Pchum Ben

There’s quite a bit to catch up on as the last few days have been quite busy. Friday was the final day of Pchum Ben, one of the biggest Buddhist festivals in the Cambodian year. It is the time of year when people remember their dead ancestors who, for fifteen days, are released from hell and allowed to return to Earth. Most people seem to have little faith in their ancestors, as virtually everyone participates in Pchum Ben, suggesting that everyone assumes their ancestors have gone to hell rather than being reincarnated. In hell people are starving, so people leave food for them in the temples, usually via the medium of the monks. Friday was the final day of the festival and, along with our teacher Dara, we went to the main wat (temple) in Kampong Cham, where we were invited to eat with the monks. They were very friendly and welcoming and the food was great, although I think we all felt a bit uncomfortable because we weren’t sure whether we were taking food away from people who needed it more than we did. We did try to ask Dara about this but he said there was loads of food and that the monks enjoyed being hospitable.

To coincide with Pchum Ben, a Thai beer called Leo have had a week-long beer festival on the river front, and on Friday we went along (as well as on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday). They have a very catchy song which is much better than all contemporary Cambodian music, as well as cheap beer, and there were lots of people there. Some of these people were very friendly indeed, as detailed in Ingran’s recent blog posting, ‘It’s not gay, it’s just Cambodian’ (http://ingran.wordpress.com). After chatting to some people for a while, it was only when I leaned over to Ingran to say, ‘I’m a bit concerned that the one next to me still has his hand on my thigh’ and he replied that his companion had asked him, ‘Do you think I’m handsome?’ that we realised that maybe it wasn’t Cambodian, it was just gay. On a separate occasion a man who spent quite a while explaining how much he’d like to kill Thai people (although he had no problem with Thai beer) offered us ‘Cambodian boom boom’, which we politely declined before making a quick exit.

More seriously, though, we were all a bit disturbed by the number of children, some of whom were as young as four or five, who spent the evening collecting beer cans to sell for money, and eating leftover scraps that people had left on their tables. It can feel especially hard because we can’t do very much for them: we have been advised (sensibly) not to give to child beggars because it turns begging into a lifestyle, one which limits their opportunities and puts them in extremely vulnerable situations. I suppose our VSO placements, most of which are in education or infant health, will hopefully have a positive impact, but it will be a long-term one and won’t directly help those whom we see struggling every day.

I think we felt similarly uncomfortable yesterday, when most of the group (eleven of us) went on a boat trip to a very poor island in the Mekong river. The island is usually flooded during the rainy season and the population moved to the mainland (although this year there hasn’t been much rain). It felt like medieval England, which ragged houses made of wood and straw, and the school had no walls, just stilts and a straw roof. Our guide said quite a lot of tourists visit the island but at the moment the island received no economic benefit – we were in fact told to bring sweets for the children, which wasn’t something I felt very comfortable with. We were discussing this last night and found it frustrating, as it would be so simple for the islanders to benefit from the tourists – they could sell food and drinks, local handicrafts, or just request a donation for the school rather than sweets for the children.

Anyway, it was a nice day: we continued along the Mekong river, passing close to the bank which allowed us to see lots of people bathing, fishing, washing clothes or just playing in the river, all of whom were very friendly as virtually everyone is here. There were also quite a few men doing jobs that might traditionally be done by women – bathing their children and even washing clothes – which I thought was quite positive, especially as we’ve been told that gender inequality is a big problem in Cambodia.    

So all in all the last few weeks have been lots of fun but always with a sense of guilt that we are having fun amid such poverty. The fact that we are in Kampong Cham only temporarily means that we can’t do very much; when we settle into our placements hopefully we can have a positive impact, however small.

To explain the above photo: we had managed to find some cheddar cheese and even some pickle (provided by Kath who found some in Phnom Penh). I think the excitement had some adverse side effects, mostly affecting Gilly and Dave but also troubling my hair.