A Khmer Rouge Nurse

            Before the Khmer Rouge regime, I completed Grade 7 in Takeo province. In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge regime came into power, my Uncle Phal, who had been educated in Hanoi, was asked to work as a doctor at M-22 hospital in Trapean Andaek, Osaray Commune, Tramkak District. He took me to work with him at the hospital. He trained me and other people in making medicine. We could produce the medicine in forms of tablets, liquid and also traditional Khmer medicine.

            My picture is about my daily life during the two-year period (1975-1976) at M-22 hospital. It was my first time working as a nurse. Everyday was the same to me. When I was at M-22, I learned how to make medicine by observing and doing. I did not undergo any written lesson. I had to look for the ingredients for each kind of disease. If you have malaria, for example, I need to take ingredients from specific types of vine. But right now, I cannot remember the names of those vines. We made vitamin C from lemon and vitamin B1 originally from rice bran through the process of toasting and boiling the rice bran which was then mixed with potato powder (Damlong Mi).  Vitamin B1 is a tablet preparation. For dextrose, there was a sponsor country at that time that provided dextrose to us. It had a label written in French but I do not know which country supplied the dextrose. When there was no dextrose available, we used coconut water instead.

            In my picture, the two yellow houses on the left are the rooms for patients. They have a thatched roof with walls made of coconut leaves. Inside, there were 30 beds for patients at that time. There were 24 medical staff and they were divided into  three groups. There was also a kitchen in a different building but I did not include it in the drawing. We had enough food in this place. My uncle was the director of the hospital. However, he was not there for long. One day, when he was driving to Kampot, his car got stuck in the mud. Then, he asked a man who was biking around the place to help him push the car out of the mud. The man helped. My uncle then went on to Kampot. He did not know that the man who helped him was Ta Mok because he had never met Ta Mok before. A few days later, when my uncle was back at the hospital, he was taken away to be killed. I think it was Ta Mok who gave the order to kill my uncle because my uncle asked him to help push the car. After my uncle was killed, the Khmer Rouge made Ta Kong the director of the M-22 hospital.

On the right hand side of my picture is the building in which we produced the medicine. You can see that there is an instrument for distilling water. When we got the water, we kept it in the big glass in the next room on the right. Anytime we needed the medicine for any kind of disease, we took the water to mix with other ingredients to make tablets or liquid. Sometimes we mixed the distilled water with other vitamins or liquid to inject to the patient. It was effective at that time. We cured everyone, be they soldiers or ordinary people.

            In the center of my picture, in between the two buildings, there are two people. On the left is the picture of me and on the right is the picture of the other medical staff. We are talking about the condition of the patients and consulting about what medicine to use. Here we are in uniform. When I went to meet the patients, I wore a blue or black uniform. When we performed an operation, we wore white uniforms like what I am wearing now. The man in front of me was wearing a colored shirt. At the start of the regime people could still wear colored shirts.

             At the bottom of my picture is the path leading to the garden. There was also a garden in the hospital ground at the time. Many kinds of flower were planted to make the hospital look nice.

            I was at M-22 hospital only for one year. After my uncle was killed, Ta Kong sent me to work in Kampot province. First I worked in a hospital of the Khmer Rouge Southwest zone. Then the Khmer Rouge sent me to work in a hospital at the district level. I was about to be killed there after I had trained new medical staff how to make medicine. The new staff did not make good medicine for the patients. The patients got allergic because of the medicine. Then the new staff accused me that I produced bad medicine; actually they produced the medicine themselves. They wanted to kill me, so they just looked for any reason to do so. However, I survived because the new director of the hospital was appointed and those who accused me including the hospital director were moved to other places. Later on, I was sent to work as a peasant in the rice fields until the end of the Khmer Rouge.

I told my children that during the Pol Pot time, the Khmer Rouge attempted to kill me many times because of my knowledge, but I survived because of my knowledge too.  My children listened to my stories, but I do not know if they believe them or not. Now, I rarely tell them about my experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime because they all go to work in the factories in Phnom Penh. When we meet, we talk about something else. However, I feel happy today that I have drawn the picture of my experiences because it reflects my experience and how much I suffered during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Painter: Chum Hoeun

Age:56

Title: A nurse in the Pol Pot time

Province: Takeo

Writer: Chheng Niem