottom holds some clothing (washed and treated) that was found in the graves as well, although clothes scatter the entire area. You can leave flowers or incense if you want to, and can go inside to see the skulls.

My tour guide seemed eager to start. He didn’t smile, didn’t do anything subtly, and radiated rage and frustration. The first thing he told me was that his entire family was killed here or at other killing fields in the country because they were doctors and teachers. Next, he told me he had worked here since 1981. Consider that people were executed here until 1979.

He took me to the stupa and pointed out the things he thought I should take pictures of. He waited outside and chatted on his cell while I stared at the skulls a while longer.

Some of the skulls on the 2nd story of the stupa. I think these were middle-aged men.

My guide showed me three skulls whose owners had been executed in different ways. One had been bludgeoned. One had been shot between the eyes. This one had been axed in half. The photo is taken from above the skull.

Next he took me around the excavated mass graves, often stopping and demanding I take a picture of something. “Here. Picture. Take.” Bemused, I followed his instructions.  Every time we stopped he reminded me how many people had been killed here. Every time we started moving again he pointed out the clothes and bones visible poking through the ground. I arranged my face into an expression of disgust and shock, but I was actually having a really difficult time digesting the reality of where I was and what I was seeing.

That is a skull. It used to be someone’s head. His face was here, his brain sat there, his ears were here. Once he had a face. He had a life, a family, dreams and fears and an imagination. Then maybe he looked a his work camp leader the wrong way and he ended up bound and blindfolded, kneeling by a pit, probably insane with fear as screams and smells surrounded him.

Things like this are hard to imagine and know when it’s a gorgeous sunny, butterfly-filled day and an angry man is pointing at various wooden signs. I think I would have preferred to take in the horror alone and wandering like I did at Tuol Sleng.

The site of Choeung Ek used to serve as a graveyard for the ethnic Chinese in Phnom Penh. This is the only remaining gravestone. In the background is the "magic tree". It had loudspeakers hung from it that played music to drown out the sounds made by the people being killed. I have no idea why they call it the "magic tree".

At the "magic tree" my guide very suddenly grasped my upper arm with steely fingers and dragged me towards the ground. He pointed in mute rage at a patch of earth strewn with teeth and bone fragments. There were teeth and bones and clothes and rope hand cuffs everywhere. Too much to be worth trying to clean up.

For me, the most horrifying thing I saw at Cheoung Ek. It reads: "KILLING TREE AGAINST WHICH EXECUTIONERS BEAT CHILDREN". Often female prisoners from S-21 would arrive with children or babies. To save time, when killing them, the executioners would just take them by their feet and swing them repeatedly against this tree.

The next few sentences are not for the queasy. Be warned.

In the film I watched at Choeung Ek, they interviewed a man who had lived in the area before the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. After Khmer Rouge fell to the Vietnamese, he headed home. He passed through Choeung Ek on the way and he said he remembered feeling very uneasy about the place: “This place is not how it used to be.” He noted the various new buildings (housing chemicals to sprinkle on mass graves, torture instruments, guards) and the terrible, terrible stench of the place. He wandered around. He saw freshly turned earth, bloody torture instruments, palm stems covered in gore, and most terribly (to me) he found a tree covered in “blood, gore, and brains.” This is that tree.

Instead of buying new machetes or palm knives, executioners sometimes just used the serrated leaves of palms.

A close-up of a leaf. They're very sharp and very hard. These trees also grow everywhere.

My guide left me to watch the film and explore the little information centre alone. Before he left I finally asked him the question that I had been most thinking about since I learned about Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek (and judge me how you will.) We had already said goodbye when I decided I had to know and chased him down with, “Wait! Can I ask you one more question?” (which was silly as it was the first question I asked him because he RIPPED through the fields as fast as possible.) He turned to me, strangely pleased, although still seemingly seething with anger.
“Is this place haunted?”
“Haunted?”
“Are there stories about ghosts?”
“Oh! Dead spirits. No. Not at all.”
“Oh. . .”
“But one time yes. Very very haunted. Many frightening stories. No since 1993.”
“What happened in 1993?”
“Monks come and bless here. We all Buddhist, so we can’t rest without … monks came and prayed a ritual for all the dead souls here. Since then, no ghosts. Nothing. Everyone asleep now.”
“What about before 1993?”
“Oh yes. Very haunted.” At this point, he lit his cigarette as if this were the most normal conversation in the world. “I work here since 1981.”
“Did you – did you see anything?”
“No. See nothing. But I hear many things.”
“What did you hear?!”
“I hear terrible things every night. I used to sleep by old guard house outside with others. Every night we hear screams, cries, prayers. We hear the sounds of people being killed.”
“…oh my god…”
“Yes. It so terrible. I know how they sounded. Women and men. Children crying for their mothers. And screaming. And [made gurgling sounds].”
“But now…”
“Nothing. Every year monks come back to say prayer again. 1993 even the King came!”
“Wow. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Yes. Bye.”

There's a primary school right next door to the killing fields. It was strange to hear the kids singing songs and chanting and screaming recess-time screams while wandering around on the site of a 20 000-person murder.

A little yellow shrine I found behind a big tree, facing the unexcavated mass graves.

They built a dyke around the remaining mass graves to protect them from the rainy season's floods. (It still flooded.)

The dyke makes for a pretty walk around the perimeter of the killing fields. It was REALLY pretty: rice paddies and butterflies and a cool breeze.

 

Sorry for this super heavy subject. As apology, please look at this duck.

 

Duck chaser.