Daravi

There is a Cambodian exchange student that is staying with us here in Aussieland. Her name is Daravy (pronounced just like you read it da-rah-v) and she has been working on a 250 page thesis for her Masters degree in hydro development to take back to her home in Cambodia. We were talking about her home land at dinner Tuesday night and this is part of her story. In the 80’s the Cambodian government was overthrown. Genocide spread through the country. 2.5 million people were killed because they were educated. One of those people was Daravi’s aunt. The few ways you could live in the country were to somehow hide the knowledge you had while being inspected or you would die. How could the government know you were educated? If you knew English…the rich were the only ones to have any say in the country. The rich were the only ones with food; meanwhile the poor are starving to death. Daravi tells a story of students like her receiving scholarships to go out of the country to continue school and while overseas the Cambodian government would offer jobs to the students so they would come back. The students would come back and once landing on back on their home soil realized that it was a trick to get them back…these students were killed also. The Cambodian government rules all media of the country: tv, radio, newspapers…any criticism of the government is not tolerated. Such is the story of Daravi and her uncle. He was a reporter for one of the newspapers and he leaked much information incriminating the government showing how corrupt it is. A couple days after the article was released her uncle and his son finished running and while on the way back home were shot and killed. The paper claims that one of the friends of the son got into an argument and he is the one that shot the two men. The government is so corrupt; they had two Prime Ministers in the same year. The first won by election…he was assassinated by the man that was next in line and he would then become the next Prime Minister…this stuff is still going on over there right now.
The mind blowing part is that she wants to go back. She is engaged and her future husband to be is still living there. Everyday they live in fear of what can happen to them just because they have gone to school. Daravi says there are many students that she talks with that go to school in a different country and never comes back. If everyone does that then who will stay and attempt to rebuild the country? She wants to be one that helps rebuild the nation. I don’t know if I could do that. I mean there is a certain level of fear that we live in back in the States, but it’s not to the level of wondering if I will die because of being smarter than the government is. I respect Daravi so much for what she wants to do for her country even though the government has done such wrong to her for such a long time…
And that’s just part of her story…