Site

Post 7: Site
During training, I blogged, thought, dreamt, and wrote poetry from the porch in front of my host family’s home in Lopburi. I wrote to the sound of cows mooing softly and my host father singing along to Thai radio from the hammock. Now, I am writing from my porch in Phitsanulok province. And it is actually my porch, of my house, where I will be living for the next two years. I moved to site a week ago and have lived in my house for nigh on 5 nights. The sounds are different, as are the sights and the smells. Here, I hear the unrelenting buzz of mosquitos, the occasional crow from the confused rooster that frequents my garden, and wisps of conversation from the small store next door. In Lopburi, my family’s house was somewhat isolated, by itself surrounded by farmland and no neighbors. However my house in Wat Bot is right in the middle of the community. There are constantly people and noise. For my first two days at site, I stayed with my supervisor from the local educational office. Her name is Ning and she lives in a beautiful house with her family, right on the Kwae Noi River.
My first full day at site, my co-teacher Pii Orasa and her sister took me to the Big C (similar to WalMart) in Phitsanulok City to buy equipment for my house. Priority number one, clearly, was a rice cooker, but I also bought an electric cooker-pan-steamer-thing, since my “kitchen” has no appliances, and a kettle. The schools provided me with a mattress, and my other co-teacher, Pii Som, donated a set of sheets and a small refrigerator to the cause. The house already had a kitchen table, a writing desk made of beautiful tuuk wood, and a little table for the porch, where I expect I will spend significant amounts of time. My kitchen does not have a sink, but there is a faucet sticking out of the wall where I can get water from. I wash my dishes in plastic basins filled with water outside the back of my house, and I do laundry the same way-by hand, in basins, outside.
Out front, I have a little garden area which I am hoping to cultivate, right now there are a few trees and scattered plants and flowers that strongly resemble weeds. The country director of Peace Corps Thailand gave all the volunteers a collection of seeds we can plant if interested, and I am excited to try my hand at growing vegetables. I am going to hang a hammock from two of the trees and can’t wait to wile away afternoons reading and listening to music there. Also in my yard, there lives a dog named “mee”, which in Thai means “bear”. Poor mee only has two working legs, as his two back legs were smushed by what I can only guess was a car. As a result, he scoots along using his front legs and so I have dubbed him “scooter”. It looks like he is army crawling every time he moves, and it makes me laugh every time. He can actually scoot quite fast when motivated, and likes to try to escape when the gate is opened, which always results in hilarity as my toothless landlady chases after him and then picks him up by his two working legs and swings him around as she delivers him back into the yard. Mee and I have become friends and he is a very sweet dog, except when he begins barking at ungodly hours of the morning. My landlady and her family come over multiple times every day to feed him rice and treats, and tidy my yard.
Their family is quite large and lives next door and always look out for me, reminding me to lock my gate and door over and over. I am surrounded by neighbors and little kids, who I may end up teaching. I live alone, but there are constantly people around. Out front and a little diagonally, there is a little hut-type-structure where people are always sitting, chatting, eating, drinking, and hanging out, and I’ve already clocked some quality time sitting with them. When I want alone time, I can go into my room and shut the door (although often times people come and sit on my porch or knock on my window and wait for me to come out), but when I want to be social, all I need to do is leave my house and I am immediately surrounded by people. Thai people do not live alone and it is rare to have a house with less than 4 people in it. They are generally afraid to live alone and very frightened of ghosts. Whenever I say I live alone, the first two questions are “Aren’t you afraid of the ghosts” and “How do you eat?” I have been here for a week, and have not yet needed to buy any food, as the people in the community are constantly feeding me or giving me food. I have way more fruit than it is possible for one person to eat, and give all my extra cakes and treats to Scooter. I have also been “Thai-napped” a few times for dinner, when people knock on my door, ask if I’ve eaten yet, and if I say no, they take me to their homes and feed me. The people in my community are very friendly and will take very good care of me.
Post 8: Wat Bot
My first day living at my house, a group of four kids came over and I ended up spending most of the day with them. They took me to buy noodles for lunch and introduced me to their families and showed me around Wat Bot a little more. Wat Bot is built along a river, which runs through the center of town. The “center” is one main road lined with shops and homes and there is a big open air market, although they are currently building a large pavilion for it. Perpendicular to the market and the main road is a lovely bridge that crosses the river. The center of town is quite loud with many cars and people and noise. However as soon as you cross the bridge, it is a very rural village feel. This side of the bridge is beautiful, with lush, wild foliage everywhere, and it is really the heart of the community. There are many traditional Thai, two-story wooden houses, some very nice and some decrepit, as well as more modern one story, white cement houses, like mine. My road is lined by large trees and homes scattered haphazardly about.
Surrounding the community are huge rice fields. Most of the people in my community are rice farmers and it is very agricultural. The other day we visited a mango orchard that also grew bananas and small, green, pumpkin-like squash. My “tambon” is known for making palm juice, or nam tan sod. There are lots of reallllly tall palm trees and men will scale these trees of primitive ladders made from bamboo, and extract this sickeningly sweet nectar from the trees. Then it is diluted and purified slightly and served as juice. My community also grows a lot of bamboo and makes baskets with it. Many of the roads are very narrow and windy and completely covered by trees, but then all of a sudden there will be a huge expanse of flat land that looks like a prairie. Since it is not too far from the provincial capital and since most of the local people are farmers, many of the teachers and school administrators live in the city and commute. Generally, the children of the families who are better off (local government officials, teachers, policemen etc…) go to school in Phitsanulok city, and so it is the poorer children in the community I will be teaching.
Sunday was “nenam” day, or introduction day. My co-teacher Pii Som drove into Wat Bot (her house is about 30 minutes away), and took me around the village. The 10 year old, Owd, who had adopted me, was enlisted by Som to take her around on the bicycle. I was taken a bit off guard, as Som had not told me she was coming, and so I was wearing a tee-shirt and sweats. I thought we were just going for an exploration and Som did not tell me to change, but we ended up meeting multiple local leaders and important people in the community. Had she told me, I would have changed my clothes. Som sat on the back of Owd’s bicycle while Owd pedaled, and I felt bad for the poor kid, who at every stop looked ready to drop.
I met a few teachers at Wat Bot school, the Pooyaiban, or village headman, who is in my case a woman, and the Ron Nayok (roughly translates to a deputy mayor). We also stopped by the police station and chatted with the cops for a while, who said they would drive by my house at night to make sure I am ok and check about safety. After a few hours of biking, smiling until my cheeks hurt, meeting a barrage of people, and speaking Thai, I was exhausted. Som took Owd and I to eat noodles, and then I gratefully went into my house to relax, read, and speak a little English (not to myself, I called another volunteer). Tomorrow Songkran begins, and I will meet even more people. It will be intense, and hopefully great.
Post 9: Songkran
Songkran is essentially three days of complete, water-soaked, drunken chaos. During Songkran, people generally start drinking beer and whiskey around 9 am (and that’s on the late end) and people “len naam”, or play water. Generally, women who have respect in the community (ie teachers) do not drink, or at least not in public. Peace Corps does not forbid volunteers from drinking, but the cultural trainers warn everyone-particularly girls-that drinking can affect your relationships and status in the community. Furthermore, some of the female volunteers from last year who came to our training advised us not to drink at site, because it will make life easier. The notion that farang women are “loose” and “easy” is quite widespread in rural Thailand, and a young girl drinking validates that notion and can make her more vulnerable to harassment. For all these reasons, I decided not to drink at site, although upon arrival my co-teachers told everyone I was not allowed anyway. I was constantly being offered drinks, but politely declined everytime.
Every province and every community has different traditions, but fundamentally it is a giant water fight. Children and adults alike roam the streets with buckets of water and water guns and attack everyone who passes by. Often, they erect informal road blocks, and every car or motor scooter or bike that passes gets a bucket of water thrown at it. As a foreigner, I am even more of a target for water attacks, and thus was soaking wet from morning until night during the past three days. The first day of Songkran, the group of ten years olds came and got me, and we walked around throwing water at people and vice versa.
Then my co-teacher came over and we walked through the village to a small outdoor pavilion where there was going to be a ceremony for all the old people in the community. One the floor, a group of men sat with these cool looking Thai instruments and drums. After the village headwomen made me introduce myself (in Thai) to all those in attendance, the ceremony began. All the old people sat in chairs in a large semi-circle and all the community members had buckets of water with flowers in it and small little cups. First, we poured water on a Buddha statue, and then as every old person sits with their hands held out, palms together, every person pours a little bit of water on their hands, or sometimes shoulders or heads. I am not sure of the significance, but think it is some kind of cleansing ritual. After the “bathing of the old” finished, all the women 60 and over began dancing “rambon” or traditional Thai dance in the center of the semi-circle to the music. I, of course, as the farang, was pulled out to dance with them.
After the ceremony, my co-teacher took me to the next tambon over, where she lives and my second school is located. It is called Thangam, and is quite a small village. The school I will teach at only has 85 students. There we went to multiple houses of her many cousins and extended family members, splashed water on cars passing by, and then finally she took me home to rest. I was drained from meeting so many people and constantly having eyes on me and needed a break. The 10 year old who had been effectively my escort everywhere said she would come back and get me in an hour to play water on the bridge. I rested a bit and then ventured back out into the fray. As we walked down the street, more and more kids gathered onto our little group until it was me and 6 kids. They were holding my arms and whenever drunk boys would come up and grab at my face, they would yell them away. Needless to say, we still got completely soaking wet, but that is part of the fun. Everyone called out to me as we walked by and wanted to douse the “farang”. At the bridge, arcs of water shot out from little faucets on the rail and each side was completely lined with people holding buckets and water guns. We played water for a while and then returned to my house around 5.
The next morning, my Pii Orasa picked me up around 7:30 and we went to the wat for a ceremony. It was the usual offering of water and food and praying in Pali (a dead language with Hindi roots that all or most of Thai Buddhist chants are in). After the chanting, a few women came up to me and Pii Orasa to say hello. One of them was a teacher a Chumchon Thangam (my small school) and the other was her cousin, Oung. Oung was taking a group of children in the city Phitsanulok to play Songkran and asked if I would like to join them. I said yes, because while songkran is nuts in the villages, it is even more nuts in the cities, if for no other reason then there are way more people celebrating. Pii Orasa took me to buy a songkran shirt, ie fluorescently bright loose fitting collared button downs with garish floral patterns, and I selected a lime green shirt with daisies and little cartoon Thai children frolicking in a garden. Then at Oung’s house we waited while the kids filled up a trashcan in the back of the pickup truck with water. We took a back route to the city and it took us twice as long to get there because people kept throwing themselves in front of the car to throw water at us and have water thrown at them.
Finally we arrived and I climbed into the back of the truck. We turned down a street and it was a bumper to bumper “traffic jam”, because the street was packed with people throwing water on each other, smearing baby powder and colored goo all over people’s faces, drinking and dancing. The five kids in the back of the truck and I had a blast throwing water on everyone we passed and laughing at all the drunk people making fools of themselves. I saw a women standing on a chair in the middle of the street drinking whiskey out of a baby bottle and multiple transvestites and cross dressers (or “gatoi” in Thai) dancing to the music blaring from the speakers. It took us a few hours to make it from one end of the street to the other, and we were completely soaking wet and actually cold, as it was an overcast day. Cold, exhausted, and wet, we drove back to site and I collapsed into bed, unsure if I could survive another day of songkran.
The next morning, Pii Orasa took me to a party at Chumchon Thangam where I met some local officials, poured water over old people again, and then danced with the older women yet again. Following the party, we went to a wat in Thangam to pour water over the monks, and then to the wat in Wat Bot to do the same. When we got back, my neighbors were camped out in their little hut as usual, and we sat with them for a while. Everyone was completely trashed, except for me and my co-teacher, and all the local drunk men and boys kept coming up to me and asking my name and giving me flowers, much to the amusement of the women. After hanging out with them for a while, I returned to my house for some peace and quiet.
I survived songkran, thanks goodness. I had still not had time to unpack at all and could not wait to get more settled, so some more laundry, and have a relaxing day. The next morning, I woke up late, read for a while (Dead Souls by Gogol), did laundry for a few hours, and then my supervisor and her adorable chubby seven year old son stopped by on bicycles to take me to the big Thursday afternoon market in Thangam. Tommorow, there is yet another washing of the monk and old people party, but for the whole district, rather than by a tambon- my district has six tambons and the other ceremonies I’d been to had been by tambon, so on a smaller scale.