E-mail #4: Buy The Ticket, Take the Ride:
Dablu from Chiang Mai. Dablu is the Karen word for “hello”, “goodbye” and “thank you”. Along with about ten other words and a lot of laughter, it was my only means of verbal communication with the Indigenous Karen people that we lived with for the last three weeks on the Political Ecology of Forests course. Despite the language barrier, I quickly slipped into rhythm of village life. This pattern of adjustment is something that I have become proficient at over the past three months of life in the land of smiles. My friends and I describe the pattern of awkward adventuring simply: “buy the ticket, take the ride”.
The first ticket I bought was a flight to Bangkok (aka: the Big Mango) for a weekend trip. Five of my friends and I boarded this flight with our only advanced planning in the form of written instructions from the sky train to the Frisbee field for a Halloween hat tournament. We booked a guesthouse from the airport and managed to cram six people plus a driver into one taxi and we were off. We befriended our taxi driver and he took us to a club he believed fit for a bunch of farang on the great American holiday of Halloween. It was called “The Rock Bar,” and was so absurdly not our style that we had no choice but to love it.
The next morning my friend Autumn and I took the sky train (aka coolest form of public transportation ever!!!) and motorcycle taxis (scariest form of public transport ever) to the tournament where we found that some things are the same cross-culturally. The Frisbee crowd in Bangkok are as goofy as in America, my team was called the “friendly ghosts” and we were terrible. Before each game, the teams chose a trick (like playing a point where you can only run backwards) or a treat (like getting to play with 8 people), we got mostly tricks. The best part of the day was that this tournament occurred at the end of rainy season and the fields were literally mud pits, or as we saw them, perfect opportunities to make ridiculous plays and goof off. By the time Autumn and I stumbled back to our guest house we were covered head to toe in mud, there was even some in my ear. It was glorious.
After meeting with NGOs and the royal forestry department in Mae Hong Son we boarded the wildest ride, 4-wheel monster truck like vehicles for the ride up to our first village via nearly impassible roads. We arrived in Huay Ton Kor and were greeted by the headman’s enthusiastic cry “Donkey (he meant democrat) win! Obama!” We crowded into the sala just in time to catch his acceptance speech at the part when the crowd was chanting, “yes we can!” It was epic.
The next three weeks were spent backpacking from village to village and living in homestays with the Karen people. More than anything, this was a lesson in learning by being. Each morning we would wake around five to the obnoxious cries of the many roosters that loomed literally feet from our heads. I threatened them with both my headlamp and machete (which I helped to make) to no effect. It was no use really, because around the same time the steady rhythm of women pounding rice percolated around the village like a heartbeat. Since sleep was not an option, we usually joined our host families in their cozy resting spot beside the kitchen’s open fire and drank pots of hot water and tea.
After the morning fire-sitting, the rest of each day came as a variable surprise. We did our best to help our host families harvest, sift, pound, and of course eat rice. We did so with a limited degree of success. One day, for instance, I was sitting on my porch when I heard the near-hysterical voice of my friend Sae protest “But I don’t want to stay home and wash my shoes, I want to help harvest rice!” This quickly erupted into a lost-in-translation debate on the street. Their host mom was going to the fields and they wanted to accompany her, but she insisted that it was too far and that they should stay home and wash their shoes. I ran to grab one of our instructors to translate, but by then it was too late and the mom had snuck off. In desperation, I scanned the street and spotted a woman who looked to be at least 90 years old. She was carrying a big basket on her back and wore no shoes. Surely we could keep up with her. I asked P’Toto and she laughed, declaring that we could help grandma gather firewood. We followed her up the mountain road like eager puppies until she ditched us with some of her friends in a rice field where we cut and tied rice until she returned with a full basket of firewood.
What really made the villages were the cast of characters that reside in them. We met nearly everyone, ranging from 20-year old host moms with three-year old kids to a magic man. In addition to the people, there was always an ample supply of pigs, chickens, goats, puppies, and water buffalo under, around, and sometimes in the houses. One morning my friend Kelsey and I peered between the floorboards (which by some miracle we did not break) and were astonished to discover that seven water buffalo were residing under our house. I was similarly surprised when half way through an ice-cold bucket shower I turned around and saw that a calf had stuck its head under the door and was inches from my ankle, trying to lick me.
On our hikes we found where the wild things really are. We passed most of the hours entranced by the forest around us, learning about the uses and dangers of the plants from our guides. There was the strangler fig, a gnarly ficcus that literally would grow up around larger trees and kill them by constricting growth. The blood tree oozed a blood-like sap when cut, the Karen use the color as a dye. My favorite was “the tree that makes fish drunk”. If you clip pieces of its bark and drop them in the river it causes the fish to become intoxicated and float to the top. This substance is currently prohibited as a means of fishing. There were also a host of bizarre animals. One day I sat down on a grassy patch of forest to record an entry in my field guide and I got a two-for-one when I realized that I was perched on top of a mountain crocodile. Needless to say, I learned a lot on this course.
Now we’re back in Chiang Mai prepping for the Islands course on the Andman Archipelago in Southern Thailand. We will be kayaking, snorkeling and getting very sun burnt (the islands are approximately five degrees from the equator) in an effort to educate ourselves about island culture and coral reef ecology. As a preview, our lead instructor Ajaan Mark made a number of bombastic claims on the first day of class, my favorite was “students arrive at the beach and cry because its so intense” so we’ll see. Needless to say, I am sooooo excited to board the long boats for this next adventure. I hope everything is well with you and that you’re enjoying the snow!
Love,
Jenna
To do:
Write postcards
Find a place to live!
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