Well all, I'm back. Just about. As of now I'm still in the lovely, commodified, tourist kitsch-drenched city of Mae Hong Son, but I will be back in Chiang Mai later today. Say, six o'clock or so. We wrapped up our tour of P'gaganyaw (pronounced: Ba-Gin-Yaw, the proper term for the Karen hill tribe) villages in Mae Hong Son province, which is in the Northeast of Thailand. I have absolutely no idea how to condense such an incredible, complex, insightful experience into a handful of words, so bear with me. Basically, the P'gaganyaw are a hill tribe, of which there are many, but they are the largest, and also most politically empowered. However, they still face face a fair amount of conflict with the government. They live in the mountains and still maintain many elements of their traditional way of life, such as weaving and rotational agriculture. Rotational agriculture is a fairly major one. You may know it as slash and burn agriculture, and probably learned about it (and maybe how "bad" it is in middle school social studies). Well, it's not bad, and in fact it is amazingly ecologically sustainable, as well as often providing the P'gaganyaw people with a healthy, self-sufficient livelihood. So back off. Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned, which I didn't necessarily expect to get, was in seeing how they are able to negotiate a nuanced and empowering relationship with modern forces, such as technology, culture, and government. They do not need to be shielded from these forces, as many Westerners like to think, reducing the people and their culture to a two-dimensional romanticized charicature. Howeveer, nor should they be forced to modernize and develop along traditional top-down models, which has often been the other, more common, alternative. Rather, living in these villages, seeing how they incorporate everything from televsision to GPS to modern materials to Thai schools to government positions (and so on down the list) into their so-called "traditional" way of life just convinced me of their ability as people to take charge of these issues, and what's more, in so doing, strengthening and empowering themselves politically, culturally and ecologically. This might all seem uninteresting or unremarkable to you all, but coming away with this understanding is fairly significant to me.
As far as the non-"academic" side of things, which is impossible to really separate from everything else, the trip was amazing. I stayed with a total of five wonderful P'gaganyaw families. We stayed in the villages (in order): Hua Nam, Nam Hoo, Huay Koong, Huay Hee, and Huay Tong Kaw. We stayed in each village for two to four nights, spending the days either in the field learning from village members about their ecological systems or political structures, or simply spending the day with our families, harvesting rice or just idling the time away. We would then hike for six to eight hours in between villages, going through spectacular green mountains or wading through rivers. My time was filled with so many little things that are just impossible to recount in any fair way. But just to give you an idea: there was a cat who I'm sure was convinced it was wearing an invisibility cloak, a seven year old boy with an unwieldy passion for rockpaperscissors, teaching English with Nick and Aaron in a school, herds of water buffalo roaming around and two AM, being freezing cold in Thailand, eating flying squirrel and chicken organs (rather, avoiding them at all costs), communicating surprisingly well when Thai was a second language to all involved, climbing Doi Pui (the highest point in the province), swimmin in rivers, a ridiculous fat and sassy host family, the father of which was an important governmental representative for the village but nonetheless wore a huge fleece blanket as a do-rag or wandered around in nothing but a teal spandex briefs, amazing stars (stellar, even), an adorable two year old boy with a cleft pallette named Hero, our hilarious and unfathomably jovial Thai guide Pi Wissain who looked like a forty-year-old Thai Ben Levick, and so on and so forth.
And whew. What more can I say. As much as I have loved it here, I long for Chiang Mai. And I am so happy to say that I will be there for the next two months, which will encompass my internship and a radical activist organization and my winter break, with adventures and yoga to fill in the gaps.
Here's to Rumsfeld gettin what he had coming to him, may he suffer every ounce of it. Cheers!
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
This week has really gotten away from me. Between school and, well, enjoying myself, there just hasn't been enough time. Basically, I haven't done anything else other than go to school from 8 to 5 every day this week, get home, go to eat, do homework, talk to friends instead of doing homework, and then sleeping for a few hours. A few days ago a member of the Thai secret police came to interrogate all of the ISDSI students at school. This man is responsible for busting all sorts of drug rings, etc., but, because he's in the Thai government, he's wildly corrupt at the same time. He's been hassling my program for a couple years, which is completely outside his jurisdiction. There's a whole huge huge huge long story behind why he ended up at the school the other day, but basically it was to to just check things out, make sure we were who we said we were. So you'd expect something like this to be, I don't know, serious, right? You'd expect him to probe us about our reasons for coming here, our political allegiances, what countries we've been to before, and on and on. But that would be in a non-Thailand country. Seeing as this was the Thai secret police, he questioned us about our favorite fruit, and whether or not we've eaten papaya salad (a famous Thai food). Are the people nice? Are they beautiful? These are the questions he asked us and we answered in broken, confused Thai. It was beyond weird, especially once we found out what was actually going on.
Okay. So here's the deal. I leave for Mae Hong Son tomorrow morning. The course is Political Ecology of Forests, and it involves hiking through the province of Mae Hong Son, visiting different Karen villages, learning about their experiences as marginalized hill tribes. I'll be back in, like, eighteen days or so. Sometime on or around the 15 of November. Until then, I will be once again be out of communication with the rest of the world. As for now, I have plenty of things to do and things to buy before leaving tomorrow, and as such I'm going to cut this short. Sorry I didn't get more pictures up. I'll make sure to post a million when I get back from this course.
One last thing. Here's my mailing address, finally:
Noah Manger
ISDSI
PO Box 222
Phra Singh, Muang
Chiang Mai, 50205
THAILAND
Make sure to mark the outside of all packages with "Gift -- of no commercial value / personal use". Make all lists of contents vague, so that inspectors don't take things. All packages will be rummaged through. DHL is faster than normal mail, but normal mail isn't subject to arbitrary and exorbitant taxes by the Thai government (which I have to pay upon receipt). So I don't know, just use your best judgement.
Bye for now.
Okay. So here's the deal. I leave for Mae Hong Son tomorrow morning. The course is Political Ecology of Forests, and it involves hiking through the province of Mae Hong Son, visiting different Karen villages, learning about their experiences as marginalized hill tribes. I'll be back in, like, eighteen days or so. Sometime on or around the 15 of November. Until then, I will be once again be out of communication with the rest of the world. As for now, I have plenty of things to do and things to buy before leaving tomorrow, and as such I'm going to cut this short. Sorry I didn't get more pictures up. I'll make sure to post a million when I get back from this course.
One last thing. Here's my mailing address, finally:
Noah Manger
ISDSI
PO Box 222
Phra Singh, Muang
Chiang Mai, 50205
THAILAND
Make sure to mark the outside of all packages with "Gift -- of no commercial value / personal use". Make all lists of contents vague, so that inspectors don't take things. All packages will be rummaged through. DHL is faster than normal mail, but normal mail isn't subject to arbitrary and exorbitant taxes by the Thai government (which I have to pay upon receipt). So I don't know, just use your best judgement.
Bye for now.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
I just posted a hand full of photographs from the trip. I planned on more, but then I realized how tired I am and the computer was going slow. So for now you'll have to deal with ten very random pictures, in no order of importance or chronology. But it's better than nothing, right? Also, that picture of Thai Grace doesn't do the comparison justice. [One of the girls at UHDP looked like Grace, my sister, when she was four]. I'll see if I can find one where it's more apparent. Look.
The following post was written a good three or four days ago, but for some technical reason I wasn't able to post it. But here it is.
I'm really quite busy, these days. Moving in to wonderful appartments, roaming the town, eating international food, buying hip but slightly androgenous clothing, cutting my hair, late-night carousing, et cetera et cetera. The downside of this overwhelming fun is that I'm quickly falling away from all those things I experienced for the past three weeks. So I'll do my best to quickly fill you all in.
First, we went to the Upland Holistic Development Project in Fang, where we stayed for 10 days or so. It was a small institute in the country that focused on developing sustainable agriculture methods for local upland farmers. While there we spent our days doing exercises, such as counting plants, studying soil, and in general exploring the grounds. At night we relaxed in the bunk houses and coped with a creeping sense of immobility and boredom. It was at UHDP that I witnessed the slaughtering of a massive pig, as an illustration of the role pigs play in local culture. The slaughter was quite incredible. As I listened to the death wails for minutes on end until it fell silent and still, and then watched as it get skinned, decapitated and split open, I saw the distinction between animal and meat completely collapse. It's something that we just don't register as Americans so disassociated with the origins of meat (and food in general), and it's something I don't think I could have ever understood without actually experiencing that transformation. I will return to being a vegetarian upon my arrival in the States. On a lighter note, there were many adorable village children running around (children of the families who live and work at UHDP), and they loved to be tossed, spun around, and all sorts of fun that can happen when one person is four times larger than another. Also, while in Fang, we visited three hill tribe villages, which were all great experiences in their own ways. The most story-worthy one was Tisae's village. Uncle Tisae is a one thousand year old man who smokes a pipe, sings and dances, has a spirit tree that is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen, and planted an agroforest because the idea occured to him in a dream. When we visited, he took us on a tour of this agroforest, which occupies the mountains the villge is on. Whereas the ancient man was able to sprint through in knee-high rubber boots, the rest of us, full backpacks included, barely managed to survive. The climb was easy enough. The tough part came on the descent, which took us down a 45 or more degree path, consisting entirely of friction-less mud and spike covered plants. On one of my many falls I happened to grab one of these plants, and ended up with, literally, my whole left hand filled with thorns. I was able to pick nearly all of them out, at least if they were still on the outside. Many managed to go all the way in, and now, as I sit typing this, you can still see them in my palm. It was fun as hell.
Whew.
So then we went to Mae Ta, which is a small town south of Chiang Mai. About forty or fifty years ago, the formerly traditional, subsistence based community became invaded by industrial agriculture. The farmers bought into the false promises and planted chemically intensive monocrops for export. So basically, whereas they used to grow food that could feed them and their families in ways that did not damage the earth and were economically viable, they were then farming only one or two crops (which could not feed a family) and which destroyed the earth with the chemical pesticides and fertilizers and put them in insurmountable debt. And then, about 15 years ago, members of the community started to band together, with a little bit of assistance from an NGO, formed a co-op, and began to make the switch to sustainable, organic farming methods. The family I stayed with owned less than two acres of land, but they grew a many many many types of plants. Because they didn't put in chemically based fertilizers, pesticides, and regularly rotated their crops, the land was healthy and fertile, which was completely different, they said, than it was with monocropping. They ate only food they grew, with the only exception being pork. Whatever they didn't eat, they sold at a villager-run organic market in Chiang Mai every saturday, which provided them with a healthy income. It was just so amazing to see a group of people so empowered, and at the same time doing something so ecologically sustainable. It was living testament to the problems of the conventional system, and the potential and value in sustainable, local agriculture. While in Mae Ta, I also got to harvest rice. This too was amazing, standing with an aching back in the middle of gleaming golden fields, surrounded by brilliant green mountains on all sides, working along side Thai people who I couldn't understand and who like to take breaks every hour to eat fruit and make toys out of the rice stalks. Just too much. I also shared my homestay with a Thai student from Chiang Mai, who was perhaps the most annoying person I've ever met. His name was Jib, and he deserves a post all his own, so I'll save it.
There's plenty more that I did and can't remember or that I did and don't want to write about. But this should give you all an idea of what I did for the past few weeks. It was very very very fun, rewarding and inspiring.
I will be in Chiang Mai through next week, and will leave the following Monday for Mae Hong Song. Congratulations if you've read this far. Go Tigers.
I'm really quite busy, these days. Moving in to wonderful appartments, roaming the town, eating international food, buying hip but slightly androgenous clothing, cutting my hair, late-night carousing, et cetera et cetera. The downside of this overwhelming fun is that I'm quickly falling away from all those things I experienced for the past three weeks. So I'll do my best to quickly fill you all in.
First, we went to the Upland Holistic Development Project in Fang, where we stayed for 10 days or so. It was a small institute in the country that focused on developing sustainable agriculture methods for local upland farmers. While there we spent our days doing exercises, such as counting plants, studying soil, and in general exploring the grounds. At night we relaxed in the bunk houses and coped with a creeping sense of immobility and boredom. It was at UHDP that I witnessed the slaughtering of a massive pig, as an illustration of the role pigs play in local culture. The slaughter was quite incredible. As I listened to the death wails for minutes on end until it fell silent and still, and then watched as it get skinned, decapitated and split open, I saw the distinction between animal and meat completely collapse. It's something that we just don't register as Americans so disassociated with the origins of meat (and food in general), and it's something I don't think I could have ever understood without actually experiencing that transformation. I will return to being a vegetarian upon my arrival in the States. On a lighter note, there were many adorable village children running around (children of the families who live and work at UHDP), and they loved to be tossed, spun around, and all sorts of fun that can happen when one person is four times larger than another. Also, while in Fang, we visited three hill tribe villages, which were all great experiences in their own ways. The most story-worthy one was Tisae's village. Uncle Tisae is a one thousand year old man who smokes a pipe, sings and dances, has a spirit tree that is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen, and planted an agroforest because the idea occured to him in a dream. When we visited, he took us on a tour of this agroforest, which occupies the mountains the villge is on. Whereas the ancient man was able to sprint through in knee-high rubber boots, the rest of us, full backpacks included, barely managed to survive. The climb was easy enough. The tough part came on the descent, which took us down a 45 or more degree path, consisting entirely of friction-less mud and spike covered plants. On one of my many falls I happened to grab one of these plants, and ended up with, literally, my whole left hand filled with thorns. I was able to pick nearly all of them out, at least if they were still on the outside. Many managed to go all the way in, and now, as I sit typing this, you can still see them in my palm. It was fun as hell.
Whew.
So then we went to Mae Ta, which is a small town south of Chiang Mai. About forty or fifty years ago, the formerly traditional, subsistence based community became invaded by industrial agriculture. The farmers bought into the false promises and planted chemically intensive monocrops for export. So basically, whereas they used to grow food that could feed them and their families in ways that did not damage the earth and were economically viable, they were then farming only one or two crops (which could not feed a family) and which destroyed the earth with the chemical pesticides and fertilizers and put them in insurmountable debt. And then, about 15 years ago, members of the community started to band together, with a little bit of assistance from an NGO, formed a co-op, and began to make the switch to sustainable, organic farming methods. The family I stayed with owned less than two acres of land, but they grew a many many many types of plants. Because they didn't put in chemically based fertilizers, pesticides, and regularly rotated their crops, the land was healthy and fertile, which was completely different, they said, than it was with monocropping. They ate only food they grew, with the only exception being pork. Whatever they didn't eat, they sold at a villager-run organic market in Chiang Mai every saturday, which provided them with a healthy income. It was just so amazing to see a group of people so empowered, and at the same time doing something so ecologically sustainable. It was living testament to the problems of the conventional system, and the potential and value in sustainable, local agriculture. While in Mae Ta, I also got to harvest rice. This too was amazing, standing with an aching back in the middle of gleaming golden fields, surrounded by brilliant green mountains on all sides, working along side Thai people who I couldn't understand and who like to take breaks every hour to eat fruit and make toys out of the rice stalks. Just too much. I also shared my homestay with a Thai student from Chiang Mai, who was perhaps the most annoying person I've ever met. His name was Jib, and he deserves a post all his own, so I'll save it.
There's plenty more that I did and can't remember or that I did and don't want to write about. But this should give you all an idea of what I did for the past few weeks. It was very very very fun, rewarding and inspiring.
I will be in Chiang Mai through next week, and will leave the following Monday for Mae Hong Song. Congratulations if you've read this far. Go Tigers.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Well I'm back. The expedition was amazing. I'll write aaaaall about it later, when I don't have a ten page paper to write for the morning. As for now, just know that I'm having a wonderful time, and I'm so happy to be back in Chiang Mai. No major injuries to speak of, except a major bee sting while riding in a song taew and a handfull of thorns from slipping while chasing a one thousand year old man down a muddly mountain. I still have a few stuck in my hand, but I can't feel them anymore. My back is also a little sore from harvest rice for two days. All in all some good times. I learned a ton.
On a completely unrelated note. Upon my return to Chiang Mai five hours ago, we quickly ran to the computers to find out the status on the baseball playoffs. And can I just say... YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME! I have loved the Detroit Tigers my whoooole life. Twenty years, twenty painful, heartbreaking years. I leave the country for less than two months and they go to the World Series. After twenty years of watching, I'm not there to see Kenny Rogers pitch 15 shutout innings. After twenty years of watching I'm not there to see Curtis Granderson and Criag Monroe explode in the playoffs. After twenty years of watching, I'm not there for Magglio Ordonez's three-run walk-off homerun to complete the sweep. What kind of absurd cosmic mixup is this? I'm completely giddy with excitement and overcome by disappointment at not being there at the same time. I've spent the last hour and a half or so watching the highlights and reading the boxscores in an internet cafe, which has actually done quite well to suffice. I'm jealous of all you who have gotten to watch some fantastic baseball. Also, I should be able to manage to watch some of the World Series, the games that take place on the weekends at least. This will require going to a bar or renting a hotel room in the early morning, but it will definitely happen. You probably all think I'm ridiculous for writing about this instead of my experiences living with a holistic and empowered organic community, or about learning what sustainability means for the environment and societies, or about all the beauty I've seen in the land and the people here in Thailand. Well... whatever.
But really. I love Thailand right now.
On a completely unrelated note. Upon my return to Chiang Mai five hours ago, we quickly ran to the computers to find out the status on the baseball playoffs. And can I just say... YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME! I have loved the Detroit Tigers my whoooole life. Twenty years, twenty painful, heartbreaking years. I leave the country for less than two months and they go to the World Series. After twenty years of watching, I'm not there to see Kenny Rogers pitch 15 shutout innings. After twenty years of watching I'm not there to see Curtis Granderson and Criag Monroe explode in the playoffs. After twenty years of watching, I'm not there for Magglio Ordonez's three-run walk-off homerun to complete the sweep. What kind of absurd cosmic mixup is this? I'm completely giddy with excitement and overcome by disappointment at not being there at the same time. I've spent the last hour and a half or so watching the highlights and reading the boxscores in an internet cafe, which has actually done quite well to suffice. I'm jealous of all you who have gotten to watch some fantastic baseball. Also, I should be able to manage to watch some of the World Series, the games that take place on the weekends at least. This will require going to a bar or renting a hotel room in the early morning, but it will definitely happen. You probably all think I'm ridiculous for writing about this instead of my experiences living with a holistic and empowered organic community, or about learning what sustainability means for the environment and societies, or about all the beauty I've seen in the land and the people here in Thailand. Well... whatever.
But really. I love Thailand right now.
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