Last week was spent at a second homestay in the slum communities adjacent to the railroad that runs through Khon Kaen. No one is technically allowed to live within 20m of the tracks, but people from my community (Mitrapap) were forced off their land nearby 30 years ago and have lived there since. Hundreds of other families have since migrated into a number of adjacent slums, and it continues to develop.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere in Mitrapap a lot. Kids EVERYWHERE. I played soccer and pingpong with the older kids and took on the role of airport for the small kids--for at least an hour and a half each day. At which point they followed me back to my house and cried when I went inside. People are outside together at all hours, and anyone could literally sit down in any house to have dinner. The food was amazing, and ironically, my house was actually a lot nicer than my first house in Srithan. I stayed at the house of the community leader, Paw-O, who advocates on behalf of the 216 families in Mitrapap. I later found out that he has been accused of taking money from a World Bank fund allocated to the 4-slum network. That might explain the tile floors. He had been sure to communicate to me that he was the first to build a permanent house in Mitrapap, so as to set and example for the others that they will be safe there. I won't jump to any conclusions though.
The rest of the family was interesting, too. My host mother was a wonderful cook and did my laundry and bought me some shorts and woke me up a couple of mornings so I could give food to some monks with her. A 29 year-old son at my house wanted very much to help me learn Thai, so he spent a few hours flipping through the dictionary and teaching me words such as "behavior," "consonant," and "explanation." Needless to say, I remember none of them. I do, however, remember being hit on by a 17-year-old meanwhile. Other words looked up in the dictionary for me include "phone number," "slave," and something that translated as "a go-between who arranges marriage." Awkward enough, you might say, until I found out that this individual was a "gatoy"--a cross-dressing man.
On Thursday night, we organized a community exchange, in which we had a couple of hours to ask questions about their community (via an interpreter) and try to find the themes that linked it to the slums that other students were staying in. There were eight of us in Mitrapap. We sort of divided into pairs, and each pair tried to steer the discussion to find out about something different about the community. May and I, for example, asked about education and job opportunities, while other people tried to get info about health. It was a cool structure and a very interesting exchange.
On Friday night, there was a party at the interns' house, and we also had free reign to paint on their walls. I wrote a quote from a book I pulled off their shelf called Thoughts and Meditations, which I would like to write here so I can remember it:
"He who does not use revolution,
to strip his dry leaves,
will slowly perish."
Orientation ended yesterday and the semester really started today. Everything we have done so far has been amazing, especially the community stays. Had I tried to do a self-designed semester in Brazil, there is no way I would have had experiences like these. Today, however, I stumbled upon the painful reality that we have real class. This morning was a 3-hour lecture about the history of Buddhism, from which I learned nothing except that monks have cell phones and digital video cameras, with which they can choose to take extensive footage of American students sitting in chairs. This afternoon was a 3-hour lecture about gender, from which I learned... nothing. Tomorrow is about human rights theory and development theory, which I am more excited for. But we have probably 400-500 pages of reading for this week alone, and no time to do it. It is really an absurd volume (not to mention resoundingly liberal--even from my point of view). I was already so tired this afternoon that I fell asleep at 4, woke up at 7:15, and was then certain that it was 7:15 in the morning. I began to get dressed to go to class again before my roommate managed to explain to me that it is still Monday. It was a very confusing conversation.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere in Mitrapap a lot. Kids EVERYWHERE. I played soccer and pingpong with the older kids and took on the role of airport for the small kids--for at least an hour and a half each day. At which point they followed me back to my house and cried when I went inside. People are outside together at all hours, and anyone could literally sit down in any house to have dinner. The food was amazing, and ironically, my house was actually a lot nicer than my first house in Srithan. I stayed at the house of the community leader, Paw-O, who advocates on behalf of the 216 families in Mitrapap. I later found out that he has been accused of taking money from a World Bank fund allocated to the 4-slum network. That might explain the tile floors. He had been sure to communicate to me that he was the first to build a permanent house in Mitrapap, so as to set and example for the others that they will be safe there. I won't jump to any conclusions though.
The rest of the family was interesting, too. My host mother was a wonderful cook and did my laundry and bought me some shorts and woke me up a couple of mornings so I could give food to some monks with her. A 29 year-old son at my house wanted very much to help me learn Thai, so he spent a few hours flipping through the dictionary and teaching me words such as "behavior," "consonant," and "explanation." Needless to say, I remember none of them. I do, however, remember being hit on by a 17-year-old meanwhile. Other words looked up in the dictionary for me include "phone number," "slave," and something that translated as "a go-between who arranges marriage." Awkward enough, you might say, until I found out that this individual was a "gatoy"--a cross-dressing man.
On Thursday night, we organized a community exchange, in which we had a couple of hours to ask questions about their community (via an interpreter) and try to find the themes that linked it to the slums that other students were staying in. There were eight of us in Mitrapap. We sort of divided into pairs, and each pair tried to steer the discussion to find out about something different about the community. May and I, for example, asked about education and job opportunities, while other people tried to get info about health. It was a cool structure and a very interesting exchange.
On Friday night, there was a party at the interns' house, and we also had free reign to paint on their walls. I wrote a quote from a book I pulled off their shelf called Thoughts and Meditations, which I would like to write here so I can remember it:
"He who does not use revolution,
to strip his dry leaves,
will slowly perish."
Orientation ended yesterday and the semester really started today. Everything we have done so far has been amazing, especially the community stays. Had I tried to do a self-designed semester in Brazil, there is no way I would have had experiences like these. Today, however, I stumbled upon the painful reality that we have real class. This morning was a 3-hour lecture about the history of Buddhism, from which I learned nothing except that monks have cell phones and digital video cameras, with which they can choose to take extensive footage of American students sitting in chairs. This afternoon was a 3-hour lecture about gender, from which I learned... nothing. Tomorrow is about human rights theory and development theory, which I am more excited for. But we have probably 400-500 pages of reading for this week alone, and no time to do it. It is really an absurd volume (not to mention resoundingly liberal--even from my point of view). I was already so tired this afternoon that I fell asleep at 4, woke up at 7:15, and was then certain that it was 7:15 in the morning. I began to get dressed to go to class again before my roommate managed to explain to me that it is still Monday. It was a very confusing conversation.
posted by Darren Legge at 7:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home