XR Girls Africa Meet Pol Pot
Now This Is What I Call The Metaverse
The young women from small villages outside of Nairobi, Kenya did not meet up with Pol Pot in person. They used their weekly show in the metaverse to host a man who lived through the Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia and had a story to tell them.
The events of April 17, 1975 still matter. Some of the people who were there carry secret stories of tragedy forty-nine years later. All of us need to know what is possible. We do not need to dwell on the extremes, but we ignore them at our own risk.
The young women in Kenya did not learn about the events through graphic depictions of scaled-up horror. They learned by viewing a series of paintings by Cambodian artist, Svay Ken, and listening to a human story, the spoken words of the artist’s brother, Svay Sanuch.
He spoke directly to the young women and to the others present at the XR Girls weekly VR event. He described the paintings showing the day his Mother was in the hospital and the Khmer Rouge came.
He told the XR Girls that he and his brother had to find money to pay the hospital, had to give blood for their mother, had to wait and pray. Then the Khmer Rouge came.
The soldiers aimed their rifles and ordered everyone to leave. Doctors, nurses, staff, family. They all fled. His mother was left there. He has never spoken of it, never told this story. Now he has told the XR Girls.
I killed my Mom
The XR Girls all said, “No, you are a brave man.”
Paul asked them to think of their own mom, to use this moment to say goodbye to them and tell them what you feel. One by one they thanked their mothers with quiet emotion. They said how much they loved them, how sad they were, that they would never forget.
The XR Girls are learning their way around the metaverse, how to use its special effects for their own rituals, like the virtual candles they each brought into the space and set down together one at a time.
Sanuch is my friend. I spoke with him after the event. I asked him to write down a few sentences. He wrote:
They burn candle and pay tribute one by one for peaceful rest of “their” mother. A sensation felt on my body then faded out replaced by a peaceful and liberated feeling.
A last gathering in front of the trio portraits — my mother, my brother and me. One by one they paid respects to me console me that not my fault at all even encourage me standing up and go forward. The evening event come to end by a song performing by African artists on big screen.
The young women of XR Girls Africa are still exploring the world because educators like Diana Njeri and Paul Mwithiga gave them the chance and they took it. In two years together they’ve won competitions and received laptops and VR headsets as prizes. The biggest prize is the human experiences they are having.
The cost of the event is the dinner Paul and Diana provided for the XR Girls and a new cohort coming along. No grants were solicited or received. No authorization was required. No innocul;ations or travel visas.
Young people all over the world could be doing this every day of the week.
Tom met Savy Sanuch after a presentation at the Bophana Center in Phnom Penh in 2017 and they have been friends and collaborators ever since.
Tom holds a Black Belt in Learning and is a founding Board Member of the African VR Campus & Centre and a long-time supporter of the Khmer Magic Music Bus.
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