What a month it has been! April started
with a family celebration to honour my host family’s Chinese ancestors. Then,
in the middle of the month, there was an entire week of holidays to celebrate
the Khmer New Year. The month closed off with a visit to our town by the Prime
Minister of Cambodia. To top it all off, the staff at ODOV have been busy with
a recent purchase of some rice paddies adjacent to the demonstration farm, and
the arrival of two cows to complete our animal raising and integrated farming
demonstration. It has now been nearly two months since I was last in Phnom Penh,
but with all going on, I haven’t missed it. In fact, the provinces are the best
place to celebrate the New Year, since everyone vacates the cities anyway to go
back to their homeland.
Even though I feel a bit intrusive when I
take photos sometimes, I plucked up the resolve to record the Chinese ancestor ceremony.
The rest of my pictures are on facebook in the album Bon Phnom Pnor
(celebration mountain grave). All of my extended host family gathered from far
and wide to celebrate. Around 7 in the morning we started moving all of the
food and stuff to the graveyard, which was just a couple of minutes from our
house. A tent had been set up, and everyone worked together to decorate the two
graves with colourful strips of paper and setting offerings of food, paper
Lexus cars (THE car to have in Cambodia), money, etc. in front of the graves.
As people arrived they burned some incense and prayed in front of the graves,
asking for good luck/happiness for the new year. After a while, two monks came,
and chanted prayers and sprinkled us with water. The monks ate a sample of our
food while someone else led a prayer, then they left and the family ate
together. And so, to add to my list of new experiences in Cambodia is this:
drinking beer and eating a pig’s foot at 9 in the morning in a graveyard.
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| The large mound over the grave is being decorated with strips of paper, while other family members lay out the food, paper Lexus cars, and other things in front of the grave. You can't see it, but there is also an entire roast pig and a few chickens in front as well. All of the little bowls of rice even have their own chopsticks. |
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| Three generations kneeling together, holding incense, asking the ancestors for good luck, health and happiness for the new year. |
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| Younger cousin helping to stick the strips of colourful paper into the sandy mound. |
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| Setting a sample of food and drink before the monks before the praying began. |
A very similar ceremony took place at ODOV
a couple of weeks later on the day before New Year. We didn’t get any work done
that day as the entire morning was taken up with a ceremony at the office very
similar to the one described above. However, obviously there were no graves
inside the office, but instead the whole roast pig was placed in front of a
small “spirit house”. That afternoon, we all worked together to prepare food
and ate/drank together in the late afternoon. I was unfortunate enough to be
sitting picking through greens in the same room as the person cutting up the
roast pig. It was to the great amusement of everyone in the room that he kept
handing me all of the special pieces of meat: the crispy skin, chewy ear, part
of the nose, the foot, and the brain. Most of it tasted OK as long as you
didn’t dwell too much on what it was you were eating, but the brain was
actually just disgusting. Later that same day, someone brought in a bucket of
what I quickly discerned was dog meat (though they used a variety of other
names I did not understand), because everyone who came in the room kept asking
me if I’d ever tried it. The director of ODOV later told me that dog meat is
also called “the security guard” or “best friend”. Here, dog is a special
occasion food that is eaten while drinking beer, and many women refuse to eat
it at all. However, the peer pressure was too much and I finally succumbed to
the inevitable and tried a piece. Those in the room had a great laugh when I
picked a giant dead ant off my spoon with obvious disgust, only to discover
that the dish was full of them and they were supposed to be there!
The actual New Year was no less exciting.
Lots of relatives from Vietnam came to visit my host family. Some of them had
not been back to Cambodia in over 30 years since they fled from Pol Pot’s
regime. We went together to visit some more relatives in a town an hour and a
half away. I felt some pride to discover that I knew the bumpy dusty roads
better than the Vietnamese relatives and switched to be a moto driver rather
than passenger because I was faster. The following day, I got sick with a fever
and unhappy digestive system for the second time in Cambodia. I was not the
only one, however. Most of my host family felt it to some extent. We must have
all eaten something funny. Despite the fact that everyone in the family got
sick, my host mother blamed our fevers on different “hot” foods we had eaten
the day previous to showing symptoms. I ate sour oranges and half a glass of
beer the day before, my little brother had too much cake and sugar cane juice…
With a list of “hot” foods so long, it’s no wonder she’s right every time
someone becomes ill. And in case you are wondering, there are “cold” foods such
as cucumbers, melons, and other types of fruit, that will not make you sick. But
thankfully I got over it quickly, and went with my host family to visit a
couple of temples later in the week. During the New Year week, people go to the
temples in the morning to pray and eat together, and in the afternoons and
evenings, there is dancing, food vendors, and lots of people just hanging out.
It was tons of fun! For being so concerned about my health while I was lying
sick with a fever on Monday and Tuesday, my host mother had no qualms about
dragging me up to dance and dance until 11 PM on Wednesday evening. It was all
rather exhausting, but worth it.
It’s been a rather exciting weekend- a
temple in a village nearby was recently re-built, and there was a big
celebration/fair lasting all weekend. Despite the fact that there were
thousands of people milling around, and it was dark out, I still managed to see
at least a dozen people I knew (not counting those I came with). We went at
around 7 (the sun had long set) and as the night drew on, the crowds grew on
the fields behind the temple. Food vendors selling baby chicken eggs, corn on
the cob, freshwater snails, and cakes; Helium balloons “gangnam style”; live
theatre; incense and prayers floating over the rice fields from the temple;
people of all ages from all walks of life. We stayed out until 10:30 PM on
Saturday, well past our usual 9:30 bedtime. Sunday evening it rained, so we stayed
home. Monday morning I awoke with the opening song from “Tangled” stuck in my
head, but unlike Rapunzel’s lamentations, it was anything but a “usual morning
routine” for me. My host mother knocked on my door at 5 AM, yelling for my host
father, my oldest host sister, and myself to hurry and get ready. After
stuffing noodle soup down our throats and making sure we all had passes pinned
to the front of our shirts, she rushed us out the door. The three of us drove
back to the Wat in the early morning light along with what seemed to be at
least half the town, in time to get seats for the visit from the Prime
Minister! He flew in by helicopter, made a rather long speech (the only part of
which I understood was that he was sorry his wife could not also come, and that
he was promising to pave the road all the way into Mesang), shook a few hands,
cut the ribbon in front of the temple, and left.
I was held up at the gate with my Aunt (we
were going to sit together as my sister was with other students, and my host
father with government staff), and for a moment wondered if I might get my name put on a special list of people who got to shake the Prime Minister’s hand (that or refused to be let in at all) because the guard
was talking for a while into his radio. But I’ll never know what was going to
happen, because before they could decide what to do about me, my host father
came back and rescued us and pulled us inside. It was good he did too, because we
had a hard enough time finding seats as it was. And as cool as it would have
been to meet the Prime Minister of Cambodia, I already have more than my share
of fame and spotlight, and was glad to just be part of the crowd for once. My host
sister Thea went to a wedding with me Sunday afternoon (my 5th in
Cambodia!), and got a taste for what it’s like to be me. People are used to me
in town now, but that day we were traveling to another village and all along
the road, people kept saying Hello! Hello! She asked me if people always do
that. To be fair, we did stand out more than usual because I was wearing
sparkly pink sleeveless dancing dress, not my normal attire of long pants,
sweater, hat, and sunglasses. Though, you would be surprised how many people
can still spot the foreigner even when I’m covered head to toe.
I suppose I should have a take-away message
from this post; something besides “life is short, party whenever you can.” It’s
now been two months since I’ve last been to the city. In two and a half months
I fly out of Cambodia. I must say that even though I’ve stopped formally
learning Khmer, I’ve noticed a big improvement in my ability to communicate
with others. It has really been wonderful to just LIVE here for the past two
months, really feeling more and more that I am becoming a part of the
community. I look forward to the same things my host family does, get invited
to the same weddings as my co-workers, complain about the heat along with
everyone else, am finally less of a “guest” than other people, and get sent to
the market to buy ice with my little sister. It is sad to think that in a
little over two months I’ll be leaving. But as I’ve probably mentioned before,
some of the best advice I was ever given was to live like I am going to be here
forever. I stumbled and nearly dropped that bit of wisdom when I found out that
it was not possible for me to stay in Cambodia as I had long been hoping. But
even now with Mozambique on the horizon, and the whole slew of mixed emotions
that brings, I am determined more than ever to live like I won’t be leaving
Cambodia, because I know that when I do leave, I will undoubtedly be the richer
for it.
Until next time,
Rebecca
“Mountains never meet, but people do.”
Tanzanian
saying
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