AsiaLIFE

After western and Chinese New Year, the middle of this month marks the Khmer version. This time we mean business. Spread out over no less than three days (Apr. 14 to Apr.16), Khmer New Year is the most important cultural festivity in Cambodia. Marking the end of the harvest season, it is a good time – it is hot and dry – for farmers to take time off and celebrate a new beginning. But what does it mean to that vast majority of Cambodia’s society – its youth? We took some time off school, got permission from our parents, and joined the youngsters in their celebratory games.

On each day of the festival, special games are played in the playgrounds of pagodas, on the streets or in people’s own front yards. This year we played with our youthful friends at a pagoda on Silk Island on the Mekong River. Thankfully, you don’t have to be a kid to join in these traditional New Year games, but usually they are played by children and youngsters. Youths are divided into female and male teams. This offers a welcome opportunity for teenagers and young adult players to flirt with the opposite sex in time-honoured fashion. Apart from sheer fun, the purpose of the games is to train mental and physical dexterity. It also teaches kids how to overcome obstacles and instil values of justice and forgiveness.

Bas Angkunh, roughly translated as “throwing brown seeds” – a reference to the edible fruit seed that is used in the game – is one of the most popular ones. Each group aims their own angkunh at the master angkunhs placed on the ground belonging to the other group. The winners must then knock the knees of the losers with the fruit seeds. “The harder I get hit on my knee, the more the boy is interested in me,” confides Molika to me with a laugh. A single, twenty-year-old university student of business management, she sees the games as a fun way of increasing her chances of meeting her Prince Charming.

Her favourite game is called Leak Kanseng. In this game, all participants bar one sit in a circle. The odd-one-out holds a kanseng or kroma (Cambodian towel or scarf) twisted into a round shape. He walks around the circle while singing a song and secretly trying to place the kanseng behind one of the others. When that chosen person realises what is happening, she must pick up the kanseng, beat the person sitting next to her with it, and run fast around the circle before the other person takes her place. “But the beating is just for fun,” Molika assures me. “It’s a way of physically grabbing the attention of a boy or a girl.” Sakavach is a nineteen year-old student of law and international relations. I ask him if he has already beaten up his future girlfriend. “No, I am too young to have a girlfriend,” he says to my surprise. “I play for fun, if I have a girlfriend, my studies will suffer.”

A moment later the youths prepare for Chaol Chhoung or “throwing the kroma”. In this game, a kind of courting ritual, two teams of boys and girls stand in two rows opposite each other. A member of one team throws the chhoung, a cloth ball, over to the other side. Whoever manages to catch it must then chase the other person and try to hit him or her with it. If the person gets hit, the first one can then ask him or her to dance together or sing a song. None of our hosts seemed to know much about the origins of these games. “They have been passed on from generation to generation,” says Molika. “I don’t really know where they come from.” Neither are they restricted to Khmers only – Sakarach tells me that his Cham Muslim friends join in the games.

The NGO Room to Read has published a small poem and picture book covering some of the Khmer New Year games. According to this, Khmer ancestors elected to teach their younger generations through poems and popular games. “Some taught people how to live in society and some others taught people about human psychology too,” it states. Meanwhile the chhoung cloth ball is whizzing back and forth between the boys and the girls. A few of them try to duck away, to the others’ wild laughter, while a moment later the targeted boy or girl gets chased around to the loud cheers of the others.

The children’s picture book A Poem about Khmer Popular Games is available from the NGO Room to Read, 111 Street 566, Tel: 012 768 329