Day 3476, memories in disguise.

This picture, which I took, represents a kind of memory for me. What I mean by that is that I don’t remember being there, but it is still an important part of my memories. I remember vaguely the wooden floor and the closeness to the skulls, but…I do remember that these skulls have hunted me in my dreams a couple of times in the past. My memories of being truly there and the even stronger emotions I felt in my dreams are mixed, so the wooden floor I remember might as well not be true; maybe I took this picture from a car when we were on patrol, driving by.

Another thing that is related to this monument in Cambodia, a memorial in remembrance of the millions of people killed during the Pol Pot regime, is the fact that it changed my life. To be clear, my life did not alter course after I saw it for the first time; it was just the tiniest seed that was dropped. Having worked as a UN soldier for five months in a country so different from what I was used to that has changed my perspective. It opened my eyes, and I could see a bigger world than just what I was used to. I got interested in history and politics and started studying in that direction. If people ask me why I am so sensitive to what is happening in the world, I will show them this picture. This monument represents that change.

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Day 2886, memories II.

Daily picture, My thoughts

We were probably standing still here, not to give the kids a chance to pose for me, but still, they did. I was almost always in the last car, looking back at what came towards us and my camera was never far away. We were for those kids, probably what the police or firefighters were to us when we were that young. I was stationed in an area of Cambodia bordering Thailand. It was an erea that was abandoned for many years because the Kmehr Rouge was holding out there to the last moment. After the first UN soldiers arrived, the people living in the refugee camps in Thailand came slowly back. Most of them were born in refugee camps in Cambodia’s neighboring country and had no bond with the area aside from some sparse stories of the elders who survived the killings. These kids you see here are most likely not aware of what happened to the place they soon started calling home; by now, they probably know what they live there.

Day 2638, to know.

Daily picture, Poetry

He never really talked
but his movements
a look
a slight gesture
told you what you wanted to hear
and see

Day 2148, thought pattern.

Day's pictures

Every skull in this monument somewhere in Cambodia once belonged to a human being with hopes and dreams, a life filled with sunsets and worries. Then one day a group of people decided that their way of living was wrong and they got murdered. This picture was taken in the early nineties when I worked in Cambodia as a UN soldier. Our task was to keep the former murderers, the Khmer Rouge, away from the people who wanted to live again on their ancestors’ land. Today, it is not going so well in Cambodia, and I wondered how much they have learned from their history.

I have written about these skulls before; they fascinate me, and they have also put my life on a trajectory I would probably not have taken If I hadn’t lived in that country for a while, between monuments

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Communication

Society

The human mind sees the world, like looking through a reflective window.

I like to share some experiences I had with communication on the work floor, not so much about communication between two people, like a wife and husband or two friends but within groups. Communication between two or more people is hard, that is a statement that most people will agree on. Why is it hard, and what can you do to improve it is another thing entirely. People disagree why this is hard, you can read thousands of books about it. Ironically we probably misunderstand each other also when we discuss these matters.

I have no special knowledge about communication, the only thing different between me and most other people is that I not only ask these questions, but I also like to look for answers endlessly, as some kind of obsession. I learned the most from others by reading there books, specially about philosophy and psychology. There are also many good lectures on the internet from all kind of sources like universities and companies like the great courses. You will enter a “rabbit hole” if you search for answers but that should not stop you.

One of my first jobs was for a small company with two owners and up to 4 employees. I was a surveyor there Communication was pretty straight forward, go to this place in that country and measure this and that, you have 5 day’s. That was more or less the extent of our communication. I drove with my assistant, in most cases to former east Germany, booked a hotel and worked the rest of the week. This was in 1996 and we used one of the first GPS systems to make a grid that other surveyors could use. The equipment needed several hours to get a fixed point within a couple of centimeters, pretty slow compared to the modern equipment.

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Kids in Cambodia.

My thoughts

In 1993 I worked in Cambodia as a Dutch Marine. The region we were working was for years in the hands of the Khmer Rouge but now all the Cambodian refugees that had lived for years in Thailand where coming back.

On this picture you see the kids that lived in the village not far from where we stayed. There is nothing special about this picture and these kids, that is what so striking for me. Put them in newer cloth and in a western city and they blend in.

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