Why Poipet? Poipet is a place where human slavery still happens
The intent of this post is not to put my passion to serve Cambodia up against your passion to serve where you are called. I can be competitive but this is not a competition so I will try to put that aside and make the case with out taking anything away from others.
It's pretty easy to argue that alot of places in the world are messed up and need help. Disaster, Genocide, Poverty and Oppressive governments are words that quickly come to mind to describe the landscape in many places. People are suffering right here in America, it's part of the human condition, though I believe it's difficult for the Western mind to comprehend the desperate poverty and the utter hopelessness that is life in most of the developing world. In America and the Industrialized Nations (G20 and counting) we are worried about the value of our homes, if we can afford a new car and if our investment portfolio will sustain us during retirement. The other 80+% of the worlds population is worried about survival for their entire family living on $2.00 a day or less, most of them less, much less.
Human Trafficking and Human slavery is particularly insidious crime. Primarily children and women are stolen or lured away; some go voluntarily viewing it as their duty, others are bought and sold. However it happens it is wrong. Thought that slavery was dead? Hard to imaging? Cambodia is listed by many sources including the CIA World book as having one of the highest rates of Human Trafficking. Human Trafficking happens at the intersection of poverty and greed. Poipet sits at that intersection. The work in Poipet is all about preventing Human Trafficking and helping the refugees of Human Trafficking.
A brief history lesson on Poipet Cambodia; Cambodia is struggling to recover from decades of Civil war and the destruction cause during the the Khmer Rouge. Remember the Khmer Rouge? Back in the 70's Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge (literally means Khmer Red) killed about 1/4 of the population of the country by execution or starvation and deprivation in labor camps in just 4 years. Think of Hitler or Stalin and you will get close the Pol Pot in terms of evil, genocide and destruction. Geographically Poipet is located at the north of Cambodia on Thailand Border, and is the region where Pol Pot retreated to after Phnom Phen was sacked by the Vietnamese in 1979. From this location, funded by the Chinese, Pol Pot waged a Civil war until 1998 when he died of natural causes. This civil war was particularly brutal with armies being run by three different forces: the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese and the Cambodian Rebel army. All were trying to recruit men from basically the same population. Recruiting is a kind way to say capture you and force you to fight. The entire area along the Thailand border is still loaded with land mines and many of the remote villages are still branded as Khmer Rouge well after the Khmer Rouge era has ended. All the villages look about the same to me but ask the locals and they can tell you who is who. It hard to forget the people that you believe were responsible for killing your family. In 2002 Cambodia was able establish a new constitution and essentially begin being a country anew trying to unite a country deeply divided.
Today Cambodia is a country with little infrastructure, little industry, limited education system though they are working hard to fix that. What was once known to be a good land capable of yielding 3 crops of rice a year now maybe yields one. Deforestation, poisoned ground water, pollution and land mines make working the land difficult. Maybe even worse is the lost ability to trust one another? This is the soil of modern Cambodia, a place where human slavery is still happening everyday.
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