2. UHDP Soccer
At UHDP, we had the fortune to be able to play soccer (footbahn) every night, 5 o'clock sharp. We'd all suit up in our tennis shoes and grimiest clothes possible, storm the field with the local people there and sprint around the red clay field as the sun dove for the hills, purples and oranges spilling over the mountain's edges, us battering the ball clumsily (or at least, I did), attempting to put it in two and a half foot wide goalposts. The red clay seeped into every inch of our sweat-sopped clothing and dyed our legs blood red as Pi Arpot would shriek wildly with every close goal, a testament to having taken part on the pitch. One night I even managed to score a goal...on my own team. In my defense though...okay, it's not even worth defending; I'm a terrible soccer player but love watching and playing to death. I did redeem myself the next day partially however, as I managed to get three assists and help my team to victory.
3. Treasure Map
Before we left UHDP, Will and I decided that we wanted to leave notes for members in the other group, leaving them underneath the rungs of the top bunk so that they would find them when they flopped down onto the lower bed. Our creative ideas for how we could leave them notes grew larger and larger over the course of the whole week, and with the help of Alice and Sam, amalgamated into this elaborate, multiple cache treasure map being signed by our code names - Hawk Dahm, Otter Mae Nahm, Lion Doi, and Baby Panda. We hid our spoils - various snacks, cans of coke, and in one cache, Marks smelly soccer socks that he didn't change once the entire week he was there - inside of bamboo tubes that we harvested from the agroforest and sealed with banana leaves and bamboo ties and proceeded to hide in markable locations around the agroforest by headlamp. The map itself was burned at the edges and soiled with dirt. It was just one of the coolest maps of all time; hell, I was excited for the other group. We decided when we go to the islands we're going to do full on treasure maps in bottles, buried on separate islands beneath an X.
4. My Birthday
My birthday, as far as my other 19 ones have gone, wasn't all too exciting, although it definitely was a unique one to say the least. I woke at 4 AM, the typical time in which my koon mae (host mother - we stayed with host families while in the village of Mae Ta, an hour south of Chiang Mai, locked within the intermontagne basin) decided that she would awake and start rummaging around the house, cooking, clanging pots and pans, in turn awakening the roosters from their light slumber, who proceeded to make curdling, screeching calls until roughly 6:15, when I decided it was worthless to try and drown it out. I wandered downstairs and took a - wait...I haven't ever described how the bathroom system works here. A quick aside:
Squat toilets - also known as eastern toilets. Basically a hole in the ground in which one squats over, drops trow, and possesses a high chance of either A.) falling over or into the toilet or B.) missing entirely, and due to the lack of toilet paper entirely, this often creates significant conundrums for the bathroom dweller. These conundrums become much more probable when the foreigner is so desperate that he or she decides to sacrifice waiting for a Western toilet, creating a myriad of embarassing scenarios. For the most part, an overall unpleasant experience, flushed away by a plastic bowl sitting in a large Rubber Maid trash can full of stagnant water. I once had the misfortune to have to wash in that water, although after having gone and farmed Telapia in a fish pond where algae was propagated by feces, it was fairly welcome.
Bucket showers - similar to the squat toilets, sans toilet. Strip, scoop, pour, go into brief hypothermic shock from the cold water, repeat the last three until clean. Often times is just the same bucket in which water is scooped into the toilet, although in more urban areas is substituted for a point-heated showerhead.
Okay, in all honesty, they're not really that bad once you get used to them. By the end of the Mae Ta experience, I had completely forgotten about showerheads and toilets that you could sit on.
I digress. I wandered downstairs and took a nice bucket shower to wake up and then wolfed an enormous amount of sticky rice (kao nee-ow) and went with Caleb out to the soowan (orchard) for a while. Caleb's name fittingly became "beer" as the week progressed because my family couldn't remember for the life of them his actual name, and they thought that calling us "Leo" and "Beer" was hilarious. We eventually just became one in the same, "Leo Beer!" being called out as any of the neighbors came over to visit. In the orchard that day, Caleb and I planted onions for two and half hours in the midmorning sun, sweat pouring down our backs as we plugged each little bulb into neat rows. Although by the end of it, as we became more desperate to finish quickly, our rows looked like we had both smoked crack and taken some hallucinogens before having come, as they drunkenly zig-zagged every which way. We were so ravenous we inhaled lunch, consisting of a Thai version of ramen noodles and sticky rice, and passed out under the small bamboo hut erected in the middle of the field as the midday rains came spot on at 12:00, bringing temporary relief to the harsh sun. We laid rice husks over top of the freshly plugged onions (to deter weed growth) until 2, when we followed our dog Ga-fayh (coffee if you didn't pick up on that one) the thirty minute walk up the winding jungle road to home. Occasionally he and his brother (Maa Mahn - Maa meaning dog and Mahn meaning, well, I have no idea what the hell mahn means in Thai. The word "men" however, quite fittingly means "smells bad.") would harass the cows that litter the sides of the roads in packs, almost getting trampled from an occasional ornery bull. We got home, bucket showered quickly, then rode on the backs of motorcycles to the Co-op where all of the other ISDSI students were waiting. They brought a bunch of gas station ice cream out, along with a lone birthday candle that I blew out after they all sang happy birthday. We followed the festivities by listening to some village elders talk about organic farming for a few hours before retiring home for dinner, which, compared to all of my other meals there, was horrific. First off, they asked me before dinner if I wanted a shot of moonshine, which is fairly culturally offensive to refuse so I said sure. I kicked back one with my host father, the caustic fluid searing my throat on the way down. Now the shot alone would've been fine, but promptly after I kicked the shot, something skewered on a fork was put in front of my mouth, insisting I eat it. "Teenee arrai?" I asked, unsure of what it was. "Buffalo skin" he responded, slipping the piece of what turned out to be a thick piece of boiled fat onto my tongue and insisting I chew and swallow, causing me to almost vomit all over the place. I choked it down somehow and smiled politely. Rice moonshine with a fat chaser. As far as "welcome to Thailand" moments go, it was definitely near the top.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Just dance?
How to summarize the past four weeks? I could probably type for hours and fail to do it justice, so I'll try to do my best. I apologize not having posted within that time frame, but three of the last four were spent in different villages in Northern Thailand, studying how the people there sustainably live with their environment and abide by agroecological principles. The week before leaving was a whirlwind in and of itself, filled with studying alternated with going to the myriad of bars they have here and dancing at the equal number of clubs that span the Chiang Mai streets. Moving into the apartments has brought us a new found freedom which, when coupled with our slightly improved ability to speak Thai, has given us the ability to manuever the city with ease. Most of the nights were filled with a group of 30 or so of us - farangs on parade if you will - infiltrating a certain club
(Monkey Club, Fabric, and Warm-Up being just a few), and, amidst the laser lights, skin flapping bass, and hordes of swaying Thais with Johnnie Walker heavy on their breath, we made ourselves blatantly American, dancing wildly and screaming Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold" whenever it was played. Days were filled with class and homework, attempting to learn Thai with pounding headaches and baggy eyes. A nap and a cheeseburger from Mike's was all that was needed to rejuvenate the party spirit for the night for most though, the energy of the night revived with a quick run to 7-11 in the basement of our apartment complex.
The partying was quickly put to an end though with the arrival of our first expedition course, as our group of 33 split into two separate groups of 16 and 17, parting ways to do the tour of cities in opposite order. My group headed north towards the city of Fahng, a long van ride through a series of gorgeous jungle mountain ranges, enough sharp turns and switchbacks to make me wish I could lean out the window and vom. We proceeded to hike for two days through two remote villages tucked away in the upland hills, sweat pouring from our brows as we trekked up steep hills in the midday sun, winding through sprawling hillside corn fields and rice paddies, the views from the top more than worth the wheezing that accompanied seeing them. At night, we listened to the stories of villagers there, our faces illuminated by the soft glow of a fire and the restless jungle murmuring behind us. Exhausted from the day, we would crash at no later than 9:00 in our bamboo guesthouse, nestled beneath our mosquito nets. The second night we watched the village children perform for us, attempting to sing the Thai versions of songs like "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer." We then all huddled around the fire and sang some of the English versions from them, eventually becoming all of us dancing tribally around the fire.
From the villages we went to UHDP, or the Upland Holistic Development Project, spending a week there in the bunkhouse and learning how they do agricultural research and help the marginalized villages do more sustainable farming. I could bore you with long asides about agroforests and hedgerowing, but I'll just highlight the more memorable portions of being there:
1. The Pig Slaughter.
As part of our understanding of food systems and they work, we connected the full cycle of from Pig to Pork by taking part in a pig slaughter, butchering it, and cooking it, utilizing every portion of the animal to feed the entire village. That Friday, tension was thick met the pig we were going to kill the following day, petting it and thinking of giving it a name, fully embodying the American paradox of having an undying love for animals and yet possessing this carnivorial denial that they are the source of the meat we eat on a daily basis. I'm not saying that the love for animals is in any way a bad thing, but the incredible distance in which our society has allowed us to be removed from the food we eat has fostered the mental separation of pork and pig. Pig is the honey holiday ham glistening on your plate and pork is the snorting, oinking, sniffing, defecating animal that runs around in our pens. They are one in the same, the abstraction of the animal from the saran-wrapped styrofoam package of meat is easy to live with. Ignorance is both bliss and a curse, for better or for worse.
Anyway, enough of ranting. We were given a debriefing of how the whole incident was planned to go which went as follows:
1. Knock the pig out
2. Stab the pig in the heart while it's knocked out
3. Bucher and cook the pig
For whatever reason, this rundown gave us comfort, as we subconsciously pictured the pig being slain silently in its sleep. Close to accurate? We herded the pig into a cage and eight of us hauled him down to the slaughter area, a villager waiting there with a hoe. "Oh hell no. He's not going to knock him out with a hoe." I thought, slightly panicked at the thought. The door to the cage was opened, and as the pig wandered out, before we could even have time to prepare ourselves, we were met with the splintering crack of wood on bone, the pig squealing as it fell to the ground, not asleep like we had imagined, but concussed, dazed, confused. Another sickening blow of the hoe gave us five seconds to haul it onto the slaughter platform, Pi Arpat guiding the steel blade in Sam's hand into the pig's heart as some people held it down. The pig let out a hair-raising scream, roaring so loudly that its own blood curdled as it surged into the pot collecting it. I stood, unable to move, transfixed, the sound of the rhythmic blood sloshing over the knife blade the only sound I could hear. The cries of the pig were progressively more gargled as blood filled one of the lungs. Tears poured from the girls eyes. This wasn't a sacrifice. The pig did not lie his life down for us. This was violence in its purest form, the way in which people have killed animals and survived for thousands of years.
And, before we knew what had happened, it was over. The pig conceded to death, lying quietly as its eyes closed. We all looked around at each other, solemn faced, some tears still streaming silently from the girls. The Thai people, however, were stoic throughout the whole ordeal; this is their way of life, the way in which they stay alive and get their protein. Pi Arpat lied a canvas bag over it. "Go to sleep." He chuckled. We all laughed nervously, but it was enough to break the tension and the relief was almost palpable. Abiding within the paradox, that is for me when it no longer fully felt like a pig and more like pork, but later in talking to other people, that point is a huge gray scale, as some people never stopped viewing it as a pig, some didn't feel it was pork until it was butchered, and others never viewed it as a pig at all. No point is less true than another. Pig is pork, pork is pig. Sounds simple, but it's a hard concept to fully wrap one's mind around, and even a few weeks after the experience, I still sometimes wrestle with it.
Within three hours, every part of the pig was cooked and on our plates. The bones and scraps went to the dogs (who can apparently eat as many bones as they want, who knew), the organs all separated and cooked in their own respective dishes, the ears, nose, tail, and skin delicacies of their own. We ate with a greater appreciation for meat, that it's a luxury that we often take for granted. Not going to lie, and to quote Fried Green Tomatoes, it really was "the best damn barbeque I ever did ate."
***
I've been typing roughly for an hour and a half, and I'll continue this post later.
(Monkey Club, Fabric, and Warm-Up being just a few), and, amidst the laser lights, skin flapping bass, and hordes of swaying Thais with Johnnie Walker heavy on their breath, we made ourselves blatantly American, dancing wildly and screaming Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold" whenever it was played. Days were filled with class and homework, attempting to learn Thai with pounding headaches and baggy eyes. A nap and a cheeseburger from Mike's was all that was needed to rejuvenate the party spirit for the night for most though, the energy of the night revived with a quick run to 7-11 in the basement of our apartment complex.
The partying was quickly put to an end though with the arrival of our first expedition course, as our group of 33 split into two separate groups of 16 and 17, parting ways to do the tour of cities in opposite order. My group headed north towards the city of Fahng, a long van ride through a series of gorgeous jungle mountain ranges, enough sharp turns and switchbacks to make me wish I could lean out the window and vom. We proceeded to hike for two days through two remote villages tucked away in the upland hills, sweat pouring from our brows as we trekked up steep hills in the midday sun, winding through sprawling hillside corn fields and rice paddies, the views from the top more than worth the wheezing that accompanied seeing them. At night, we listened to the stories of villagers there, our faces illuminated by the soft glow of a fire and the restless jungle murmuring behind us. Exhausted from the day, we would crash at no later than 9:00 in our bamboo guesthouse, nestled beneath our mosquito nets. The second night we watched the village children perform for us, attempting to sing the Thai versions of songs like "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer." We then all huddled around the fire and sang some of the English versions from them, eventually becoming all of us dancing tribally around the fire.
From the villages we went to UHDP, or the Upland Holistic Development Project, spending a week there in the bunkhouse and learning how they do agricultural research and help the marginalized villages do more sustainable farming. I could bore you with long asides about agroforests and hedgerowing, but I'll just highlight the more memorable portions of being there:
1. The Pig Slaughter.
As part of our understanding of food systems and they work, we connected the full cycle of from Pig to Pork by taking part in a pig slaughter, butchering it, and cooking it, utilizing every portion of the animal to feed the entire village. That Friday, tension was thick met the pig we were going to kill the following day, petting it and thinking of giving it a name, fully embodying the American paradox of having an undying love for animals and yet possessing this carnivorial denial that they are the source of the meat we eat on a daily basis. I'm not saying that the love for animals is in any way a bad thing, but the incredible distance in which our society has allowed us to be removed from the food we eat has fostered the mental separation of pork and pig. Pig is the honey holiday ham glistening on your plate and pork is the snorting, oinking, sniffing, defecating animal that runs around in our pens. They are one in the same, the abstraction of the animal from the saran-wrapped styrofoam package of meat is easy to live with. Ignorance is both bliss and a curse, for better or for worse.
Anyway, enough of ranting. We were given a debriefing of how the whole incident was planned to go which went as follows:
1. Knock the pig out
2. Stab the pig in the heart while it's knocked out
3. Bucher and cook the pig
For whatever reason, this rundown gave us comfort, as we subconsciously pictured the pig being slain silently in its sleep. Close to accurate? We herded the pig into a cage and eight of us hauled him down to the slaughter area, a villager waiting there with a hoe. "Oh hell no. He's not going to knock him out with a hoe." I thought, slightly panicked at the thought. The door to the cage was opened, and as the pig wandered out, before we could even have time to prepare ourselves, we were met with the splintering crack of wood on bone, the pig squealing as it fell to the ground, not asleep like we had imagined, but concussed, dazed, confused. Another sickening blow of the hoe gave us five seconds to haul it onto the slaughter platform, Pi Arpat guiding the steel blade in Sam's hand into the pig's heart as some people held it down. The pig let out a hair-raising scream, roaring so loudly that its own blood curdled as it surged into the pot collecting it. I stood, unable to move, transfixed, the sound of the rhythmic blood sloshing over the knife blade the only sound I could hear. The cries of the pig were progressively more gargled as blood filled one of the lungs. Tears poured from the girls eyes. This wasn't a sacrifice. The pig did not lie his life down for us. This was violence in its purest form, the way in which people have killed animals and survived for thousands of years.
And, before we knew what had happened, it was over. The pig conceded to death, lying quietly as its eyes closed. We all looked around at each other, solemn faced, some tears still streaming silently from the girls. The Thai people, however, were stoic throughout the whole ordeal; this is their way of life, the way in which they stay alive and get their protein. Pi Arpat lied a canvas bag over it. "Go to sleep." He chuckled. We all laughed nervously, but it was enough to break the tension and the relief was almost palpable. Abiding within the paradox, that is for me when it no longer fully felt like a pig and more like pork, but later in talking to other people, that point is a huge gray scale, as some people never stopped viewing it as a pig, some didn't feel it was pork until it was butchered, and others never viewed it as a pig at all. No point is less true than another. Pig is pork, pork is pig. Sounds simple, but it's a hard concept to fully wrap one's mind around, and even a few weeks after the experience, I still sometimes wrestle with it.
Within three hours, every part of the pig was cooked and on our plates. The bones and scraps went to the dogs (who can apparently eat as many bones as they want, who knew), the organs all separated and cooked in their own respective dishes, the ears, nose, tail, and skin delicacies of their own. We ate with a greater appreciation for meat, that it's a luxury that we often take for granted. Not going to lie, and to quote Fried Green Tomatoes, it really was "the best damn barbeque I ever did ate."
***
I've been typing roughly for an hour and a half, and I'll continue this post later.
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