This month has been dominated by noise, funerals and lack of electricity. This of course is all happening in the hottest months of the year.
Noise- why, oh why is this such a NOISEY country!! I wake up to wedding or funeral music at 4.30 most days and go to bed with the sound of Karaoke noise or wedding music which carries on past midnight. The music to announce weddings or funerals is on tape and goes on for at least 3 days and is blasted from the home of the event.Now we have so little electricity the noise of the generators trying to pump water from the wells is adding to my list of noise problems.
Funerals - last week a chap from the Office of Education died (he had been ill a long time and I never met him). I was invited to go and pay my respects to the family on the same day and went with my VA. I was ushered upstairs and onto the balcony where a man was reading prayers into the loud speakers - of course! I thought I was going to meet the family instead as I went into the room I realised he was laid out on the floor and only covered with a thin cloth like net curtaining. My VA told me to kneel at his feet and light 3 incence sticks and say a prayer! It was quite a surprise and probably better I was not warned in advance. After that I had to light some paper money and throw it it a pot close by to burn then it was downstairs to eat biscuits and drink water by the loudspeakers for a while.
On Friday I had to attend a 100 day ceremony since the last funeral I attended when another of my colleagues got run over by a car which crashed into the party tent on the road outside his house. The ironic thing was the funeral tent was erected in the same place he died and we sat under the tent in same place on the road! Funeral food is always the same too- water or fizzy green fanta to drink, rice porridge with pork and beansprouts and finaaly the biscuits which taste like iced gems without the icing. And, just like weddings you are expected to pay for this privlige. However, as there is no pension scheme the money goes to support the family.
On Sunday I then had to attend the funeral of the man who died last week. Such a busy social scene her!!
This meant going to the home, standing in the full sun in line for 30 mins facing the coffin whilst prayers and speeches were read out. Then the coffin was cumbersomely loaded onto the monkmobile and we processe3d behind on our motobikes at a slow pace. There were at least 150 bikes all going at less than 10k an hour so I am glad that my skills are good enough to do this now as it was quite mayhem at times. We arrived at the Wat and the ceremony was quite brief at the graveside - we did not enter the Wat the hardest thing for me is that we had to squat for the prayers and this is so tough on my knees.
Finally, yesterday after work I attended the 7 day ceremony and a repeat of the fanta and rice porridge. Hooray as my ears are so sore from the horrendous chanting and piped funeral music.
Electricity - or lack of! Ratanakiri cannot produce enough of its own and during the dry season the hydro electric power is not strong enough. They have spent the winter months putting new lines in from Vietnam and the switch over was meant to be from the middle of April. Something has seriously gone wrong and we have had very sporadic electricity since then. Yesterday it was off from 7am and has not been switched back on in our home area. There are 7 different areas in this small town so only a few places have elec. on at any one time. No one has any information and everyone except us Westerners seem to accept this. This is of course in the hottest months with temperatures in the mid 30s and very humid. So no fans, no pumping water from the wells to have in the house and no way to keep food for more than a few hours. Shopping in the covered market in these temperatures is no fun either. David has been very good at this but his enthusiasm is defiantly wavering.
The best part of April was when I travelled half way to Phnom Penh to meet my niece Sarah who was travelling for a short time and was passing through on her way to Thailand. We had a very busy couple of days and I tried to show her a piece of the real Cambodia as well as catchong up with all the news. It was so good to see her but made me a little sad as it was just like being with Lucy and Emily again.
However, we still enjoy life here and this is just part of being in a different world but work is good, very busy for both of us at the moment and we also have a really good social life and we are never lonely. There is no time we have wished we were not in Cambodia.
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