Waiting to enter the playing field and start Karen New Year
I thought that rising with the sun was early trying rising for Karen New Year! Everyone in the camp us up by 4:30am and getting dressed in their Karen finest, I have never had an opportunity to wear my full Karen gear: longi, Karen shirt, and bag before, but I am glad that I came prepared! When I stepped out of my hut everyone was waiting for the call to come down to the playing field to raise the Karen Flag and start the day’s festivities. We waited by the bridge until the sun had finally crested over the tops of trees and was shining foggily down on to the playing field, at this point the Heads of the Camp implored everyone wearing traditional Karen dress to come down to the field to raise the Karen Flag.
Waiting on the playing field and listening to speeches
The Karen Flag was not to be raised on a silly ol’ traditional flag pole, no- for Karen New Year they had cut down a very large bamboo pole and carefully decorated it all along its length. At the top held the Karen Flag with numerous festive balloons. At a given signal special members of the Karen community used bamboo sticks to slowly prop-up the flag while a gun salute was being fired. It was quite a sight and at certain times I thought it was all going to topple over, but eventually it made it up right and stable.
Waiting to raise the Karen Flag
Up it goes!
After there was a combination of speeches by the Heads of the Camps and praying. The Karen that live in the camps tend to be a majority of various Christian religions and praying is a large part of every social gathering. Impressively though not only did they have Christian religious leaders there, but a Buddhist monk was also present for those of the Karen in the camp who are Buddhist. After two hours of prayer there were a series of Karen traditional dances that highlighted the Pwo and Sgaw Karen traditions, even though most of the camp’s Karen identify as Sgaw Karen. All in all it was a wonderful way to ring in the New Year a second time!
Moo Wah Paw dancing a traditonal Pwo Karen Dance
At around 10am everyone dispersed and Mweh Paw and I went to visit her Pastor and attend church. It was a very cute bamboo church where we all sat on the floor and mostly sang prayers in Karen. For me, not speaking Karen nor being Christian, it was a bit of time to day dream and reflect about the previous year and the one to come.
All of the teams that competed during Karen New Years lining up to receive prizes
Then it was finally time for the big final soccer game between the camp’s highschool and Karen players from outside of the camp. Nearly everyone was at attendance for the game, which was tied and ended with penalty shoot outs! Talk about nerve racking! But the highschool team won and that meant big celebrations were to be had throughout the camp. The team decided to celebrate by killing a pig for dinner and because our dear friend Moo Wah Paw had been feeding the pig for all of these months we got a 1 ½ kilos of delicious pig for dinner! YAY no fish paste tonight! After we watched the pig being killed Mweh Paw took me off to the side and whispered, “Do you want to drink some beer tonight?” Not knowing that the camp leaders had prohibited the selling of alcohol in the camp I agree and a few hours later a man I had never see before shows up at our hut asking for money. Mweh Paw quickly explains that if I give him the money we will get us the beer and once he had left I asked,
“Who was that man?”
“Oh, the Camp Head of Health”
So not only is alcohol illegal to sell in the camps, but we just bought prohibition style alcohol from the health head of the whole camp! Go figure only in Karen culture would the health head be the one with access to the booze!
Raw pig in a bag never looked so good!