Weddings - Khmer style and Joanna wowserish....

Weddings – what they are to me

A horribly sad amalgam of western traditions such as tiered wedding cake and champagne, with local traditions such as throwing delicate jasmine flowers bud over someone for luck. It all ends up looking out of place. However an optimist would see it as new beginnings for people who want it all. I see it as ugly and rather sad.

Women are in their finery of frilly, fussy meringue style ball gowns. Unfortunately they are ill fitting and worn so tight they rarely are flattering as individuals but the over all beading, silks, colours, mix of modern and traditional styles and the women themselves combine to be breath-takingly beautiful. In comparison men are in plain cotton shirts and often collars are frayed, with non-matching sad old serge trousers having seen better days. Wedding season is dry season Oct-May and the best (only?) way for young people to play and meet people; think of the discos of a 70’s/80s teenage period but with many Cambodian parents as chaperones!

In Cambodia the wedding attended by partygoers is actually the end of the all rituals and the couple have technically been married a few days by now. The day has been full of rituals and then at 5.30pm guests are invited. People dine and then its quite okay and acceptable to leave immediately. Strict registers are kept, of cash amounts given by guests and in return, a meal and music is provided.

For those who want to, meals can be timed to be a little later, say 7pm and then stay on for the couple to appear near the eating area. They walk to the centre and do a number of western style rituals such as toast each other however also bow heads while a Buddhist piece of music is played. The tiered cake is cut and photos taken. The quality and aesthetics of the cake seem to be irrelevant; it’s the having the western style cake they see on a movie that seems to be significant.

Meanwhile the couple look exhausted and fragile and incredibly uncomfortable. One or both will have thick white make-up (this is the Asian continent aspiring to be white skinned) and be flanked by family representatives looking equally unhappy. Even a first dance tradition has now been added to the event with then everyone joining them on the dance floor at a suitable moment; the dance is a traditional Khmer style slow step with no touching of a partner

Its all over by 8ish and then some more ‘pop’ style music is played. Drinkers stay to drink. Dancers dance. 80% of people all leave. 9pm is late for a typical wedding departure.

All the fuss and bother and drinking crammed into a few hours and lots of money spent on a ceremony that is either a proud modern Cambodia taking its place in the world or a sad aspect of losing local culture and aspiring to status from rituals beyond their own capacity to pay.

I feel so “bah humbug” as I wrote in negative way. I not a scrooge (mostly!) and yet these weddings get me going with complaints! I just want to scrub out the English words on that wedding cake and demand that some sort of Khmer food ritual is used instead of a poor imitation of a western wedding cake.

If not yet seen photos of me in Khmer wedding outfit of bows and pink curls see:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1371&l=e494c&id=1071994594

beads, silk = GENDER

Trying to not stare but there was a young man stooping over beautiful beadwork on a bodice of a silk dress. He was sewing the tiniest beards into a design that was drawn onto the silk. There were 2 other women in the timber hut at sewing machines. He greeted me but then a woman came over to speak with me about my new cotton casual trousers I wanted made. He continued to sew beads. I tried not to stare!

It raises a number of gender role questions

Is he just filling in for the day cos his sister or wife is ill and they have a rush order? Or is he a kindly manager helping out just once?

I think not due to his complete familiarity in his space and with his nimble finger work. He looked like a young man very used to and happy with his employment.

And I wish him well in this role of his. He is simply sewing beads. For me it’s an indicator of flexibility and personal individual choices that might be opening up. Wonder if he can also repair a moto like all men are fully expected to be able to do?

Gender roles are very strict in Cambodia, with any child who gets an education even taught 'law of men' and 'law of women' prescribing specific gender roles; the expected women as baby-makers and masculine men in narrow role of strong, uncaring and uncreative

UN investigates racism in USA

and about time too, many liberals will be saying!

UN targets US on human rights

From correspondents in Geneva

February 21, 2008 02:14am

Article from: Agence France-Presse

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• US guilty of "systematic" racial discrimination
• Different standards at Guantanamo for non-US citizens
• African-Americans suffer harsher sentences

THE United States is guilty of "persistent and systematic" racial discrimination across all aspects of society from Guantanamo Bay to the justice and school systems, rights groups said.

"The persistent and systematic issues of racial discrimination have not been addressed" by the US government despite its adoption in 1994 of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, said Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the US Human Rights Network.

"Unfortunately since 1994 we have found that the Government has not lived up to its obligations," Mr Baraka said, citing issues such as the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the black population of New Orleans, the treatment of immigrant workers, police brutality and housing.

"These issues have escaped the scrutiny" by Government officials that they deserve, he said.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) will examine Washington's record later this week.

The US Human Rights Network (USHRN), along with a host of other rights and lobby groups including Human Rights Watch, has prepared its own "shadow report" highlighting what it says are serious cases of racial discrimination.

Human Rights Watch cited the different legal standards applied to non-US citizens detained at the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp.

"The US policy of detaining non-citizens without judicial review over their detention constitutes discrimination that violates CERD," said Alison Parker, deputy director of the US program of HRW.

She noted that US citizens were transferred from Guantanamo into the regular US justice system that afforded them more rights.

Ms Parker also cited the disproportionate impact on African-Americans and other minorities of both corporal punishment in schools, and the handing down of life sentences without parole for juveniles who commit murder.

The experts said both Democrat and Republican administrations had failed to implement the convention in full since 1994, but voiced some hope that November's presidential elections could bring progress.

"We have seen some interest on the Democratic side in at least engaging around issues of human rights," said Lisa Crooms, co-author of the USHRN report and a professor of law at Howard University in Washington DC.

On the Republican side, Ms Crooms noted that current frontrunner John McCain "at least knows of international law" and had campaigned prominently against torture while in the US Congress.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23250261-401,00.html