April 6, 7, 8Pratchum Nheat, the “family festival” that Krousar Thmey organises every two years is always a big deal. It is the main philosophy of our organisation that family ties our of extreme importance in Cambodian society, hence our name (Krousar Thmey means new family) and our preference for reintegrating children in their family if it is feasible rather than in a protection centre or a family house. In Cambodia, families often have these family reunions called Pratchum Nheat where all the members of the family rejoin in a particular place and spend a few days together, catching up, eating, dancing etc. So KT tries to recreate this. This way the KT children also feel like they are part of a “clan”. But this year’s Pratchum Nheat was even more important than usually, as it was also the 15th anniversary of KT and for this occasion, the King of Cambodia agreed to inaugurate the festivities. The children were so excited months in advance. Each time I would go to a centre they’d be rehearsing their dance/song/play and asking me if I was coming and what would I be performing.
The organisation for this was huge. I felt like I was submerged with work, with the press releases, the invitations, the exhibition on KT and its programs I had to create, in addition to my normal tasks, but that must have been nothing compared to the work the different centre’s directs and the Khmer staff at headquarters have put in. When we arrived in Kampong Cham on Thursday the 6th of April, everything was set up, a big tribune with for the king and distinguished guests, and 4 large side by side tents with rows and rows of children sitting quietly for the arrival of the king. It was so impressive. First the sheer number of kids. I knew KT took in charge nearly 2000 kids but seeing that huge group of children was astonishing. Second, the way they were sitting so quietly, and they’d been sitting there since 5 in the morning!! I can’t imagine 2000 children sitting quietly on chairs in Europe. The kids were so excited that they’d started getting up at 3am even though the festival started at 8.30. The staff had to put them back to sleep but at 4, there were too many kids awake and running around getting ready that they gave up trying to put them back to sleep….
So all the volunteers were sitting in the tribune along with the “distinguished guests”. We felt quite bad for that, as all the Khmer staff, even the directors were sitting below with the children. Complicated Khmer-foreigner relations at work which I will have to explore in another post. The king arrived at 9 among joyful cheers from the children. He stopped and said hello to nearly every kid in the first few rows. He was bending over really low (usually you have to bend down lower than the King) and spending time with each of them, asking them questions. He was very affectionate, it was very touching.
The ceremony started with the national anthem, which the deaf kids signed in their language. There were really beautiful dances from the deaf girls of the Chba Ampeu school near Phnom Penh.
They can’t hear the music so their teacher, who is discreetly sitting aside from the stage, shows them the beat. The king was very impressed and obviously touched by all the performances and the different speeches made by former KT children now responsible adults with jobs and families and by Benito, the founder of KT.
He was then taken to see the exhibition I had prepared. I was waiting in the exhibition room and when Benito and the King arrived, Benito started presenting me to him, saying I was one of his former students, which is a bit of a stretch of the truth. He looked at me confused so I explained that I used to take dance lessons at the Conservatoire in Paris and suddenly his face lightened and he was like: Oh yeah, Anaïs, I remember you now, yes you were much younger, ah thank you, thank you Anaïs. How funny. I knew he didn’t remember me at all, but I played along. He thanked me for ever though. I didn’t quite know what for though so I kinda replied, ummm. You’re welcome you’re Majesty...! Anyway, he skimmed through my exhibition and I was gutted. That thing took me hours. Oh well, I least I had preferential treatment from the king compared to the other volunteers who he didn’t even greet.
After the group picture the king left and the rest of the festival was much less formal. There were dances, music from the blind children, shows from the deaf children. There was the long and much awaited for general knowledge contest. The brightest kids from each centre, family house and schools sit in this multi part test, every time a team catches up another one, every body cheers. It’s really cute to see that they all feel like they belong to a group that they are proud of, but there’s no rivalry between the different “groups” as there is obviously a feeling of belonging to the wider Krousar Thmey clan.
I had a least at much fun as the kids. First, I was able to just “ankouille legn” (best translation would be “sit and chill”) with the kids of the family houses during the general contest.
I’m so glad I can speak khmer now so that I can do that. I don’t understand why KT doesn’t encourage volunteers to speak khmer more. They say it’s because we shouldn’t and don’t work directly with the Cambodians as our job is purely administrative. But in situation like this, or when I show a potential donor around a family house, I’d feel completely useless if I’d didn’t speak khmer. Especially since Cambodia is not a country like some places in Africa where foreigners are welcomed in every homes and live the day to day lives of every inhabitants. Cambodians are very welcoming, if you don’t speak a minimum, relations can be very limited.
I didn’t just hang around with the Cambodians. Maybe it was because Pratchum Nheat is a festival for children, so I felt like regressing into childhood, and when the children were competing against each other in the jar smashing game, Corinne and I begged our colleague Vannak who was on the microphone to play too. There was only one jar left but we said we could play together. So they blindfolded us and gave us a stick and we jumped around like idiots for 15 minutes whacking our stick in the air, trying to crash the hanging jar full of sweets.
The kids and the staff all around us where hysterical. White people making a fool of themselves is as funny as it gets… We never managed to get the jar in the end. I sneaked out of my blindfold and told Corinne where to hit it. Now I am known as the cheater.
The volunteers and staff of the headquarters had also prepared a show. As I said in my previous post, as we can’t seriously try to do something as nice as the kids’ dances and music shows, we did something silly that would make them laugh. So it was the happy giants against the mean ghosts, who tried to encourage kids to stay in the streets and do drugs etc. The happy giants win in the finale general fight. The kids loved it.
In the evening the children would improvise music and dance and sing. It was a lovely atmosphere. It was so great to be able to be a part of that.
We ankouille legned there, they asked me loads of question on my family, my boyfriend, my salary and my rent. Then me and kesor walked around the area, played with the kids and spoke with the villagers. Then Phal took us to see her friend who just had a baby. We sat there in her house for a while and played with the baby. After a while we went to the end of the island where there’s a beach. We rented a little hut, bought food from walking fruit sellers and chilled there for a while. So all in all, we did a lot of chilling. But it was chilling Cambodian style and I really enjoyed it. You can just invite yourself in people’s house, talk about nothing really important and then move on. It’s really fun. I could do that for days… 
