GRIFFITH GLEANINGS OCTOBER
This month we have moved out of the city centre of Siem Reap to a new rural home. We are still close enough to stay engaged in our formal language learning and important relationships we have in Siem Reap, but oh it is good to look out a window to see trees rather than concrete! We are now residents of a small community separated by fields of rice and vegetables dispersed around a local market and school called “Chreav”. You can find “Chreav Primary and Secondary School” on Google maps, but our road has no official name so you might want to call us for directions before you try and drop in for a visit. We are still learning the correct way that the locals pronounce the name of our village. Our neighbours also have some different vocabulary to those city folk from Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, so we have some rich learning experiences ahead. Actually that is one of the main reasons for our move. We expect to have more opportunities to develop our language skills in a community that doesn’t see a lot of foreigners and we will need to keep trying until we are understood. Our new landlords front door is 60cm from our back door so we literally are on our landlords front door step. We were encouraged by our landlords to hold a new house opening before our fourth night in the new home and to ensure to invite the head of the village who is one of our neighbours. The only time available for the village leader to visit was our third day in the home and he came after our other visitors had left. While a house warming party is familiar to most Westerners it has much more spiritual significance in Cambodia. A traditional house opening party will involve Buddhist monks officiating a “blessing” and various symbols are used to seek spiritual protection of the home and make offerings to appease the spirits. The occasion for us didn’t involve any monks and was opportunity for a conversation about our trust that Jesus will protect our home. The Khmer people live in a world that for them is deeply influenced by spirits and deceased ancestors with good and bad impacts. It has been fascinating for us to explore Khmer cultural insights into how they seek to protect themselves and their livelihoods with our local Khmer friends.
Sitting with our local Khmer friends in the new home sharing over a favourite Khmer dish “Nom Ban Chok” (a rice noodle accompanied with a variety of salad ingredients, including flowers, then a curry or fish soup to top it off) we also had the unwelcome guests of a colony of ants joining the party. It added to the experience for some to pick the ants out of the food as we sat around with our Khmer friends.
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