Going Away

Last Friday, my SAO had a little going away celebration for me. They did a traditional ceremony called a bysee. The bysee is a ceremony where they make offerings to the spirits so that they will grant you good luck.


Here they are they day before preparing. They are making the bysee using banana leaves & flowers.





And the finished bysee.

I've done a bysee before, but this one was a little more intense than previous ones. They told me to go to the SAO before 10:oo (I usually go in after lunch), I got there at 9:30 & they were still getting things ready. I got pretty confused at one point when they made me ride my bike back home to put on a different shirt so that I could give them the one I was wearing. I thought they just wanted it to compare sizes (for a gift) but they told me that they needed it for a while. I found out when I went to the bysee that they needed it for the ceremony. Apparently, I had to "give" something to the spirits. They also brought in the village's "spiritual medium" to do the ceremony.

That's my yellow shirt on the table.

Here is one offering to the spirits...that's rice, money, flowers, and candles.

A little video clip of the ceremony.

Here we are offering food to the spirits...apparently they like to eat chicken heads & intestines, sticky rice, bananas, and rice cakes.

More video...she started filming right after he tore off one of the chicken heads & put it on the plate I was holding...yummy!

And here he's using a flower to "paint" my hands with water.

And at the end of the ceremony, each person tied strings around my wrists & said little good luck prayers for me.

When they were done, it felt like I had sweaters around my wrists...which is not a good thing because it's over 100 degrees here!

After the ceremony, we all had lunch. (We actually ate the chicken that we had for the ceremony)

Later that afternoon, they took me to some nearby waterfalls for a little picnic.