Culture – Page 9 – Welcome to Cambodia, and…..

CACD Retreat #2

As part of the CACD retreat (Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development), we visited a social enterprise center where Bishop Olivier has created basically cottage industries to give employment mainly to people with disabilities and poor women who have no source of income and no possibility of jobs like in the city.

One source of employment is weaving khramas (scarfs) and other cloth on these massive wooden looms.

Weaving is a simple process basically but it looks rather complicated to the untrained observer. Here a woman guides a shuttle with white thread across the loom while the shuttle with green thread rests on the finished product.

Here a woman weaves a solid-color piece of material. It is a slow process, basically weaving one thread at a time.

This woman is able to bring her toddler child to work with her.

What’s Cambodia Like #4?

I don’t intend to dwell only on the negative aspects of life and culture in Cambodia but there are so many of them. They certainly can’t be ignored in daily life.

It seems almost every day, literally, there is another story of some government official or military officer or village chief arrested for fraud, selling government land, appropriating land of indigenous peoples, cutting protected forests–you name it.

Lunar New Year’s Eve Preparation

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve for the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit and many people in Cambodia are preparing for the celebration. The Lunar New Year is not an official holiday in Cambodia but many, many people claim some Chinese ancestry and take two or three days off to celebrate. There were signs of preparation along the streets of Phnom Penh this week.

Vendors had plenty of chrysanthemums on sale and also lots of oranges. Both are preferred because of their golden color promising wealth in the new year. And then there are the Chinese lanterns and decorations to make for a festive house.

One international school welcomed its students with many lanterns hung in the entrance-way while another chose pots of chrysanthemums to create a spirit of celebration.

What’s Cambodia Like #3?

CITA’s proposal notes that the history of the Khmer Rouge regime is not taught in the high school curriculum, along with other important facts that are also omitted. This is what Cambodia children grow up with, a lack of knowledge of even their own country and culture.

What’s Cambodia like? #2

No need to worry about checks and balances and separation of powers and messy things like the rule of law in Cambodia. Everyone should just do what the prime minister says.

What’s Cambodia Like?

People and cattle are routinely killed by lightning every year in Cambodia. That is about one person every five or six days. And thousands of home are destroyed by the thunderstorms. You don’t see numbers like that in more developed countries.

Water Festival 2022

Today is the first day of the annual three-day Water Festival. It is held in November, at the end of the rainy season, when the Tonle Sap River reverses its flow and starts to empty water out of the Tonle Sap Lake at Siem Reap. There are normally boat races in Phnom Penh with hundreds of boats and tens of thousands of paddlers.

This year, though, the boat races have been canceled because ASEAN is having its annual summit meeting in Phnom Penh and the government decided it would not be wise to try and organize high-level government delegations (President Biden is coming) and a million-plus Water Festival revelers at the same time. We still have the three days off but there are no boat races to watch.

Mobile Monk

Monks are not allowed to drive vehicles but they can ride when their destination is too far to walk.

Musica Felice Concert

Today Ms. Miwako Fujiwara produced another charity concert at the Sofitel Hotel ballroom. Her productions are always wonderful musically and this time she added some rather extravagant traditional Khmer dances.

The Musica Felice singers and musicians with Miwako conducting.

Traditonal Khmer dancers accompanied some of the musical selections.

At the intermission, Miwako joined the group from the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme for a photo.

Sweeping: A Must

If you judge by their driving habits, Cambodians are an undisciplined group. With many coming from remote areas with dirt roads where cars can’t even go, the idea of following driving laws is novel and not easily accepted. There are many other areas of life, too, where modern practices–and requirements–of city life don’t resonate with people who grew up in a small bamboo house next to a rice paddy.

One exception to the lack of discipline, though, is sweeping–sweeping your street, your property, your house, your school, whatever you have. Sweeping is a MUST. Basically every business and household has someone sweeping in front of their building every morning. It’s just something Cambodians do….