A party and some gangstas

10-9

So I was invited to a party. Yesterday, on my visit to the district office (a very nice building with a really sweet older woman who was a vice something something for the education of the district and nice older man with tattoos on his hands and forehead…subtle protection tattoos who couldn’t speak English but spoke slow Khmer for me and told me he spoke Thai as well) I was somehow invited to the party the next morning at 8. That is…8 in the morning not 8 in the evening. Imagine my surprise! I wasn’t really sure what the thing was for until about half way in, either. I went, in my Khmer skirt and a simple polo, not really sure to expect, and was immediately taken aback by the lack of women in the audience. I was seated with the aforementioned lady, who was looking well with some fake hair piece and a pretty pinkish Khmer shirt, who sat by the plump lady in a similar but more gold shirt and who wore lots of makeup on her wide eyed face who I knew later to be the new district chief’s wife. They ended up sitting on the stage behind the guest of honor, who sat behind a table with a flower arrangement on it. Like at swear in, the important folks never travel alone…and this guy was no exception. I found out later that he is the chief of the entire province, somewhere along the lines of a governor I suppose, and after the speeches were over he came over to greet me (personally…because I am white). The speeches were long…very very very long – first the current district governor, then the new district governor, who we were having the party for and who is a very nice guy that I met the day before, then the important chief guy.

Once again, there is absolutely no etiquette for things like this. The military men behind the guy behind the flowers chatted together and talked on their phones…the audience rarely paid attention (I was no exception, especially considering I could only understand a select few words out of any given half hour speech), but still 2 and a half hours passed by and we were all sitting still. I was actually sitting now by another vice something, an older guy who has a really gentle demeanor and told me more than a few times that I could come to him with any problems that I had.

Throughout the speeches, I was watching the party preparations going on outside the door, a spread of tables under a tent (with fans!) with chairs covered with fancy Khmer fabric and silverware and glasses set out on top of the lacey tablecloths. Then…I saw the men begin carrying out cases of the most expensive beer you can buy here, and setting about half a case on each table. Given there were more tables than I could count, even outside the speech room…that’s a lot of alcohol. On top of that, once we sat down (with the same lady of course, because she must adore me…), each of the tables received a huge bottle of Johnny Walker and a bunch of soda water. When I sat down, it was only 11 in the morning. The majority of the bottle was gone by about noon. And then there was the food. In front of me there was: a plate full of chicken cut in the way that only Khmer people can, full of bones and strange parts that never get eaten in the States, a similar plate of duck meat, some brown soup with large abnormal chicken pieces in it, sour vegetables that don’t sound appetizing but are actually delicious in breakfast sandwiches, baby shrimp things, baby fried frogs, and some bug that was the delicacy of the table. There were some sauces, rice of course, and basically anything you could every want.

And it gets better. One of my fellow guests was a guy who wore Ray Charles shades around, and I thought he was a very suitable look alike. He would cheers someone and show a bright silver tooth revealed only with the broad smile that he had. Cheers are fairly constant, and you stand up and if the person is of a higher rank than you, you hold your glass with two hands and make sure that it clicks lower than their glass. As a teacher…I am basically of a low rank. As a volunteer, making next to nothing…well. Let’s just say that I can tell that I am surrounded by wealth because I had a small figure in comparison.

The morning ended with a little bit of entertainment as well. They had begun playing some music, though there wasn’t any dancing (maybe because I could count the female guests with a set of hands), and I was sitting with my counterpart asking about a few Khmer words and watching a few obviously army men carrying ice around as servers, an entertaining site given the uniform that reveals intense arm muscles often littered with tattoos, when the chief of police sat down right next to me (drunk) and began asking me some questions. I had met the guy yesterday, as I also met the new district chief, and he was beyond excited because I asked a little question about the police force of the district in order to break his silence at my presence. It was a little awkward…I’ve gotten used to the gender roles here and am unaccustomed to any sort of contact, but I was stuck between my counterpart/translator, who usually talks so close to me I wonder if he can hear okay, and the chief whose blood alcohol level (not to mention the midday heat) lowered his spatial reasoning and who was also very close. I laughed it off because he was asking interesting question about why I was there and why on earth I would want to come to a place with a history like Cambodia’s…but then there was an odd moment where he asked me a more difficult question and as I thought and smiled he tapped my nose with his finger and burst out laughing. Very odd. I went home after that, and enjoyed a leisurely afternoon.

Until…my brother knocks on my door and asks if I want to play volleyball. But of course! We head over around the corner to the court (with a regulation height net on a dirt court) and play on, and soon we are joined by a few guys and then more, and then more. A few of them play, but not many, probably because the barang has all of their attention. I must have heard the word 30 times, even more. But the game was nice, good exercise, and the ball, because it was semi-flat most of the time, left a nice little bruise on my arm. Oh…but the one last detail of that is that I’m sort of sure that some of the guys were gangsters. I can’t be sure, of course, because I’m guessing that it would be a little inappropriate to ask, but they had feathery longer hair, the typical sign of such a guy, and one of them looked like Tupac. I realize how ridiculous that sounds, that long feathery hair = gangsta…but, that’s Cambodia.