PChum Ben Festival

At the risk of looking as If I am having too much of a good time for a hard up overworked and deprived volunteer I just have to tell you about the last two days which once again have been full of rich experiences and a mix of emotions.
Firstly over the past few days Cambodia has been celebrating one of its many traditional Buddhist festivals namely Pchum Ben very briefly this is a time when families come together so all the city workers return home to the provinces and celebrate and remember their ancestors. This centres around the temples where people take food in abundance and it is offerred up to their ancestors through the monks and then to the people including all the poor from around the district the festival lasts for days and for many this is the time when they have enough to eat.
We were invited to attend the temple nearest to our school last Friday our teacher Dara explained that the ceremony was to celebrate the life of Buddha and how he became "The Enlightened One" after travelling for 40 years to try to discover the meaning of life and why people got sick etc he had been born a prince so did not need to encounter as much personal hardship and danger as he did on his travels eventually he came to rest under a Banyan Tree which is why you will always find one growing near a Buddhist temple any way I digress we were invited to partake of the feast although we all felt a bit uncomfortable about taking food that could have gone to poor people we were assured that this was a great honour.The monks ate first as they have to eat before noon and then we were invited to eat.
Our table was laden with different types of curry and vegetarian dishes  and there was a pot of rice that would have fed an army.The whole experience was very humbling particularly when the chief monk helped to serve us.He was a delightful man dressed only in his orange robes he had a big toothy smile and twinkly eyes.It was another experience that I will never forget