Eternity with Rhee

Every morning about 8am, Rhee opens my gate and rolls her old motorbike down the path. It signals the beginning of our day. The kids run out to the balcony with Tobias calling "Ming Rhee Ming Rhee" as though he has not seen her in months. I breath a sigh of relief that she came again, and will help me manage the daily tasks of living in this exotic but challenging place for another day.

Her day has already begun hours before, when she wakes her five children and husband up to prepare them for the day. She hand washes all their clothes, and then goes to the market to buy their food supplies. On a good day, she will also sell the offal that her 14 year old son has earned from working since 3am in the piggery not far from their home. On those days, she beams, because the extra income she earns from that sale means the family can have something a little special from the market. Today she was running a little late to work. She had killed eight chickens, plucked them and sold them all this morning before she came to my place in addition to her usual tasks!



Since I met her about five months ago, Rhee has been a very significant part of my life here. She negotiates the market, dodging the mud in the wet season and the dust in the dry, finding the best cuts of meat (which translated means the pieces you can eat without having to mince it to a pulp first) and bargains for good prices, thrilled that she can save me 200 riel (0.5 cents) on a kilo of tomatoes! She scrubs Tobias' shorts after an afternoon of play in the dust piles, attacks spider webs on a daily basis, collects water when the pump is broken, and advises me on all manner of acceptable ways of doing things here in the province.


As much as she is a delight to us, we are, she assures me, a great source of joy, entertainment and information for her! Just this week she was introduced for the first time to broccoli and red capsicums (bought when I was down in phnom penh last week), she viewed her first real live Christmas Tree and discovered that Holland was really far away since you had to be in the aeroplane for over 12 hours. In addition to all her discoveries, the salary Rhee earns working for us has meant she can enrol her youngest daughter into a private school, and that the family are never without anything to eat.


Perhaps what has meant the most to me is the way Rhee has trusted me enough to open up about the history of her life. One day,while sitting on the kitchen floor chopping vegetables, with tears streaming down both our faces, Rhee told me a little of her story.

Rhee is a child of Pol Pot. Unable to forget it, she carries that history like a heavy yoke upon her firm frame. Rhee was about 7 when Pol Pot cleared Phnom Penh and sent almost the whole population out to the rural areas. Then living in the city with her seven siblings, parents and grand parents, the entire family joined the exodus which eventually found them settled in Battambang, a province about 300 km away. There, Rhee was separated from her adult family members and some of her siblings, and went to work in a children's labour camp. Like so many other stories of those who lived through these years, Rhee tells of a life characterised by hard work and hunger. She can't even repeat many of the things she has witnessed with her own eyes. With other children she searched secretly for frogs, crickets and even mice, which they hastily shared between them. Once she was caught during the night, searching for food in a nearby rice field. It was punishable by death, and she still doesn't know why she was allowed to return, alive, to the camp.


At the end of those years, Rhee was re-united with her mother. Her seven siblings, her father and her grandparents had all died. With almost nothing but the clothes on their backs, Rhee, then about 10, walked the 300 km back to Phnom Penh barefoot, often, she says, carrying her young niece on her back.


Once returned to Phnom Penh, her traumatised mother was unable to deal with the grief of loosing all but one of her family members. Rhee reminded her too much of all she had lost, and she rejected her, the only one to survive. Although they lived together in the same house, Rhee was a stranger to her mother, and after she remarried, Rhee had no place in the new family.


Determined to make something of her broken life, Rhee began working in the day for a distant relative who gave her food and lodgings, and a small amount of pocket money. Rhee invested the money. She enrolled in night school, and began to learn to read and write, since she had the privilege of school robbed from her during the Pol Pot years.


She married a good man, and had five children. She is hard working and wise and has managed to buy land and build a home. She is industrious and grows vegetables, has chickens and fruit trees. She always dreams of a better life. A chance to improve the lives of her children.


She inspires me because she has risen above her circumstances. I can't begin to imagine and the kind of life she has experienced. She still dreams of a better life. She strives for it. She has not given up.

And its for Rhee and others like her that I am sure I am meant to be here. Through the testimony of my life, and the chances to talk to her, I can share with her the real hope that is available to her. The chance for healing and restoration of all that has gone on before, and the peace and love that is guaranteed to those who believe in Jesus. All that this life has thrown at her is not the end. There's more. So much more.

I want to share eternity with Rhee.