Everyone has their painful memories. Do you shut them out? Do you dwell on them? Tearfund’s Abigail Frymann was amazed by Chomno In, a Cambodian whose life is a remarkable story of courage and grace.
Every now and then you meet someone who inspires you, someone whose story touches your heart and makes your eyes sting.
For me that person was Chomno In, head of the Tearfund partner organisation I was visiting in Cambodia.
Chomno is the founder of the Cambodian Hope Organisation.
Horrors of the past
Chomno is Cambodian. To truly understand what it means to be Cambodian, you need to have experienced its last few decades first-hand.
Think back: the Khmer Rouge, The Killing Fields – the stuff of books and film and easily rationalised as fiction. Here is a country full of heroes and survivors, as well as penitent former child soldiers and unrepentant traitors.
Chomno’s life reads like a micro-history book. Under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge as a teenager he saw the whole of his uncle’s family killed. He was separated from his parents and forced to carry out hard labour. They were apart ‘three years, eight months, 20 days – that’s one thing I’ll remember for ever.’ His voice is soft and understated.
Refugee wedding
Because Pol Pot’s brutal enforcement of an agrarian utopia had wiped out much of the country’s modernisation, Chomno worked on a farm. When Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge Chomno fled to a refugee camp, where he lived for seven years.
There he trained as a medical assistant; there he became a Christian; there he learnt English; there he met his wife; there he married her and there they lived until 1992.
‘The wedding was just small event; we got friends to come and help. My wife had to wear her normal dress.’ He speaks slowly. ‘They bombed the camp on our wedding day and people had to run away. My wife says, ‘Why don’t we get married again?’"
Back to serve
Children learn about the dangers of trafficking through karaoke.
He and his wife moved to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, where she ran a successful business buying and selling gold. I ask if he has ever gone back to the camp, where people still live. ‘Yes.’ I am surprised. For personal closure? For curiosity? But I underestimate this man. ‘We have projects there. We have built a well and a school and cleared the mines.’
He goes on. ‘When I got there I felt a pain inside, but I saw children suffering and that’s why God let us go back. God planned for me to help people in there.’
Hope
The Cambodian Hope Organisation, CHO, was set up three years ago to work with rural communities in the north of the country. Chomno wanted to address the causes of poverty and disillusionment that drive people into the arms of traffickers. In Khmer, ‘cho’ means stand.
CHO enabled Sorn Srey Him to make a living as a seamstress so she’ll never have to run away to traffickers again.
Today 20 staff and 35 volunteers carry out skills training and adult education; they build wells and schools; they run a church; they help people grow their own vegetables and eat more healthily; they enable people to set up small-scale farming business; they raise awareness of trafficking, domestic violence and bullying. They counsel and pray with children who have been trafficked and somehow make it home.
Christ-like love
Chomno is a visionary, and a classic workaholic. He has large dreams, great abilities and a large – if overstretched – heart. His eyes drop as he tells me he’s worried about his health and the amount of time he doesn’t spend with his wife. He asks for supporters to pray for him and the team.
He becomes more animated again. ‘It’s exciting to see children safe from abuse and having a better standard of living. They go to school and they have big, healthy smiles. And every time we go to a village and people there praise the Lord and sing a song, that makes me feel, “Aah! This is it.”’