16: A CAT chasing its tail

One of my “frequently asked questions” (and by frequent I mean my family and approximately two others have inquired), is what my daily life is like. Well fair friends, you are in for a treat, for I shall tell you. Every morning, I wake up at 6:30 am. Even when I do not have to go at school, the combination of rice trucks, my confused rooster, and rowdy neighbors rouses me from my slumber fairly early anyway. I do yoga and pilates every morning for about a half an hour, which not only makes me feel centered and awake, but also stretches my body, stiff from sleeping on a mattress (albeit a large one) on the floor. Then I open my doors, curtains, and gate, and eat breakfast on my porch. During the hot season, I ate mangos and bananas and pineapple every day, which was a very yellow breakfast, but a delicious one. Now that it is rainy season, I am somewhat less than impressed with the fruit options. Watermelons are everywhere and I eat them in abundance, but for some reason I have a firm opposition to eating watermelon in the morning. The other ubiquitous fruit types are rambutans, which I feel “meh” about, and durien, which is frankly disgusting. It can be wonderful only eating fruit that is locally grown, because it is fresh and delicious and you see the face of the person who grew it. On the downside, sometimes a girl just wants a banana in the morning and does not want to have to travel 45 minutes to get one.
School (which I’ve already written about) goes from 8- around 3:45. I leave for my daily bike rides (or run/aerobics class) at 5. Thus, each day there is about an hour of ‘in between’ time. Some days, I go run errands. Other days, I return home, change into comfy clothes, and collapse into my hammock under the jackfruit tree with my i-pod and a cool glass of water. The days at school are draining, although [generally] wonderful, and all I want to do when they are over is have 30 minutes to loll in my hammock and daydream off into the sky. Pii Baw can usually be found puttering around my yard at this time, and on lucky days she will push the hammock for me, which creates a lovely breeze. I try to nap, but am never successful because after-school-before-dinner is the time when kids are running amuck, and often like to come and peek into my gate and yell “hello” at me.
A bit before five, I change into my biking gear and set off for Mr. John’s house, about 2 k away near the market. The assembled group for that day sets off, barring rain, and the journey begins. These bike rides continue to be a significant source of pleasure for me, because the landscape is so beautiful and I really love to cycle. I get home around 7:15, unless I eat with Mr. John and Film, and concoct some sort of dinner. From 8 to bedtime is wildcard time. I’ve been known to read, write in my journal, construct blog entries (like right now), tidy my house, do some sort of minor art project, chat on the phone with other volunteers, or a combination of the above. My shower gets thrown in there somewhere, and as of yet, I have not found myself at a loss for something to do. Most of you know I am quite adept at entertaining myself.
Lately my evenings have become dominated by CAT, otherwise known as Community Assessment Tools. CAT (meow) is new to PC Thailand this year. As volunteers, we arrive at site filled with the desire to improve our communities and help its people. But what does that entail? What needs to be developed? What are the needs and wishes of the community? What are the issues not being addressed? The answers to these questions are neither intuitive nor obvious. Sometimes, clear projects will fall across your path. For example, the environmental habits of Thai people are awful. The people in rural areas remain unaware of global warming, and not only consume massive amounts of plastic, but burn all their garbage, including toxics. I think it’s fair to say that environmental education and development are needed in a majority of rural communities in Thailand. However, every community is unique and thus has unique issues. For real, sustainable, and meaningful development, the communities must be involved in creating and executing projects. Peace Corps is not about sending in 22 year old farangs to tell people who have grown up in these towns what they should be doing better. If the locals are not interested in a project, nothing will get accomplished. Thus to have successful projects, we must first collect information and talk to people about their communities. Enter CAT.
Gathering information about the villages is not a simple task. What is the main force driving the economy? What are the specific health issues? How many people are registered as having HIV/AIDS? How many students continue their education past the 9th grade? How many people are living below the poverty line? Are the officials doing their jobs properly? These are necessary questions with specific answers that cannot be answered passively. CAT is basically a series of tasks, surveys, activities, techniques etc…that will answer these questions and aid community integration. Examples of include drawing community maps and writing up daily and yearly schedules for various people in the community. They also provided 20 (or so) surveys about agriculture, the environment, health, AIDS, schools, local government structure etc… etc… to be filled out by knowledgeable people. These questionnaires inquire about factual data, but also about the main problems, resources available, current projects, and potential projects. These “needs” assessments are meant to help us volunteers find a project, but also to meet as many people in the community as possible. Getting to know the health workers and village headmen is helpful, because once we have a project that we want to execute, we can’t do it alone, nor should we. We need Thai counterparts to help with communication and planning, as well as support from the community and those who provide funding.
In one week, I head to Korat, a large city in Western Isaan, for a second round of training. It will last two weeks, and involve learning more Thai, additional sessions about Thai politics and culture, more technical stuff, and a counterpart conference. At PST2, every volunteer has to give a brief CAT presentation. For us TCCO, our presentations should focus on our schools. How many students, how many teachers, assets, challenges, needs, potential projects etc… For CBOD volunteers, CAT is a much bigger deal. At the beginning, it is essentially all they are supposed to be doing, because they arrive at site with no pre-existing project, and must use CAT to find one. Their presentations are on their communities as a whole. While I want to have secondary projects with my schools, I am also interested in community development, and so have spent my past two community days (Fridays when I do not teach), surveying. I went to two local health stations and the local governing body with questionnaires and chatted with the people there.
Most of my evenings over the past two weeks have been spent CATting, or processing the information I have collected at my schools and drawing school maps. I have so many ideas for projects already, based on my personal observations, but I look forward to discovering things about Wat Bot I have not discovered on my own. I am also looking forward to the English language movie theater and Mexican restaurant in Korat (according to Lonely Planet), spending two weeks in a hotel with all the other volunteers, the hiking/camping trip 10 of us have planned for the weekend before, and then visiting my host family in Lopburi after PST2 finishes. I will return home on July 12 (Happy Birthday Sarah!) with 3 days to prepare for a large teacher training I am helping to plan. I’ll let you folks now how allllllll that goes.