Culture – Page 18 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

Wait, it’s Tuesday!

This morning I was riding a motorcycle taxi (a motordupe) across town to our 10:00 AM mass, just like I do every Sunday, and I was thinking it was strange that this microfinance place was open on Sunday.

Then it dawned on me: “This isn’t Sunday! It’s Christmas!” and I considered how it’s just like a Sunday with all of us off from work and going to mass and that I would have the afternoon after mass to catch up on some paperwork.

Then it further dawned on me: “Wait! This isn’t Sunday! And it is Christmas, but it’s a work day in Cambodia” where 94% of the population is Buddhist with zero interest in Christmas and the birth of Christ. As I saw this woman dusting off the wares in her little shop, I realized that this afternoon after mass I would be heading back to work at the Deaf Development Programme. “It’s Tuesday!”, just an ordinary Tuesday and an ordinary workday for all of Cambodia except for the few of us Catholics who had a service on Christmas morning.

Christmas 2018: Santa Outfits

The understanding of Christmas isn’t very deep in Cambodian society and most outward signs of the season are commercially driven and geared toward children.

Every neighborhood will have several shops selling Santa suits for primary school children.

Most schools in Cambodia are commercial, that is, they are private schools not associated with the government and also basically uncontrolled by the government. Anyone can start a school and many people do to make money. If you have at least one foreign teacher–or even if one of your teachers knows some English–you can call it an international school which has great cachet for the parents. And then if you’re selling the foreign ideas, you have to celebrate things like Christmas so that creates the market for these Santa outfits.

This is where the Santa outfits end up, on the kids participating in a Christmas program and knowing next to nothing about the meaning of Christmas.

Water Festival 2018 #5

The Water Festival is over for another year and now the cleanup is in full swing. Click here to see more photos from along the riverfront.

Water Festival 2018 #4

For reasons like lack of electricity for refrigeration, some parts of the Phnom Penh economy work every day. And then there are those really poor people who work so they can eat that day. Click here to see more pictures from the streets during the Water Festival.

Water Festival 2018 #2

Click here for more scenes of preparation for the festival along the riverfront.

Water Festival 2018 #1

The Water Festival is on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week but already the preparations are much in evidence. Click here to see some of the work that is preparing Phnom Penh for the festival.

Buddhist Fund-Raising

Organizations collect money in Cambodia just like everywhere else in the world, but here they don’t use robocalls and direct mail. It’s a more people-to-people approach here where figures like these process through the streets accompanied by a tuk-tuk with a loudspeaker announcing the presence of the figure–and the accompanying woman who collects the money for a Buddhist organization in this case.

Pchum Ben Festival

October 8-10 are the three public holidays of this year’s Pchum Ben festival, a traditional religious occasion when people honor their ancestors, particularly by making offerings of rice balls in the pagodas. Click here for some photos from the beginning of the holiday period.

Topics: Sun–Drying Food

People in Cambodia want to keep the sun off themselves–it’s hot and makes their skin dark–but foods are left out in the sun to dry throughout Cambodia, in the city as well as the countryside. Click here for some examples in Phnom Penh.

The Killing Fields

Many people have seen the movie The Killing Field and many have visited the killing field near Phnom Penh, the site most people know of. There are actually about 300 killing fields, though, spread throughout the country. There is such a large number of these fields because the number of Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge was great. It is generally thought that the Pol Pot regime was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 1.5 to 2 million people. The killing field that most tourists visit is the orange dot along the river, immediately south of Phnom Penh (next to the row of three yellow prison dots).