Breaking Ground

PEPY is currently constructing 3 government primary schools and a secondary school building in Chanleas Dai Commune.  All have begun construction already.  Last week, Managing Director Maryann Bylander attended a groundbreaking ceremony organized by Ruun village.  Her account of the ceremony follows.

Breaking Ground:

Alongside villagers, workers, and the school support committee, I stand beside a makeshift altar, a broken school desk covered with blue cloth.  Atop it sits a hastily made symbolic school, a square offering made of banana leaves and bark by a team of villagers. The achaa, or spiritual leader, has adeptly crafted the altar, barely speaking as he makes quick cuts in the tree.   With the help of some translation and gesture, he explains the symbolism for me.  The “ground” of the school, is sprinkled with rice for the Gods, and a piece of bread that has been cut, to symbolize the ground we break today at Ruun primary school.  Incense sparks from all four corners, an invitation for the Gods from all sides of the earth.  Next to the school, a pig’s head, rice, noodles, fruit, and flowers made from local plants adorn the altar. 

The cost of the modest ceremony is equivalent to half of the monthly salary of a teacher.  In a village where malnourishment and poor health is a significant problem, this expenditure marks the importance of the new building and of the investment in education.

We sit in prayer at the east side of the grounds for the new school, east signifying the hopeful promise of beginnings.    After words of thanks to the Gods, prayers of hope, and incantations I can’t begin to understand, we raise our hands a final time in gratitude.  Let this school be blessed.  Let this be a place of learning for all of our children.  Let the building stand strong for years to come.  Old women nod with authoritative approval.

I can’t help but smile as the achaa takes small parts of the various food items and sprinkles them near the fence, an offering, I am told to the God’s who will inevitably come late.  I appreciate a culture that accepts those who are just a little late to the party. 

As quickly as it all begins, the workers come to take pieces of the pork, noodles and rice.  They sprinkle some on the ground and eat the rest voraciously.  They have been working hard, after all, digging for the foundation all morning and afternoon.  In the freshly unearthed soil, they place bundles of burning incense.  My camera now long out of batteries, I take the only picture I can, a mental shot of the dozens of burning yellow prayers among piles of dirt and grass.  In the early evening light, the smoke colors the dusty air, the whole ground burning in offering.