The Reverend Francois Ponchaud peppered his sentences with French and Khmer words and repeatedly paused during a lecture last week to ask, “Can you understand my awful English?”
But limited English didn’t stop the 64-year-old French Roman Catholic priest and author of “Cambodia Year Zero”—an early book account of Khmer Rouge atrocities—from offering five two-hour lectures this month on topics ranging from Cambodian history to religion to “elements of the Khmer mentality.”
Ponchaud, who first came to Cambodia in 1965 and stayed until the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, said earlier this month that he scheduled the lecture series to better educate foreign workers on local culture. He is adamant that anyone working in Cambodia should learn about their surroundings.
For almost 30 years, Ponchaud has worked on behalf of Khmer Rouge refugees, returning to Cambodia in the 1990s. He now works at the Catholic Cultural Center on Street 101, but pauses work to travel the world to meet Cambodians who fled the war and are still living abroad.
“I go to visit because when I see Cambodians, they say that it’s like ‘rising again.’ They can tell their sorrow and painful stories,” he said. “They speak to me.”
The 50 attendees—half of whom were foreigners—at Ponchaud’s first lecture last week happily chuckled along with the priest’s language woes. Much of the first lecture focused on early migrations to Cambodia and the melting pot of the early cultures that resulted in traditional Khmer culture.
The lecture series was originally offered in French to volunteers with Phnom Penh’s Catholic Mission. “Then the French community said they wanted to come. And then the Protestants wanted to come. I say, ‘I no speak English!’ But they said that that’s all right.”
