Benyangai PostCIEE THAILAND SPRING 2009 NEWSLETTER March 30, 2009Volume IX Issue 2

We hear all the time that we are a nation of consumers. On our first unit in Yasothorn province, I learned what it meant to be a producer and consumer of my own food. My host family ran a small organic farm. Much of the food I ate there had been grown in our backyard. The lengthy process I normally experience to obtain my food had been drastically shortened. Sometimes it was just an hour from when my food was picked (or killed) to when I was consuming it for dinner.

My roommate, Cortney, and I got to work on our family’s farm one day before the large Saturday market in town. We spent the afternoon digging up what tasted like purple sweet potatoes. These we washed and prepared (and threw out the ones that were irreparably damaged by our clumsy shoveling techniques) to sell the next day.

It was strange, standing behind my homestay mom at the market, to look at those packages of purple tubers displayed on the table in front of me. I knew that I had laboriously dug them from the earth less than 24 hours before. I had seen them dusty and dirty emerge from the soil like buried treasure. At

the time, I wasn’t thinking of those roots as food that would be sold. To me, there has always been such a long string of events separating me from my food, that sometimes what I eat doesn’t seem like food that has ever come from the earth at all. Food items are commodities divorced from their original state of growth. This experience, then, was new for me. To participate as a producer and consumer of my own food is an experience that will never leave me. Evelyn Holt Wake Forest University

Producing and Consuming my Own Food

Hello from CIEE Khon Kaen! Since our last newsletter we’ve been everywhere from organic farms to goldmines. We’ve written some pretty impressive human rights reports and scavenged through the local landfill (some of us even snacked on goods we found!). We studied rural and urban trends,

as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Between getting to know our host families and getting to know the chickens soon to be on our plates,

Thailand has continued to be a mix of surprising, intense, unpredictable, humbling, and downright awesome adventures. We’re all still enjoying ourselves immensely and have a whole slew of crazy new

experiences to share with the folks back home. Enjoy!

*”Benyangai” is an informal way of saying, “How’s it going?”

Agriculture

Evelyn Holt and Cortney Ahern take a rest with their host mom. Students spent a week in Yasothorn province learning about organic farming from the Alternative

Agriculture Network.

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P’Bamrung’s HouseThe moonlight peeks through the cracks in the outhouse. I search for a bucket in the dim light and wash my hands, finding that I poured more water on my shorts than on my hands. Fumbling in the dark, I find the door and walk out to a view that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I’m standing on the porch of Bamrung Kayotha’s (P’Bamrung) house, perched above a pond full of fish, frogs, and tadpoles. The trees reach down towards the water, and the stars looked only a finger’s length away. The scene seems timeless. I feel at peace in this haven, at peace with the world.

P’Bamrung’s house is an extension of himself. Thirty years ago, he returned from Bangkok to take over his parent’s farm. There he built his house, planted his fields, and made a place to live. His goal was to live self-sufficiently off the land. He had come to realize the pit falls of the Green Revolution and the vicious cycle that had ensnared so many other Thai farmers. From that point of acknowledgement on, his life has been one of activism, of working tirelessly to release his fellow people from the shackles crafted by big business and corruption.

Walking around P’Bamrung’s 17 rai farm, I am amazed by the diverse wildlife that he has cultivated over the years. He eats fish from his pond, and eats chickens, pigs and fowl from

his land. His garden is full of plants, everything from lettuce to chili peppers. As P’Bamrung says,“The people of Thailand have the sun, labor, and the land, what else do they need?”

P’Bamrung leads by example; he cultivates a sense of community with the people that he meets and teaches that with self-sufficiency as a base, a community can be created and strengthened.

One day, I too hope to live off of the land and to take what I have learned from Bamrung and spread that knowledge. I hope to live in a community that does not value the unsustainable vices of consumption. Take a moment and imagine your life. Think of the trash that you blindly produce everyday. Think of the energy that you waste every time you walk out of a

room and forget to turn off the light. Remember the time that you drove to the corner store that is only half a mile from you house. Try to understand what humankind is doing to the planet that we call home. To live in a way that respects nature and the beauty that surrounds us everyday is perhaps the greatest act of respect that we humans can give to each other and to all that inhabit this great earth. With this thought, I leave you with an idea that is meant to inspire. I only hope that my words are not wasted, that I can pass P’Bamrung’s knowledge onto others and foster the idea that “small is beautiful.” Sam Newman Penn State University

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The Chicken Massacre“You must find one without babies,” P’Joy explained.  But all the chickens in view seemed to be surrounded by baby chicks pick-a-little-ing at their feet.  P’Joy, so much more than a van driver for CIEE, is probably an incarnation of the Buddha himself. True to his name, he is the most radiantly joyful man—incapable of harming a flea.  Or so I thought. 

Having been invited over for lunch, six of us CIEE students piled into P’Joy’s van.  We had a date at his country house with a promise to teach us how to cook Isaan style.  I think it’s safe to say we were all expecting som tam (spicy green papaya salad), or at least something relatively bloodless in preparation.

So when P’Joy snuck out from around the corner of his house with a 15-foot blow-dart gun, we were not entirely sure how to respond.  He chuckled in his jolly sort of way and continued furtively chasing the chickens around his yard with the bamboo blow-dart.  Some of us followed cautiously, not wanting to miss out, but praying he would miss us when he puckered up.  But the chickens were on their game that day—or perhaps were just familiar with the routine (“I eat chicken everyday,” P’Joy confided).  Although ultimately unsuccessful with the blow-dart approach, he was able to corner a chicken into the coup.  We could not see much from our position of safety, outside the coup, but we could hear a lot of flapping of wings and scuffling of P’Joy’s flip-flopped feet.  He continued to chase the chicken in circles until…snap.  He came out grinning, a chicken dangling from his right hand.  Lunch was warm and dead. 

P’Joy got a bowl and what looked like a curvy pirate’s knife from the kitchen.  He did the Thai-squat next to the bowl on the dusty patio and

proceeded to slit the throat of his victim.  What followed was a series of draining, boiling, soaking, de-pluming, slicing, wrenching, slicing, extricating, bucketing, and cleaning.  At some point, post-slitting and pre-de-pluming, P’Joy hacked off the head of the chicken and chucked it into the neighbor’s yard.  Although the head is not traditionally included in Isaan dishes, other surprising body parts are, including: stomach, intestines, and feet…only after the toe nails have been chopped off, of course.

We threw all the flesh and giblets (no discrimination here) into the pot along with freshly picked galangal and lemon grass from his organic garden. 

Forty-five minutes later we set the table outside.  The relatives of our lunch pecked at our feet.  Isaan never tasted so fresh.

Mikaela Dunitz Georgetown University

CIEE program driver P’Joy prepares an Isaan favorite

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I stood ankle-deep in garbage, surrounded in all directions by the discarded remnants of thousands of people’s daily lives. The crashing sound of garbage trucks dumping tons of waste drowned out conversation. “Ow?” I shouted over a steadily shrinking pile of trash, holding up a battered plastic cup or two-liter bottle: “Do we want this?” “Mai ow,” my host-father replied with a patient smirk: “No. We don’t want that.” Uncovering a relatively valuable recyclable—an aluminum can, glass bottle, or printer cartridge—was like finding buried treasure. Digging through piles of trash with a long rake-like tool, I became absorbed in the steady rhythm of scavenging; almost absorbed enough to ignore the stench of 40 acres of decomposing trash, built over 40 years into an imposing mountain.

The people of Kambon Noi, like scavengers around the world, live and work informally. They receive no wages, no benefits, and little access to government programs. Parents struggle to feed their children and send them to school on an income of 100-150 baht per day. Toxic leachite from the decomposing waste has polluted the groundwater and rendered it undrinkable. Respiratory illnesses are common, a product of years of inhaling landfill dust and thick black incinerator smoke.

Working out in the hot sun with my Paw, digging through other people’s trash, arms sore from hours of sifting, it was hard for me to understand why these people stay. I asked my Paw just that question. He stays, he told me, for his children. He stays to make enough money to get them an education, to ensure them rich, full, happy lives. Scavenging isn’t

so bad, he said. Even after years of working in the landfill day upon day, he echoed my first impression that scavenging is like treasure hunting. It’s not the job that hurts him most—it’s the knowledge that people who work with trash aren’t acknowledged by society or the government. They are looked down on, pitied, or, even worse, not even thought about at all.

After living in the landfill, it is impossible for CIEE Thailand students to stop thinking about our families in Kambon Noi. We have formed an interest group to go back and work with the community, using the tools at our disposal to further their struggle.

Hannah Dillon Clark University of Michigan

Urban Trends“Ow, Mai?”

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The best way to learn Thai words - and never forget them - is through experiencing them. It was 3:30 in the morning when my host family from the Land Development slum community and I arrived at what looked like random ponds in the middle of Khon Kaen. I was honored to join them. Paw catches prawns and small fish every morning so that Mae can sell them at the market by sunrise. My eyes were barely peeled awake, but I kept them open long enough to watch Paw trudge through the murky water with his long fishing net.  Mae noticed I was getting sleepy and told me to go to the ta-non while we waited for

Paw to finish. Used to being confused but going along with the situation, I followed Mae to the truck.  She pulled out a mat, handed me some pillows, and laid the mat on the paved street we had driven on to get here. Sure, there were hardly any vehicles at this hour, but at the time I didn’t understand why the grass patch 10 feet away wasn’t a better option. Still, I went with it. There Mae and I were, falling asleep in the ta-non to the sounds of crickets and distant motorcycles.   We woke up about an hour later to help Paw empty his catch into the baskets. Mae, my little sister and I were all standing on the shore when they both cried, “Ah!

Mod, mod!”  I smiled and nodded but didn’t move - what was the problem? About a minute later I felt it. I was standing right on top of a red ant hill, one that took its entire communities’ vengeance out onto my feet. I danced instantly off of it as my whole family laughed at me.  My feet were covered with burning red dots…friendly reminders for my ignorance. It dawned on me why Mae didn’t put the mat on the ground earlier - turns out the street was the safer option.

Lisa Bruckner Macalester College

A Bite to Remember

CODI Project in Samakee PattanaWe woke up to scraping sounds and voices on our third day in Samakee Pattana, a slum community twenty minutes away from our university. When I looked out of our pink mosquito net, I saw all of our host family moving everything out of our house. Our sisters and their husbands were moving big dressers and boxes. Our little nieces and nephews carried out dishes and decorations from the walls. Eliza and I got up quickly. As soon as I finished my quick morning ap naam (shower), Meh Joy (our host mother) instructed me to move my things to her daughter’s house next door. Eliza and I were trying desperately to figure out what was going on. We had two ideas. Our first guess was that we were helping with some sort of massive spring cleaning initiative. Our second guess was that the roof had leaked from the rain the night before. We thought we might help with a minor repair. When we got back from our

Eliza Leavitt helps her host family with some remodeling

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Someone’s knocking at my door. I open my eyes and begin to orient myself. The clock reads 4:45am. The knocks become more insistent, although I can’t figure out why. It’s only during fourth round, when I hear a version of my name, “Bahk, Bahka,” being whispered through the wood that I realize I am being beckoned. Last night’s barely functional Thai conversation including “yes Paw, I would love to help you scavenge!” floods back to me. It is my first morning in the Land Development slum community, and I’ve promised to go scavenging with a man I just met.

About five minutes later, I’m watching my paw fasten a large metal cart to the back of his beaten-up blue motorcycle. He hops onto the seat and gestures for me to do the same. Speeding past neighbors who have just woken up, we’ve soon left the small community behind

and have teetered onto the highway. Everything begins to look familiar, and soon enough we’re rolling into the Khon Kaen University campus, the place I left only 24 hours prior. We start to drive past buildings I know, and yet I no longer feel like this community is my own. This time I’ve come as a guest: a scavenger. We pull up to a dorm about a block away from mine. By this time, I’ve put together that Paw buys recyclables from the dorm housekeepers, which he then resells to a trash-dealing middleman. Two women slip out of the nearest staircase,

Overlapping Worlds

sister’s house, our Paw was smashing one of the outside walls with a sledge hammer, while our P’Sow (older sister) ripping up the plastic floor covering. It became clear that we were not giving the house a spring cleaning.

For the rest of the day Eliza and I got to practice our demolition and construction skills. We destroyed the inner walls of our house, making what used to be three smaller rooms into one big one. We crushed the concrete floor into rubble and then helped to spread a four inch layer of dirt over the whole house. It took us a while for us to understand what was going on. The Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) provided funding to this slum community at the beginning of this year. Rather than giving community leaders cash, the funds came in the form of construction materials.

CODI is an organization connected with the government. It began with a transfer of 3,274,350 million baht from the Urban Community Development Office and the Office of the Rural Development Fund. One of CODI’s projects, the Ban Mankong project, is meant to specifically

address issues of urban slum communities. The community’s headman told us that CODI has given them materials for construction and beautification projects. He seemed very proud of his community and the fact that CODI had granted them these funds. The more I learn about CODI, the more complicated and political the destruction of our house seemed to be.

CODI has been criticized for its approach towards to the betterment of communities. Our host family was more concerned about the issue of renting than with re-cementing their floor. They are living “illegally” on land owned by the SRT (State Railroad of Thailand). CODI has been accused of throwing money at projects that are not sustainable and offer no long term solutions. The destruction and reconstruction of our house seemed to fit into this criticism, because these initiatives do not address the larger issues.

Catherine Fuller Vassar College

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The Power of Community

carrying trash cans full of plastic bottles and bags full of paper and cardboard. The meeting is surprisingly official: Paw pulls out the purple scale from the back of the cart and begins to meticulously weigh each bag of goods. We fall into a pattern together: he puts the bag on the scale, I read the weight, he writes the weight into his notebook, I place the bag into the cart, we repeat. It’s a business and we both work diligently. Eventually he adds up the weights, calculates in his head the total price, and hands the women a receipt. Money is exchanged and we move to the next dorm. We do this at three

more buildings until our cart is literally spilling over with all that’s been collected. At 8am we returned home.

On that day we bonded over the waiting, weighing, and calculating. As we talked about his impression of the university, my life as a student, and his survival as a scavenger, our worlds began to overlap. For the first time since I’ve been on this program, the university no longer offers a safe haven from the issues.

In the past, the university has been a place to reflect and to re-immerse myself in the privilege of higher education. But there’s

no getting away from trash. There’s no getting away from knowing that the product of my direct consumption will probably find its way back into the hands of the community members I just stayed with. I know that even after I leave his community, Paw will wake up everyday at 5am to come to my campus to make his living. The issues are no longer something that I read from a book or can witness and then easily distance myself. They are present in my own physical space and routine. It took one motorcycle ride with someone I barely knew to make that known.

Rebecca Haverson Muhlenberg College

Until a few weeks ago, I had always believed that urban poverty was bleaker and more oppressive than rural poverty. The word “slums” for me had conjured up images of people who were living in fear and uncertainty. As a result, I was a little bit nervous about going to stay in a slum, especially when I learned that the seven of us who were going to the community would all be living on our own with separate families.

My fears were eased, however, almost as soon as we arrived. A huge group of children and several adorable puppies greeted us when we stepped out of the van. My 13-year-old sister immediately took it upon herself to shepherd me around everywhere, and soon we were strolling up and down the street, meeting other children and fellow farang along the way. I was amazed by the hospitality, not only of my family, but of the entire community. Throughout the day, we were constantly in and out of other people’s houses, visiting friends, talking, and watching TV. Our neighbors were

constantly inviting us to come in and eat with them. Wandering the streets with my little sister felt a lot like childhood summers in my neighborhood at home.

When we asked members of the community about their lives, they said that they had more suffering than happiness. What I saw from living there,

Luke Rampersad, Margo Silverman, and Rebecca Haverson

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Shades of Meh A-non“I am not well,” are the first words that my host mom says to Tany and I, as we take our bags to her house. Instead of the usual pleasant introduction, she instead lets us know about the problems that have been affecting her life for the past couple of years. Because of water contamination from a nearby goldmine, she now bathes in water containated with cadmium, lead and arsenic. She also has to spend extra money to buy drinking water and food from a market. All of these expenses have caused her to work multiple jobs, including selling lottery tickets.

Meh A-non is a leader in her community, and is trying to get the government to pay attention to the water pollution. She is an amazing woman, who I got to know throughout our four-day homestay. Some highlights of the homestay include: eating squid, which I thought was bugs, seeing Meh get all dressed up for a night of listening to music with us, and holding hands with her while walking around town. My favorite memory of her is a night when we were all about to go to sleep. Meh, Tany and I shared a bed, while the rest of her family shared beds across the room and upstairs. This specific night we were talking and giggling a lot, using Tany and my limited Thai abilities. We discussed our height differences, and the smell of a pillow filled with pine needles that Tany brought from home. Meh said that she didn’t like the smell since she didn’t recognize it. Tany and I, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough of it since it smelled like home. This night was amazing in many

different ways, but mostly because I connected with Meh in a way I was not expecting when I first came into the community.Meh did not treat me as a tourist or a foreigner. She treated me as a daughter. This is rare for someone that you have only known for a few days. Because of this, not only did I have an amazing homestay experience, but I also made a deep connection with a person who is from a completely different culture than my own. Julia Lee Bates College

however, was the success of a group of people who came together and created their own happiness. On the last morning we were there, one set of parents piled ten children from the community and five farang into a tiny pickup truck and drove us all to an irrigation canal to go swimming. When we returned home, my meh offered me one of her skirts, primarily because I was running out of pants to wear. I felt so much joy playing with the children in the slightly murky water. I realized how powerful it was that these people were able to cultivate such happiness rather than being controlled by their circumstances.

The weekend dramatically changed my perspective on the power of communities, even when impoverished and marginalized, to shape their

own destinies. Now, instead of only thinking about what the people in this slum community lack, I also think about what they have. While they have faced many problems and received little aid from the government, they are still willing to share their food, time, and energy with others within the community and even with outsiders. They live life on their own terms, refusing to accept the suffering imposed upon them. In the face of adversity, they find ways to create their own happiness. I hope to learn from their example.

Meghan Ragany Georgetown University

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Conquering Human RightsExtra Tidbits

As I sat in a dimly lit room, a sense of anxiety permeated the air as the interns and student leaders began to discuss the assignment in front of us. I began to feel an overwhelming sense of pressure. How would this group of college juniors be able to produce a Human Rights Report in two weeks on a village and topic we knew nothing about? All of these thoughts began racing in my head and I had to simply relax. I thought to myself, this is what this program is all about.

The “experimental learning model” is a phrase used to emphasize the importance of making your education your own. This idea has become a broken record in my head that replays over and over as the work load becomes monumental and I feel lost in a sea of confusion. However, once beginning this process of endless work, I found a purpose. This was an assignment that mattered. It was not simply for a grade; it was a piece of work that would circulate throughout villages and NGOs of Thailand. This report would involve a group of 15 students coming together and using each of their strengths

to create a finished product.

As the process began, I became excited. We, as a group, were accomplishing things. “I felt like a detective on assignment” one student said as the problem was unraveling before our very eyes. Even once we came back and began the sleepless night and the endless drafts after drafts and rewrite after rewrite the report began to take shape. It began to seem as though we would accomplish this entirely on our own.

In the end we did, as groups without the facilitation of teachers were able to produce a Human Rights Report. I felt capable and as though my skills and the skills of my fellow classmates were used in the best way possible. Consequently, as the program preaches, we used the experimental learning model, and I taught myself through the other students around me. Elizabeth Baldetti Marist College

Lukas Winfield, Rebecca Haverson, Muriel Leung, and Evelyn Holt

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David Streckfuss • Resident Director • dstreckfuss@yahoo.com • 01-708-1852Arunee Chupkhunthod • Program Assistant • aruneee@yahoo.com • 01-965-3400Jintana Rattanakhemakorn • Language Coordinator • jeabjin@yahoo.com • 01-662-3324John Mark Belardo • Office Manager • jm_belardo@hotmail.com • 06-639-7723Kanokpan Paladech • Assistant Program Coordinator • kan_pal@hotmail.com • 083-270-7400

Watching the sunriseCool winds blow, warm sun rises

The world keeps turning.

My heart beat faster, but my blistered, sore feet moved slower and slower up the rocky slopes of Mount Phukradung. After an epic battle between my mind and body, I managed to convince myself, and my feet,

that I didn’t pay 400 Baht to almost climb a mountain. I grinned and endured a few more painful steps to the summit. The pain I felt during those last steps is gone, but the euphoria of watching the sunrise from the top of

Phukradung still lingers.

I sat at the edge of the cliff, trying to see as far as possible. Rows of mountains shrouded in mist faded into the horizon. The cool breeze left me shivering, longing for the sun’s rays to pierce through the clouds lining the sky.

When the sun finally rose above the clouds, all my experiences in Thailand suddenly came into perspective.

As a college student, I have spent the past three years learning about all the things wrong with the world, yet in the one hour I spent watching the sunrise none of that mattered. I likened my sweaty, four hour hike to the struggles of the slum, landfill, and farming communities all across Isaan. Slum residents face eviction,

scavengers inhale toxic fumes from hazardous waste, and small farmers receive less money for their crops. In my heart, I felt that all the pain and suffering was only temporary. After all, though clouds may block the light,

who can stop the sun from rising?

For what good is warmthIf there aren’t clouds to dull it

Sun shines and rain falls.Jenny Hardy

University of Tulsa

Sunrise on Phukradung