However, they do have doma. The king & royalty have a PR campaign going that doma is a nasty habit, harmful to one's health, and it may be less common in the younger generation than in their parents, but it is still a frequent sight and has been a fixture here for centuries. Doma is betel nut, something that looks like an ungrated nutmeg. It is wrapped in a large, heart-shaped green leaf along with a smear of white lime-powder paste, and then rolled up into a small bundle and chewed. Once chewed, the doma turns into a bright red pasty lump, turning the mouth, lips, and teeth a bright red color. Doma chewers of many years have blackened teeth. Red spittle and used-up doma chews liberally dot the sidewalks and streets; sometimes you must watch where you step.
We spoke at length to one shop-keeper about doma. She said she began chewing it when she was about 20, and although she doesn't like what it does to her teeth, and she knows it probably increases her risk of things like stomach cancer, she says she can't stop, that she feels sick when she doesn't chew it. She has a chew in her mouth almost constantly - she told us that she chews 30 or 40 doma a day, sometimes as many as 50. I don't know what that costs; here we have t
aken a picture of doma for sale at a counter inside a small grocery: a leaf, the white lime, several betel nuts, all wrapped in someone's old geometry homework from a school exercise book. You see doma sellers on the sidewalk too, and hawking it from small baskets at sporting events, but I haven't seen too many of the young, Westernized, cellphone-chatting young adults chewing it, so I think that may be a good sign. If they can gradually eradicate doma, continue to ignore the weed, and keep out tobacco, then this bodes well for the king's program of measuring his nation's progress by its "gross national happiness."
