CAMBODIAN COMINGS CAMBO'DEA: Up the country, a Cambodian home visit and church

Cambodia has about 28 public holidays and the king's birthday means a 3 day vacation during which a number of VSO volunteers descended (ascended, is more correct given that Mondulkiri is the Cambodian uplands) upon MDK. I hosted my colleague Mike and his visiting wife who is blessed by having Irish parents. A group of us, 2 Indians, 2 Phillipinoes, 1.5 Brits and 1.5 Irish (see above sentence for meaning of these fractions) went south of Sen monorom to visit one of this provences many waterfalls, which are all sacred to the local Bunong (animist) ethnic people.

The Bunong people believe the forest is a spiritual entity, with each rock, tree and waterfall possessing a soul. Their culture strives to keep man and nature in balance.

This is the last part of road leading to the waterfall. Only one motorcycle fall and no injury.

Why you wouldn't use the stairs provided????After one look at it we took the safer option

My brave English visitors swim in the sacred waters and lived to smile knowingly to the rest of us, the less adventurous ones

VSO volunteers used to be young but now span the ages.....how valuable is the wisdom of age.

Now that the rains have arrived Cambodia is becoming a lush green land and maybe the real emerald isle

and given all that sap and new growth a young man's mind (haha) turns to sacred thoughts, older men take what they can get..mine is a statue..how hard up is that

One of the local sights is called the Sea Forest which is a forest that looks a bit like an ocean set of waves

Coming back we looked down on the town of Sen Monorom

The following Sunday my volunteer assistant, Thouen Chanto invited me to see his school (about 20 km out of town) and his home. So here he is at his school door.

Moi sitting in his classroom. He teaches lower secondary school with the crazy pay of about $ 50 a month. A litre of petrol is $ 1.25 and bus to Phnom Penh is about $10. So figure that out. To survive you have to have other jobs and/or as he has , a wife with a shop and some land.

The school has built a little Bunong home to house/display some local craft skill

Here's a real Bunng home

We went to see the school director who was preparing some food from the forest much to the interest of his dogs.

Then we went to Thouen's home which he has recently built

And here he is with his lovely shop keeping wife outside their shop which is next door

This is their kitchen at the back of the shop

We, the 2 men, adjourned to the new house to have a lunch delivered by the mrs to the accompanyment of a couple of room temperature beers

The family have one kid who has as many toys as any modern kid. T told me that as a kid toys were unknown to them

All in all a pleasant trip to the country

There is a protestant church just down the road from me and a sizeable Korean protestant input into the area. But I hadn't noticed any Catholic one. When Mike's wife was here she expressed interest in seeing a Catholic church and I had been told there was one beyond the Sea Forest. So off we went in search and found one as we had been directed,

One look inside, where there was drums and electric organ suggested we might not be in a Catholic place and so it turned out.

But the vicar and his children were very welcoming

I was still no wiser about the whereabouts of the local Catholic spot.

Shortly afterwards I was having dinner recently when a few men came in and a colleague told me they were Catholic brothers and included a real backpacker looking Argentinian bro called Pedro. I asked, out of curiousity, where the local Catholic church was and he told me there was one in Dak Dam a Bunong village about 20 Km away. Last Sunday at 4 pm a truck pulls up outside my house where I was working on my next workshop on my veranda. The bearded man, below, came in and asked if I was the man who was enquiring about the church and if I wished to go to mass. So there I was heading out the country in a clapped up old Toyoto 4 wheel drive to my favourite Mondulkiri village.

These 2 men ( Bernard and Max) are Bavarian and the bearded one has been in Sligo ( my home town) to the Marist house. So you see its a small world.

Mass was said by a Columbian priest, also Pedro, in Kymer and Bunong. All the congregation, of 24 were Bunong and seated on the floor, one women brreast feed for most of the ceremony. Pedro has been in Cambodia for 16 years and loves the country.