The parting of the dearly-departed.

The main part of the Buddhist Funeral with Monks

Foreword: Mr Erik W Davis has published a book "Deathpower: Imagining Religion in Contemporary Cambodia” that featured in this weekend’s Phnom Penh Post.  It describes local funeral arrangements and prompted me to write up my observations.  Mr Davis no doubt elaborates on these.

The man next door imbibed too much rice wine, probably a cocktail with brake fluid, had a massive stroke and soon succumbed to his fate in the small hours of the morning. The wife and neighbours had dragged his heaving body to the local hospital, somehow balanced on a motor-cycle.

He who pays the piper, calls the tune?

Very often, too often in developing countries like Cambodia, there are “Westerners” who exude the same superiority complex.  They believe that because of their better education; and coming from their more advanced/sophisticated home country – together with their money - they can bring improvements to bear on these needy folks.  In this sense, the old missionary concept lives on, only with a development rather than religious slant.

They can be sorely mistaken.  I often remind such well-intentioned if misguided souls that it was not so long ago, that our countries were not so civilized. (Please refer to a previous blog.)

“We have struggled to engage with people….”

 Housing in the UK - out with the new, in with the old?

Refurbished terrace house in Ashington, Northumberland, that once boasted the longest rows of such houses in the country, the homes of the once proud and mighty coalminers.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-32329797.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodhorn

Glasgow demolition of tallest blocks of flats (apartments) in Europe

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2319916/Second-Glasgows-iconic-Red-Road-flats-reduced-rubble-massive-regeneration-project.html

Recently I met a new colleague in the UK housing sector who lamented “We have struggled to engage with people in the north there!”

Failures are finger-posts on the road to….achievement!

Sage advice in a Ludlow Pub.

"Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success" attributed to C. S. Lewis and Charles F. Kettering

We had just left Northumberland, but I couldn’t help spotting this worldly advice in Worcestershire - clearly a sign for something to write about?

What a week it has been.  So now we are back in Cambodia after two months in the UK. 

NGO Law off to worst possible start!

Outdated? “Children should be seen but not heard?”

Cambodian school children pictured in 2002 - the "traditional" expectation is for them be dutifully patient; regimented; compliant. Girls even today find themselves pressured to follow the traditional women's code "Chbab Srey".

 

This is my Op-Ed in the Cambodia Daily on 17 July 2015, but with illustrations and sources of reference added above and below.  My premise is that Cambodia's ruling party, in trying to retain control, is turning the clock back to the days of absolute patronage/dependency, when people "knew their place in Society".  They hope that this will make for a compliant electorate, unlike the one in 2013.

Privilege, Wealth and Inequality.

My school reunion Alnwick Garden May 2014

(Photograph credit - George Skipper <skipphoto@hotmail.co.uk>)

Privilege, wealth and inequality - no, I am not this time talking about Cambodia, but my home town Alnwick in the UK, thanks to the circuitous route of a Washington Post article reproduced in the Cambodia Daily.  The article (copied below) traces the landed gentry status of the Duke of Northumberland, who even today has inherited vast ownership of lands and business interests, plus to go with it considerable influence in public affairs. 

Now what the article did not include was the controversy that accompanied the plans for the Alnwick Gardens.  In this sense, Cambodian-watchers will see something more familiar. 

More to Saint Helenian Culture than Napoleon

This blog dates from 2015 when St Helena was in the throes of its greatest hopes in living history. Sadly as previously those hopes and ventures were shattered, leaving "Saints" once again to pick up the pieces. Then just as a glimmer of hope returned, Covid19 ills crossed its horizon. What next for St Helena?  Something really must be done about St Helena. See also my latest blog.

I have taken the title from my most popular blog to date*, to make the same point – before it is too late – for Saint Helenians not to lose their unique culture when the new airport opens up in 2016.

Just as for Cambodia’s indigenous peoples, and most such peoples around the world, are we seeing again a failure to appreciate the richness and rarity of Saint Helenian culture?