Jaipur, India

We have arrived in India! Although I was not enthusiastic about leaving Thailand so soon, when I walked on the Air India plane and saw flight attendents in Saris, Bindis, and Henna on their hands, I knew all was right (respectively: a traditional Indian dress, the forehead dot, and semi-permenant natural ink used to design hands and forearms.) My first interaction with an Indian was a wonderful man sitting next to us on the airplane who immediately began conversation. Gone are the days of no English speakers and only hand gestures to communicate (from the non Hindi speaker's view, this makes at the very least one benefit from Colonial rule!)

First notes on India: while leafing through the in-flight magazine, I took note of advertisements. On beach advertisements the main focus was the beach (rather than oiled down airbrushed bikini wearers) and even in the advertisements with people, they were clearly selling the relevant product rather than sex. I also have noticed this on billboards since I've been here. This after having no mirror for weeks at a time in Thailand: hurrah, SE Asia and what you do for self-respect and self-esteem! I will take into account however: my standards for "not scandalous" are far different than those here, so I could be overlooking subtleties.
It is notably interesting how quickly my sensitivities have changed: while in the airport we saw many tourists that were dressed, may I say, in a way less culturally sensitive, and while it would have been nothing out of the ordinary at home, it certainly made you blink and step back here.
And India is significantly more fully clothed even than Thailand. No matter the heat, rickshaw drivers, outdoor laborers, and the entire male population is wearing slacks or jeans and a long-sleeve button-up shirt. Women are wearing saris and scarves, covered from head to toe (with exception of mid-drift, but they have to let heat out somewhere) or other equally as efficiently covering clothes. None of them noticeably sweat, either. I want their secret!

Flight meal: The Question was, “vegetarian or non-vegetarian” rather than “beef or chicken? …oh, I’m sorry; you had to pre-request vegetarian specially.” Woohoo for meatless feasts! So far, after five days in India, I have not had to skirt around meat once; all of our group meals have been vegetarian (and salivatingly delicious) and meat is even a challenge to find. In a country of 82% Hindu (no beef), 12% Muslim (no pork), and a sizeable Jain population (nothing that has had any adverse effects on living organisms at all—within reason) it is no wonder.

We are staying with host families for this week. Our host family speaks wonderful English and the two children, 14 and 16, attend a private all English speaking school. An example of a typical day here:

7:00-8:00 Yoga Class (instructed by yoga teacher who gave lessons to Bill Clinton on one of his India visits.

8:00-9:30 Breakfast

10:00-11:30 Lecture on “A Brief History of India” or “India People’s Theater” or “Indian politics” or “Hinduism—Textual and popular traditions.” All have been great!

12:00-13:00 group lunch, each day at a REALLY nice Indian restaurant. Today was the only day without a “family style” course prepared for us; the plan was to take us to McDonald’s until several of us voiced that it would mean personal ethical breaches, so we went to another nearby vegetarian restaurant. (Different than in the US, McDonald’s has a more upper-mid class demographic and is even somewhat of a chic, status symbol. The menu is of course very different with beef replaced by veggie burgers and no beef flavor added to fries among other changes, but most of us rather take their word for McDonald’s cultural place in India and forego a meal there.)

12:30-16:00 Group Excursion: Sight-seeing Tour, visit to orphanage, Block Printing Studio, Hand-made Paper Factory, and visit to Kalakar Basti, a folk artist colony.

19:30-onwards Dinner with host families or dinner at Chokhi Dhani, a rural faux-village resort near Jaipur where we ate traditional Rajastani dinner (Rajastan is this region of India) and experienced many cultural surprises around the village, including Indian massages, henna tattoos, elephant and camel rides, traditional dances, etc.

Left-hand taboo: I’m still working on it. Even after I’ve gotten fairly good at remembering to eat with my right (I’m a lefty) it is still difficult to break my Italian habit of bread, or in this case rote, in one hand and fork in the other. Is it better to soil bread with left hand (really only there for secondary purposes,) or the fork which has the more important job? After my initial fear of soiling my Indian reputation with this, Rekha Gi and Rishi Gi informed me that now-a-days, nobody really cares and it is quite arbitrary. Then during my first meal with my family, I saw that my sister used her left hand exclusively. So much for going out of my way to be culturally sensitive. Stormy seas attraversed, nonetheless, I will continue with right. Because it is a little like eating with a foot, it takes me more time and thus enables (or forces) me to enjoy my food on a higher level.

Traffic is a delicately organized chaos with right-of-way going to largest vehicle (with exception of crossing cows): more notes on that later.

My host mother fasts every Monday, Thursday, and Friday, all for different Gods. Her husband owns a furniture shop. Their marriage was arranged with them only meeting once before the wedding day (but of course had at that meeting there been any serious objections by either it would not have been continued.) More comments on this later; I hopefully will be able to learn more personal opinions on this during my time here (because for as many reasons as a Western mind would object, I can see much sense in this cultural difference.)


Kalakar Basti is the name of a small slum community settled circa 1984 in a section of Jaipur by nomadic Indians. Traveling artists form part of a deep tradition in India, but today's organization of society makes a nomadic lifestyle near impossible. Thus, these nomadic Indians organized themselves into a community, performing traditional song and dance for tourists, in big hotels and at festivals, or wherever they can to make a living. We went to visit them in their community rather than them come to us, as is customary for them, so that we could see their way of life.








Kalakar Basti

Other notes on Thailand

Description: Decraw
A ball game played in Thailand

Each team has three players on a volleyball-like court with a five foot high net (approx.) Each side may hit the ball (usually wicker) as many times as necessary without using hands or arms (only feet, legs, chest, head, etc.)

Making payments
Gahh!! I have not seen a single place that takes either credit cards or traveler's checks. Only cash. Be it a post office, a department store, or a chain, only cash. You do not always realize how convenient spending money can be in America. I suppose America's debt problems may have something to do with that!

Thai Street Life

This is another beautiful part of Thailand. You could practically do all of your shopping in Thailand without ever setting foot inside a store. Food vendors. Seamstresses. Salesmen of magazines, paper, cosmetics, home appliances, batteries, shoes, clothing. All scrunching their business into a four by seven cart on wheels along the sidewalk, there for your convenience.

This also adds to Thailand's food culture. This is far from an Italian "two meals a day, don't even think of ruining your appetite by snacking" culture. Thais, especially in cities and towns, will graze throughout the day: a smoothie here, fried chicken feet there, and a plate of Pad Thai if you really have an appetite. Because of this, even when you think you are ordering a full meal, it is never overly filling. A dish of Pad Thai is probably not meant to be a full diner; I am expected to have picked up a bag of fresh roasted peanuts an hour before and fried bananas after. This dining does not have to be hurried and can be comfortable and classy, as well. Often a cluster of these food carts will have table seating and real china dishware. This could be your destination for a night out on the town; not just a pit stop on your way home from work. And do not think that you are sacrificing variety: with a wok at hand, there is nothing that these Thais cannot cook up.

You can also pull together an entire wardrobe in the sidewalk space between two crosswalks. Shoes, socks, undergarments, ultra-hip teeny bopper clothes, business casual, gym workout, linen hippy...the possibilities are endless.

And perhaps you need a garment mended? Look no further than the little corner lady perched in front of her sewing machine. Hand your garment off and by the time you pass by after work she will have it waiting for you.

The Future of Food

At Pun Pun, we watched a video entitled "The Future of Food." While incredibly depressing (ignorance is bliss!), it had some extremely important information.

Here is an unorganized list of some of the important points.
-Technology (used against enemy) from WWI was tweeked after war initiating the use of Nitrogen fertilizers, and nerve gas (also used against enemy) from WWII and again from the Vietnam War (remember Agent Orange?) was modified for insecticides. How healthy are these REALLY for us, our children and our environment? Food for thought.

-The Fifties brought about the systemetizing of agriculture and monocropping to "increase efficiency"
-It has also led to increased food vulnerability to insects and disease (Potato Famine) and loss of dependence for farmers who used to do subsistance farming.
-Excuse has often been that this will "help with food shortages." Most countries facing large hunger problems used to be all subsistance farmers that had to switch to monocropping exports to pay back World Bank loans. Monocropping has stripped much of their former land making it no longer farmable.

-Gene Revolution
-Then came genetic changes to make crops "round up" ready. Round Up kills anything green (it is in similar vein of Agent Orange.)
-Terminator Technology
-Seeds have been genetically altered to, after one season, "commit suicide" so that the seeds cannot be reused and must be rebought (profit for seed industry, and profit is number one priority!) What happens when these seeds cross pollinate with other non-genetically modified seeds (as has already happened)? What happens when they reach the third world?

-Patents
-Article 1 of the Constitution says that you cannot patent life and was upheld until a Supreme Court case voted in favor of a man who had tried to patent an oil fighting microbe that he had "invented" through genetic engineering.
-This case opened the door for an entire industry of patenting plants, animals, seeds, etc.
--This video focuses on agriculture, but this is a huge problem elsewhere.
A company has patented a gene that causes breast cancer, haulting any labs from using the cell to search for cures without a huge fee. So this company's profit is above finding a cure for cancer.
-Companies began going into seed banks and patenting any seed that did not already have a patent, giving them the rights to that seed and royalty from its use.
-Seventy-five percent of the world's farmers save and use their own seed.
-Now seed industry monopoly Mon Santo (who appropriately owns Round Up) owns patents for most seeds. If you are a farmer who saves your own seeds and those seeds become cross pollinated with a Mon Santo seed, even unknowingly, you are at fault and they own all of your crop (based on numerous court decisions.) You either owe them for your earnings or you burn the seed that your family has cultivated to perfection for generations.
-As if this isn't all heartless enough, many of these large companies are pressuring to unify patent laws around the world so that they can take and patent seeds out of the other countries. Thus, the third world agriculturalists will be paying the first world seed owners who have never seen, grown, nor would even have the climate to grow those seed.

--80% of our beef products are processed by four companies, and the majority of agriculture is also monopolized by a very few.
--Today food in our supermarkets travels an average of 15,000 miles before it reaches our shopping carts! Most of our apples are from...can you guess where? Washington (which is already a huge trek to reach us in the East)? No. Answer is: China!!

All of this can be summarized as followed: buy locally and buy organically!

(I will one day return and better organize this...when I am not paying for a slow computer.)

Sea Gypsies--fishing dilemmas

The Sea Gypsies have little money and inferior equiptment. The waters of Thailand are already overfished, so sometimes they will go to the nearby waters of Burma where there is not such a large fishing industry. The problem: they must do so illegally. Because they do not yet have Thai nationality, or any nationality for that matter, they are in particularly big trouble if they get caught. A couple days before we arrived, a group of men was out fishing late at night illegally in Burmese waters (weigh: fishing illegally and risking getting caugh with no knowledge of national laws...and being able to feed your families.) Burmese officials stopped them, confiscated all of their fish, and confiscated their boat. One of the Moken men went back the next day to get the boat...and he still hadn't returned. Many of these men have spent time in jails from Burma to India, for days, weeks, or years, and with no papers, no traces with which their families would be able to locate them, and no way to communicate through these different languages (many Moken do not even speak Thai,) you can imagine how terrifying it must be.
Their livelyhood has become very dangerous. Also to catch fish, when times get rough they also still use bombs (they blow up in the water, shock, and kill a wide range of surrounding fish) which are both illegal and an environmental nightmare. There are at least two Moken men walking around in this tiny village with one arm because of unfortunate accidents with these bombs...they are very dangerous for people, too.
Yet another dangerous practice: deep diving to fetch sea cucumbers (apparently the Chinese love them.) Without masks or scuba gear, teenage boys and young men will go out on diving missions for weeks at a time gathering shell fish, sea cucumbers, and other food on the ocean floor at depths as low as 75 feet. The village chief's son has been hospitalized in Ranong for the past two years because of a diving accident; he got the bends (similar such problems are all too frequent) and still has no use of his legs. One afternoon they took part of our group out while to see how they fish, and it became fairly clear why they sometimes are pushed to these extremes. Two Moken men, clearly masters of the water and more comfortable on their boat than on land, showed us how they fish with nets. The net was about six feet high and perhaps three football fields long. We trew it out into the water, waited and went for a swim, and then returned to collect our winnings. Our "winnings" could not have filled one person. In the entirety of the net, about five puny fish were caught. With the effort that it took, it certainly is not the most efficient method (the gain probably did not even outweight the price of fuel used to power the boat.)
We bought masks and snorkels to use for our few days following volunteering on Ko Lao on Ko Phayam to then give to the Mokens. Hopefully they will be able to both use them for diving as well as offer them to tourists to rent, bringing in some extra income.

Ko Lao--Medicine

Ajahn Vichai is an older man staying with the sea gypsies, by choice, to help. He used to work for the UN and was part of a group in the early 80s that won a Nobel Peace Prize for their work done to help SE Asian refugees fleeing to the West (mainly from Vietnam and Cambodia.) Today he receives a very small living allowance (I'm not sure from whom) and lives alone on Ko Lao to help with anything he can, from medical care to teaching families how to keep their own chickens. Mike, Emma and I went to Ranong with him one morning to pick up medical supplies with the money that our group donated. While Ajahn Vichai explained all of the different medicines that we needed and thus explained why we needed them, the pharmacist was initially very helpful, recommending other medicines that would be good to have for our purposes, and then insisted that we take it all for free. He also does similar work with some of Thailand's poor peasants and is eager to help his fellow Thais and fellow good samaritan aid workers such as Ajahn Vichai. We walked out with two full cardboard boxes taped shut of medicines: it was uplifting to see such a personal interaction and such good hearted people helping each other out. Emma and I tried to buy Menthol inhalors (Thais sniff them all the time: at first glance you think they are snorting crack cocaine but realize that it is Menthol and pepperment oil among others to help with congestion...and to wake you up.) because we are trying to live more like Thais, and he even insisted that we take them without paying because we were doing such good volunteer work.

I love Thailand!!

Giving the Mokens medical aid is not as simple as handing them free medicine, however. Often they do not trust medicine. Most cannot read, so often they will use one medicine for any ailment that they have, not being able to read the instructions. They also are reluctant to go to the hospital. They have no means of paying, and even though aid organizations will now help, they still have fear from past experiences. They also do not want to miss a day of work. If the sick must go by boat to Ranong and stay overnight, they loose a day of work and so does whoever accompanies them. A woman gave birth in the village while we were there...in the village. She would not go to the hospital (nothing in the village is clean or sanitary, including water) because she and any women who accompanied her would miss more time of work, collecting shellfish to feed their families.

Burma

We went to Burma (Myanmar) for a day! Yeah, one more stamp in my passport!
It was quite an experience. Although only a narror strip of water and a 20 minute boat ride divides them, the differences are vast. Thailand has had a fairly stable history, and one can tell being there. But Burma has had many problems throughout history and in recent history, and it shows. People are much more destitude. People were more aggressive on the street, but aggressive because of their situation. Right away we had an eleven year old tour guide showing us around; girls like her drop out of school, learn languages from tourists,and then try to show tourists around for whatever those tourists are willing to offer. Hopefully just enough to feed her family for the day. I also felt that men were much more aggressive when they see a foreign woman than here than in Thailand...but I guess they are just preparing me for India.

Ko Lao--The Land of the Sea Gypsies

I have arrived to the land of the Moken people, or the Sea Gypsies. "The land of the Sea Gypsies" is a bit of an oxi-moron and for them even a bit bitter-sweet because, historically, the Sea Gypsies have never had a land of their own. For centuries the Mokens have been nomads of the water, living off of the sea. They traveled, worked, played, ate, lived and died all on their boats. They are true masters of the seas, nomadically roaming the seas of SE Asia. Traveling the seas to follow their livelyhood of different sea organisms, they would stop at ports only to sell some of their catches in exchange for anything they would need that the sea did not provide.

However, especially in the past 50 years, the countries of SE Asia have strenghtened their national boundaries, moving them out into the sea, creating problems for a travelling peoples with no nationality. The Sea Gypsies have no papers, no passports to be stamped by coastguard. The Burmese say, "you must stay out of our waters, you are Thai." But the Thai say, "You are not Thai, you have no proof." Mokens all around SE Asia have had to settle on islands and abandon their centuries old lifestyle.

We stayed on the island of Ko Lao for one week, working to help a small community of Sea Gypsies. There are many, many small communities of Mokens, not only spread out on Thai islands but also on those of Malaysia and Indonesia. The Mirror Art Group--the same group that works with the hill tribes of the north--in the past decade has begun working to gain citizenship for the Sea Gypsies, in addition to aiding in numerous other projects.

The Moken of Ko Lao have it particularly tough. While aid money flooded into SE Asia after the Tsunami of 2004, Ko Lao has only now begun to see a small amount of it. With such a large scale catastrophe and so many different aid organizations, some families and communities received too much and took advantage of it while others recieved nothing at all. Little record could be kept of aid in the chaos after the tragedy, so this sort of hole in the system unfortunately was able to occur. Recently they have received more aid, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has been helpful. Many disheartened Mokens talk of corruption in the aid organization, who often try to involve the community very little in the decisions being made on its behalf. Also, having numerous different aid organizations with different focuses is not always good either. Christian missionaries built a big, beautiful church to be used for the children. Not long after, MERCY, an organization that helps communities with childcare, preschool, prenatal care, and basically anything concerning children, built also a very nice daycare. They at least seem to be doing well for the community: they try to have meetings with the villagers to include them, they feed the children, and the villagers seem to give positive reviews. The missionaries, on the other hand, keep their big, beautiful structure locked up save when they are there on Sundays to sing Bible songs with the children (but at least they let aid orgs. like us use it as a dormitory while we are there.) The point: different groups, instead of working together, are wasting resources building the same thing twice while other necessities are not being built at all.

Interesting Fact:
While 225,000 people died in this earthquake, not a single Moken from Ko Lao was killed, and very few elsewhere. Why?
Because they knew it was coming. Very few Mokens have any sort of formal education, but they know their sea and the signs it gives. Mokens all over packed up and sailed North or went inland before the Tsunami came.

While there were no casualties, everything they had was swept away. Since the Mokens of Ko Lao recieved little aid, they had to fend for themselves. Their boats were ruined. Even once they could fish again, fear that the ocean's fish had eaten their dead relatives kept many Thais away from seafood for years after the Tsunami, greatly hurting the fishing industry.

What an intense, experience. The more time you spend on this island, the deeper you realize their problems run. There are no easy solutions. These Mokens have only been on Kao Lao for 34 years, and it is their first time living permanently in one place. There is a great deal that they never learned.
TRASH
The island is absolutely covered in trash. Nobody has a trash bin; the ocean is our dump. Broken glass, plastic bags, and food packaging litters the landscape...34 years of it. They have taken the western world's "gift" of packaged, store bought snacks, but have not had the benefit of the West's efficient waste removal knowledge. While I would walk around in shoes noting the numerous broken glass pieces every square yard, children would come running past me, shoeless. Because while living at sea it was not an option, they have NO agriculture. They grow nothing. This is the first real generation not brought up in boats: can you blame them? Unfortunately, any sort of agriculture cannot begin until after the trash situation is fixed. And believe me--I had to shovel as we worked on the housing project--the problem, quite literally, goes deep.
FOOD
Luckily, finally the Mokens have received small amounts of aid. The children usually get at least one rounded meal per day, grazie a both the MERCY foundation and Pee Now, a Thai woman who stays in their village, looking out for and cooking for the community. Otherwise, the main staple of their diet is shellfish. Only shellfish. Women sit on their haunches hour after hour scraping muscles out of their shells to feed the family. They have little money to buy any variety from Ranong (the closest city on the mainland) so this tends to be their staple. And (as I said the problems run deep,) much of the money that their families DO see is drank away by the men. The reason becomes clear when you look in their eyes and realize that the people of this village have very little hope; they are very, very jaded. This is perhaps the biggest problem and steepest hill to climb for any benevolent soul or NGO who would like to help, because it almost seems as though these people have lost the will to care.
OUR ROLE
During our time here, we have helped with numerous projects, but much of what we hoped to accomplish fell through. Perhaps our biggest accomplishment came from playing with the kids. The island is tearing at the seams with shoeless, often bare bottomed children running about. But while the adults all seem to be jaded, the children still laugh and see the world as children anywhere do. Many of these children stopped attending school because they had to leave the island to attend a Thai school and after their efforts were treated poorly by the Thai children and not understood or taken care of by the Thai teachers. For them to feel loved and even adequate is important for them to continue with a positive outlook as they grow into adults. At best, we gave the children hope, and maybe even also a little to those jaded parents as they watched their children line up behind us as we airplaned them around with smiles on our faces.

I have SO many wonderful pictures, and SO much more to say about this island, but I do not have time!!

Tomorrow we will be in Bangkok, and then off to India! Woohoo! I am incredibly blue to leave Thailand because I LOVE THESE PEOPLE!--but I'm sure I will have an equally rich experience in India.

Notes on Thailand

Notes on Thai’ness:

Safety standards of the “sue happy” US do not apply here. The perfect example was demonstrated numerous times by Nong Ti, a two or three year old neighbor, in Mae Joo. -The first morning I woke up and looked out the window. There was the toddler Nong Ti outside, playing with a hammer and nail alone. He was emulating all of the grown ups: holding the nail to the ground and hitting it.
-Nong Ti on a motorcycle: We went swimming in the reservoir that is about a 15 minute walk from our house. The entire village has only about three cars, but there are several motorcycles. Nong Ti—instead of being carried back by his mom Pee La (a perfectly standard model Thai mom—rode on a motorcycle standing up behind the driver (teenager) sandwiched loosely with another teenager holding him from behind. All three wet, of course, returning home downhill on a dirt and rock road.
-Nong Ti on tractor—I was walking with Pee La when she saw Nong Ti sitting alone on top of a seven plus foot high tractor playing. She was somewhat surprised to see him there and walked over to get him. I assume there was another adult on the other side of the tractor…but there was no one else in my line of sight.

Homestay in Mae Joo

Mae Joo is a village of about 100 families. Diana and I stayed the week with Pee Noi and Pee Nit and their two children, Noi (7) and Nii (11.) They had a lovely wooden home that had belonged to Pee Nit's father (today, to build a house out of wood in Thailand is near impossible because of the extreme deforestation in the past 50 years,) with two luxerious squat toilets outside and running water (I realized how luxerious their home was later while staying with the Juhu hill tribe where there were no bathrooms and only one place in the village with running water.) Most Thai houses make no effort at having tight seals. What is the necessity? Often there is a foot or two gap between the top of the wall and the start of the roof, the windows have no screens, and bugs are just as acceptably part of the indoor environment as they are part of that of outdoors. And bugs--and not the standard USA sized bugs but mommoth ones--make niether house moms nor toddlers flinch. A six inch grasshopper? Great! Let's watch the two year old play pick it up and play with in inside the house.

Our meals always eaten on the floor with an elegant newspaper "table" cloth, and we typically ate sticky rice and veggies, fish, etc. with our hands. I have not had a single meal without rice (while staying with a family) in Thailand, breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Thai cooking ingredients include: rice, fish sauce, soy sauce, oil, MSG, salt, sugar, garlic, hot pepper, veggies, and tofu, fish, chicken, or pork in a wide variety of combinations. That is Thai cooking in a nutshell. Examples of veggies: bamboo, pumpkin, tomato, greens such as kale, green beans, edamame.

On the second day we walked the few miles up to the nearby Lahu hilltribe village, Hu-e-La-Bute. The scenery en route: wet rice paddies, banana trees, papaya trees, avocado trees, trees of fruits that I am not quite sure I can pronounce, water buffalo, and rolling hills and mountains. In the village all of the adults were gone out in the fields save perhaps one school teacher, and children seemed to be running about unchecked. In all of these hilltribe villages, there are pigs and chickens/ roosters gallor. There are very few water buffalo or cows compared to what there used to be, however (we saw a small heard here and none in other hilltribe villages.) In the past, cows or buffalo were a family's bank. If a family came upon weath, they invested in animals. There was no bank in which to secure money, and so it was much safer to use a cow as a bank, earn interest in calfs, and when need be sell them for money or trade. But this came to be looked down upon by Thai society as outside influences poured in and so very few families do it anymore. All of the hilltribe houses here were made of bamboo, and most had thatched roofs. A good thatched roof will be impervious to rain and will last a good ten years. Smoke that gets trapped in the roof from families cooking inside will prevent termites, bugs, and moskitos...and did I mention that they are readily renewable and often at no cost?

Missionaries: while missionaries have been very unsuccessful in converting Thais, they have had much greater success in converting hilltribes. In this small village of bamboo houses, there was a large, cement church with a big cross on top. Typically--such as in the case here--missionaries will come in and offer food and money for education only to those willing to convert. So, if you don't let them "save your soul," then they likely will not help you at all.

Many houses in Thailand--both the Lahu houses and those in Mae Joo--are raised up on stilts because of the rainy season. The Lahu build bamboo houses up on stilts and their livestock live beneath, protecting from predators and providing security. they also act as very efficient garbage disposals: family members prepare meals inside, and any scraps they can drop down to the animals by lifting up pieces of the bamboo floor and dropping food through.

Boxing: Our nextdoor neighbor in Mae Joo coaches Mui Thai boxing in Bangkok. Thus, it became nightly ritual by the end of the week, particularly in Peer's case, for him to give the American kids a bit of exercize and a run for their money. I got free Thai boxing lessons! After Peer was done one night and they were looking for someone else to take a turn, I was naturally the first to step up. What awesome exercize! I wonder how much bringing a Thai personal trainer back to the States would cost me in Baht.

Funeral: There was a death of an elderly woman in the village on our first day in Mae Joo. Bummer for her, but a great cultural opportunity for us. For the three days before the funeral, community members constantly surround the family. Every evening people especially people congregate in big tents around the family's house. They pay respects to the body, but more so it is a meeting place for community members to laugh and have a good time. Not much somber atmosphere to be found: people seemed to be having a great time. Every evening the women make huge vats of food, be it dessert, soup,or rice to feed everyone. the day of the funeral is also a full day ordeal, with community members cooking lunch together, eating lunch together, and then heading over to the grounds for the cremation.

Steps to builing an adobe house

--Lay a foundation of rocks or cement. It is important that your adobe blocks do not start directly in contact with the ground to prevent termites from climbing through your walls and up to your roof.
--Make your mixture of clay, sand, fibrous material (such as rice husk) and water. Mix with feet (“I Love Lucy” style) and pour into blocks, easily formed by the frame of a basic wooden ladder.
--Let dry for 7-10 days.
--Stack your blocks in shape of desired house, leaving space for door and windows, and hold blocks together with a thinner version of your first mixture.
--Cover the inside and outside with same mixture. Add imprints and embellish for decoration as desired.
--Add thatched or tin roof using wooden frame directly on top, being sure to leave a long overhand beyond all walls to keep water away.
--Vuola! Move in, plant an organic garden, and enjoy your new home debt-free! Your new home will keep you protected from the elements and will maintain a fairly regulated temperature on its own. Hurrah for self- sufficiency!

Pun Pun: Living Sustainably

Pun pun is an organic farm, seed-saving operation, and sustainable living and learning center an hour outside of Chiang Mai in the small village of Mae Joo. We stayed with families for eight days in Mae Joo in pairs of two, learning the village Thai way of life, working and learning at Pun Pun, and running a kids camp for some of the village youth in the evenings.

Five years ago, Pee Peggy and Pee Jo (“Pee is used in Thailand for respect) bought the stripped piece of land on which they hoped to build Pun Pun with very little money. No one would ever know, however, because—with organic farming techniques and patience –where not even a banana tree would grow before crops are thriving. They are sure to keep nutrients circulating; far from monocropping on their nine acres they grow rice, sesame, passion fruit, pineapple, turmeric, kale, squash, papaya, basil, bananas…and the list goes on.

Many years ago, the Thai farmer was almost completely self-sustaining. But starting 50 years ago, the government introduced monocropping for export to make more money. People began working harder, cutting down more forest, and finally introducing chemicals. They were producing more, but producing only one crop did not provide them with security. Rice, their main crop, traditionally can only be regrown on the same land for three seasons before the land is stripped and they need to find fresh land. At Pun Pun, they are trying to reintroduce a self-reliance system to Thailand, providing people with more security, and harvesting less of a greater variety of crops all throughout the year and rotating crops to keep the land healthy.

When Pee Jo and Pee Peggy purchased this “unusable” land and began their unconventional practices, the villagers of Mae Joo thought they were crazy. Although chemicals were not introduced into Thailand’s agriculture until a mere 50 years ago, people already cannot imagine farming successfully without them. But that is alright; Pee Peggy and Pee Jo planned to lead by example. Sure enough, after only a few years the villagers started going up to Pun Pun asking for advice and adopting their techniques. Now Pun Pun offers numerous internships and provides week long intensive courses that are attended by people from all over—both from Thailand and abroad.

They are also using and teaching earthen building techniques. One-third of the earth’s population still lives in earthen homes, and it is the oldest building technique. With millennia of wisdom to learn from, earthen building may be something worth looking into! “Why spend the rest of your life worrying about paying off a mortgage when you can simplify your life, build yourself, and spend little to no money?” Pee Jo makes clear, a simpler life is a life with much less stress.

During our time at Pun Pun, we learned by hands-on experience. We made our own adobe bricks, helped to construct a house, added a final paint finish (paint made from earthen products such as clay and sand, of course,) and worked on organic farming techniques. Pee Jo is an inspiration, living his words and beliefs as very few can claim to do. In a world of fast paced advancement but less and less security, his example of self-sufficiency is becoming more and more attractive.

Mountain Trek

White and squirmy, its taste of coconut milk surprised me when I bit into it. The cricket I ate in Mexico had been so bitter compared with the mildness of this bamboo worm . On our six hour hike, one of our guides had gone off and gathered dozens of bamboo worms with his machete. For the past four days, we have been trekking with guides from the Mirror Art Group in the mountains of Northern Thailand, from hilltribe to hilltribe, staying with hilltribe families along the way.
Day one we stayed in a small Aha village, and were very lucky (or very unlucky we came to feel around 4 a.m.) to have arrived the evening of their New Year celebration marking the end of the rice harvest. The celebration entailed dancing, banging drums, and singing around a fire from dark until well into dawn the next morning—thus our frustration in the midnight hours as we tried unfruitfully to sleep with thin bamboo walls in the small window of opportunity we had between the time we left the celebrations and before the rooster were set to begin their wakeup call. The dances were performed to scare off spirits; because men must leave the confines of the village in order to work the rice paddies throughout the harvest, once the harvest is complete any spirits that follow them back in through the village gate must be frightened away. When we arrived, our families fed us well: the wonders one can do with little more than fresh vegetables, rice, a fire pit, a wok, and a mortar and pestal. Then they adorned us in traditional Akha garb for the festivities—ankle covers, head dress, and all—and we headed for the town center to dance around the blazing fire. The dances were simple, more or less just stepping together in a circle, but I’ll be damned if those elderly Akha women didn’t keep their vigor well until five a.m.! I’m sure that “whiskey lady,” walking around with a free flowing bottle of whiskey and a shot glass making sure everyone had had their fill, helped to keep spirits lively.
The next day our wet, rugged trudge through the forest was wonderfully balanced by the two hour elephant ride the rest of the way to the Lahu village, but day three was by far the most intense. We were in the mountains with no other human in sight from our start at 9 a.m. to near the time we reached the Jahu village at almost 4 p.m. Starting at 900 meters, we hiked up the mountain reaching 1500 meters and then decended to the secluded village on the other side.
The Mirror Art Group is a non-profit, non-government organization working in Chiang Rai. Through a number of projects, they help the peoples of the area make a better life for themselves while still retaining their cultural identities. They organize numerous advantages for the surrounding hilltribe communities, such as a television station with their local news, volunteer teaching, help achieving Thai citizenship, fundraising, and cultural experiences that help other Thais and tourists understand the hilltribes’ unique ways of life while creating pride for the hilltribe peoples in their traditions. All of the guides with us had themselves grown up around Chiang Rai in hilltribes. Their ability to navigate through unmarked jungle and their use of a machete as if it were a mere extension of the were impressive. But most impressive was their ability to understand the Thai language, English, and multiple hilltribe languages, all unintelligible between each other.