Friday morning I taught a couple hours before making my usual visit to the mango stand behind Puok High with my co-teacher, Socheat.

As we sat on plastic stools next to the mangoes, I noticed a well-dressed Khmer man in his early 50s taking pictures of the school’s five newly-constructed bathrooms.  I’d never seen him before.  He looked like he was from the city.  He saw me and came over to join us.

I started the conversation with all the formalities in Khmer, but this guy wanted to speak English, a language he’s fluent in. So, we did.

He told me he works in Siem Reap in a management position with the European organization that donated Puok High’s five newest classroom buildings over the past few years.  The organization also donated the new bathrooms, so this man was in town to take pictures of the new structures to e-mail to his bosses in Europe.

After we greeted each other, he immediately thanked me for living here.  My presence as a westerner seemed to open a whole history of things  he wanted to talk about.  He showed a wide range of emotions, but mostly outrage.

Generally speaking, in America, anger and outrage are emotions we share with others.  Having worked as a reporter, I know this pretty well.  It’s our way as Americans: If we’re angry with someone, we tell them or we tell a friend. If we’re sad we cry to our friends and family.

In Cambodia, nothing has been farther from my experience.  My host family, my neighbors, my students— almost everyone I encounter keeps the peace.  They bear pain or inconvenience without complaining, they keep anger to themselves, they keep their crying to a minimum—these all seem to be cultural norms.  One example I encounter daily: Cambodian kids seem far less likely to cry or whine than American kids.

So, I was surprised to hear this man showing so much outrage.  It was outrage I’d expected to hear more of when I came to Cambodia, but so far have heard almost none. It’s the kind of outrage that is justified in the most heart-wrenching way.

He began by telling me how upset he is with his government.  He said the government is corrupt and takes advantage of the people.  He said, “Just look around the Siem Reap countryside.  A lot of people are in desperate poverty.”

This man told me he’s well-off, so his outrage is for his neighbors, his country.  He seemed shocked by the massive amounts of tourist wealth pouring into Siem Reap and the inability of that money to trickle down to the poor countryside.

He’s from Puok and his mother still lives here.  So, he had a lot of insight into Puok’s recent history.  He told me a few things I already knew, but in much more awful detail.  He said his mother lived close to Puok High during the Khmer Rouge.  So, at night, she could hear the screams of the people being tortured in the classrooms that had been turned into a regional torture prison.

Some of the history was new to me.  He told me Puok High’s campus had been hit by at least a bomb or two during the civil war in the early 1970s (before the Khmer Rouge took full power in the late 1970s).  He said some of those bombs were probably funded by the United States, if not directly dropped by the United States.

He told me the reason the United States was involved in bombing this area was because they were trying to get rid of Viet Cong troops who’d come over from Northern Vietnam to hide.  He said the Viet Cong hid in local homes, they blended in.  So, many innocent Cambodians died during the bombings and other violence.

He got more animated and angry as he talked.  He got louder and used his hands while he explained things.  Again, this was very unusual to me.  This has never happened.  Usually people explain this history very calmly and in a matter-of-fact manner.  And, they usually only talk about it when I ask them.  This was unsolicited.

He told me that the Khmer Rouge forced him into a workcamp where he lived and slaved for three and a half years (1975-1979).  He told me his brother and sister died in that same camp (I’m not sure if they starved or were shot or tortured.  I didn’t ask.)

I was relieved to see this man get angry and loud.  I’m glad to know he hasn’t become numb to a pain that is still with him decades later.  Yeah, he feels pretty hopeless about his government.  But, he doesn’t let his anger get the best of him.  He uses his anger to do very tangible good.  He was involved in a big way with tripling the size of Puok High and improving it over the last decade (with the help of the European non-governmental organization).

Most of all, I admire his braveness in talking about these issues when other people around him stay quiet.  I related to this guy because I’ve always had a tendency to get worked up and angry when something is bothering me.  It was inspiring to see in this stranger that all that energy, when channeled correctly, can create something truly good.