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Slum Pictures!

This is Meh Me. We pushed this cart around the nearby neighborhoods selling coconuts, peanuts, corn, sweet potatoes and these weird sweet roots named pee-ots. We walked around from 10 am to 3 pm during peak heat. Now my neck is ten times darker than the rest of my body. I also was meeting new people all day long. I gave number out twice, to some creepy buddhist vegan and a middle aged mom. Jealous, Philip?

Sold these suckers some peanuts.


This is what happens when little kids steal your camera.


This one's for Naomi. I missssssssssssssssss youuuuuuuuuuuuu!


One morning this guy pulled up in front of my house with two farang friends from down the road. We went for a drive. He thinks Warcraft III is the name of the car.

He took us to this exercise park and proceeded to talk to the peacocks until one opened up to him.



These are the exercise machines, they aren't particularly conducive to working out.


They are fun though.


This was the third time I've experienced dead squirrels and homemade whiskey, apparently squirrels taste pretty good. This time around we went hunting with slingshots to slay the beasts.

Living it up in the City

This past unit I first went to a local landfill and lived with a scavenging community. Some people were born there, but some migrated there from the countryside as farming continued to lose it's viability and were forced off their land to search for alternative sources of income. Every villager works 8-10 hours everyday at the landfill picking through the tons of trash transported in from Khon Kaen. The night I got in, four us ate dinner and left at 9pm to work in the landfill. For a couple of hours we picked through mounds of rotten produce and plastic bags in the dark with the only source of light coming from a 10 year old headlamp that flickered on and off when i turned my head. We ended up sleeping on top of the landfill in a little Sala until midnight waiting for the night shift of dump trucks until we went back to our house. The next day we sat in another Sala for hours talking to our Meh, Pah and Yai, with them teaching us Isaan (a mix of Thai and Lao that most people speak in this region of Thailand). The community there is amazingly inclusive and warm.

After a couple of days I left the landfill and lived with a family in a slum community inside of Khon Kaen. This homestay was even more amazing as I was determined to communicate with my new family. There were six family members and for my entire stay I continued to engage them in Thai. Not only did I greatly improve my Thai, but I made a much deeper connections with this family than I have with my previous homestays.
It's interesting, I had preconceived ideas of what a slum would look and be like, but this slum (from an outsider's perspective) looked like any other village. It even had a real concrete road (which is which is kind of a big deal). What made it a slum was the lack of property rights since the entire community was squatting the land and the the economic pressures that made them choose to live in a place without long term security.

Landfill:

Dying in Thailand

So, some quick updates

I got some sickness, but hey, if you're going to be sick Thailand's the place to do it. I've never had such a good experience (well, I've never had a good experience) in a hospital. We were seen by a doctor within two minutes of walking in. Its almost more of a hotel than a hospital. Thailand has a really good health care system (everyone but us right?).The thing is, Thailand is so cheap that it's more economically viable to fly all the way to Thailand for a serious operation (say, heart bypass for example), have the operate (by doctors who trained in the US) and then take a week long vacation (maybe some tropical beach, elephant sanctuaries, who knows?). By time you decide to return to the US you're better and you've saved hella money.
What a deal.
My trip to the hospital cost $16. Cheaper than my co-pay in the US I must point out. So yeah, its been great. I only had intense stomach gas. I think it was from my second homestay when my meh kept cooking me meat for the first few days until I could communicate that I ate food that was jay (veggie) not animals that eat jay food.
Oh yeah, so my group is pretty amazing. When I got back from the hospital I three different people brought me dinner, including my thai roomate's brother who brought me a bag of hot soup. Then two friends gave their evenings to watch Spirited Away with me as I laid in bed. I know, don't you just want to cry about how great everyone is? I am.

See? Fun times.

And kitty eats gecko.

How to Harvest a Red Ant Nest Part II

We went to a Wat (Buddhist temple) where they make/teach how to make homeopathic remedies for the community.



This is where they make virgin coconut and sesame oil.


Some of us make some medicine with cumin and honey and turned yellow.


After an exchange with the farmers in our community our families did a traditional ceremony where they tied blessed strings around our wrists. They're supposed to keep our spirits tied to our physical spirits which is a good thing since they keep away ailments and bring good luck. If you have enough you may even find your soul mate. I have twelve.




For the last night all the males (since there are so few of us) slept with the interns and ajaans at this guy, Bamrung's, farm. He is a older guy who lived through the labor movement and student uprisings of the second half of the 20th century. I interviewed him and wrote a profile article about his story. Dude is pretty intense. Among his creditials are, being present for the government massacre at Thammasat University in 1973 and being a key leader in the Assembly of the Poor which represents marginalized the rural poor as a collective voice across Thailand which has swarmed Bangkok with tens of thousands of angery farmers more than once. Oh, he is also an ex-communist soldier. Basically, he is a big deal and I interviewed him for two hours and stayed at his house.

This is his house.

It's an almost entirely self-sufficient farm.


Beehive.

Wild pigs will fuck you up. Notice the tusks.

The man himself.

How to Harvest a Red Ant Nest Part I

So we just recently finished our month long orientation and began our first unit centered on rural issues. The overwhelming majority of Thai citizens are farmers, but because of the effects of the Green Revolution, Free Trade Agreements (etc., etc.) the small scale farmer is quickly disappearing from the landscape (like most of the world).
We all lived on separate farms that were practicing a returning to traditional farming practices and working towards self-sufficiency which was primarily was a rejection of the use of chemical inputs (e.g. pesticides) and getting rid of the dependency relationship their use creates. The use of chemical inputs also has had detrimental affects on the health of farmers and because of their high cost, most small scale farmers have large debt.
We learned from talking to our families (yep, we can talk about organic farming practices in Thai) what their past experiences have been with farming with chemical compared to the organic farming that they do now. All the organic farmers in the province have formed a community that functions as a support group, sharing supplies and help when needed. Perhaps most importantly, this community supports the farmers mentally giving a sense of family and validation that is often rare in Isaan (NE Thailand) where the populace is incredibly marginalized and either exploited for the gain of agribusinesses or paved over in the march to industrialization.
On a brighter note the food we ate while at these homestays felt amazing after the grease bowl meals we have in the city. My body hasn't felt that good sense i've gotten here.



This was our house.


Meh.


Gai.


Whoowa.


Ma.


This is how you harvest a red ant nest.


This is how a red ant nest harvests your hand. One week later, my hand still has toxin marks all over it.


One of these things is not like the other.



Kind of a big deal, if you get my meaning. We found one of these chillin above us one night while we slept. Ahhh. Thats the sound they make.

Chang