The Buddha Connection

Meet Dheri. After having spent the last 8 years in Phnom Penh studying and enjoying the nightlife and fast rhythm of the capital, he was asked by his parents to return to Kaoh Rong and help them out with their shop since he's the only one in the family who speaks some English and can communicate with the foreigners. He misses living in the big city, with its over-abundance of beautiful girls among other things, but out of respect to his parents he will stay here as long as it takes.

The other day, Dheri and some of the villagers were stitching banknotes to a banana tree branch in order to make an offering to a temple in a nearby isle and me-always the curious one-asked if I could join them. 

After getting the permission from the oldest of the group and buying my part of the offering-soft drinks together with straws for the monk,candles and incense wrapped with banknotes for the ceremony-we got aboard a small boat and were safely taken to the island by our capable but no more than 14 year old captain.

Between my non-existent khmer and Dheri's broken English, I didn't exactly understand when was the old pagoda destroyed, maybe during the Khmer Rouge years, and the new one leaves a lot to be desired, made of tin, bricks and plastic. The whole affair was very relaxed and down to earth, maybe because it was my first time participating in such a ceremony I had expected something more mystical but that's just my western-bred brain, fed with cliché-covered films for too long.

It was this down-to-earth atmosphere that in the end didn't make me feel like an intruder, what with everybody laughing now and then, chatting, the kids teasing me and the grown-ups showing me where to sit or stand.

After the incense was lit, the floor cleaned and the soft drinks offered in a silver platter to the teenage monk, everybody sat down and started praying and chanting for what seemed like an eternity, in which time the sun set and the mosquitos came, mercilessly attacking my body. Getting all worked up and ready to kill every flying creature in the island, I slowly started getting away from the ceremony so as not to annoy the others. And then, in-between the prayers I heard hands clapping and as I turned I noticed to my disbelief at first, that as everyone was praying, hands in front of their faces and all, every now and then they would try to kill the flying buggers and immediately return to praying position. We are only humans after all...

The beauty of the whole affair was that after the ritual was over, everybody stayed there for more than an hour to keep some company to the monk-at least that's the impression I got from the relaxed tone of the conversation- who lives in the isle alone.

And then we were off to our island, and its ever-present thunderstorms in the background.