This was the country the Cousinses came to in 1998, a country that only months before had tanks rolling through the streets of its capital, no one in charge of the government, no parliament, no judiciary and very little security. It was a country that still bore the scars of almost 30 years of war.
Jim Cousins, however, was not in Cambodia to deal in politics. He was there at the behest of the U.S. Embassy, which wanted an international-standard clinic in the country. Only a handful of doctors had survived the Khmer Rouge, and the Cambodian medical system had never fully recovered.
Jim Cousins'75, M.D. at work in the Phnom Penh clinic he established for SOS International in 1998. The clinic was opened at the behest of the U.S. Embassy after decimation of the country's physicians by the Khmer Rouge government.The U.S. Embassy approached SOS International about opening a clinic. SOS is a private company that operates clinics and evacuation centers in remote corners of the world, where companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) want their staffs to have access to internationally trained doctors.
Cousins had worked with SOS in the past. Twice he'd gone on several weeks' leave in Indonesia, where Freeport-McMoran, an American mining company, had hired SOS to open a hospital. The experience had been a great one for Cousins--and a glimpse of his future life.
After a second trip to Indonesia, Cousins stopped in Cambodia, where he talked to U.S. Embassy officials about opening an SOS post there. The talks evidently went well.
n northwest Cambodia, the ancient temples and spires tell the story of the country better than any book could. They tell how great a power once resided here. They tell that Cambodia was once a great nation. They convey the awe that the Angkor Kingdom must have inspired in the 12th century, when it spread through Myanmar, Malaysia, Laos and Vietnam--almost all of Southeast Asia. At its height, the capital city housed and fed a million people.
The name Angkor was known and feared throughout the region.
This period of "Cambodia the rich and noble," as Chinese merchants called it, lasted from around 800 to the 1300s, when the Thai kingdom to the west invaded and sacked the capital. The Angkor Kingdom never completely disappeared but instead went into a long, slow decline, its might drained by regional powers--Siam to the west, Vietnam to the east and France from across the ocean. Over the years, the kingdom's seat slowly shifted to the south and east, where it remains today.
The ruins of Angkor were literally lost in the forest until European explorers stumbled across them in the jungle in the late 1800s. When they saw the crumbling ruins--77 square miles of spectacular terraces, temples and palaces--they could hardly believe their eyes.
Cousins failed French at Colby, more than once.
This seems odd, watching the man pick up his cell phone and say, "Allô? Oui, oui, Pascal," and go on speaking the language fluently. It seems even stranger if you know that Cousins has a degree from a French university, a French wife, children with French citizenship, a French passport and a home in a former French colony.
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