Friday, March 23, 2007

building a village house

Thursday, March 1st, I wake up 2 in the morning to the sound by the river bank. I see the lights too. I follow the noise and light and there the villagers are slaughtering a whole grown-up pig and a couple of ducks. The pig is well over 1 meter long and it's clear cut around the throat and a large bucket filled with blood are indicating the mammal's certain death.
Next morning Tra's house is busy with so many people. First thing i see waking up again at 6am is the head of pig from last night, and a large battery and stereo system blasting Khmer pop. There seem to be 40, maybe 50 villagers around and more arriving, sitting on rugs spreaded out in front yard where they are all served rice soup with pork, and rice wine, some packs of khmer cigarettes are passed around in the crowd. This is not an usual way of having breakfast.

Next door to Tra's house have they been building the frameworks of a new house, one considerably nicer than many others in this village. Tra's house is relatively nice and large (which makes me speculate they might belong to relatively better-off people of this village) located in center of village right near the well, but this new one has conclete columns instead of wood, and the floor is much higher than Tra's house(which somehow seems to mean that they are well off).
And today is the day all the villagers collaborate to hoist beams and pillars that will become the four walls.

Everything is manual work. No heavy duty machinery, no sophisticated measuring device. Still by the end of the day all four frames of beams and pillars are facing four different directions and it looks more like a house.

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