Im held in a kind of pragmatic upright position where i think my spine could just about support me even if i gave into the magnetic urge to sleep here and now at the hotel internet in Phnom Penh.
The tuk-tuk drivers and the hotel guys are outside laughing and chatting in the hot dusty night with their radios, and the extended family of the chinese restaurant next door are tossing comments into the kitchen as they wash up plates on the street outside.
Today is the king's birthday and coronation day, and I found myself drinking gin and tonic in a swish hotel with two gently wise older volunteers and two fellow soggy-eared new ones when the brown high waters of the Mekong and the large sky above it lit up in a burst of fireworks. It was the king's view, he from his privileged position in the palace, ours from the Himalia (or something) hotel, but the sounds blasted on the walls of buildings and made a small child run the other way in fright. Everybody in the city would have heard them and would have toasted the king. "King, Religion, Nation" cried the flag of the country, and although it wouldnt be my motto of choice, it is things like this that give people a chance to feel connected and celebratory together, something distinctly Cambodian that wasnt destroyed by Year Zero social planning and the upheavals afterwards, not emasculated by the relial on NGOs, and a reason to have a lovely time.
Another thing like this is the Water feFestival, when the massive Tonle Sap lake stops filling and starts emptying, signalling the end of the rainy season and the signal of change to all the life and livelihood that lives on it. The waters turn and flow outward, and the whole country races dragon boats, in their villages and provincial capitals and, for the winners, in Phnom Penh.
And with them shall be a boat of strange foreigners, life-jacketed in the same orange as the monks. I am one of these, delighted to be aboard a boat again and dazzled with the unexpectedness of it being a 58 person dragonboat.
The first practices this weekend saw us having an audience of several hundred Khmers, laughing at us as they staggered quite charmingly at the edge of a raucous wedding. On our breaks they invited us in to dance and plied us with palm wine, and their kids swam out to our boat at one point, about twenty of them, little laughing heads like otters all over the water coming to play. And I enjoyed forgetting about bilharzia and jumping in to play with.
Tomorrow morning we're heading in a pick up packed high with other peoples furniture and my scarily grown-up seeming matching crockery (!where are the higgledypiggles of arden st plates and cups?! id agreed to this lovely old lady at the market who went hoe specially to get my friend a teapot, so i felt bound. maybe organised dinnersets will signal a New Organised Me) to Battambang, not for a visit this time but to make a home and a life there.
Lots of feelings relief apprehension nervousness bit-too-tiredness excitement resolve... and lots and lots of curiosity.
whiskers a flutter, tail held tentative and watchful to one side with the occasional sharp swish. but now purringly to bed.
Thinking of home, and all the ways I love it, and breathing at the brink of a new one.
love love love xoxooxoxoxoxo
Monday, October 29, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
schmolitics. and sea-cows.
Sea-cows, those grazers that, having evolved from water to land, placidly plodded (i am sure of it) back to the sea. Touching the surface with the human name "sea-cow", they feature in Rumi's poems on friendship and completion that got read over the summer in a little blue tent called Haley's Comet and grew into characters in the epic tales that Kato and I spun each other on long walks and under the Scottish night sky. I think in some romantic-era poem they might feature as a 'mdong' (can anyone confirm this? me getting googlelazy), which is 'one time' in khmer, the singular, unrepeated moment. They featured as 'Crodh mara', sea cattle in Gaelic, in an isle of Pabbay folkstory unexpectedly recounted in Duncan's fireworks-of-wonder email sent at the weekend. And as seals-dogs-dolphin crosses, they were in Mauri's dream, transforming fear to play and contentment.
And I found these two last connections strange and soothing, because this weekend I took myself away from the peopled throng of Pteh Bong Proh (big brother house in khmer, VSO training centre for another week before we head to Phnom Penh and then placement) to a town up the Mekong where I had the nourishing pleasure of watching a playful pod of flatfaced Irrawaddy river dolphins feed, jump and dive in the colourful evening waters, and where, for a happy morning, I entertained myself with slightly too-loud laughter by inventing a story of a magical tiny blind sea cow in a rice paddy who adventures in the mouth of a remorse-strucken tiger to illuminate the path of a lost water buffalo...
There was also the time when I visited Battambang, my future home, to have the head of Primary Education, one of my future bosses, talk patiently through the twists of fate for a Scottish selkie, seal-woman too desired by man to be allowed to remain free in the water, but too drawn to the sea and her family there to resist returning when she finds her seal skin he had hidden from her, away from her human family but cursed with a longing for them as strong as that she'd had for the sea. Oh, so beautiful, these stories. Twin pulls that reason and riding waves of time cant quite resolve, to love simultaneously impossible things. So I attempted to stop myself shedding tears over dinner, struck by the strangeness of hearing this story of the cold sea and firesides in stone mountain crofts while sweaty in a fragrant heat in paddy-flat land.
I write this because it continues to surprise me, the regularity of the sea cows raising their shiny heads, and because it makes me happy to think of these lovely beasts, well enough developed in feeding to mix labour and leisure so seamlessly, chirping as they break the watersurface or singing their long long whale songs miles beneath it.
I also write it because the last week or so Ive had conversations and realisations that have made me feel a kind of quiet despair here. The level of corruption in government ive heard about many times, but its just recently Ive started wondering if its not an intentional move to entirely fail to pay teachers monthly, or if they are paid to raise it maybe five dollars a month to a totally unliveable-on $35, while heads of government at all levels pocket vast quantities of money. The same for policemen and for the army, who get a lot less even. The police get bought off on every account, as is their survival necessity, and the army are the number one agency responsible for the rapid and disasterous deforestation of Cambodia.
Subwon, the 30year old guard at Pteh Bong Proh, looks repeatedly and uncomfortably around his shoulder when we talk about government, but clearly wants to tell me that there are no choices of how you make your living if you have nothing to pay your way with, that you have to pay off teachers and doctors and police, that people's land is being bought up by plantation and gravel companies in the immediate promise of a few thousand dollars and leaves people with a purchasing power too low to buy anything like as much land elsewhere. and when we talked about strikes, about Burma and the potentials of organised collective action, he lowered his voice and claimed it is not so different a situation here, that people are threatened and 'if there are demonstrations people get hurt'.
Some people claim that there are positive developments in Cambodia, more roads being built, more wealth coming into the country. I feel I need an injection of faith that these leatherinteriored aircon Lexuses, virtually the only car on the streets, but a common one, apparently only in the last few years, and these dazzlingly huge mansions built on the central road networks (and presumably beyond) represent a wealth that might in some way become distributed to the benefit of the vast majority of people here. The prime minister Hun Sen recently declared that any withdrawal of aid from the World Bank(under attack for ignoring clear signs of corrupted deals with its money) would only affect the poor since he would be alright 'for a few hundred years', and the son of the governor of the province I am in, Hun Sen's nephew, declared that if the makers of a Global Witness documentary about the scale of deforestation and the government's complicity in it returned to Cambodia he would personally see to it that theyd be killed.
And in the middle I am having serious doubts about the good of my project, tweaking at the possibilities of 'community involvement in schools' when the government's interest clearly includes a docile population and a grossly underpaid and overworked (by their multiple jobs) teaching staff, and about my position in an organisation where I will not, it is becoming clearer to me, be able to ask questions about these structures because I am working within the tanglements of their patronage.
But the seacows are singing, wherever they are, and I am to the Mekong to drink a beer and walk the long bridge at sunset with my friends.
And I found these two last connections strange and soothing, because this weekend I took myself away from the peopled throng of Pteh Bong Proh (big brother house in khmer, VSO training centre for another week before we head to Phnom Penh and then placement) to a town up the Mekong where I had the nourishing pleasure of watching a playful pod of flatfaced Irrawaddy river dolphins feed, jump and dive in the colourful evening waters, and where, for a happy morning, I entertained myself with slightly too-loud laughter by inventing a story of a magical tiny blind sea cow in a rice paddy who adventures in the mouth of a remorse-strucken tiger to illuminate the path of a lost water buffalo...
There was also the time when I visited Battambang, my future home, to have the head of Primary Education, one of my future bosses, talk patiently through the twists of fate for a Scottish selkie, seal-woman too desired by man to be allowed to remain free in the water, but too drawn to the sea and her family there to resist returning when she finds her seal skin he had hidden from her, away from her human family but cursed with a longing for them as strong as that she'd had for the sea. Oh, so beautiful, these stories. Twin pulls that reason and riding waves of time cant quite resolve, to love simultaneously impossible things. So I attempted to stop myself shedding tears over dinner, struck by the strangeness of hearing this story of the cold sea and firesides in stone mountain crofts while sweaty in a fragrant heat in paddy-flat land.
I write this because it continues to surprise me, the regularity of the sea cows raising their shiny heads, and because it makes me happy to think of these lovely beasts, well enough developed in feeding to mix labour and leisure so seamlessly, chirping as they break the watersurface or singing their long long whale songs miles beneath it.
I also write it because the last week or so Ive had conversations and realisations that have made me feel a kind of quiet despair here. The level of corruption in government ive heard about many times, but its just recently Ive started wondering if its not an intentional move to entirely fail to pay teachers monthly, or if they are paid to raise it maybe five dollars a month to a totally unliveable-on $35, while heads of government at all levels pocket vast quantities of money. The same for policemen and for the army, who get a lot less even. The police get bought off on every account, as is their survival necessity, and the army are the number one agency responsible for the rapid and disasterous deforestation of Cambodia.
Subwon, the 30year old guard at Pteh Bong Proh, looks repeatedly and uncomfortably around his shoulder when we talk about government, but clearly wants to tell me that there are no choices of how you make your living if you have nothing to pay your way with, that you have to pay off teachers and doctors and police, that people's land is being bought up by plantation and gravel companies in the immediate promise of a few thousand dollars and leaves people with a purchasing power too low to buy anything like as much land elsewhere. and when we talked about strikes, about Burma and the potentials of organised collective action, he lowered his voice and claimed it is not so different a situation here, that people are threatened and 'if there are demonstrations people get hurt'.
Some people claim that there are positive developments in Cambodia, more roads being built, more wealth coming into the country. I feel I need an injection of faith that these leatherinteriored aircon Lexuses, virtually the only car on the streets, but a common one, apparently only in the last few years, and these dazzlingly huge mansions built on the central road networks (and presumably beyond) represent a wealth that might in some way become distributed to the benefit of the vast majority of people here. The prime minister Hun Sen recently declared that any withdrawal of aid from the World Bank(under attack for ignoring clear signs of corrupted deals with its money) would only affect the poor since he would be alright 'for a few hundred years', and the son of the governor of the province I am in, Hun Sen's nephew, declared that if the makers of a Global Witness documentary about the scale of deforestation and the government's complicity in it returned to Cambodia he would personally see to it that theyd be killed.
And in the middle I am having serious doubts about the good of my project, tweaking at the possibilities of 'community involvement in schools' when the government's interest clearly includes a docile population and a grossly underpaid and overworked (by their multiple jobs) teaching staff, and about my position in an organisation where I will not, it is becoming clearer to me, be able to ask questions about these structures because I am working within the tanglements of their patronage.
But the seacows are singing, wherever they are, and I am to the Mekong to drink a beer and walk the long bridge at sunset with my friends.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
ancestors day
hm..weirdly the blog clock is on another time to me and most of the world - published last entry as 8 days before it was..if same thing happens this is october 11th, full moon about to rise, puddles drying in kampong sham streets after big storms night before last, me still feeling slightly weird about blog writing but thought id put my message to clement up on here, and the streets of cambodia buzzing with activity.
its one of the biggest holidays of the year in cambodia today - pchum ben, the end of 15 days giving food to the monks at the pagoda every morning to stave off hungry ghosts of ancestors. the streets are full of traffic but almost all the shops are closed (apart from this internet and a big orange mobile phone shop jammed -as it always seems to be- with monks selecting their purchases, orange orange zesty blast to the eye), just families cooking out on the street together and slick young guys cruising by the river, four to a moped. i went to the pagoda this morning and got welcomed warmly with rice, fruit and smiles and comments of 'madame kampuchea' (i was wearing a khmer long skirt as advised). there is a lovely kind of irreverence to people's religiousity here i think - its very serious, and absolutely everyone seems to have been going to temple these last days - but when people are in the middle of ten seconds praying others grab them by the arm or poke them in the side to say hello, and inside, legs crossed to one side, with chanting blessing the food thats being brought, everybody's quite happy to chat quite noisily away.
feels a very social and nourishing religious life, although the temples are definitely the wealthiest buildings you ever see - get money from the community and from local political parties when they want to win votes etc (is one of really only a few cases where money filters to local level from government). they also obviously have a lot of power, and althoguh it allows people like the english speaking monk i spoke to today to be educated (and poor boys can stay at the pagoda while they study, without needing to become a monk, really good if travel to school is too difficult etc), its very gender biased, as the only women or girls who live there are elderly nuns who are usually widows (as theyre not needed at home anymore, and other than the pagoda and family theres no safety net for them) and even they i think do all the work for the monks in terms of cooking and cleaning and clothes washing etc. so the opportunity for girls as well to live in a pagoda in order to access school (something others in my job have investigated) doesnt seem to be possible.
theres also the strange question of cambodian buddhism as distinct from other traditions ive come across through friends and reading etc. theres loads to say about this. one thing is that monks seem to buy stuff, talk to women, accumulate their personal savings during monkhood and eat meat, all of which i found pretty surprising. i met an ex monk who said he'd once tried to meditate for 20 minutes but found it hard....and from speaking to his monk friend who was currently studying at an indian-named university, studying meditation, although he agreed when i said i had understood this was one of the most important practices in buddhist life, i gathered that it was not a teaching common to the monks' lives here. the stories of the buddha ive heard are all of magic naga dragons protecting him, and paintings in pagodas all feature a blue smiley god surrounded by serving women, remarkably like krishna.
like everywhere, religion here is a mix of roots and understandings and practices. noodles again. and my not really understanding how the hungry spirits of ancestors fit into reincarnation doesnt really matter. more important is the fact that in this very family-centred community, every family has relatives who died or were killed in pretty distressing circumstances in living memory. im not sure if thats the reason that my language teacher dara seemed a bit sad today, and in his grammatical examples started using constructions like 'who killed dara's father', 'daras father was killed in 1976 by pol pot'.
part of me wants to say 'dara's father was killed by a khmer person working as a part of the same system as pol pot in 1976', but i think, aside from not knowing how to say ''same system'', its hardly my place to challenge this more succinct and swallowable way of explaining causation.
im out again to face the music-rippling streets on my trusty bicycle, almost perfectly apt now at moving seamlessly with the multishaped vehicles' pressing flow. (and dont bikes feel like gazelle-glidey bodily extensions vs comfy-but-not-as-much-yet motos).
are nights closing in and leaves starting to turn in the sceptered isle yet? maybe too soon. the cool breeze from the fan makes me think rosily of being wrapped up in cold winds walking to cosy pub-insides. oh the romanticism of winter. enjoy seasonality and its condiments.
may our ancestors be pleased with us...
xoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxo
its one of the biggest holidays of the year in cambodia today - pchum ben, the end of 15 days giving food to the monks at the pagoda every morning to stave off hungry ghosts of ancestors. the streets are full of traffic but almost all the shops are closed (apart from this internet and a big orange mobile phone shop jammed -as it always seems to be- with monks selecting their purchases, orange orange zesty blast to the eye), just families cooking out on the street together and slick young guys cruising by the river, four to a moped. i went to the pagoda this morning and got welcomed warmly with rice, fruit and smiles and comments of 'madame kampuchea' (i was wearing a khmer long skirt as advised). there is a lovely kind of irreverence to people's religiousity here i think - its very serious, and absolutely everyone seems to have been going to temple these last days - but when people are in the middle of ten seconds praying others grab them by the arm or poke them in the side to say hello, and inside, legs crossed to one side, with chanting blessing the food thats being brought, everybody's quite happy to chat quite noisily away.
feels a very social and nourishing religious life, although the temples are definitely the wealthiest buildings you ever see - get money from the community and from local political parties when they want to win votes etc (is one of really only a few cases where money filters to local level from government). they also obviously have a lot of power, and althoguh it allows people like the english speaking monk i spoke to today to be educated (and poor boys can stay at the pagoda while they study, without needing to become a monk, really good if travel to school is too difficult etc), its very gender biased, as the only women or girls who live there are elderly nuns who are usually widows (as theyre not needed at home anymore, and other than the pagoda and family theres no safety net for them) and even they i think do all the work for the monks in terms of cooking and cleaning and clothes washing etc. so the opportunity for girls as well to live in a pagoda in order to access school (something others in my job have investigated) doesnt seem to be possible.
theres also the strange question of cambodian buddhism as distinct from other traditions ive come across through friends and reading etc. theres loads to say about this. one thing is that monks seem to buy stuff, talk to women, accumulate their personal savings during monkhood and eat meat, all of which i found pretty surprising. i met an ex monk who said he'd once tried to meditate for 20 minutes but found it hard....and from speaking to his monk friend who was currently studying at an indian-named university, studying meditation, although he agreed when i said i had understood this was one of the most important practices in buddhist life, i gathered that it was not a teaching common to the monks' lives here. the stories of the buddha ive heard are all of magic naga dragons protecting him, and paintings in pagodas all feature a blue smiley god surrounded by serving women, remarkably like krishna.
like everywhere, religion here is a mix of roots and understandings and practices. noodles again. and my not really understanding how the hungry spirits of ancestors fit into reincarnation doesnt really matter. more important is the fact that in this very family-centred community, every family has relatives who died or were killed in pretty distressing circumstances in living memory. im not sure if thats the reason that my language teacher dara seemed a bit sad today, and in his grammatical examples started using constructions like 'who killed dara's father', 'daras father was killed in 1976 by pol pot'.
part of me wants to say 'dara's father was killed by a khmer person working as a part of the same system as pol pot in 1976', but i think, aside from not knowing how to say ''same system'', its hardly my place to challenge this more succinct and swallowable way of explaining causation.
im out again to face the music-rippling streets on my trusty bicycle, almost perfectly apt now at moving seamlessly with the multishaped vehicles' pressing flow. (and dont bikes feel like gazelle-glidey bodily extensions vs comfy-but-not-as-much-yet motos).
are nights closing in and leaves starting to turn in the sceptered isle yet? maybe too soon. the cool breeze from the fan makes me think rosily of being wrapped up in cold winds walking to cosy pub-insides. oh the romanticism of winter. enjoy seasonality and its condiments.
may our ancestors be pleased with us...
xoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxo
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
