What happens when a teenage girl is alone in a shack, allowed to invite as many boys over to spend the night as she wants?
Many say that this is the perfect setting for a broken heart or an unwanted pregnancy. But the Kreung tribe in northeastern Cambodia believes this is the best way for girls to find true love, according to the Vancouver Courier.
Inhabited by the Kreung tribe, northeastern Cambodia.
Deep in the Ratanakiri region of Cambodia there is a tribe named Kreung. The Kreung people get up early at sunrise and farm and harvest crops in the forest.
While in most of Cambodia women are traditionally discouraged from smoking or drinking alcohol, Kreung women do all of these things like boys. The Kreung live a simple life, including basic survival activities such as eating, shelter, love and sex.
In particular, when it comes to women’s rights to sex, Kreung has a tradition that many cultures won’t accept: love huts.
A love hut in the Kreung tribe.
When girls reach puberty (about 13-15 years old), their parents will build a bamboo shack away from the family home. The purpose of the hut is for girls to be able to communicate and experience with their boyfriends privately.
In 2011, journalist Fiona MacGregor visited a young Kreung woman in a love hut to find out if sexual exclusivity was the key to lasting love.
What Fiona discovered was a surprisingly romantic society, where girls were very confident in their relationship with their boyfriends and clearly understood what they wanted in a relationship.
While Western women are faced with conflicting ideas about traditional values and appropriate sexual behavior, Kreung girls are taught that sex is a natural and beautiful part of love.
The Kreung people are imbued with the idea that sex before marriage is acceptable and encouraged. Young women have the right to try to find the right man to marry.
Gaham, 21, poses with her husband and children in front of the love hut.
In particular, girls are proactive in Kreung. They invite the guy they like into the hut to have sex or simply to talk.
Young girls told journalist Fiona that the love hut is an opportunity to find a future husband.
A girl named Gaham, 21, told Fiona about the love hut : “Before, we lived together in a cramped house so we couldn’t open our hearts, but when we have our own hut, we can open our hearts to each other. . Staying in the hut at night is very dark and quiet, so the atmosphere is very romantic.”
Gaham’s mother Kampan, 55, is also supportive of the love hut. “I had a lot of boyfriends – more than 10 – before I married Brang. I find him a bit jealous but it doesn’t matter because he loves me,” said Mrs. Kampan, who has lived with Mr. Brang for 40 years.
Mrs. Kampan, 55, poses for a photo with her husband.
In Kreung, divorce is a phrase that doesn’t appear much. In a Kreung village of 150 couples, only 1-2 couples left.
Not even the word “lazy” is used. A woman can have multiple boyfriends at once and there’s no arguing if she ends up choosing someone else.
Nang Chan, 17, emphasizes the important role of love huts in creating a strong woman and helping women find true love.
“Love hut gives us independence and is the best way to know who we really like,” says Nang Chan.
In the Kreung tribe, sexual violence is rare and rape is non-existent. The Kreung boys don’t have an aggressive attitude. They are taught that respect or disrespect for women affects the whole family’s livestock and strongly believe this.
Nang Chan and a boyfriend.
“When guys come to sleep overnight, if I don’t want them to touch me, they won’t. We just talk and sleep,” said Nang Chan. “If I had a special boyfriend and we fell in love, I would be close to him. But if I stop loving him and like another guy, I will stop having sex with my ex.”
“I have lived in a hut since I was 15 years old and since then have had four special boyfriends. I didn’t count how many people stayed overnight. There are 2-3 people at night”.
Currently, the Kreung people have been instructed to use condoms to prevent pregnancy. Previously, this tribe made their own “birth control pill” consisting of wood, alcohol and a centipede. Thanks to the propaganda of local NGOs, condoms gradually became more popular.
Nang Chan is very confident about her ability to control herself and her friends of the same sex in sex.
“I was worried about getting pregnant but we were taught how to avoid it and guys are usually very responsible,” she said. “I don’t know how women in other cultures are but I think Kreung girls are very strong… If girls don’t like what a guy does, they won’t do it.”
Nang Chan says Kreung girls are very strong.
However, according to journalist Fiona, unwanted pregnancies still happen in Kreung. The strange thing is that no matter who the girl is pregnant with, the man she eventually chooses will still raise the child as his own.
Leum, a 30-year-old father from Kreung, said: “If a girl has a child with a man who doesn’t love her, she will still be married by the man who loves her, and raise the child as his own.”
According to journalist Fiona, the tradition of sex in the Kreung tribe is being threatened by many factors.
Love huts are slowly disappearing as the tribe comes into contact with some modern cultures and Khmer cultures, which consider premarital sex to be immoral.
Not to mention the Kreung people started to have more televisions and mobile phones. This means that teens have the means to view pornography – images that can negatively affect their sexual lifestyle.
The Kreung are mainly engaged in farming.
Poeum, 17, says she’s been quite worried about boys’ attitudes lately.
“If before, the guy wanted to have sex but I didn’t, we would just play together and chat,” she said. “But now it’s more difficult because many boys are not very good. Some people are very rude. If they try to do something I don’t want, I have to yell at them.”
According to the Phnom Penh Post, the way the Kreung people build houses is also changing as they become richer.
Traditionally, houses in Kreung are built of bamboo, small in size and unsustainable, having to be rebuilt once a year. Love huts are also made of bamboo, located far from the family’s home.
However, some villages now build houses out of wood or bricks because they are older. They let their daughter stay in a separate room in the house, not building a separate hut. As such, privacy has been somewhat reduced.
The question of whether the Kreung way of life survives after being influenced by outside cultures remains open. But so far, Fiona says, the Kreung tribe remains a rare and inspiring example of the results achieved when young women are free in their sex lives, free from judgment or criticism. .