Cambodian Christian Related Articles

Mr. Ey Vonn

The Lighter Side of World Vision-Cambodia! Mr. Ey Vonn

 By Brian

And then there was Mr. Vonn Ey.  Or was it Mr. Ey Vonn?  Either way, in English it sounds dangerously similar to Mr.“One  Eye” or  Mr. “Eye, One”.  Or even, Mr. “I WON”!  Any combination of such makes room for some confusion, especially among Cambodians whose national pastime is flipping words or names around to make them mean something entirely different, too often crass.  Poor Mr. Vonn, even his email is:   Vonn_Ey@—-.

Vonn was conscripted to fight for the Khmer Rouge in the late seventies.  One hot day in Battambang Province, his squad went out on patrol. Part of his platoon was walking on a paddy dike when the man leading point, hit a trip wire, thereby detonating a claymore mine which was set by the invading Viet Namese.  A claymore mine is a device, that when triggered, blows a thousand steel pellets the size of ‘bbs’ at the speed of light toward the direction it is faced.  Mr. Vonn was bringing up the rear and saw the entire squad wiped out before his eyes. Vonn was the only survivor in his squad but his eye caught a piece of plastic from the casing of the mine.  The eye could have been saved but the Khmer Rouge, not known as a very compassionate bunch of fellows,  would not let Mr. Vonn cross the border into to Thailand to have his eye treated where it could have been saved.  After a few  months,  he lost his eye which was replaced with a glass eye.

Mr. Vonn  Ey is a man of small stature but big of heart.  He’s quiet at times, and other times he is quite the practical joker-  and he is also very sensitive. Sometimes he thinks God played a cruel joke on him by having his name describe his handicap.  Mr. Vonn Ey, in reality has only  ’one eye’.  He is often poked fun at, but never in a mean way and he takes it pretty well for the most part.

Mr. Vonn became a believer in Site 8,  one of the refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border under the control of the Khmer Rouge.  He was discipled by my friend Jim Schmick who was running a pharmacy/clinic for CAMA services in the mid-eighties.  Vonn attends the New Jerusalem church in Toul Kork.  Mr. Vonn is made up of pretty sturdy Christian stuff.  For years he lived on an Island on the Mekong about a forty minute motorcycle drive from the city.  After traveling from the World Vision office, across the Japanese Friendship bridge and down the road toward Kompong Cham, he would take a right just after bridge number six and enter a dirt road for about a kilometer. He would then  take a ferry across the Mekong river to his home on ‘’Koh Dite’.  His family is perhaps the only Christian family on the Island and they receive some pretty harsh persecution.  Their dogs have been poisoned to death, they have been verbally abused and a young boy whom they were teaching the Bible, was grabbed and doused with gasoline, ready to be set on fire until he broke loose and ran away.  He doesn’t come to study the Bible with Vonn anymore.  This had gone on for many years with Mr. Vonn, who is always helping the very people who hate him and his God.

I work with Mr. Vonn at World Vision.  In 1998, we did 11 retreats for the World Vision Khmer staff.  At times Mr. Vonn would drive me crazy.  Mr. Vonn,  Mr. Ke Tha and I would always share the same room when we led retreats at the seashore in Kompong Som. We always shared one room and I would always be in the middle bed, Ke Tha to my right and Mr. Ey Vonn to the left.  After every meeting, or teaching session, when we got back to our room,  Vonn would immediately turn on the television set.  He had that fool boob tube on constantly!  It would drive me nuts.  I’m not big on TV watching even on a moderate basis but every waking minute was hard to take.  Part of the module I was teaching emphasized “garbage in,  garbage out”.  Maybe he was applying the “garbage in” part.!!??

I said, “Vonn, you’d watch that tube twenty four hours a day if you could.  Don’t you know that the television is just filling your mind with useless trivia”?  He told me that because I came from a free country that had all its infrastructure left intact, I took the art of watching television for granted.  It was one way he could learn all about the outside world. He explained to me that for much of his life, his people were like a frog in a well. They had little idea what the rest of the world was like or what other countries were doing.  All his countrymen pretty much had most of their education interrupted by war. Television was a great source of information and an excellent educational tool…so he explained to me.

I some what agreed and sympathized with him after that skillful rationalization until I glanced back at the idiot box. Scantily clad Pari models where walking down an isle, hand on hip, turning this way and that with  pouty looks on their faces.  Scantily clad is a generous description.  “Yikes”!, I yelled, as some model walked down the isle in saran wrap.  “Vonn, how does watching these half naked models help build your worldview?”  He grabbed the remote control and changed the station to some show about Chinese warlords in the Middle Kingdom who had magical powers in the martial arts.  When they fought, heads would literally roll, blood would flow, lightning would strike and people would explode.  To me, it was extremely ridiculous but this was the entertainment  diet of  many  Southeast Asian people.

“Vonn, now what good is this for your mind”, I asked him.  “Well”, he said with a sigh, like I really didn’t understand much about the Cambodian people,  “I’m not really paying much attention to it.  You see,  I just use the television to dry my wet clothes.  See how the heat comes out of the back of the television like that”?  I looked over and there it was, indeed it was true.  He had underwear, t-shirts and his little blue bikini bathing suit hung on the rabbit  ears.  There was no winning with this guy.  He was a true artist!

That night after the evening meeting, I wanted to hit the hay a bit early.  There was Mr. Vonn Ey lying on his bed watching body parts fly and torsos explode. He beat me back to the room before I could hide the remote.  I put the pillow over my head and tried to get some shuteye.  I checked my watch at ten.  All the lights were on and the t.v. was still blaring.  I looked over at Vonn.  I could see an open eye.  He was still watching t.v.  I did this on the hour till midnight.  Same thing.  All the lights on, t.v. blaring, eye open.  Enough was enough. I looked over at Vonn and his eye was still open.  How could he still be watching t.v., I thought to myself.  I got up out of bed and was about to give him a good reaming when I immediately realized what happened.  Mr. Vonn had fallen asleep at about 9:30 p.m. with TV blaring and the lights on.  When I stood up to confront him I noticed that I had been facing his glass eye which doesn’t shut.  His good eye was shut and his glass eye was open. He had been sleeping soundly for hours!  His un-shuttable  glass eye lost me quite a few hours of sleep.  I still should have rung his neck.  Maybe I still will.

Once he asked me to help him write a report about crime for his English class.  First he had to write it, then he had to give it orally with out looking at his notes.  He was pretty nervous about the oral part of it because students were not allowed to look at their notes.  After lunch he came back to work and I asked him how it went.  He told me, no problem, “I got an  ‘A’ and the teacher told me it was the best oral report yet given in our class”.

“Wow, how did you manage that?,” I asked.  Well, he began, “I was addressing the class and teacher just happened to be sitting way over to the right.  All he could see was my glass eye, which just looks straight all time.  So my good eye was reading from the notes and my glass eye was making contact with the class and the teacher”.  It all worked out quite well he thought.  I guess there are some advantages to being slightly handicapped.

Mr. Vonn Ey has studied English some. He even worked as a translator for UNTAC(United Nations Transitional Authority Cambodia). Occasionally he is pressed in to translating for foreign missionaries or visitors who have been invited to speak in chapel at World Vision.  One time he had to translate for the same speaker twice in one week. The messages were similar in content.  In the first message the speaker kept using an illustration about submarines.  In the next message he didn’t refer to submarines but kept talking about suffering.  These words sound pretty similar to Mr. Ey Vonn’s ear so he every time he heard the speaker say, ‘”suffering”,  Vonn translated it “submarine”.  After about ten minutes that staff could not keep straight faces anymore and they lost it.  The speaker was confused because he didn’t think he said anything funny – that funny, anyway.  Finally someone in the audience spoke up and told Mr. Vonn what the problem was.   Poor Mr. Vonn Ey lost his share of face that day.  But….he still chuckles about it today.

Vonn was responsible to lead games and competition at our World Vision retreats. We often play a game where he collects various items and then crouches down behind a blanket, which is used as a barrier so people can’t see the objects.  A member from each team approaches the blanket and Vonn would quickly hold up the object and the first one to correctly identify it, by shouting out its name would earn points for their team.  He tries to collect uncommon objects that are not readily identifiable.  While he was playing that very same game, I got a mischievous idea.  I went to our room and got a pair of Ke Tha’s blue  underwear.  I was going to have Vonn hold it up as on object, hopefully to Ke Tha’s embarrassment.  I crouched down next to Vonn and whispered, “Vonn, here, try these. Ke Tha should get a kick out of this”!  He looked down and then did a double take.  Quickly stuffing the shorts in his back pocket, he exclaimed in astonishment; “These  are  MINE!

Pray for Mr. Vonn.  He is a good man and world sure is a better place with him around.