We arrived in Siem Reap Cambodia Two days ago now, on a direct bus from Saigon Vietnam. We immediately started our volunteering at the Landmine Museum, and continued this morning. We are teaching english to young Cambodians, most of them victims of landmines who now live at the landmine museum (which also acts as a sort of orphanage, though many of the youngsters have parents and either don't know where they are OR can't be supported by their parents)

The Landmine Museum is about 4 km out o town, on the road to Angkor Wat, off a 1 km dirt track spur road. We get there on bikes, bouncing over ruts and inhaling massive quantities of dust, avoiding children and small animals reclining in the street. The museum itslef is a ramshackle assemble of tarp-roofed shelters and buildings, decorated with big piles of the residue of warfare - de-fused bombs, mines, missiles, chains of bullets, all collected by the landmine museum owner and curate, Aki Ra. A former child soldier of the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese puppet army, and then as a member of the Cambodian army and the U.N. peacekeeping mission here, Aki is responsible for laying some of the countries estimated 8 million mines. He has become something of an international celebrity for his efforts to rid the country of the things.

So Aki spent the last 7 years or so going out, either alone or with other Cambodians, and with nothing more than a shovel and a spade, finding and de-fusing mines. Sort of nuts, but it seems to have worked. He claims that he can find and de-fuse a mine for about $2 each, versus the $500 plus that it costs most officially sanctioned mine clearing outfits. He also set up the museum and started taking in young victims.

Like much of SE Asia (Laos and Vietnam in particular) being here is one part fascination, and one part quilt, as we see first hand exactly where our tax money and international reputation have ended up. Many of the weapons in the musuem carry the Made in USA stamp, and perhaps Da, who lost his arm to a mine (photo above), is a victim of our foreign policy (though China and the USSR might also have been the generous contributors of the machine that took his hand). Regardless, it gives us a great deal to think about. We meet travellers form other nations and we often hear the rather grim joke parlayed about that perhaps we will be visiting a museum like this in Iraq in 15 or 20 years. Lessons seem hard-learned by my nation.

We plan on spending another 3 or 4 days working with the Landmine museum, and then spend our remaining few days visiting Angkor Wat. aFter that, we travel to Bali, where we will switch from introspective ponerings of grim monuments of our nation's policies to hours spent on blue-water beaches sipping beverages out of coconuts. The ironies aren't lost to us, but it just has to be done.

Ian