Cambodian Birthday
by Rachael
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
A long time ago Pa told me that April is a very good luck month. In the Cambodian culture, New Year’s always falls in April, which means that all the children born before New Year’s become a year older….In Cambodia, people don’t celebrate the day on which they were born until they’ve lived past their fiftieth year. Then families and friends gather to feast on sumptuous food and honor the person’s longevity. Pa told me that in other countries, people become a year older only after having passed the exact day and month that they came into the world. On this day every year, friends and families gather to celebrate with food and presents.
“Even children?” I asked him, incredulous.
“Especially children. Children get a big sweet cake all to themselves.”
My stomach swishes at the thought of having a sweet cake all to myself. I pick up a piece of charcoal from the ground. Tentatively, I put it in my mouth and chew it. It does not taste like anything, just chalky and a little salty. I am six years old and instead of celebrating with birthday cakes, I chew on a piece of charcoal. I pick up a couple more pieces for later and put them in my pockets as I head towards home.
~ from “First They Killed My Father” by Loung Ung
Luckily for K-turned-10-today, we are not doing “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” 🙂 Our family tradition is that when someone turns ten, the whole family goes out for dinner at a restaurant of the birthday person’s choice; K-now-10 picked Indian. She also got a surprise number ten cake (chocolate logs with individual icecreams), but didn’t get to eat it all herself!
And we organised a fireworks extravaganza….
OK, so that’s not quite true, but we haven’t yet told you about the fireworks display we saw two nights ago. It all started in the morning. When we went down to the market for breakfast, there was a helicopter hovering above. We knew it was an unusual occurrence because a) we can’t remember when we last heard a helicopter and b) EVERYONE was looking up at it.
Upon arriving home again, the guesthouse owner pointed us to the television….there was that helicopter – both on tv and hovering above our street! Watching the screen, we soon recognised the Olympic Stadium just a block away where we have played soccer a couple of times. It was looking all very pomp and circumstance-ish, with floats and flags and officials giving speeches. January 7th is the day The End Of The Genocide is remembered, and 2009 marked the thirtieth year. We headed upstairs to our own tv (yes, we have televisions here and the children have been watching lots of National Geographic programmes, and the Dadda has been getting his fill of tennis, soccer and boys-make-grunty-noises type shows) and when balloons and birds were released on the screen we raced to the window to watch them float away in real life.
Meanwhile, Rob and some of the boys had gone out to buy water. They were stunned at the eerily quiet street. Moments later a cavalcade of official cars ferrying the president and his cohorts zoomed past. And then the traffic resumed its usual course.
Later that evening the fireworks boomed across the city. We can only presume they were part of the celebrations. Celebrations to mark the end of children eating charcoal for survival.
Note: this morning we wandered over to the Chinese Embassy to get our visas (and then went to the Vietnamese Embassy to get even more – oh an expensive day this was, $800 just to go through a couplea countries, and that’s US dollars – gulp). Anyway, there he was, Mr Plod the Policeman. So Rob snapped a pic and we’ve added it to the bottom of yesterday’s post. You can scroll down if you want to see what a scary looking fella he was! Actually, he’s more like a big teddy bear.
Tags: children, food, history, learning, postcard: Cambodia, recreation, tradition
rayres
happy birthday to K
double digits now 🙂
Happy Birthday K! Hope you had fun celebrating:-) Glad to know that you are all well now. lots of love from us allx
HUGE Happy Birthday!! Glad you are looking better K-now-10. Will pray it continues for all. What a great year you will all have with birthdays everywhere. Hope the Indian food was nice. I love the cake 🙂