| From West by Northwest.org Voices for the World Letter from Cambodia: A Land of Extremes By Bhavia C. Wagner Nov 8, 2004
Hi everyone, hope all is going well for you. I am in Cambodia right now and am sending out this little report on how things are here: The seasons just changed from rainy season (where there is a down pour every afternoon at about 3 pm) to the dry season (where there is almost no rain until May). It is a little cooler - in the 90's! I am in the capital city right now, and it is a festive time because the new king was crowned on Friday. He is about 52 and a ballet dancer who has been living in France, China, and Eastern Europe for the past 30 years. So when we ask people what they think of him, they say they don't know, they have to wait and see. The king doesn't have much power. He's more of a figurehead, but the people really respect the king. The ceremonies have been private, but there have been fireworks at night and there was a holiday. As usual, I am deeply touched by the poverty and the gentleness of the people here. People are very polite and welcoming to foreigners. When we were going to a remote temple at Angkor Wat we stopped by a little roadside stand to buy some palm sugar. They were making it there - tapping the sugar palm tree and boiling down the sap. I asked the woman if we could look inside her house (so my group could see how a Cambodian lives) and she welcomed us into her home. She didn't have any furniture, just mats on the floor of her one room house where about 12 people in her extended family live. They had two altars - one to the house spirit who protects the house and another that was more Buddhist. But they pray to their ancestors for help. The house was on stilts, to stay dry and to keep the animals out. There is one month during the year when people raise money for the temples. And that month started just a few days ago. Overnight we saw these big tents go up in front of people's houses around town. They rent tables and chairs and bring a Buddhist monk to give a blessing. They invite all their friends and neighbors to come and eat and to make a donation to the temple. Many people raise funds for a temple in their parents' home village. It is a way to get some of the urban wealth to the rural areas. Our guide said that if you do this 7 times then you will reach Nirvana. It is expensive to put on an event like this, so most can't afford to buy their way to heaven. But everyone enjoys participating because it is a way to earn good karma for your next lifetime. We stopped by one of these events and they welcomed us in to see what was going on. They had a live traditional band and later they were going to have a procession with a group of drummers who are gaily dressed and one was painted like a clown. It's fun to see the traditions here. One of the more interesting things on this trip was a visit to a special exhibit about the ceremony they do for some sick people (who have symptoms similar to chronic fatique) where they call back some of the person's 19 spirits that have split off. It was fascinating. We all have these 19 parts of our spirit and when we have a trauma, like falling down some stairs or other bad experience, then some of them split off and get left behind, and then we tend to get sick (maybe physically or mentally, like depression). So this ceremony brings them back. My tour group has six people in it and we are half-way through our two week tour. Tomorrow we will go to a village 3 hours from Phnom Penh and see some of the students who are getting scholarships from Friendship with Cambodia, and we will meet the women's groups, ride in an ox cart to the rice fields, and sleep in a traditional house on stilts. We will visit the school and we are taking a notebook, pencil and pen for each of the 100 students. We will give the school a map and 2 soccer balls, and about 20 books in Khmer. Later we will take medical supplies to a clinic.
So far we have visited Angkor Wat temples, gone out in a boat on the Tonle Sap lake to see the floating villages and a center that does environmental education; we went into the slums and met some people with AIDS and the NGO workers who are helping them; we had a program about the labor issues in Cambodia and learned about the unions and arbitration (about 30% of Cambodia's garment exports are for GAP); we have seen several cultural programs with traditional music and dance; we learned about the problem of traffiking women and children for sex; on Thursday we will visit a program that is removing landmines; we have toured the royal palace, the genocide museum and the art musem and more.
We go to shops with crafts produced by landmine victims and other disadvantaged groups. I am bringing back 2 suitcases of crafts - beautiful scarves, baskets and lots of things to sell in the US to raise money for projects here. We eat in restaurants run by NGOs who are helping street children and destitute women. On the full moon Cambodians go to the temple and make an offering of food and money to the monks. It is a big occassion, and people dress up. We joined one of those ceremonies and the nuns gave us their rice bowls so we could go through the line and make an offering too. So we are having a real Cambodian experience. They are so warm and giving to us. Today our transportation was the cyclo, the bicycle taxi, peddled by the very poor farmers who come to the city to try to earn some cash.
My heart hurts to see the very poor people who struggle so hard to get enough food to eat. I see women with little children pushing a cart through the city picking through garbage for some recycling to sell. Their clothes are ragged and they look so worn down. It is a country of such extremes. Extreme kindness, extreme poverty, and an extremely painful history. I feel very safe here. We are careful about what we eat, and have not gotten sick. We drink bottled water. I hope you can come someday, because it will change your life. It opens my heart more each time I come, makes me appreciate all that I have, and inspires me to do something to help those who are so poor. Bhavia Carol Wagner is author of the acclaimed book Soul Survivors: Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia about the Pol Pot Holocaust and how people coped. She is also active with Friendship with Cambodia, a non-profit organization that raises funds for humanitarian projects in Cambodia. Visit Lois Barton's review of Soul Survivors at West By Northwest.org and order at Powell's link to the left in the blue column. Or order direct from the author at www.efn.org/~bhavia. Bhavia says: My publisher went out of business, but less than perfect copies can be ordered from me for $15 including postage, checks made out to Book c/o Bhavia Wagner PO Box 5231, Eugene, OR 97405 You may contact Friendship with Cambodia at PO Box 5231, Eugene, OR 97405 Phone (541) 343-3782, E-mail at cambodiaedu@hotmail.com © Copyright 2000-2004 by West by Northwest.org |
