Hair ceremony
22 Sep 2009 10:16 am
Every couple of weeks the boys at the Father Ray Children's Home need to get a haircut. Heads are shaved very short here. It's not just to keep them cool in the hot weather here in Thailand but it is also a school rule which states that hair must be short.
Several boys at the Home do not always get their whole head shaved as they have what is known as a ‘pom geh'. This is a small area of the head that is never shaved as some families see it as a way of protecting the male child. Some boys have a very long ‘pom geh', sometimes reaching half way down their back.
Once a boy reaches a certain age, usually between ten and thirteen, he visits a Buddhist temple where the Abbot performs a ceremony which means the boy is growing up.
Young Goh came to live at the Children's Home when he was just three years of age. Now at the age of ten and a half it was time to cut off the ‘pom geh'.
The Abbot welcomed Goh and his two friends as well as several teachers from the Home. After a few words of advice for this young boy his teacher took told of the hair. The monk cut away, and the hair was collected into a very large lotus leaf. This leaf was then folded to make sure that no hair was lost. Then the leaf containing the hair was buried under a large tree to ensure that the boy grows like a tree, with large roots and a big family.
Goh already has a large family, one hundred and fifty brothers and sisters, but one day he will leave our family to start his own. We all hope that his life will be good with a large family to take care of him in old age.