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| Together again: When the Khmer Rouge was ousted, Sin Son (r.), arranged to trade a buffalo for his family's last surviving
elephant, Sambo. Suzy Khimm |
Phnom Penh's totem elephant – Sambo – survives
The speckle-eared pachyderm escaped machetes and famine, and now rests as Phnom Penh's totem of good things.
from the April 9, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
Sin Son spent two years in the labor camp, where his parents, two brothers, and two aunts would be among the 1.7 million Cambodians who perished as a result of execution, starvation, disease, and overwork under the regime.
After the Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1979, Sin Son returned to his village to find that only one neighbor had survived. He was astonished to hear that Sambo, too, was still alive. Sambo had been taken in by a chief cadre and was living hundreds of miles away in the Cardamom Mountains, the neighbor told Sin Son.
Sitting today with his elephant in front of Wat Phnom's ornate steps, Sin Son breaks into a smile as he tells – for the umpteenth time – the story of his remarkable reunion with Sambo.
Sin Son pedaled his bicycle for three days to get to the small farm where Sambo was being kept.
"At first they did not believe I was her owner," he says. "But when I called her name, she came out from the jungle behind their house. I was so happy, so excited – I never thought she'd be there, or that they'd give her back to me."
He arranged Sambo's release in exchange for a buffalo he scrounged to buy from a neighboring farm.
"The Khmer Rouge destroyed pagodas, they killed monks and cut their throats ... but maybe they took pity on [Sambo]," Sin Son says.
Sin Son moved to the capital in 1980 to rebuild – bringing his huge "sister" with him.
• • •
Having served the powerful and elite for centuries, elephants are still venerated in Cambodia, says Dougald O'Reilly, director of Heritage Watch, an archeological preservation group.
At Angkor Wat, stone reliefs depict elephants carrying warriors into battle and parading in royal processions. According to legend, elephants hauled the stones for building the world-famous temple, though it's more probable that they helped create the canal network around the complex, says Mr. O'Reilly.
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