Lim Eng     Cambodia, Cambodia - Pictures

We were cutting the forests to break the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge were in the mountains, and the mountains had many, many trees. The day I went, the train took a lot of people, the whole province, not just my village. We all rode the train about a day. There was no home for us to stay in. We just slept in the forest, on the mountain. They had us there for a month and a half. We had a knife, and it didn’t matter if the trees were big or small, we just had to cut them all down with these knives. From day to day we went to cut, and we were scared because we didn’t know what the area was like, so we would stay together.

One day, the person I was cutting trees with cut herself. Of all the people there, I was the one who lifted her and carried her back down the mountain. She blacked out, and after ten minutes of carrying her, I stepped on a mine. I didn’t feel the mine, but the person I carried, she yelled, “Lim Eng, you stepped on mine!” I thought maybe the person in front of me stepped on the mine. I put my arm out to her and said, “Oh, no problem, no problem,” and then I could not feel my leg.

After that, more people came to help me. It was about 10 kilometers from where I stepped on the mine and where my house was. People carried me three or four at a time, and they would switch off. They didn’t have anything to put me on, so they just carried me. When we got to my house and they found something to carry me with, it was another 20 kilometers to the hospital in Kampot.

At that time, they didn’t want to take me at all because there were so many Khmer Rouge and there were mines all over the roads and it was getting late. By the time they got me to the hospital in Kampot, it was 6 in the evening already. And when we got to the hospital, they didn’t have anything. They didn’t have anything to help me.After that, they wouldn’t agree to take me to the hospital in Kampong Saom, which was three hours away by car, until a government soldier told them to take me because I was his sister. He lied. If he hadn’t lied I would be dead.

“I remember thinking it would be better if I died.”

After they cut my leg, I was there for two weeks, and then I stayed in Cey Comneah hospital in Kandal Province for about two months before I could go to Phnom Penh, where they could work on my leg. I was embarrassed, so I didn’t go home. At that time, before the Crouy Cangva Bridge was built, we had to cross the river with boats to get to my home, and it was too difficult to get into the boats, and I was embarrassed, so I just stayed in the place where they worked with my leg.

The person there didn’t have any experience at making prosthetic legs. With that leg I couldn’t walk, I would just trip and fall. It was tight, very tight, so tight I could barely wear it. The leg was so tight I couldn’t walk, but the physical therapist said, “Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk.” It took two months of training, and then I could walk, but not very well.

Then I went home, but after one week, the knee of my new leg broke. It was very difficult for me to go to Phnom Penh to fix it because I could not get into the boats, and it was far away, and I had to spend my own money, and I cried out, “I don’t want the leg!” And I stayed at home alone. I didn’t want to eat anything, but my brothers and sisters brought me food. I just stayed at home and didn’t go anywhere and I didn’t want to leave and let others see me. I remember thinking it would be better if I died.

“After I started to ride, he let go, and then I didn’t need help.”

Before my accident, I worked with a women’s association in my hometown of Srok Kampol. We would help women learn to work without a husband. Back then the government would take the husbands and make them soldiers and the women were left without knowing how to do anything, so we would teach them how to take care of their children and themselves. After my injury, the people who used to work with me came to persuade me to go back to work, because they saw me being miserable at home with nobody there for me and I was just getting worse and worse. So I agreed, and my uncle agreed to take me back and forth to the province to work.

When I had work for a while, I thought that I could get better, but I was still miserable because of my leg, which kept breaking. One day when I came to get my prosthetic fixed, I saw someone at the repair center who could bicycle. I was surprised and I stared at him and thought, “How can he ride a bicycle and I can’t?” I continued to stare at him. After a while I noticed that the pedals had a strap attached for the prosthetic foot. When I went back home, I decided to call the governor of Kandal Province. I told him that now I know how to ride a bike, and so I was asking him to give me a bike. He said, “Really?” and I said, “Really.” Then he set up an appointment for me to come and get it. So I rode on the back of my co-worker’s bicycle to Kandal Province to go and get my bike.

When I got there, the governor gave me one bike. I asked him, “What else can you help me with? What else can you give me? I don’t have anything else, except for this bike.” He gave me some rice and a lot of other stuff too, which I sold in the Kandal Market, and then I went home.

When I got home, I had to put a strap on the pedal the way that I had seen it. Then I called a community member who had cut trees in the forest with me. I asked her to help hold the bike while I tried to learn to ride. But when I climbed on the bicycle, I fell down, and when I wanted to try again, people would laugh at me. The lady that helped me got angry because I’m big and she couldn’t hold me. She cursed at me and she said that she wouldn’t help me learn any more and that she was exhausted and she hated this, and she cursed me.

But one child, he saw me, and he was surprised. He said, “I help, I help, I help!” I told him to come help and he loved it. After I started to ride he let go and I didn’t need help. After a while my leg would get tired from pedaling on one side. I would pedal only on one side. I wasn’t used to it. Later, I let him sit on the back of the bike.

For five days, four nights I could not ride the bike. I practiced at night so no people could see me. But when I could ride, I rode on a different street so the people could see me. Then I would go to work by riding my own bike.

“They think nothing of us at all.”

In 1993, I began work for Cambodia Trust. At that time they wanted crippled women, because at the organization they didn’t have any women working, they were all men, and they knew that in Cambodia, the women are very embarrassed and shy and couldn’t work without a leg. They knew that there were crippled women in the rural areas, so they wanted women like me to help the women who were embarrassed about their legs come and work.

I know how difficult it is to be disabled as a woman. I understood that. Normally, according to traditional Cambodian customs, there is nothing more important for a woman than a man. When you have a disability, the woman is not good for anything and should just stay at home. There isn’t anything else for people with disabled legs. If they know that you are disabled, you might as well do nothing and just stay at home. It’s pointless to go outside, it’s pointless to have a husband, and it’s pointless to have children or womanly duties. They think nothing of us at all. They want us at home. I knew that feeling, and I knew the embarrassed feeling that other women had. They wanted to wear a prosthetic leg like me, but they were extremely embarrassed, and didn’t know the method to get one besides, since they were in the countryside and far away from places where they could make prosthetics.

So I went to work by going from village to village spreading information, meeting the chief of the district to discuss the Cambodian Trust and spread information that our organization would welcome women with disabilities. I wanted to show myself as an example: I can wear this leg and I can work. I would show myself to them so they could see.

“I told him my history”

Once, I met with a family that had a child that lost both legs. The child went to get some water and stepped on a mine. The family didn’t even want me to see their child the first time I went there. I told them that I also stepped on a mine when I was cutting in the forest and now I wear a prosthetic leg. But they were still afraid that when the child went outside with the fake leg, he would lose his confidence, would see everyone who had arms and legs and become discouraged. I told them that I thought the same exact way before, and wanted to kill myself. But I survived because I had my friend when everything happened, the one I was helping when she cut her leg; she didn’t leave my side, and helped me feel alive again. And my friends really helped me when I was first using my prosthetic leg.

The mother and child decided that they wanted to get help, but still the father said no way. He wouldn’t let the child do it. Then I told him my whole history, and said I was the same way as him at first. I told him that I thought I had only one thing to do, just die. I let him see my leg and watch me walk with it, and then I gave him the address to our organization. I said, keep this and I will set up an appointment for the child and I will take him.

When I went to pick the child up, I was able to bring a car so the family could come, too. I walked in front to block the view of all of them. They walked in a group with the child in back. When we got to the place where they work on the leg, the family did everything to treat the child.

“I gather people … to help each other”

Now I am proud of myself because I learned to ride my bicycle all by myself and now I can ride a moto by myself. I help women with shyness issues until they are no longer shy, until the point where some women come on their own and it’s not necessary for us to go get them. I gather people to be their own group, and I gather disabled people that have similar jobs to help each other, and I help them to know how to keep things away that aren’t good for them. And there are many other things I am proud of.

Lim Eng works in Mok Kampong, Kandal Province, Cambodia. She is a Community Based Rehabilitation Worker with The Cambodia Trust an organization helping survivors of landmines and polio live and work with dignity. Photos copyright Nura Kureshi. With special thanks to The Cambodia Trust, Veterans International Cambodia.