U-Facing

I have to say, being a unit facilitator was interesting. A unit facilitator is the person that basically leads a unit in the programs. They make sure that all the exchanges go smoothly, which is when we meet and talk to people involved in the issues that's being discussed, and doing the briefing if the unit and the workshop, which is sort of like a debriefing. While it seems as i many people in the program did not enjoy the position, I surprisingly did. I some how discovered that I missed working hard in a way. I'm so used to the hectic schedule and long night that I have at school, that I began missing it in a way, which I don't know if that's good or not for my sanity in the future.

As a unit facilitator we had a few extra duties then the past 2 unit facilitator groups did. We had the job right in the midst o what they we were calling the slump. The slump is the period on study abroad were most people start to go in to hiding in a way, they start to miss home and people, and because of that go through a sort of depression. This was not exactly the funnest time to be doing the job, as many people has really begun to hate the program, and in turn retaliated using passive agression. So to try to liven things up and get the group past this slump, we tried to change up the way the unit was runig for once. It seemed as though everything had gotten a little too monotonus and that because of it people were unhappy.

When I normally do these types of things, I love to really have a ineractive component to them. While at home, I'm the president of a club called Globemed that does similar things in informing the student population of northeastern, so I wanted to try and mimic some of the things that I did back home a little bit. What we came up with essentially was a water ballon fight. It was genius. The fight was done in such a way that a feelings of emotion could be envoked. We made it so that one side was the villagers, and gave them limited supplies, and limited space to move, while the other side we called the governement, or in general terms, "The Man." We gave that side a larger ammount of water balloons and oppertunities to get the other team wet. In the end the mesage was that with a certain ammount of reasources the villagers or any marginalized group has to face difficulties in order to accomplish their goals.

Development???

Rasi Sali is the first village that I went to on the third unit of our program. The issue of this unit is water, and more specifically dams. In Rasi Sali, the government of Thailand built a dam for what they say is irrigation purposes, but instead the dam has done nothing more then flooded crucial crop fields for surrounding villagers and diverted the fish that normally come up stream. This has in turn severely affected their livelihoods, mainly due to violation of right to culture, food, work, health, etc. The situation has been happening for quite some time now, and the Thai government is well aware of the issue at hand. The most inspiring part about this is the activism of the locals in the village. A few years ago, the elders of the Rasi Sali village decided that they were not going to stand for the violations that were occurring any more, and in retaliation and pure civil disobedience style, they set up a protest village outside of the entrance to the dam. The village includes members from many families through out the village and come to show what a community with an issue can do when they mobilize.

My own experiences and impressions of the village were interesting. I have to say that I never really thought of right to culture as a huge issue. Rights seem to be tangible things that are or are notgiven to someone, such as food, water, work, right? How can one measure the right to culture anyways? Well I guess I have to then think about what exactly a right to culture in America would be maybe to find a parallel. In the case of Rasi Sali, the fields of which they plants cow neow, or sticky rice, were flooded. Cow neow is a stable of the northeast region of Thailand and in a way culturally defines the region. It’s in many ways seen as a lower class food to many of the people in the rest of Thailand, but that’s also in many ways why its so important. On top of that the people in the area have a long history of working as fisherman and farmers. It has become part of their culture and even has been integrated in to their holiday system, with the month surrounding harvest season being vacation time for the children of the area so that they can help their parents harvest rice.

The conclusion of this is that the people of the area have a tradition to their land and their work, a defining part of their culture. The dam has essentially forced them to look for other venues of employment, abandoning what they know best from years of training to do “new generation” jobs such as driving taxi’s in Bangkok, and running shops in Bangkok’s tourist hot spot, Khao San road. It does not really seem fair does it? And all in the name of development for new times, seems more one sided to me.

Monutains of trash and development theparkak 2

My last unit was on urban developments, specifically focusing on Landfill and slum communities. Over the last few days, I visited and stayed with a family that worked and lived on a landfill, as well as a slum community in The city.I spent three days and 2 nights at the landfill community , working with the family and other students collecting recyclables and other materials that the family can use for extra income.

I have to say that this was a interesting experience. I don't think that i would have ever thought that I would be living in a landfill community, or that a landfill community even existed. i mostly thought of people more so to be scavengers working on their own terms rather then living and working in a community. The first day that I was there, we went on a tour, with all the little kids of the community quickly latching on to us and following. At first glance I couldn't ever imagine the amount of thrash that had piled up in the land fill. There were mountains of trash that were maybe 50 feet in the air and solidly wide as well. The thing that most struck me was the presence of needles and other medical wastes. supposedly due to loop holes in the law, private clinics were allowed to dump medical waste in to the landfill along with other wastes.

The first day on the job was a interesting one. Me and the other students got out to the land fill at about 9 in the morning to work, equipped with nothing more then boots and gloves( which is actually more then some people who work there daily have.) I began hoeing away at the trash that was being hauled in to the landfill, picking up any piece of glass , metal or hard plastic that I could find and tossing it in to my homestay father's bin. After a little while, I felt like I was getting the hang of it. i was never really taken back by anything in the landfill surprisingly. the smell hadn't bothered me too much, and the fact that I was working in other people's trash never really struck me as odd. This was until I hoed at a pill that had just gotten out of a trash truck and found a dead baby cat. For some reason the image of that disturbed me and reminded me a little bit about the type of work that was going on. After a little while, we all went home, gin chowed( ate) and then played with the kids basically for the rest of the day until the next days work. The people who live in the community work at the land fill for about 15 hours a day, working days, and nights. The night of the second day I went over to the Land fill to discover at least 15 people busy at work still hoeing away at the land fill, just trying to make a living.

After two days at the land fill, we said our goodbye and went on our way, with out really knowing what was going to happen. Once back on campus for the hour or two before leaving for the slum, man of the people who lived at the land fill with me started getting sick. As soon as we made it too the slum community, people started dropping like flys, and had to start going to the hospital. I think I counted that 7 out of 16 people ended up going. While that sucked in and of it self, it started to make me wonder. The land fill community that we all lived in by no means was in any sort of financial burden. the families could very well provide for themselves and their family members with out any problems. However the health risks of working at the land fill were incredible. I couldn't help but think that if 16 healthy young adults could come in for only 2 days and a majority of then get sick, then what toll was the landfill having on the people that worked there day in and day out. not only that what about the kids that ran around the piles of trash with flip flops, or many times even without shoes. What was the effects that were happening to these people?

I came out of there intrestingly enough not thinking that the people working in the land fill were working in filth, in such a way that was deaning. I actually came out of there thinking the exact opposite. The people there are just making a living by collecting the recyled materials that they can find so they can provide for their families. The omai thing however in my opinion was why should they have to worry about serious health concerns ( medical wastes, gas) were they work .

The secodn homestay was teh slum homestay, To be honest with you. i felt pretty shitty the whole day that I was staying in the homestay due to cathcing something from the landfill, however i still had a great time. The night that I was there, i spent having a chat with another student and her homestay father, a really cool thai guy that drinks close to every night and somehow has english music playin during the day. we spent the might trying to understand each other and talking mostly about thai beers. It was great. haha

The " Slum" community that i stayed in was called Theparak 2. the intresting part about the community was the fact that in recent years they had developed so much , that it no longer was really a slum. The most intresteing thing that I found when being there was when i was talkinf to my friends homestay dad and asked hom about the slum, he corrected me immediatly ans sadi that " its not called slum theparak2, but development theparak 2." THis change in attitude about ones own community is pretty strong. ot be able to change to definition of ones own community is pretty amazing.

Buddhist Lent- Yea, apparently they do have one.

Recently I took a trip to the northern boarder of Thailand and Laos in order to partake in a Buddhist festival for the end of Buddhist lent … One which I don’t really know the name of in a village called Tamui. Tamui lies on the Mekong river, right across from Laos. The Village was a nice little place, and the people were extremely nice, and well aware of the tourist destination the village had become. The history of the festival was that there was a Buddhist myth that living in the Mekong river was a very big snake called the naga. On this day, the end of Buddhist lent, the naga is supposed to be spitting fireballs out of the Mekong river, and supposedly show its form.

The day that we got to the village, we were exhausted from the long ride. The bus ride had been about 7 hours on some of the most under done roads I’ve seen in Thailand. The village was getting ready for the huge influx of people they were going to expect the next day. Since the village was still preparing, as a group we went to a local national park that had paintings on the walls of the mountain that dated back to cave men. I have to say the walk was pretty exhausting and really mad me realize how out of shape I really was.

The next day we woke up to blasts outside of the window of the house that we were staying at. As I went outside, I realized that it was just the village kids throwing loud fireworks in too the air… not the safest of things, but to me it seemed awesome. I then spent the rest of the morning periodically buying large amounts of fireworks and throwing them in to the air, thus fulfilling the pyro of my youth. During the afternoon, I actually was invited by one of the villagers to the banana forest in the back of the village. There I found out that the villagers actually create boats out of the banana trees and send them down the river as a offering to the naga. Once the sun went down, the boats were sent down the river, along with hundreds of candle lit flower bouquets. Sadly though, I never got to see any fireballs launched from the river.

Na Nong Bong- The village that gold devastated

Two days ago I spent the night in a village called Na Nong Bong in the Loei Province of the northeastern part of Thailand. The community is being demolished f all rights to their livelihood by a near by mine, owned by Tong Kah Harbour Limited, a mining company that was originally based out of Australia. The mine itself has caused enormous amount of problems for the people in the area, and is likely to cause even more in the near future.

The mine that resides on a mountain top, sticking out like a blatant sore thumb as it is surrounded by lush greenery all around it. The Mine is situated on what is called the golden belt, a strip of land running through Cambodia, Laos and Thailand that has large gold quarries in the rock. The company claims to have " the cheapest method of goldminining int he world" which in turn matriculates to a huge effect on the surrounding population. Chemicals used in the mining process such as cyndide, and arsenic seep in to the water supply and in turn has drastic effects on te villages in the area. To put things in to perspective, I used the water in the village just to wash my hands and feet, and they were tingling for the whole day afterwards.

It was pretty incredibile going to visit this community for a day. In what seems like a impossible battle for their own rights due to the huge ammount of corruption, and governement stake in the goldmine company, the villagers have made a point to come toghtehr and protest for their rights time and time again. The day that we got to the village, they were already going to work making headbands and planning out the protest at the local governmennt office the next day.

After an incitful conversation with a NGO the next day concerning the village, we came back to the village in the afternoon to seem people happy, eating and drinking Lao Kao ( white whiskey, made only in Issan.... not aweful, but it has a kick, and leave a taste in your mouth). Apperently they made such a commotion outside the office that the government couldn't vote on creating another mine in the area.