Issan!!!

11/3

So, I have a few unfinished posts that I’m including in this and then concluding at the end, so beware of another long one… But more importantly, I now know where I’m headed for the next few years. At least location-wise. The shitty thing is that I can’t actually post exactly where I am because the U.S. Government, for whom I am currently working, has decided that it is a bad idea for me to ever give my exact location in a public forum. Something about bird flu pandemics, spies with bad haircuts and Jesus’ second coming; I’m not really sure. But I do think that I can tell you that I’ll be in the middle of Issan, in a province called Maha Sarakham. I feel comfortable telling you this because if you tried to use it to hunt me down (still not completely sure why you would..) then it would still be less useful to you than the phrase, “farang bpai nai?” Part of the reason I decided to include my incomplete posts after all was a now-ironic comment I made about Issan, because there really isn’t much there, at least geographically. This lack of topography has been euphemized to me (as so much of Thailand has) by being told that the flat, featureless land makes for easier biking. This is very convenient though, because the sub district that I’ve been assigned to work in has upwards of 20 separate villages spread out over a relatively large tract of land and connected by red earth roads. I may or may not be working in every village, but I am required to check them all out, so the ten pounds that I’ve lost so far might multiply.

But I’m excited about Issan. I’m glad I’m not somewhere touristy, and the people are known for their energy and culture. There are wisemen in my village and musicians that play native instruments and the very Issan dialect is known for its liveliness and dramatic nature. The people are very proud of their culture and even the volunteers that come out after two years have strong Issan pride. The group that’s in the process of leaving right now made shirts even. From what’s been described to me I feel like it’s akin to Cajuns back home, and I’ll let you know if that’s anywhere near true. They do take a lot of pride in their food, like Cajuns do, which is cool except that it’s a bit more intense. Beyond field mice and bugs and so on, the people in my area have actually formed a coop making and selling fermented fish dipping sauce. It’s called Bpla Ra, and I find it hilarious that my area specializes in this, because prior to finding out my site – literally two hours before – we were having a nutrition session and this sauce was brought up because eating too much apparently causes cancer, and I had eaten it before and officially decided that it was my least favorite thing about Thailand. Now part of my job will be facilitating the production of this pungent rotting fish sauce. Hilarious. My host dad loves the stuff, and I really don’t think it’ll grow on me, but we’ll see. Either way, it’s great because it starts me out with a clear basis for helping the community while I’m getting established and figuring out what else they want or need (the clear basis being that they want my help trying to figure out how to raise their own snake-headed fish for the sauce as opposed to having to buy them in the market). One last note on Issan culture. Of the things that my site listed as priorities for a volunteer, the third most important thing to them, after income generation and program development, was sharing their culture. This translates into the owner of what looks like my best housing option (who is also the assistant to the subdistrict headman) saying that he is willing to build a bathroom onto the house if Peace Corps won’t allow me to stay somewhere where the bathroom is not physically attached (which they won’t), but he really doesn’t want to because he really wants me to experience Thailand. Fantastic.

The overall site seems like a great work environment. There are a lot of very motivated folks already working in the area, and most of them have a little English, which will make my life immensely easier. They’re excited about having a volunteer, they understand what my role should be (do I even?), and they already have goals and have identified places where I might be able to help. With the little information that I have right now, I don’t think I could have reasonably asked for more – or even this much, really. There is one housing option (the one currently with no bathroom) that I’ve been told is the best, and that looks a little run down, but is in what seems like a really cool neighborhood. From what I understand it is an old, closed down store, but it has a living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, and will likely soon feature a bathroom as well. If the bathroom is being added on now, I might even be lucky enough to put in a few requests before it’s built and get a western style toilet. God, that’d be pure bliss. I feel like I’m probably stuck with the bucket shower, though.

So I like my site. The PC staff made a map on the floor of our giant classroom during a break and put down pieces of paper with the names of different provinces in a semi-accurate depiction of the entire country. This, of course, after dragging us through an entire day of classes while we only wanted to know where we were going. When we were all finally standing around the map, they would call out a person’s name and then a province, and everyone would scour the floor to see the piece of paper with that name on it. Then we would go stand on that piece of paper and know that this unfamiliar place was our home for the next two years. I had anticipated not knowing anything about the site immediately, and therefore basing my first visceral response on who was close to me. But this didn’t happen. When I went and stood on the words “Maha Sarakham,” I almost stopped paying attention to the next few people because I was realizing that where ever anyone else was, this was where I was and that I will be out here by myself most of the time, making a life and hopefully a difference. I almost immediately had Issan pride and liked the place before I knew anything about it, because it was mine. It turns out that my closest friends didn’t end up very close to me, but we’ll still meet up, and we’ve already found the cool places between us all to go meet up. It’s weird how an 8-hour drive doesn’t seem very long in this context. A friend realized that we came here with 52 people, the same as the cards in a deck. We’re down to 51 now, so I feel like someone just played a mean game of 51-card pick-up with our lives. We’re scattered everywhere and I didn’t end up near any of my closer friends, but that just means I get to explore more of the country visiting them. So I’m telling myself. I also lucked out because I ended up with another volunteer ridiculously close to me, and even though I don’t know her very well as of yet, she definitely wasn’t on my list of “being near this person is the same as being alone.” There aren’t really any other volunteers near us for a huge distance (even for PC), but I think we ended up being as geographically close as any two volunteers I’ve heard of that aren’t working together. I’m 15 k from our nearest city and she’s 7 k from it, so at most we’re 22 away from each other, potentially less. If nothing else, it’ll be good to have a drinking buddy nearby when I need a break.

At this point, that’s all I have to say about my site. I’ll be heading there this weekend after two nights in Bangkok and a day working with a current PCV. I’ll obviously let you know how it goes. Now, here are my previous posts and maybe some follow up at the end if I find time. Peace.


8/3/09

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting across from the tukraw court in the shade of a papaya tree with the left side of my head windswept into a mohawk, listening to Herman Dune, shooing away flies and bees, snacking on mangos, sweating a little, feeling a little tired and a little hung over, and smelling a little like dead fish.

Thailand is getting bigger and bigger. I’d never been here before January, so when I landed in the airport in the middle of the night and was bussed to a hotel just outside a small town in a relatively rural province, all I knew was of Thailand was the airport terminal, the hotel, and the 7/11 across the street. It seems weird, but with all our time so structured, and being unable to leave the hotel until we got bikes, for the first few days of Thailand, Thailand was just the Ton Palm Hotel and the one mountain I could see from it’s parking lot. When we went looking for beer we ventured into the town and Thailand grew a few miles. Then when I went to homestay it became my house, the place where I have class, the market, and our hub site. I’ve been getting around, seeing things and people and I think I have a feel for the few small villages near me and the town center. Then yesterday my host family drove me a few hours to the next province and I realized how small my grasp is on this country. We drove through small villages in the middle of fields for miles, and on tops of mountains, and I couldn’t help but think that, as far as I know, any one of us could end up at any one of these villages for the next two years of our lives. And tomorrow we all get our site assignments, and the whole country comes to life. It’s not just the south with the beaches and the north with the mountains and Issan with the…? But most of these places will be the homes of my friends and places I’ll go visit and get away to, and one place will even be my home. It’s all just so big and ungraspable right now that I can’t decide if I’m excited or terrified. Something’s going on though.

I went to a party last night because my host dad’s little brother became a monk today. Thai Buddhism is not what I tend to think of as religion. It’s more of a culture than a religion or a philosophy, and it’s present in every aspect of life here…… [This is the point where my host brother came and told me folks were playing tukraw, so I went and played for a few hours, ate, passed out, and woke up to the longest day of PST yet. In this post I didn’t have time, but had wanted to tell you about going to the monk ceremony and everyone was drinking and dancing the night away. I got tired and went to bed early on the floor of the local government office and then was woken up at 5 when the music started up again. I got up at 6:30 and was immediately offered a drink. When I refused I was pushed into a bathroom to shower with no towel or change of clothes, so I showered with the bucket for water for the toilet (which everyone did) and then used my boxers to dry myself. I went to breakfast and finally gave up and started drinking, which soon led to half the village dancing through the streets for two hours being chased by the rolling speaker system of the band. We got to the wat and there was a short ceremony and I met an English speaking monk that I exchanged phone numbers with and have talked to twice since. Then we went back to the government office, had lunch, and passed out for a few hours before I rode back home in the covered back of a pickup, where wind did a real number on my hair as I drifted into sleep and was rudely jolted out every few minutes by potholes. That’s really all that’s worth telling.]


3/3

[I wrote this in a really bad mood and decided not to post it because it felt really negative when I was writing it. When I reread it I think it’s not that bad, so here it is, for better or worse.]

I’ve forgotten the last time I felt clean. When I get frustrated or start daydreaming, that’s where I go to in my head – some place where I just feel completely clean and relaxed again. Sometimes I shower three times a day, but usually just twice. I have the choice of a bucket shower with cold, stagnant water, or a small showerhead that gets just enough pressure to make you think about and miss real showers. The bucket shower’s faster, so I usually lean that way in the mornings, but in the afternoons I do both because some of the water in the pipes of the shower has heated up during the day and is warm, which just feels nice. Either way, you’re bound to break a sweat within 15 minutes of your shower, so the inadequate bathing quickly becomes completely pointless, except that it keeps you from stinking (“stink,” in Thai, is pronounced “men.” The girls find this hysterical for some reason). It’s early March now, and the weather is comparable to mid June in Mississippi, except there’s no air conditioning, so sweating through your shirt is an accepted fact of all our lives, even Thais And this is the “cool season.” I got questions about the picture of the concrete room with the water basins, and that is the bathroom at my house. No sink, so I shave with the same bucket I use to shower, and with a small, broken hand mirror I bought at a 7/11. The small water vat thing is for water for cleaning yourself after using the squat toilet, and the big vat is for baths. Sometimes there’s toilet paper, which is mainly for drying yourself here, but we’re out most of the time. Frogs like the room, and lizards are everywhere here, but they eat mosquitoes and such, so I like them a lot. Mosquitoes do swarm the bathroom, but it’s fine, because you have to wear a traditional Thai towel, or pakaman, while you shower anyways. You where the pakaman because there are holes in the walls and anyone walking by can see you. Only once was I sure no one was home, so I decided to shower naked, and, sure enough, half way through I heard the whole family coming back from a field walking straight towards me. I recovered in time, but haven’t felt daring since. So the mosquitoes don’t bother much, but the killer for me is the spiders. They’ve taken over the corner behind and above the squat toilet, so when if I’m using or getting ready to use the toilet, and lean too far in any direction, I end up in a spider web. The spiders haven’t personally bothered me yet, but they are alive, and their webs are driving me crazy. I haven’t decided if the family just doesn’t see or care or if it’s a form of the Buddhist anti-killing ideal. I’ve been considering finding some Raid and just seeing if they even notice when the bastards disappear. [Update: the fam ended up taking care of it without me having to say anything about a week ago. Made my day.]

They recently put new gravel down on the road that I live on, which was a pain at first, but now that it’s settled it’s fantastic. The ride out in the morning is just enough downhill that it’s pretty sublime, and the direction I take to and from classes usually has me riding into the sunrise in the morning and into the sunset at night. Unlike Memphis, where the sun can strike the pyramid a little after rush hour and blind everyone even thinking about heading west on Auction, the haze here always mutes the sun, so even when you can feel your skin sizzling, your eyes don’t hurt much, and in the morning the sun seems more like a mirage in the distance, casting the mountains’ shadows over the endless fields of rice and cassava.

I’ve been using my black berry as an mp3 player so that I can avoid using earplugs and hear traffic coming up behind me while I bike. This is working out swimmingly, and the battery is lasting for days with all of the other functions turned off, but the cord that plugs the bb into my computer to allow me to change the music I’m listening to is still in storage. So while I’m biking anywhere from an hour to several hours a day, I’m listening to the same 20 or so songs on infinite repeat. At least they’re good songs, and I’ve found that a few of them are great for certain places, like paper planes and electric feel for biking through the city; and born in the usa, visions of Johanna, last call for mary jane, and all my format for country roads. I like listening to Nate trying to sing over passing motorcycles.

My ankle’s healed, and I don’t have any major health stuff currently except just being tired. I did that to myself this time though, because I decided to bike around 55 k and climb a small mountain on Sunday. Sunday’s our only free day and so everyone tries to squeeze all the things we think of during the week into the 10 or so hours of daylight that we claim for ourselves weekly. It wears me out though, and my host family told me I need to just relax next Sunday because I keep coming home too tired to eat. I’ll get my site placement next Monday, so Sunday’s not a good day to lie around getting anxious, but maybe it’ll be nice. [you’ll notice this relaxing Sunday never happened.]

My midterm review went fine, and I haven’t heard back on my midterm language exam, but I’m not worried. The biggest complaints I got were that I don’t take the weekly surveys seriously, which is because I just vocalize any complaints I have, and that I need to budget my time differently so that I’m not always riding my bike so quickly and won’t get into an accident. Of course, anyone who’s ever ridden in a car with me knows that I don’t like going slow regardless of whether I’m late, and it might even surprise you to know that I’m even generally early to sessions here. But while my own review seemed fine, two of the people in my small group received relatively harsh comments directed at our group as a whole. All of us being fairly driven people, we immediately got defensive and pissed, then got over it mostly and got motivated. We’ve become pretty cohesive and everyone’s grown on me a lot. We’re not all best friends, but we work closely and well together and have found a good balance and we have fun. So it’s nice, and since we were come down on we’ve been ridiculous over-achievers, making powerpoint presentations and excel sheets for small presentations that most teams use posterboard paper for. Which brings me to the fact that I really need to go because we’re upping ourselves again by making a video for tomorrow’s presentation, which I need to spend some serious time editing. It was great hearing back from some folks, and I’m going to try to get some captions on those pictures, and maybe even put some more up. Best to you all.

12/3

And a final wrap up before I post. Really just a couple thoughts I had before that I wanted to write down. For instance, I’m tired of being treated like a child. I understand this, of course, because I speak like a child and carry around alphabet books that children use to learn to write and whenever anyone says anything to me I just stare blankly at them until they walk up and grab my wrist and take me to wherever they were talking about. Still… I think the only thing I might hate more than being helpless is being treated like I’m helpless. My remedy for this it to keep focusing on learning Thai and hopefully become less helpless. Maybe then I won’t be treated as such.

The other thing I wanted to write about was the way Buddhism effects life here, but I don’t have time. Maybe next post. I leave for Bangkok tomorrow afternoon, spend Saturday shadowing a current volunteer, and then head to my site for Sunday and Monday, before returning home on Tuesday. Hope the sun shines as bright on the other side of the world today. Take care of yourselves.