Before
the Laughter Began
A few months ago, a colleague sent an article of
Dara’s Than’s Story and I thought I would share it with you. During our first two weeks in Phnom Pehn Dara was our VSO/ Cuso Khmer teacher. He was
smart, witty and fun to listen to. He had a way of making us laugh when
he knew that we had had enough with our Khmer lesson. He also told us ‘unthinkable’
stories he experienced during the Khmer Rouge regime. Dara was a great story teller and a romantic. Dara sadly passed away last June 2014. Below is Dara’s story. Enjoy!
******************** Dara's Story - Before the Laughter Began
Deep furrows
run from the corners of Dara Than’s eyes. They come from countless smiles that
cause his face to contort as he bashfully covers his mouth, as wheezy
explosions of laughter wrack his rotund body when something strikes him as
funny.
His is a face created to smile and
laugh; dark brown eyes dominating a round face topped by closely cropped hair.
Yet a shadow creeps across his brow as he reflects on his past, his gaze
drifting and his expression somber.
“The word
refugee is a beautiful word,” he says. “It sounds lovely and it’s easy to say.
But the reality of it is like being buried alive”.
Dara’s brown
eyes cloud over as he recalls the 12 years he spent in a refugee camp on the
Cambodia border in the 1980s. Gone is the
jovial laugh and constant sparkle which identify him among the expat community
in Phnom Penh as a good-humoured Khmer teacher. Instead, there’s a rarely-seen
seriousness and a touching poignancy to his speech as he talks about his past.
Small wonder,
as this gregarious, fun-loving teacher recalls a past punctuated by loss,
hardship and uncertainty. It’s a common tale among survivors of the Khmer
Rouge. But what makes Dara special is where his life has taken him and what he
has made of a future he often was able to define, let alone predict.
There were days
when he was not sure if he’d see tomorrow. Hours spent working in rice fields,
trying to survive. Months on the front-line, holding a gun, in defense of his
country that was being torn apart. “I never
thought I’d return to this kind of life,” he says, sipping an iced cappuccino
in a Phnom Penh coffee shop. “I just lived from day to day. There were no
plans. It was all about survival”.
Today, Dara is
a successful Khmer teacher in Phnom Penh and, in a field crowded with
competitors, stands out not only for his remarkable teaching skills but also
for his engaging personality and that bubbling, unforgettable laughter. Years later,
his students recall that quality. “His style was
encouraging and fun.” said Anji Loman Field, a British film-maker who worked
with Dara more than a year ago. “We had a lot of laughs and – in contrast to my
lessons with other teachers – the words Dara taught me have stuck with me to
this day.” Daniel Saver,
an American law student, has a similar recollection. “For me, the
most memorable part of Dara is his characteristic laugh,” he said. “When he
laughs, a huge smile comes across his face and he bounces up and down ever so
slightly, sort of like a Cambodian Santa Claus.” And, while Dara
thought he’d never see the day when laughter would be part of his world, his
eyes still twinkle when he talks about some experiences of days gone by.
Like the tattoo
– a roughly-drawn picture of a mynah bird perched on a branch – which one of
his fellow refugees etched onto his left forearm when Dara was 21. “I wanted it to
attract the girls,” he said. A mischievous glimmer flits across his face, his
eyes start to twinkle and he erupts in a bellowing belly-laugh that rocks his
body.
He’s not sure
where the laugh came from but puts it down to having an appreciation for
getting through the dark days. “I look at what
I have now and it makes me feel stronger,” he says. “In the camps, I was very
low. I survived mentally by comparing my life to others and knowing I could get
through it. That everything comes to an end. “Sometimes when
I talk about those days, I can’t stop the tears. After 30 years, it may be
forgivable but will never be forgettable.”
Dara was only
10 when war broke out in Cambodia and 15 when the Khmer Rouge invaded. His
mother had given birth three days earlier to a baby boy, who his parents named
Santapeep (“peace”) because they thought the country’s troubles were over, but
suddenly the family was thrust into the chaos and tumult of a country ripped
apart by conflict. Dara’s mother was forced to escape with a newborn baby, his
father was imprisoned in a labour camp and Dara sent to work in the rice
fields.
Two years after
the invasion, in an attempt to find his father, Dara was arrested by the Khmer
Rouge. He was marched to an abandoned rice mill, shackled and locked in a dark
room. Later that night, the door opened and he was pushed outside with an AK47
at his back.
Walking
barefoot through a banana plantation, he feared his last moment had come. He’d
heard the Khmer Rouge killed people in these fields because their decaying
bodies made good fertilizer and he fearfully anticipated the gunshot. It never came. Instead, he was
marched to a Khmer Rouge prison where he was chained together with dozens of
other prisoners and shackled to a steel bar. “I knew I had
to escape,” he said. “I checked out the fence when I slipped away to urinate
while the other prisoners were having lunch and decided I would try to get over
it”. Urged on by his
desire to escape, Dara sprinted toward the fence, leaped over it and kept
running. Once back in his village, he looked for his mother who’d been sent
away to work and, after he found her, learned she’d been told
Dara had been
shot, his liver eaten and his body dumped in the river. “I was so angry
that I joined the army,” he said. “I had no experience or training in how to
shoot a gun but I was right on the frontline every day. I saw several of my friends
get shot and, one day, I was walking with three friends when a mine exploded,
killing all of them. That was the day I decided to leave the army”.
In the
meantime, his family was living in Battambang and starving – five people
surviving on handfuls of rice. They heard they could get handouts of free rice
from a town near the Thai border so Dara walked – at night, along with hundreds
of people, barefoot, 100 kilometers to the border – to get rice for his family.“We were
allowed 15 kilograms at a time,” he said. “My shoulders were red and swollen
from carrying it so far, but there was nothing else I could do”.
At that point,
Dara moved to a refugee camp where, in 1983, be began learning English and
applied for a job with the United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO) to
teach in primary school in the camp. By 1989, he was
working as a translator and interpreter, landed a job editing a bi-weekly
bulletin and began teaching Khmer to foreigners who worked in the camp.
But his
troubles were still not over. He wrote a
petition for a neutral refugee camp, signing it with a pseudonym as protection,
since he could be accused of working for the Vietnamese for spearheading this
activity. Later that year, he was interviewed by a Time magazine correspondent
who promised to protect his identity, then broke his promise and revealed his
name in the magazine. One month later, Vanity Fair magazine not only used his
name but published his photo in an article, with the caption “This is Mr. Than
Dara, who wrote the petition for a neutral camp.” “I will never
forget the name of that journalist,” Dara said. “I could have been killed for
being identified and I did not expect to be betrayed”.
Since it was no
longer safe to remain in the camp, he paid a guide to get him across the border
and navigate a route through the mine fields. He finally made it to Phnom Penh,
without ID documents ,where he found his uncle and grandmother but was turned
away from their home as they feared for their own safety by harbouring him. On his uncle’s
advice, Dara went to the police and confessed he’d escaped from a refugee camp.
He was immediately arrested and spent the next 17 days being interrogated
before he was set free.
A week after
leaving police custody, he found a job with Save The Children Norway where he
earned $250 a month for translation services and, in 1991, started working as a
contract teacher for the VSO after the Paris Peace agreement was signed. He
taught the first group of eight volunteers who came to Cambodia and worked as a
contract translator and language instructor for OXFAM, VSA, OSB and other
organizations.
The rest, as
they say, is history. Dara now lives in Phnom Penh, travels to the provinces on
teaching projects several times a year and raises two children with Sarah, his
partner of 17 years, who he met in a classroom. He’s been interviewed by the
BBC about his life, written about in a number of publications and earned the
respect of his peers and students.
So what about
his heroes? Who does Dara look up to and respect? “Oh,” he
smiled, wistfully, his face softened in reflection.”There’s someone very
special I admire most who lost a husband, raised four children alone and never
remarried or left her kids to have a life of her own.
”That’s my
mum”.
Gabrielle Yetter, July 27, 2011
Kevin my friend, my
life line… As you know by now Kevin is my husband
and in VSO/Cuso terms he is known as my accompanied partner. Whilst I’m at work, he plays many
functions. After breakfast, Kevin will
walk with me partway to work before he turns off to the market to buy produce
for lunch and dinner. He makes the most
delicious meals that I always look forward to especially on my return from the
villages. (See below Kevin’s pumpkin soup
recipe). Added to this, the house is
always spick and span, the floors washed, clean laundry is put away and
more. When Kevin isn’t a ‘wife’ at home,
he accompanies me to the villages, assists with workshops, activities ... you
name it he does it. And, in his spare
time he teaches English. Kevin’s a
very good listener and in a sense is a ‘punch bag’. We have our usual arguments about everything
and anything… as friends that’s what
it’s all about and it clears the air too.
We talk a lot about work, about the challenges and frustrations that I
deal with on a daily basis. However,
Kevin has a knack at making things better.
It's nice to come home to someone that understands me inside out. I really don’t know how I would have managed
without him. I’m so lucky to have Kevin
here with me. He ’s my friend, my
lifeline and everything that you can possibly imagine. He is definitely a Keeper! 
