Sarith's Story
The school project started when Sarith Ou began helping poor rural school children when he returned to Cambodia in 1994. He left in 1975, and since had been a guerilla fighter, a refugee and finally a naturalized citizen of the United States. Sarith visited some rural schools in his home province and was struck by the lack of resources and by the poor attendance. He began to talk to parents about the importance of education, and give away school uniforms to encourage attendance. Over the next several years friends began to contribute, and this evolved into the Cambodian School Project.
Together with their wives, they built houses and cleared land at the edge in a rural province, at the edge of the forest. This was rich soil. Their farms prospered and they healed from the war. Others began to join them, and a village of 300 families formed. Oeur Ou was their leader. He was helpful to all. But knowing Sarith, it also seems likely that he had many good ideas.
Ouer Ou and his wife had seven children. Sarith was the youngest of the three boys. As village boys did, he and his brothers learned to read and write from the Buddhist monks at the local temple, They also learned Buddhist history, practices and meditation. Then, as a teenager, Sarith moved into the temple and became a monk. It was typical for young Cambodian men to spend several years as monks before going on with secular life. A good student, Sarith eventually became a teacher for the younger boys at the temple. At this time, Cambodia was being heavily bombed. Outside this village temple, Cambodia was falling apart.
IIn 1970, the royal government fell to a military coup. The Khmer Rouge continued to infiltrate the countryside and by 1971 they were sometimes on the grounds of the temple where Sarith was attending and teaching. They were new, nobody knew they would usher in such evil. At this time the US was trying to stop the communists by dropping two million tons of bombs on Laos and Cambodia. The king had exploited the poor for generations, the army was no better and many people found the Marxist rhetoric of the Khmer Rouge compelling.
This is a picture of Sarith’s teacher from that era, still teaching as he was when Sarith was his student. He is a fierce character. He clearly remembered Sarith with affection. When asked if Sarith was difficult to teach, he made eye contact and said, “No, the only difficulty was the bombs. The bombs were difficult.”
There were other difficulties as well. The new military government was just as corrupt as the old royal government. This was no surprise. Aware of this, and like many other idealistic young Khmer, Sarith hoped the message of the revolutionaries was true – that they would create a just and equitable government. He joined these radicals, the Khmer Rouge. Six months later, he was completely disillusioned. Not only were they not helping the poor, there was complete confusion at the local level. Despite their Marxist rhetoric, there clearly was a hidden central control that was calling the shots. Sensing a dark purpose behind this massive deception, Sarith left the Khmer Rouge.
He couldn’t go home. In 1972, the Khmer Rouge had taken over his village. Having left made him an enemy to the communists. Sarith went to his uncle, a career army officer, a colonel at the army base closer to Thailand, in Battambang. At his uncle’s urging, Sarith became a government soldier, now the only opposition to the communists. He eventually became a commander of several hundred men, and paymaster for the post. Sarith began to see how things really worked in this army. Under the protection of the king, the officers were getting rich by withholding part of their pay from the men, who had no recourse. No wonder the army was losing. By April of 1975, the US was pulling out of Southeast Asia and the country was falling to the communists. His uncle urged Sarith to surrender (with him). They would surely be safe as they were under the protection of the king. Sarith did not think so. He talked to his uncle about his own experiences with the Khmer Rouge, urging him to flee to Thailand. His uncle refused, and Sarith left on his own for the border. A few days after crossing, he learned that all 106 officers at Battambang, his uncle included, had been executed by the Khmer Rouge.
Having crossed the border illegally, Sarith was jailed with a heavy sentence. A month later, as thousands of Cambodians poured into Thailand, he was released. After recuperating from the conditions in prison, he joined a former army officer and helped to organize a Cambodian guerilla army in the jungle, on the borders of Cambodia and Thailand. Many joined this army and it grew to several thousand troops. They got some material support from France and had dreams of overthrowing the communists. Toward this end, Sarith made repeated dangerous forays back into Cambodia, assessing the enemy. “At 26,” he said, “you are fearless.”
He found, in his visits as a spy, that the Khmer Rouge had no opposition. The opposition was dead, and many more besides. As the strength of their enemy became more clear, support for their small army dried up. Taking back Cambodia was not possible. After two years as a guerilla fighter, Sarith realized that rescuing Cambodia was not possible. Only time would change this grim reality. He left the guerilla army, as he had the Khmer Rouge and the government army. Cambodia was in chaos.
Newly arrive refugees told terrible stories. The Khmer Rouge had killed all of their enemies, real and perceived: former soldiers, police, government officials, teachers, doctors, people with soft hands, people with glasses – the entire middle class. Old scores were being settled. Deadly lies were being told. The Khmer Rouge were in total control. They had support from China and they even had the king.
Without hope for a military or political solution, Sarith moved to another camp. He married a young Khmer woman, living in Thailand but like many near the border, ethnically and culturally Cambodian. They started a family, having two daughters. Moved to a holding camp, Sarith spent the next year working as a translator. As he heard story after story of the holocaust from the survivors he interviewed, Sarith realized he would never be allowed to live if he returned to Cambodia – he would have the same fate as his uncle if he did. The family waited for sponsorship to America.
In 1979, Sarith and his family were flown from the camps and resettled in Cambridge, Wisconsin, sponsored by Grace Lutheran church. One of Sarith’s sponsors from that church, Tom, is now on our board. Sarith first worked in a factory, then became a welder, then a machinist. He studied English at night. In 1986, the family moved to Madison. Sarith’s language skills got him a bilingual specialist job with the local school system, helping Cambodian students and their families. He helped found the Cambodian Association of Wisconsin and served as president. He began working with the local Southeast Asian mutual assistance organization, and Sarith joined their board. Gray (now on our board) was director of this organization. His agency, United Refugee Services, was the main support for many hundreds of traumatized Southeast Asian refugees, Hmong, Lao and Cambodian.
In 1990, Sarith helped Roger (also on our board) start a support group for the many Cambodian war veterans disabled with post traumatic stress. Sarith was asked to served on the board of directors of the local mental health center and mental health services to these groups were expanded. The center has two weekly groups that meet at the temple and provides psychiatric services to most of the Cambodian community in Wisconsin.
In 1992, with support from the Madison Community Foundation, Sarith, Roger, the veterans group and the Cambodian community bought land for a Cambodian Buddhist temple near Madison. They brought a monk here from Cambodia. He is now an American citizen and the abbot there. A second monk from Cambodia joined him and is also now a citizen. A house for monks and a ceremony building were built on five acres of land. Thanks to contributions from Cambodians all over the country and much volunteer labor, the buildings were paid for and the mortgage small. The temple is the center of the Cambodian community. The high incidence of traumatic stress makes it hard for many Cambodians to acculturate. The temple, staffed by Cambodian monks, is deeply beneficial for those who find it difficult to adjust to a modern individualistic culture, a culture with many values incompatible with their own traditional society.
While helping to create all of this, Sarith kept studying (he didn’t sleep much). In 1993,
got his degree in political science from Edgewood College. Meanwhile, in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge had attacked their old mentors the Vietnamese in 1979. Within a few months this blunder led to their defeat and the victorious Vietnamese appointed Cambodia’s leader. Guerilla warfare was waged in the jungles, but by the early 90’s,
the Khmer Rouge were looking for a way out. In 1993, the UN brokered a peace and sponsored elections. The refugee camps were emptied. Officers of the Khmer Rouge guerilla army joined the new government. Their soldiers turned in their guns. The long
civil war and holocaust was over. It was again possible to safely travel to some areas.
Sarith was able to visit his brothers in town, and to see the countryside near where they lived. The country people were poor and the schools were in terrible shape. There were not enough schools, and children attended only sporadically. often needed to work in the fields. On later visits, he began to talk to the parents about literacy and give out school uniforms to encourage attendance. Given that most children had only the clothes on their backs, such gifts were not trivial. Attendance improved.
Roger and Tom, the sponsor from Grace Lutheran who is now on our board, began to contribute. Other friends joined in. Sarith told his story at local churches, and we recruited friends and relatives. Contributions steadily increased. More uniforms were given away each year. Finally, in 2002, we were able to build our first school, a few kilometers from the bridge pictured above. The project went well, coming in on time and on budget. As this first school neared completion, a story about our project appeared in the Sunday paper. People we didn’t even know began to send in contributions. We began to hope of being able to build another new school.
Here is Pran, Sarith’s brother. He found the poorest village for our first school, and oversaw its construction. The first school was in a village that had never had a school. We immediately had 200 students. We gave them all new uniforms. Over the first year, we had no dropouts. We had been able to deliver. Stephanie joined our board, and made our first website. We continued to get contributions. We began to think of building another school, and we had a place in mind. Steve, a former rocket scientist (I am not kidding) joined our board. His church, Resurrection Parish in Rochester, MN, began to help. One anonymous donor at Resurrection contributed the entire cost of building another school!
Almost before we knew it, we built two more schools, and by 2006 we had three schools. Pran was again central to the project in many ways. Then, disaster struck. Pran became ill, and medical treatment did not help. He passed away. This was a hard blow to Sarith, to get back a brother then lose him. It was also a blow to our project as Pran had been so central to getting our schools done. Our board, in thankfulness to Pran and to support Sarith in his loss, decided to build a school in Pran’s name, in their home village, the village founded by Ouer Ou. That school, Pran Ou School, was completed last year.
