Wat Outing

Today (October 8, I’m writing and posting later) is the final day of Pchum Ben, the second biggest holiday in the Khmer calendar (after Khmer New Year in April). This holiday is about ancestors and the gates of hell opening...well, Wikipedia can explain it better than I can. All I really know is what I’ve seen over the past week, and that has involved going to a lot of different wats. I’ve now visited four different wats (Buddhist temples) with my family. I think I’m finally starting to get a hang of the routine.

First, around 9am, my host mom tells me we are about to leave, so I should hurry up and get ready. If I’ve been given advance notice, I’ve already gotten into my wat-going attire – a white dress shirt and one of my two nicer sampots (traditional Khmer skirts). Then I sit around for maybe 30 minutes more while my family goes about the business of getting ready. It reminds me of waiting for my family back home to get ready for Church on any given Sunday. We all pile into the car, up to seven or eight people in my dad’s Toyota Camry. Here in Cambodia, it’s pretty typical to double-up the passenger seat and put at least four people in back. Luckily, the furthest drive this week was only about 45 minutes. (Actually, to tell the truth, I LOVE riding in cars here. I get to tour the countryside, and it’s one of the only times I get AC, so I don’t mind the crowding.) Once we arrive at the wat in question, we all pile out, grab an assortment of food from the trunk, and shuffle into the wat’s secondary building, sort of a dining hall for the monks. There are quite a few rules about eating in the monkhood. Monks only eat one big meal a day and are not allowed to eat anything between noon and dawn the following day. When they go out into the community to ask for offerings, they carry big silver bowls to collect their daily food. They are not allowed to take food into the main sanctuary building, so there is another area with a raised platform where the monks sit and eat and a lower area where everyone else can congregate. We take our shoes off at the door and claim an area of the grass mats on the floor by dropping off our assortments of offering items. I follow my host mom up to the altar area where we kneel and do three bows to show our respect to the Buddha. Somebody then hands me three sticks of incense, which I hold between my palms while somebody prays. Then I put my incense in a pot of sand to burn.

Now we start sorting the food and money offerings. We make a tray of all the items to be offered to the monks, and eventually we present it to one of the more senior monks who is in the hall accepting things. The seniority of the monks is very apparent, since they sit on their eating platform in descending order of age and/or importance. During the Khmer Rouge regime, the Buddhist establishment in Cambodia (in addition to the education system, the family unit, and so much more) was systematically destroyed, including disrobing and execution of monks, so the senior monks often appear to be fairly young. At each of the wats, probably 75% of the monks were actually young boys (maybe 8-18 years old) who often become monks either to receive schooling or to bring honor to their families. Anyway, the exchange of the offering involves some of the grandfatherly types who hang out at the wat making a presentation of our gift, including the amount of money, the name of the family, and where the family is from. Two of four times, this presentation has happened on loudspeaker. To actually give the offering is quite simple. Two or three people lift up the tray in the direction of the monk, and everyone else touches the people who are touching the tray. Then the monk touches the tray, and the transfer is complete. Now the monk can leave and the food can be set out with all the goodies brought by other families for the monks’ lunch.

At some point in the late morning, the wat grandpas start leading the whole ‘congregation’ in chants. Some are responsive, so I try to mumble along a bit. Others are recited, so I just sit in my feet-tucked-back, hands-together, head-bowed position. The chanting continues on and off, and closer to lunch time, somebody hands me a bowl of rice and a spoon. The first time this happened, nobody explained it to me, but luckily, I was pretty sure I was not supposed to start chowing down. No, the first bowl of rice has to get into the monks’ begging bowls. When I was in Thailand for the summer, we offered rice to monks two times, and they just filed past us while we knelt on the ground and put handfuls of rice into their individual bowls. Here, at least during Pchum Ben, it is more of a free-for-all. See, Khmer people are not really fans of the whole ‘standing in line’ idea. The monks’ big bowls are set out on the table, and people start to go down the row, putting a spoonful in each one. Getting started on the first bowl is the hardest part, since the end of the table is a mass of people all pushing to get to their rice spooning. After I have braved the crowd and spooned in my rice, I go back to sit. More chanting ensues. Eventually the monks arrive, and there is more chanting, now a sort of back-and-forth between the congregation and the monks. After maybe 30 minutes or so, the monks are finally allowed to eat, and I can finally break my sompeah (hands together in front of my face). Unfortunately, I have to leave my feet tucked to one side the whole time the monks are there. I’m working on building up the stamina of my back muscles. After the monks are finished and have filed out, the leftovers are redistributed to the crowd in a surprisingly orderly way that makes absolutely no sense to me. Then we get to eat! A whole array of dishes is laid out for each family, and everybody digs in together. I’ve had prahok, the pungent, disreputable fish-paste that is occasionally called the cheese of Cambodia, three times this week. And – I’ll tell you a secret – I might actually like the stuff. Finally, there is a blissful car ride home in AC and a mandatory afternoon nap to recuperate from hours of sitting and to sleep off the food coma.