Half way!

We had the wedding last week it was really interesting and quite enjoyable. We began our wedding preparations arriving at the salon at 10 30. We both had our hair crimped, curled, sprayed, pinned and everything else you can possibly do to hair. Then we had our makeup applied, we had our eyebrows razored into shape (we now have horrible stubbly eyebrows) we were caked in various powders, lip liner and gloss, eyeliner, eye shadow , false eyelashes and eyebrow  pencil and it was then fixed with what appeared to be hairspray. I walked out almost 3 hours later feeling like a transvestite, but was told I looked beautiful by everyone in the orphanage, I wasn’t fooled.

The wedding itself, as they all do, took place in marquee’s draped with neon yellow and pink silk and netting, pretty hideous yes, went pretty well with my complexion actually. The marquees were filled with approximately eighty five tables of ten people! pretty huge. They are able to afford this as everyone gives money as a wedding gift. My table was made of  the khmer Magna staff, including the 2 pas (not the female mas) from the group home, one of the accountants, and lots of teachers that no longer work for Magna. Being British, one of the strangest things I found about the wedding was the lack of small talk there were frequent silences around all the tables during the dinner which were not considered a problem at all. I was also shocked when half of our table left the wedding after just 45 minutes; they had eaten their fill and were ready to leave! I considered this extremely rude but no one else was bothered and it seemed common place to behave this way. The women must have spent about five times longer getting ready and traveling to the wedding than actually being there.

 We spent the majority of the late afternoon/evening eating, the food was very tasty, you could almost say we had 4 courses. Various meat platters for the first course, raw crab and fish salad and deep fried tasty things for second course, seafood soup, a large fish with ginger, fried rice and steamed rice for the third course. And pudding was a peanut paste that tasted a tiny bit like peanut butter in the shape of an upturned bowl with glace plums, we all dug in with little spoons. We drank Pepsi, soda water, Ankgor beer and whisky.

Cambodian culture is very generous towards beggars, street children, the homeless etc. I was surprised to see a large amount of street children wondering around the tables, when everyone around the table had finished eating the children would descend on the tables pouring all the leftover food into plastic bags to take away. They also collected empty cans which they could sell on for just under 2p each.

There was no unity amongst the guests over dinner. People arrived, started eating and finished eating at very different times. The bride and groom in the first of four outfits wondered around the tables greeting everyone during dinner. When enough people had finished a band and dancing started. Guests were invited to have photos with the bride and groom in their second outfit, which we did and then we were introduced to a new table of people. They were fun and drank a lot, they kept filling up my glass and every 10 seconds someone would shout ‘jol mouy’ and we would all have to clink glasses and drink, it seemed everyone was so busy clinking that no one was really able to talk. Later in the evening the bride and groom in their third outfit a white suit with red lapels and tie, and a white ruffled dress, cut a wedding cake (a new tradition adopted from the west). I asked for a piece of the cake, quickly discovering why no one was eating it, it tasted like a bathroom sponge covered in cheap squirty cream.

The rest of the night was dancing for most of the guests and stood in front of a fan for me. I was sweltering and incredibly uncomfortable for the majority of the night. I felt a bit bad as we were most definitely the centre of attention and were in high demand on the dance floor. Being one of very few ‘barangs’ outside of Phnom Penh and being the only non khmer at the wedding made me feel like Beyonce walking into my school dinner hall. It was strange, I have no doubt we received more attention than the bride and groom, I don’t think they minded though, in fact I think we improved their street cred by being there. However I had an extremely embarrassing moment when attention was focused solely on the bride and groom cutting the cake, I tripped over a wire causing the flood light directed on the couple to turn off. When it was turned back on everyone had taken a big step away from me just to make sure no one was in any doubt that I was the guilty attention seeker.  I quickly moved back to my spot behind the fan.

We have had some good experience in cross culture diplomacy recently. Everyone seems to have different reasons for the lack of money getting through. We have been trying to work out the actual reasons and hopefully improve the situation, it would be such an achievement if we managed but it will be hard work and will take a long time.  It would also be a big achievement if we managed to improve the speed at which things that need doing get done, but that’s not going to happen. We are currently waiting for our water problems to be sorted out, the house has spend the past week with about 4 hours of running water, not great when Beth and I have diarrhea and vomiting. I feel we are getting a proper gap year experience.

This week we have introduced bed wetting charts, if the children on the chart have a ‘dry week’ or make an improvement they get a small present (‘present’ in khmer is the same as in French). When the children found out they decided that they all wanted a bed wetting chart. When I say bed wetting however I mean floor wetting, none of the children are sleeping in their brand new beds, I think because they are so used to the floor and they say they are too hot in their beds. We have also started doing a little bit of geography and with the children and taught them to do Sudoku. They don’t study geography at school so this week I stuck up a big map of Cambodia and they drew their own, even the little children joined in, though Rachana’s bore more resemblance to a dog than a country. Sudoku was a great hit they love it, Nary who is seven was rattling through six square Sudoku’s I was very impressed with her. Bun Choc was doing really well so I gave him a difficult Sudoku out of a news paper which I was amazed to see him finish within 5 minutes, I thought I had found a child protégé, it turned out I had forgotten that you need 1 to 9 along the lines as well as in the squares.

We took the older children on a trip to a roller blading rink, they were so excited asking about it for a week before and they are still asking if they can go again. They were extremely wary and cautious at first but got into pretty quickly everyone left bruised and exhausted. Whilst we were there we gave them the equivalent of 25cents each to spend in the arcade and a 25cent ice cream each.  The highlight of the trip for me was watching them use an escalator for the first time it was hilarious they couldn’t get their balance and thought they were going to get sucked in at the top, they were all grabbing onto the arms of strangers, some of the strangers were clearly very unsettled by this. One group of 6 girls ended up in a pile at the bottom of the escalator, which was potentially quite dangerous but I was in stitches. 

Seng Ying

Sok Vy