Throughout my 18 blog entries, I have introduced quite the cast of Thai characters. These, for the most part, have been passing mentions, and the writer in me cannot help but feel that this is incomplete. To try and understand my life at site, a further characterization of this eclectic bunch is necessary. They are the people who make my life here what it is, who help me exist happily, and who I will hopefully give something back to in return. That, and I’m not sure I could dream up better characters. I am going to write my “characterizations” in installments, and will intersperse them with my regular blog entires.
My counterparts:
Ning - Ning is my 4 foot 7 inch pink-loving, hard-working, glitter-headband-sporting, feisty, baby-obsessed, educational supervisor. Ning and her husband Dten recently got promoted from teachers to supervisors and moved permanently to Wat Bot, where they live in a beautiful house along the river with their son Dtiu, Ning’s younger sister, Dten’s father, and dog named Pie. I lived with them before I moved into my own house, and within half an hour of my arrival, Ning whipped out her wedding album. She lost no time regaling me with the entire saga of their courtship, and inquired seriously what age I want to get married and how many babies I want to have- needless to say I was horrified. Despite her adoration for all things marriage-and-baby related, Ning is a dedicated career woman. She is always working when I see her, which is…unusual in Thailand. Ning’s driven, ambitious attitude stands in delightful juxtaposition to her collection full of pastel, shimmery Thai silk suits and collection of sparkly headbands, which she wears immaculately every single day. Dten does not work nearly as hard as Ning, but can always be found about 10 steps behind her with her light pink camera, snapping pictures or bringing her papers.
Ning and Dten have just one chubby seven year old son named Dtiu, who they indulge constantly, which is partially which he is so rotund. Twenty minutes before dinner if he asks for fried chicken, sticky rice, and sweets, he gets it. Fortunately he is still at an age where fat is cute. Every time you ask Ning or Dten how Dtiu is, they say “oh, very fat”, and smile. Dtiu can be shy, but has no problem running around the house naked and farting loudly, whether or not I am present. Apparently he is only shy around “beautiful girls”, and I did not make the cut. I try not to let it bother me, and told him I will wait until we can get married one day.
Som - Som is my co-teacher at my big school. She has a degree in English and heads the district’s English network. Despite this, her English is not very strong. She has a good vocabulary but no sense of sentence structure. Consequently, we often have language standoffs, where she is convinced that she is speaking properly and I have no idea what she is talking about. She repeats the same ambiguous jumble of words over and over and I try to guess the meaning. For example:
Som: “You eat very much, fat like me”
Bekah (in an upset voice): “You think I’m fat?”
Turns out she meant that if I eat a lot, I will be fat like her. I made a mental note to teach her the conditional tense.
However with her position as the head of the network, Som pretends her English is much better than it is. She loves to show off her “English skills” for other Thai people. During lunch or at meetings, she will translate basic things for me she knows I get, just to display her abilities, and will nod knowledgably and say yes to anything she does not understand (What is for lunch today? Yes. How long does it take to go to Korat? Yes. Why do most Thai men have mistresses? Yes. ) The most flagrant example of this happened during our presentation at a teacher training. I spoke English and she translated into Thai, but when she did not understand me, she would just make things up. With my Thai skills, I noticed every mistranslation, but wasn’t about to call her out in front of 150 of her colleagues.
Som is one of the only moody Thai people I have ever met. She is always nice to me, but I have seen her get into arguments with other Thais -something you never see in this intensely non-confrontational culture. She has melancholy days, where she sighs heavily on a regular basis and locks us in her classroom to eat lunch alone. Often Som’s bad moods are triggered by her on-going feud with the school principal or her husband, who takes business trips to visit his various mistresses. Conversely, when she is in a good mood, Som is the life of the party. Last week, she walked around the wat (temple) holding her boobs and teasing the other teachers that hers’ are bigger. She also initiated a conversation at lunch one day about how many times a year the teachers sleep with their husbands and has asked me to help her make a match.com profile so she can “make foreign friends”. Another one of her strong suits is making up weird “teaching” songs on the spot.
The woman can also eat like no-one I have ever seen. She always complains about how she is fat and wants to be skinny, but then takes me out to eat massive amounts of deep-fried fish, som tum, and canome (Thai sweets). She always orders food enough for five people, and finishes all of it. It blows my mind every time, particularly when an hour or two later she asks if I want to go eat dinner with her, because if you don’t eat rice, it’s just a “snack”. Furthermore, Som has somewhat off-kilter notions of nutrition. We will be eating the deep-fried fish, which has a few pieces of shredded carrot and cabbage on top, Som will tell me the dish is healthy because it contains fresh vegetables. She will only drink glasses of water with one ice cube in it, because very cold water makes you fat, and according to her I lost weight because mango season ended, not because I started going on 40 km bike rides. In her classroom, she has a poster that says “motto” and reads: Rich -> Eat, Eat ->Fat, Fat -> Danger.
I enjoy spending time with Som outside of the classroom, but teaching with her can be stressful. She is impatient with the students and does not seem to enjoy teaching anymore. She will bang a bamboo stick really hard and loudly against the board or the desks when she wants attention, which freaks me out, and told me it is the rule in Thailand that teachers hit students. I told her in America it is absolutely not ok for teachers to hit students and asked her not to do it anymore, or at least not when I am in the classroom. Thus far she has acquiesced. Som regularly invites me to sleepover at her house, and I think I will use the no-hitting thing as leverage for the slumber party she clearly wants to have.
Orasa - Orasa is my co-teacher at Thangam, the small school. She teaches first grade and adores children. She has never been married and has no kids of her own, but is the full-time caretaker of her nine year old nephew who lives with her (and me). She grew up in the same village as the school and literally knows everybody. Orasa was the one who helped introduce me into the community and get me settled. At Thangam, she is in charge of the school’s finances, and spends a great deal of time helping out the other teachers. It is clear the school would not function without her-the principal wanders into our classroom with questions multiple times a day. She is an incredibly caring, thoughtful woman who figures like a sweet, loving aunt in my world here. When I was sick, she brought me food everyday and knows when to step in if I am having an off-day. I feel comfortable going to her if I am upset or need help. She helps me with so many small things, like making copies, getting my haircut, or chasing down the motorized ice cream stand in heels and a skirt.
Orasa speaks very little English, and does not seem overly eager to learn. She dedicates many hours when I am at Thangam to helping me improve my Thai reading. We will often spend a couple hours a day going through the first grade Thai book, eating fruit or locally-made treats, and chatting. She loves to laugh and when she came to PST II, made so many friends that when I asked her to get dinner with me, she couldn’t because she already had plans. She can be very shy, however, around authority figures, and when the country director came to visit my site, she hid in my kitchen. I want to get her to the point where she is comfortable with hugs, because every time I see her, I just want to give her a hug, but alas, that is definitely not normal behavior here.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
BRE 20: It means no worries…
It’s been a while friends, and for that I apologize. Part of the reason I have not written recently is that things have assumed a routine, whatever seemed noteworthy before now passes without a second notice and it feels as if there is nothing new to report. That is not to say that life is dull, because it is not, but simply that it now feels like my life rather than “the experience of a lifetime” or a two year escape from it. Despite the settled dust, there are things that occur every day to remind me I am not in Kansas anymore. Firstly, the sounds I wake up to. The loudest sounds come from the ancient farming trucks. I live on the last road before miles and miles of rice fields. Thus the trucks that carry equipment and rice farmers back and forth are constantly passing my house. Often 15 to 20 people will pile in the back, yelling things over the din as they prepare for the day. The second loudest sounds come from the animals. A motley assortment of roosters, chickens, dogs, birds, and cats are constantly roaming around the village, making noise, and irritating each other (as well as me). The next noise that weaves its way into my burgeoning consciousness is the pounding of a mortar and pestle. Most Thai dishes begin with mashing a few main ingredients together with a mortar and pestle. Most Thais eat a full meal in the morning, and thus the sounds of the women next door cooking waft into my bedroom window during the early hours. This sound has a soothing regularity to it, although it still does not motivate me to eat spicy curry and salted fish for breakfast.
Right now it is rainy season, although it has not been raining often. It usually rains at night, which can shut off the power and the water supply, but also cools the air which makes sleeping more comfortable. It is an unpredictable coquettish rain, that falls on impulse when you least expect it. The sky could be ominously black and not a drop drips from the clouds, or it can pour out of a clear sky. It is mischievous rain that never rains when you want it to, and always knows when you need to do your laundry. On the topic of laundry, it is allegedly this very activity that caused the rash which has been living on my arms for 10 days now. I wash my clothes in a bucket with my hands, and my arms usually end up covered in soapy water. Last week a mysterious collection of dots and splotches that did not itch or hurt, but was unsightly, began climbing my arms and was not going away. The Peace Corps doctor said it was a probably a reaction to the chemicals in the laundry detergent powder and will be better in another week, but I would like it to go away, as some people look at me like a leper. Still I prefer an innocuous rash to the ant bites I received after wrapping my towel around me, where they had unfortunately set up camp. Ah, and did I mention on the train to Bangkok I had my purse slit by a thief, and my phone, money, and credit cards were stolen?
These may all seem like negative things, and they are. Sometimes I think the smallest things will tip me over the edge. But for the most part, I have acquired quite the hakuna matata perspective on it all, or at least I am beginning to. Things are out of my control, the good outweighs the bad, none of these annoyances are a big deal, and the key is to take deep breaths and let it all go. I have acclimated to the sounds and enjoy watching the animals puttering around my yard; I use the misbehaved rain as an opportunity to do art projects or yoga in my house; the rash will ultimately go away and I view as an “earning my spots” type thing- plus it is not nearly as bad as the bacterial skin infection on my chin from a few months ago. As for the purse, there was not too much money in it, I wanted to switch banks anyway, and thankfully my passport and camera were stashed elsewhere. These silver linings do not come from unfailing optimism or perfect inner peace, but rather from the realization that getting worked up over things, particularly in this country, has little to no effect, and it is better to let things flow as they will, rather than trying to fight them.
Furthermore, as I mentioned above, no situation is going to be perfect. For us Peace Corps volunteers, I think sometimes we revel in the misfortune, in the pains, in the aggravations, because it is not supposed to be easy, nor do we want it to be. But to dwell on these is a mistake, to forget the joys is ignorant. When I get so frustrated at the students I want to scream, or feel completely drained after a day of school, I remember my neighbor who works 20+ hour shifts on her feet in a wire factory, and feel sheepish, but also a greater conviction in what I am doing. She desperately wants her daughter to be better at English so she can have a better life, and many of my students are like that. I can also laugh at the silly things, like when I accidentally taught my kids that people from Norway are Nordish, or when they tried to say soccer and all I could hear was 30 little voices saying “suck it”. When I first got to site, I disliked that I lived close to an ugly little town. I wanted the pastoral small Thai village and resented the town’s presence, for violating my ideals and expectations. Now I appreciate it for the daily market, the bike and paper shops, the convenient stores, and most of all, the smoothie stands. Additionally, the town is just a small part of my site. The 10 villages around it are beautiful, with vibrant flowers and lush foliage bursting everywhere, homes clustered in tightly-knit communities, and a river that flows towards the mountains. My friend Liz from Cornell who visited for a day on her way to Chiang Mai said it was like a butterfly garden. I had barely even noticed the butterflies before.
Even writing it now, my petite pearls of wisdom seem trite. I’ve read these same things many times before and none of my thoughts are original or surprising. I suppose what I am driving at is how more than ever, I am feeling the harmony that exists in the universe, the ying and the yang, the churning, inevitable, inexplicable flow of life swirling around us that is not necessarily good or bad, but just is. It is not about optimism or pessimism, but about balance and perceiving things as they are. And for the first time in my life, these ideas I’ve had and heard before, I truly believe and am experiencing in what feels like a deep and visceral way. Now that these notions are being put into practice, and I am beginning to understand them beyond the words that express them.
Hakuna Matata
Right now it is rainy season, although it has not been raining often. It usually rains at night, which can shut off the power and the water supply, but also cools the air which makes sleeping more comfortable. It is an unpredictable coquettish rain, that falls on impulse when you least expect it. The sky could be ominously black and not a drop drips from the clouds, or it can pour out of a clear sky. It is mischievous rain that never rains when you want it to, and always knows when you need to do your laundry. On the topic of laundry, it is allegedly this very activity that caused the rash which has been living on my arms for 10 days now. I wash my clothes in a bucket with my hands, and my arms usually end up covered in soapy water. Last week a mysterious collection of dots and splotches that did not itch or hurt, but was unsightly, began climbing my arms and was not going away. The Peace Corps doctor said it was a probably a reaction to the chemicals in the laundry detergent powder and will be better in another week, but I would like it to go away, as some people look at me like a leper. Still I prefer an innocuous rash to the ant bites I received after wrapping my towel around me, where they had unfortunately set up camp. Ah, and did I mention on the train to Bangkok I had my purse slit by a thief, and my phone, money, and credit cards were stolen?
These may all seem like negative things, and they are. Sometimes I think the smallest things will tip me over the edge. But for the most part, I have acquired quite the hakuna matata perspective on it all, or at least I am beginning to. Things are out of my control, the good outweighs the bad, none of these annoyances are a big deal, and the key is to take deep breaths and let it all go. I have acclimated to the sounds and enjoy watching the animals puttering around my yard; I use the misbehaved rain as an opportunity to do art projects or yoga in my house; the rash will ultimately go away and I view as an “earning my spots” type thing- plus it is not nearly as bad as the bacterial skin infection on my chin from a few months ago. As for the purse, there was not too much money in it, I wanted to switch banks anyway, and thankfully my passport and camera were stashed elsewhere. These silver linings do not come from unfailing optimism or perfect inner peace, but rather from the realization that getting worked up over things, particularly in this country, has little to no effect, and it is better to let things flow as they will, rather than trying to fight them.
Furthermore, as I mentioned above, no situation is going to be perfect. For us Peace Corps volunteers, I think sometimes we revel in the misfortune, in the pains, in the aggravations, because it is not supposed to be easy, nor do we want it to be. But to dwell on these is a mistake, to forget the joys is ignorant. When I get so frustrated at the students I want to scream, or feel completely drained after a day of school, I remember my neighbor who works 20+ hour shifts on her feet in a wire factory, and feel sheepish, but also a greater conviction in what I am doing. She desperately wants her daughter to be better at English so she can have a better life, and many of my students are like that. I can also laugh at the silly things, like when I accidentally taught my kids that people from Norway are Nordish, or when they tried to say soccer and all I could hear was 30 little voices saying “suck it”. When I first got to site, I disliked that I lived close to an ugly little town. I wanted the pastoral small Thai village and resented the town’s presence, for violating my ideals and expectations. Now I appreciate it for the daily market, the bike and paper shops, the convenient stores, and most of all, the smoothie stands. Additionally, the town is just a small part of my site. The 10 villages around it are beautiful, with vibrant flowers and lush foliage bursting everywhere, homes clustered in tightly-knit communities, and a river that flows towards the mountains. My friend Liz from Cornell who visited for a day on her way to Chiang Mai said it was like a butterfly garden. I had barely even noticed the butterflies before.
Even writing it now, my petite pearls of wisdom seem trite. I’ve read these same things many times before and none of my thoughts are original or surprising. I suppose what I am driving at is how more than ever, I am feeling the harmony that exists in the universe, the ying and the yang, the churning, inevitable, inexplicable flow of life swirling around us that is not necessarily good or bad, but just is. It is not about optimism or pessimism, but about balance and perceiving things as they are. And for the first time in my life, these ideas I’ve had and heard before, I truly believe and am experiencing in what feels like a deep and visceral way. Now that these notions are being put into practice, and I am beginning to understand them beyond the words that express them.
Hakuna Matata
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