Cambodia Monks Face Food Shortages Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

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PHNOM PENH —The period before Khmer New Year in mid-April is traditionally a busy time for monks. Chanting at numerous ceremonies across the districts, they receive donations for their blessings, and villagers from surrounding areas bring food to the pagoda to honor their Buddhist faith.

But this year is different.

 

Having noticed a significant drop in offerings in the two weeks leading up to Khmer New Year, the monks at Chumpouvaon Pagoda in Kandal’s Sa’ang district - about 35 kilometers south of Phnom Penh – worry things will get tough for them.

 

Venerable Dean Det, 25, became a monk with his younger brother nine years ago. This year, he said, the fear of the coronavirus kept people from coming.

 

“Since the start of COVID-19, fewer people have come to the pagoda,” he told VOA earlier this month. “It used to be 50 to 60 people [on those days], [now it] dropped to 10 to 20 people, so there's a shortage of food for monks.”

 

While the population struggles to sustain an income amidst the coronavirus pandemic and many Cambodians are worried about feeding their own families, monks in Cambodia are left behind as not enough donations come in.

 

Venerable Dean Det said they need at least $25 per day to feed the 31 monks living at Chumpouvaon Pagoda.

Khmer New Year officially starts Tuesday and ends Thursday this year, although the government has cancelled the holidays in an effort to prevent people from returning to their families in the provinces and contain the spread of the virus.

 

There are 120 official COVID-19 cases in the country, although doubts have been voiced about the accuracy of that number.

Tens of thousands of factory workers across the country are out of jobs after clothing companies, facing plummeting demand, have cancelled orders. The tourism sector, which accounts for almost 20 percent of Cambodia’s economy, is in tatters, as travel restrictions and fears about contagion see flights cancelled across the globe.

 

In normal times, the Buddhist clergy raises donations during religious events, such as during weddings or funerals. Now, they say, many have been cancelled, and the government has banned mass gatherings to celebrate the New Year.

 

With social distancing becoming increasingly respected across the country, the monks’ daily ritual of door-to-door alms-collection has also largely come to a halt since February to prevent catching the virus, Venerable Dean Det said.

 

To prevent the spread of the virus, the World Health Organization recommends so-called “social distancing”, namely to remain physically distant from others as much as possible.

 

Owing to growing desperation, however, monks sometimes still go out to collect alms and small amounts of food, such as sugar and noodles, he said.

And the situation might become direr after Khmer New Year, when alms and food donations drop even further and the monks do not have their New-Year-supplies to live off.

 

They are not the only ones potentially facing hunger. In Cambodia, there are more than 60,000 monks who depend on alms, according to secretary of state at the Ministry of Cult and Religion Nhean Phoeun.

 

Seng Sary, an independent social researcher who stayed at a pagoda for more than a year in the 1990’s, said that the virus had impacted the monks’ supplies.

 

“When the Buddhist population has financial issues, the monks at pagodas have financial issues as well,” he said. “The monks rely on the income from laymen, so when they lose income, the monks face financial issues.”

 

Touch Tun, 43, an assistant to venerable Dean Det at Chumpouvaon pagoda who has been running errands for him for more than five years, said he is worried about the shortage of food monks are facing if the outbreak prolongs.

 

Sary echoed similar sentiments, and said the situation could become much more difficult if the pandemic continued for too long.

“If the COVID-19 pandemic continues only for a brief period, the Buddhists still have the ability to support the pagoda. They won’t let the monks starve. But if it continues for a long time, there will be an issue of alms, not enough alms,” Sary said.

 

It would then fall on the monks’ relatives of those in the monkhood to offer support, he said.

But this is problematic, as many families send their children to study and live at pagodas because they lack the means to support them otherwise.

 

This seems to be the case for most monks at Chumpouvaon Pagoda. “All monks here are poor children who become monks. The monk chief and I came from poor families, from peasant families,” Venerable Dean Det said.

 

More of this very long report, with pictures : https://www.voacambodia.com/a/monks-face-food-shortage-amid-coronavirus-pandemic/5368885.html