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Surviving the killing fields of Cambodia
Loung Ung
CambodiaGALLERYCONVERSATION
When I was 8 years old, other children in other parts of the world were playing with toy guns, or playing Cowboys and Indians.
It’s taken me many, many years to turn from being a victim to being a survivor-- and an activist who advocates for peoples positive solutions to warfare. It was a very long transition. For many years, there was still a hunger that wouldn’t go away, even though I had a big plate of food in front of me. For many years, I was still startled from the sound of low flying planes, the explosion of fireworks, and the kick of a cars engine that brought me back to a time when I was victim.
About the time I turned 16, I started asking myself: Why me? Why did I make it? Why am I not dead when my mother, father, sisters, twenty other relatives are? Why am I here? And about that same time, somebody put Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning” in my hands and it really changed for me.
So why me? Now I am 36 years old. It’s 26 years since I left Cambodia. To be honest, I don’t have an answer to why me. I don’t know why I survived and not others. And I’m getting to be okay with that. I’m getting to be okay with the fact that life is not fair.
I started first, fresh out of college, working as an activist in a domestic violence agency. Then I worked on issues of child soldiers. And then I began working as a spokesperson for The Campaign for a Landmine Free World; which was part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. I am proud our effort and our collective voices won us the Nobel Peace Prize.
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