elsa clerin

Cambodia, Phnom Penh Part.01 Arriving in the city

When stories and explanations are lacking, what can we cling to in order to understand and tell the story of our ancestors?
I don’t know much about my mother’s life and her family’s in Cambodia. I know that my grandparents lived there for about ten years and it was there my mother, my uncle, and my aunt were born and raised.
In the late 1960s, on the advice of my grandmother’s boss, who was anticipating the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power, they left Cambodia for France.
This was their third forced departure, after having left Hanoi and then Saigon in Vietnam.

Upon my arrival in Phnom Penh, I didn’t have a very precise plan.
Some family photos had captions, a few documents contained addresses and place names, but most had nothing at all. I combined random exploration of the city with more focused research based on a few photographs and scraps of paper I had scanned before leaving.

I also met up with Veasna, who had found the perfect bike for my trip. We had to assemble the last few parts and various accessories I had brought with me.