I've Moved

Thanks for stopping by. I have a new location. Blogger has been good to me. But now that I'm a designer, I need to update my look.

GIS Skills

This is one of two maps I made for Monday’s presentation. The PDF looks much better. Really. SDF staff and villagers from Ban Houimanaw are going to speak to officials from the government forestry department about how traditional villager knowledge helps preserve natural resources in the forest. Mr. Dacho keeps saying I have to present as well, but I can’t tell if he is joking or not. I’m pretty proud I got my act together enough to make a GIS map using GPS data from the field. Although standing next to Pau’s maps, mine look like they were drawn by a five year old with two crayons and some stickers. He’s the man. He also has the worst back problems I’ve ever seen in someone under 30 from sitting at the computer all the time.

If you read the text of the map and wonder what I mean by “land use category of farmed land without old tree stumps,” here’s the deal. There are four patterns of agricultural land use in the village. They are rice paddy fields, vegetable fields with stumps, fields without stumps, and orchards. For the poster I made I wrote brief descriptions of each. We went in to compare the health of the stump fields versus the no stumpers. Here is the stump explanation.

"There are two reasons for the presence of stumps in the fields that have them. First, when clearing forest the forest stumps are labor intensive to remove. Second, their presence reduces soil erosion and landslide frequency. The stumps are beneficial. The reason for the lack of stumps in the plots without them is that the villagers removed them to quiet the fears of officials within the forestry department that stumps meant that more forest was being cleared. The plots without stumps endure a greater rate of soil erosion and risk of landslides. The data collected on December 3 reflects that fields with stumps promote the growth of more beneficial plants than those without. "

Amish Picnic

I have been getting to know the monster of globalization and I see how it is fed by technology. And more personally I have been living with all these people whose lives are simple technologically but their lives and their being feels so whole. I want that. The other night I left work and when I walked outside I found a bunch of coworkers and some new people sitting at the picnic table in the middle of the yard. It was dark and they had stuck three candles to the table for light. They were drinking beer and eating nuts and salad. They usually drink beer here by pouring it into 8 ounce glasses from a 1 litre bottle. If you pour into your own glass then you must pour into everyone else’s. And the salad was in a bowl with three forks. When they invited me over I was struck by how palpable the sense of community was just in that little space. I sat next to one guy whose English is good named Gai. He poured beer into a glass for me and translated some of the conversation so I could get up to speed. Then he and I started talking about the subject. We were talking about NGOs and how control and power is consolidated in Thai society. We talked about taking vacations at the beach and then about people wanting to feel fulfilled by what they do but sometimes having trouble finding that. And we talked about the villagers in the hill tribes. Younger villagers are farming less and getting jobs in factories more and more, much to the disapproval of the village elders. The youth want to earn money to buy motos and cell phones. In one generation life in the hill tribes will be completely transformed. Some villages got solar cells three years ago and the kids already spend their whole Sunday glued to the TV. Then Gai asked me about the Amish. We talked about how they decide as a community whether or not to accept new technologies by discussing the ramifications they will have on life. We talked about how their children are taught the value of the Amish lifestyle but also allowed to go try on life in the cities of the US. I told him most children return to be Amish. It was great. During the long patches of Thai speaking I just looked around and took it all in. Their faces lit by the dancing light and the energy they had when talking and listening to each other. And I thought to myself, “This is way better than spending the night in front of the TV. Why doesn’t everyone do this? This could be so great for the world.” So I decided that when I get settled in Portland and the weather starts to warm, I’m going to build a picnic table. And I’m going to invite everyone I know and also people I don’t know to sit. And there will be candles and we will drink beer from 40s and have salad and nuts. And I want to talk to people, about what they see and what they do and what they wish. To make community.

Dogs and Exxon

Do you know that share or compete game we all played in kindergarten? The one where you stand across from your partner and you touch your hands together, my left to your right and your left to my right. And the teacher says you have 30 seconds to score as many points as possible. And a point is scored by pushing your partner’s hand to his or her shoulder. Then the teacher says go. Some kids finish with 3 or 4 points and others have 25. What was the difference? The competitive kids pushed against each other and it became a strength contest. Others (the good kids) realized that by cooperating they could score many points. I relax and you push, then you relax and I push. Our hands bounce back and forth like metronomes and we rack up the points. I saw a lovely example of this the other day.

I was at a big meeting between two villages, the government and a few NGOs. SDF was there to mediate the conflict. The lowland people are upset that the Hmong people who live high in the hills have been expanding their agricultural production and using more water. So less water makes it downstream. The conversation at the meeting got pretty heated at one point. I thought I was gonna see fists fly. But things calmed down and by the end of the day everyone was drinking whiskey together. I spent a lot of time reading and working on a crossword from the Bangkok Post. It was during lunch that I was trying to figure out what a good solution to the problem would be. I was interrupted by a skinny guy who was finished with his lunch. He walked over by me and scraped clean his bowl of rice and chicken curry onto the ground. Just then two dogs ran from out of the bushes to eat the food. They got there at the same time and drew back their lips to show their teeth. There was fierce growling and they began to circle the food. They were scrappy dogs and each one clearly had some experience fighting for food. Just then the white and tan one lunged at the black one and bit its neck. They unleashed their fury and began rolling and biting and clawing at each other. As this was going on a smaller dog snuck out from around a nearby building and walked up to the food and ate it. As it was licking the ground to get the last of the rice and curry the other two dogs stopped and noticed. The two fighting dogs just walked away as if nothing had happened. I wondered at that moment if they had feelings and if they were feeling foolish. Did they know that it was their unchecked competitive nature that had cost them each the food? Did they see the error of their ways? I tried to imagine the same dogs in the future running up to a pile of food and instead of growling, just separating the pile in half with a paw and sharing. But that seemed ridiculous. I thought to myself, how great it is that humans can share.

I now turn my attention to the human world. My exceedingly unapologetic and intelligent friend, Gabe Rubin, made a statement in October that has stayed with me all this time. He said that the activities of oil companies are logical and understandable given the capitalist system in which they function. He said it is reasonable for oil companies to buy false controversy on GCC and suppress its public acceptance. He said that there should be no expectation for oil companies to pursue greening advances or to develop alternative fuels. Gabe says that companies are risk averse. They have one way they make money and any other action has uncertainty. Therefore they resist change. They do not invest unless a positive outcome can be proven by past similar action. So of course Exxon wants to maintain the status quo concept that burning oil causes no harm. Exxon looks into the ground and sees trillions of dollars of profit just sitting there. All it has to do is hire lobbyists and buy politicians to change policy and open vast national protected areas up to drilling. That, and hope it doesn’t get caught breaking laws that prohibit business relationships with states that sponsor terror. It’s been doing it all since the 70s, so it will just keep on going. And the last thing it wants to do is invest 5% of profits in developing new products and technologies for which there is massive global demand.

Gabe speaks about the difficulties of being an oil company. When an underdeveloped country, like Niger, needs help extracting and processing its oil, it calls Exxon. Exxon buys oil rights from Niger. That means that Exxon does all the work and moves all the oil and gets most of the money, but it has to pay a little to Niger for the rights to do this. And all Niger has to do is collect the checks and silence the citizens who protest (often Exxon helps with the silencing). But Exxon learns that they only have a limited amount of time to profit from this business relationship. After several years Niger will think it has enough money and know how to run the operation itself. Niger tries to kick Exxon out, Exxon says, “Hey we have a contract to do this for 99 years.” Niger shows up with guns and Exxon has to run. Maybe Exxon even has to abandon some of its equipment. This is a bad thing. It is bad for Exxon, for Niger and for the world. I’d like to discuss the search for a solution.

First, this situation is rough on Exxon. It loses anticipated revenue and equipment. The effects of this situation in Niger are awful. Niger lacks expertise and it tries to run the oil operation on the cheap. There are spills and explosions and people are getting caught in the drill rig and torn to pieces. The environment and the locals get shit on. And the Niger oil is being turned into Niger money but it still isn’t helping Niger people. It is buying Bentleys for the top five politicians in the country. Corruption and governance get worse. But at least there is more oil on the market for China and the US to burn. That will slow price increases as a result of consumption going up and supply going down for about 4 months. Oh no, but that’s a bad thing too. It will delay the price increases the world economy needs in order to finally make the shift to green energy sources. But all that’s nothing, the worst part of the Niger Exxon falling out is the effect it has on the future.

Exxon isn’t dumb. This sort of thing happens enough times that it starts to build this situation into its business plans. That means that when Congo calls Exxon, Exxon is prepared. It negotiates a contract that really gouges Congo. It gets environmental and safety exemptions so less equipment is needed and there is less operational overhead. But when the spills start flowing and people leave work looking like ground beef Congo gets pissed. So the Congo army shows up and shows Exxon the door. Turns out that Exxon trying to cover its ass actually makes the cycle more likely occur. And the negative consequences increase with each iteration of the cycle. Next time Exxon is gonna hire a local militia to buy some extra time before the soldiers come knocking. That means when Exxon gets the boot there are angry poor people running around with assault rifles. The time after that Exxon will bribe politicians in an effort to buy more time. But that just installs a robust self reinforcing system of corruption throughout the entire government – see Nigeria. Everywhere Exxon goes it leaves a larger and larger scar.

This is because it is risk averse, like all companies. They won’t try something new. They are just adapting old methods using new information. And no one can stop Exxon from doing this. The US government is basically an extension of Exxon (maybe it’s the other way around) and the UN can’t influence the behavior of companies. The shareholders are rolling around naked in cash, the media is more interested in crotch shots of Britney, science for fact is up against science for hire and the worst thing the average citizen can think of when you say Exxon is “Valdez,” which was 17 years ago. And Gabe Rubin is going around preaching acceptance based on the corporate risk aversion clause. So I sat fuck it, throw it out the window. I propose a new tack. We’ll call it innovation. Of course I’d prefer for the era of oil to be ending but I’m not naïve. So if this is the system we’ve got for a long time still, we are gonna need so switch the flight path. Acknowledge that it is possible to be so risk averse that you avoid improvements and revenue generating opportunities. Risk averse sounds a lot like ‘stay the course,’ and we know how well that does.

What if, instead of a conflict based adversarial approach, Exxon pursued a harmonious cooperative one? The next time Exxon goes to build a relationship with an oil rich technology poor nation I’d like to see Exxon bring in some third parties. A couple NGOs, some nice small neutral European governments, a few UN agencies and deliberative bodies, people from the IMF and WB, a group of people attached to those fancy international courts and institutions of justice, maybe several consulting firms and definitely a bunch of local citizen’s groups. What’s the point of all these groups trying to represent all these interests if they never come together to work on a single project. There are 1000s of NGOs all working in their own disconnected bubbles. And beyond that pretty building on the East side of Manhattan at 42^nd street and hundreds of ignored resolutions I’m not sure what the UN does that justifies the billions of dollars that it spends. The global infrastructure is there, it just hasn’t been put to good use yet. There’s power, money, awareness and influence aplenty, all just sitting around. Let’s put it all together, Captain Planet style, and see some action.

Everyone will work up a happy agreement (HA). The purpose of the HA will be justice and to incentivize stability in the relationship, not animosity. We’ll call it ‘sustainable profitable development.’ Sustainability isn’t just for the enviro Nazis anymore. It can benefit governments and businesses too. The economy doesn’t like uncertainty. If stability facilitates a healthy economic environment then there is money in all kinds of hippie causes. Conflict resolution and natural disaster reduction, food security and biodiversity, clean water and medical care, and maybe even nuclear non-proliferation. I’m beginning to see the wisdom in the idea of my old friend from Wesleyan, Alison Binkowski. When last we spoke, Alison’s biggest goal in life is to build an effective international diplomatic entity modeled on the UN that is for-profit. Bring all the stakeholders to table, account for and value their various interests, incorporate information from many sources, and then everyone gets a cut of the resulting windfall. The HA could be the first project of Alison’s UN.

The HA will stipulate that Exxon gets lots of time to be the exclusive Mr. Oil in the country. The HA will establish a more than fair payment schedule to the country by Exxon. The HA will lay out conditions for optimum environmental goodness and safety. In addition, the HA will mandate that local people will benefit. Not just jobs and infrastructure improvements; that’s corporate doublespeak for, “only that which will benefit us.” I mean compensating the neighborhood when the townies are wearing grass skirts and eating dirt and the new guy in town brings 5 drill rigs capable of going 3 miles below the earth’s surface and 100 oil derricks. It shouldn’t be that hard and it should be done. The US government does it when it expands a highway or builds a landfill. Don’t tell me that it shouldn’t be done overseas with private firms just because there have shareholders. The HA will be a big document and when everyone agrees and signs it, it will be a watershed moment. This change will represent Exxon investing in a country’s future prosperity and in the end it will benefit Exxon too. Exxon will set a glorious example for companies all over the world. It will serve all involved parties and it will be secured, certified and supported by international organizations and institutions. Everybody benefits. And best of all, no more business as usual. Thousands of smart people and pompous pricks and money whores graduate from business schools every year and it took me to figure this out? I just had to look out at the world of corporate conduct and ask, are we people or are we dogs?

Food

I have been eating lots of Thai food, some crazy food, street food, a ton of fruit, and bits of phalang food. I turn to the phalang food to get me through a wee stretch of homesickness or because I need to take a break from the Thai food. I’ve been with a falafel, an omelet, a turkey sandwich, a couple bagels, a fried chicken sandwich and one night I went Greek. Aside from that I’ve been engaged in high impact culinary cultural absorption. Highlights include Tom Yam, a spicy seafood soup and Khao Soi, a northern Thailand brown curry dish based on rice soup.

Here are some basic facts about eating in Thailand. The food is spicy. That’s a monumental understatement. That’s like saying oxygen availability is an important factor for mammalian survival. I once ate something so spicy that I chewed on a dried red chili pepper to cool down my mouth. I once ate something so spicy that the moment it touched my tongue I launched into a violent fit of hiccups that persisted for 15 minutes; I’m talking full body convulsions. It is my hope that the spice based perception of heat has the same germ killing affect of actual heat. Because I’ve eaten some nasty stuff here, handled by people who are not aware of the germ theory of disease, but it always comes with chili. Also, there is no Thai breakfast. They eat the same food in the morning that they’d eat for dinner. You wake up and think Wheaties and they’re thinking mushroom and fish head soup with galangal over rice. There’s a lame joke that goes like this: Thai people eat one meal a day; it starts in the morning and continues until bed time. I don’t understand how it works. Maybe they have a super high metabolism. I tried it their way for a couple of weeks and I’m wearing 5 extra kilos as a result. There is pork in everything. If you order shrimp Pad Thai, you will be eating shrimp Pad Thai with pork. And in Thailand every part of the chicken is food. Last week I saw half a chicken head floating in my soup. The skin, the fat, the ligaments, the marrow, all are fair game.

There are three kinds of Thai food here. First, there is the stuff that is visually similar to what you'd find in a Thai restaurant in New York City, think Pad Thai, Pad See Iu, Satay, curries, and whole fried fish on a bed of greens. At first I was a little disappointed to come across this kind of Thai food but then I began to taste the difference and soon I came to appreciate its authenticity here. It’s like seeing a picture of a Buddhist temple versus standing in front of one and looking up at it sparkling in the sunlight. In the states the food is adjusted for the western palate, which is a very different beast from the Asian palate. There are many ways they make that stuff special here. For instance, the most popular Satay here is squid. And here, the whole fried fish is eaten, everything but the bones, those are for the dogs. I like the fins; they are like crunchy fish chips. I once watched a 6 year old girl go around a dining hall collecting the eyeballs from all the fish on all the tables. She would bat her lashes and an adult at the table would dig out the eye with the handle of a spoon and drop it onto her plate of rice. She must have eaten 20 eyeballs that night.

Thai food type number two is the kind that depends on unique local ingredients that I’ve never seen in the states. I have particularly enjoyed this area of culinary exploration. I’m eating new spices and leaves and roots, flowers and fruits, and unexpected taste combinations. Spicy and sweet is the Thai way. I am into the chili fish paste and I love this one type of green leaf that comes with pulpy stalks and little yellow flowers. It gets sautéed in garlic and fish sauce with soft peanuts. Oh yeah, I love the peanuts here. They are way better than boring American ones. They are purple and soft and hard to describe. Mostly they get boiled and there are 3 or 4 in each shell. If the American peanut is cheddar, these are brie. I think. I am eating so many new foods here. I like eating tamarind. It is sweet and a little like a prune and a date. It looks like a bloated green bean except it’s tan. You crack the shell and pull out the chain of brown goo. Then you pop each ball off the root-like fiber that connects them and put it in your face. Enjoy. It goes well with whiskey. Just remember to spit out the hard shiny black seed shaped like a dodecahedron. And they have the smoothest silky kind of yellow tofu here; it’s a joy in soup.

Thai food type number three is food that we would consider nasty. This begins with fish balls. Thai people love fish balls and they are everywhere. Picture replacing all the pretzel carts in New York with fish ball carts. They remind me a lot of gefilte fish. They are often fried, which leads me to want to try fried gefilte fish. Other nasty food includes sour fermented pork blood sausage, grasshoppers, spiders, larvae, sautéed cow skin attached to an inch of fat, congealed blood, and all kinds of dried seafood. I have tried neither the sausage nor the grasshopper. I prefer the dried seafood that is salty, not sweet, and I try to avoid the bits with the dead bugs in them.

The Thai barbecue I attended was a spectacle. Oddly enough the beef was raw: muscle, stomach, intestine, and liver. Only when we ran out of 6 inch shrimp did people start to put the beef on the grill. There was also 1 foot squid, kick-ass chicken soaked in Thai BBQ sauce, clams, freshwater crabs, fish and pork pork pork.

My favorite street food is Pad Thai, noodle soup, spicy green papaya or mango salad, crepes, fried bananas, sweet French fries fried in coconut oil, and the fruit. Walk down the street and you can get corn or strawberries in a cup, with or without, salt, sugar, butter or coconut milk. For $0.30 you can pick up a bag of pineapple, watermelon (red or yellow) or papaya and a pointy bamboo stick to use as a utensil.

I have done a great deal of fruit exploration here and I’m hoping to track down an illustrated guide book to Thai fruits when I get back to the states. I love jackfruit, longan, phalang, passion fruit and a bunch more I can’t name. When I first saw jackfruit growing I couldn’t believe it. I looked up into the tree and hanging off the branches were giant bumpy oval light green cocoons the size of watermelons. Phalang is a crisp white guava. When I buy them the vendor always jokes about the phalang buying phalang. Passion fruit is what the villagers in the hills always give me when they are eating pork for lunch. I like Thai bananas and oranges. The ‘naners are smaller and sweeter and the oranges are green on the outside with a thin easy to peel skin. When I’m in the hills people often dig something from the ground or pick something from a tree and give it to me. And I dutifully put it in my mouth and try to eat it. There are the blueberries with the seed and the things I call teeth. Each one looks like a giant tooth, 3 inches long, and off white. You pinch the tooth root and it splits. Inside there are 3 air sacks filled with seeds. The seeds are black and covered in a white moist fibrous pouch. The pouch is sweet and the seed is kinda smoky sour. They are great. I also like the sour grapes with a pit that come from what I call the fern tree.

The desserts here are interesting, in a good way. I’m a big taro fan. It is so versatile and my mouth loves that bouncy pasty texture. They have lots of little jelly things that jiggle and come wrapped in banana leaf. Oh, and sticky rice. Take a glob, put a nut and a slice of fruit in it, dip it in coconut milk, grill it, and call me; I’ll come right on over. I’m over the sweet egg things and their cookies and cakes make me laugh. They are too bland for phalang and too sweet for Thais.

In the hills we eat the same 6 dishes. Rice, fish head soup, canned mackerel in tomato sauce with MSG, fried egg, dried and then roasted fish, and sautéed greens. A good day is when pumpkin makes an appearance. A treat at lunch is roast cabbage. That’s about it. If you don’t count litre after litre of rice whiskey that they start into around 9am and don’t stop until bedtime at 10:30pm. The first trip I made to the hill I was curious about the food. On my second trip I was scared by it. Then I learned how it was cooked. Soon it became old hat for me. Now I sometimes find myself hungry for it. I like how it is served on one big plate the size of a table. The matriarch of the hut flops 6 or 7 piles of rice around the edges and the dishes are put in the center in bowls. Everyone gets a spoon and no one has to wait for anyone else to start. It builds a sense of family and community without any courtesy or formality.

Can you believe I’ve had no GI issues? Really, I’ve been as regular as the sun (knock on wood). And wanna hear what I’ve been doing for drinking water? I’ve been boiling the tap water in my room in my electric kettle and pouring the water in my Nalgenes. Thrifty Gabe. Sometimes I have a moment right as I go to put something in my mouth. I think, I’m about to eat Hepatitis A, this could be a bad idea. But I do it anyway. I figure mind over matter, hunger and curiosity over infectious diseases.

Things Are Good

I’ve been trying to keep my posts specific, but I’m gonna switch things up a bit with this one. I’d just like to say that life here is great. And in case you’ve been worried about me, I gotta say, don’t worry. I’m happy. I wake up looking forward to my days and when I lie down to go to sleep I’ve got no worries. It’s not all perfect. And I spend a lot of time missing all kinds of crazy things. Last night while Gai, Tuk’s friend who now lives in the UK, was cooking dinner, someone put on a Billy Joel CD and it filled me with a comforting sense of familiarity that I haven’t felt in while. But I feel fulfilled by what I am doing here in a way I’ve never felt. I think I’ve been looking for something like this since I graduated from college, except that wasn’t really looking, in a deliberate kind of way. I learn tons every day and my work is engaging and challenging and the people are great. I feel that my energies are helping, in a tangible way, people who need help. I believe in SDF, its goals and methods and its energy. We have a presentation to organize on December 18. Several officials from the forestry department will be there. The point is to display the valuable ways in which traditional hill tribe knowledge maintains the health of the forest. We have begun to collect the information that will be presented and train the villagers in making the presentations. It’s amazing how much they know and how they don’t know that they know it. They’ve never had to express all the information that floats around their heads. They learn by doing, not by reading or talking.

During my last trip to the hills we spent the day collecting plants from plots the villagers use to grow taro, cabbage, lychee, coffee and bananas. The harvest is over so all these weeds are coming in, except some of them are quite useful. We talked about each plant and the role it plays in the ecosystem. Except they didn't use the word ecosystem. We made a big chart. Plant samples were taped along the left edge of the paper. For each one we wrote down the Thai name, the Keren name, its benefit, its harm, how it propagates, its physical description and its growth cycle. Some of the plants are food for people or pigs, some are medicine for coughing or for constipation and some plants help aerate the soil or fertilize it. I collected GPS data on the plots and recorded their locations on our map. I also took notes on how to begin to categorize the villagers’ land use practices for the database SDF wants to build. Tuk and I translated the charts into English. Later there was a big meeting in the school to review our field work and make demo presentations. Lisa took some of the children outside and they made a chalk mural. After a long hot day I got to dip my feet into the river 20 feet from a waterfall. At night my coworkers and I roasted bananas over a fire. Later I sat on a log under a giant full moon and listened to the sounds of the jungle. I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be.

My Face

By popular demand. Here is the new look.

Tirade

Ask any enviro what the biggest problem facing the world today and I’d wager the response would be global warming. Sure GCC (global climate change) is tied into water quality, air quality, human warfare, species extinction, soil erosion, natural disasters, resource consumption, ecosystem health, ocean current behavior, drought, famine, economics, politics, greed, suffering, inequality, market valuation, externalizing costs, and corporate risk aversion. But I think that GCC is not the problem, it is the symptom. The problem is how we live and interact with each other and our surroundings. During my time in Thailand I have seen clear tangible examples of balls rolling uphill. These situations are ones where the net result to the world is negative. I’d like to find a way to turn gravity back on.

I have lived in the hill tribes among people who are subsistence farmers. Each family has a rice paddy and several plots of land on which they grow vegetables. The villagers set up a work exchange so that everyone’s rice gets planted, tended to, harvested and stored. Life there depends on making do with what you have. And they make way more than just ‘do.’ In Hoi Manow, the village that has hosted me the most, there is a volleyball court and several bodegas where people can buy eggs and noodles, cookies and soda. The villagers work hard. There is wood to be collected so that there is fire to cook with and there is weaving to be done so that there are clothes to wear. It is easy to look at the village and think about how simple they are. They sit on the floor, their toilets don’t flush, their roads aren’t paved and their food is not refrigerated. But if you get to know them you will see the complexity of their world. They are amazingly resourceful, making so much from so little. Everything in their world has multiple uses and applications. They employ vast amounts of information in how they interact with their surroundings. To decide what to plant on a certain plot they consider the slope, the soil quality, the proximity to the forest, the surrounding flora, the distance to the road and estimated labor requirements. They use different weed assemblages as indicators for soil moisture and worm density. Every villager has to be a craftsperson, a botanist, a cook, an animal breeder, a manual laborer, a lumberjack, a mule, a businessperson and on and on.

I have been thinking a lot about the contrast between the life of a person in the village and the life of a person in New York or Newton or Springfield. In Thailand they have a phrase that, literally translated, means, “Over speak.” It is what they say when you go too far in your speech, when you say something that is bold. I get it a lot. During the last trip to the hills, while Manop was weaving his truck around the rocks and holes in the road, I was asked if I could drive the route. I responded, “I have been here so many times I could do it with my eyes closed.” That statement elicited many cries of, “Ohhhh, you over speak.” But in America the default of our discourse is over speaking. Everyone is trying to be bold, to stand out, to elevate his or her position in life. Think for a moment about the degree to which our government has practiced over speaking in the past 6 years. In America secretaries turn in administrative assistants and garbage men turn into refuse technicians, getting drunk with friends for 2 years becomes an MBA, if you inject rats you’re a lab technician, taping down wires makes you the lead gaffer, walk silly and wear makeup and you’re a model, knock on doors and ask for money and you’re an environmental fundraiser, if you can talk about the postmodern dominant aesthetic paradigm then your canvas painted black is worth $10,000. Most people in the states do one thing and they repeat it day after day. But somehow its value gets inflated. Most people do not adapt, they do not employ creative problem solving, they cannot aggregate a great volume of information from many different sources, and the things they see and touch often have only one purpose, sometimes the only purpose is to been see on the owner. We desire, as individuals to create an impossible world of stasis, stability and consistency. When something breaks in the states you get someone else to deal with it. When you make a mess, you pay someone else to clean it up. We have people to whom we subcontract our childrearing and other major personal responsibilities. As a nation we are trying to buy our way out of our responsibilities as a result of our contribution to global warming. Our government hires consulting firms to sell the idea, based on fabricated science, that growing forests will fix global warming. The government then shops around to find a third world country that will plant trees and sign off on the paperwork that our government designed. This would be fine if you could install a forest where there was not one previously and allow it to grow without interference. But that is not how the situation plays out. Our efforts on paper to fix the problem actually make it worse.

A paper company making hundreds of millions of dollars every year wants to expand. A new paper mill requires a $50million investment and will bring in $2million a year. In order to feed the mill the company needs hundreds of thousands of hectares of land on which it can grow trees. It is able to use connected consulting firms, some of which have been involved in writing government policy both in Thailand and in the West, to get permits from the Thai government to build a tree farm on the pretense that the Thais will be helping to remove carbon from the atmosphere put there by the West. The company then gets its government connections to rate wild native Thai forests inhabited by minority ethnic groups as “degraded.” The company then cuts down hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest that give life to thousands of villagers. A whole ecosystem is gone. The company plants fast growing eucalyptus and contracts the villagers to cultivate the tree farms. The villagers have no food and no water because the forest is gone and eucalyptus cultivation is water intensive. They have to wait 3 to 4 years before they can sell the trees. They bare all the risk of the cultivation. And when the trees go to the mill to be made into paper the effluent from the factory is pumped into the environment untreated; villagers start dying and getting sick by the hundreds. The environment is shit and communities are damaged. On the upside, a company in Japan gets to save $0.62 on a box of paper. Is that a good thing? Are they going to be more, or less likely to recycle, conserve and reuse paper? How many companies are there in the US that have ever printed 100 copies of an important 100 page document only to find one typo, throw it all out and start over. This is the world we live in, this is what we value. In the end, the net effect of the economic benefit from the paper farm is more environmental destruction. We are missing opportunities to live more efficiently. We can reduce our global carbon emissions by one third using only existing energy saving tools and practices. This money we’d save from not buying the energy we’d otherwise use will pay for the change and put money in the globe’s pocket.

You can tell me about the money that is being made from the tree farm. About how the government benefits and the company and the shareholders become more wealthy. I know about trickle down and rising tides floating boats. But you’ll be telling me about people who have cars being able to afford sheepskin seat covers. And seat covers eat resources. Everything you own asks you to own more. Buy a lamp, need a bulb, buy a vase, need a flower, buy a vacation home, and the need list is huge, buy a car, need a gas station, a drill rig, an oil refinery, an international shipping conglomerate, a crew to wash oil off of seals in Alaska, and a pharmaceutical company to develop the drugs to treat the cancer caused by the VOCs that your car pumps into the atmosphere. To say nothing of needing an army of 150,000 to kill 300,000 while failing to bring stability to a region whose two biggest exports are the black gold that is killing the planet and blind hate for you and your family. And if you believe that in the end you are helping those villagers, you need to think about what kind of help they most need. I don’t think they need TV so they can learn about and want cell phones and nice clothes and shampoo that will make their hair shiny. I think they need to see how much they have. How their lifestyles make for strong supportive families and communities and how skilled and knowledgeable they are about working with all that their environment provides. And the biggest need is for us to learn from them. The cultural exchange is going the wrong way. The Dali Lama has written extensively on the difference between the developed and the developing worlds. He says that the pain in the third world, of disease and hunger and the hardship of life is smaller than the pain in the western world. He doesn’t just cite our drug use and suicide, adultery and crime. He describes the persistent emotional and spiritual damage we inflict on ourselves. He writes about the pain of greed, desire, anxiety, competition, secrets, judgment, injustice, deceit and the other numerous plagues of the mind. In Buddhism, Dharma is truth; it is the true actual state of the world. Meditation allows Buddhists to cultivate the ability to see through the artifice in the world. Buddhists seek to appreciate what they have, they learn to live in the moment and they strip away the cache placed on things. They look past the status, they deflate the constructed perspective, and they abandon the artifice. If we could just admit that there is so much wrong, that so much is false, that America and Americans have serious problems, we could move forward.

Have you ever looked at an alcoholic and felt sorry for him or her? You see someone who has squandered the power of choice. Make the wrong decision enough times and you can no longer make any decision; you lose control. America is 5% of the world’s population but it consumes 25% of the world’s resources, including oil. We are oilholics. We sit at the global bar acting like assholes, fat and spilling our drink on the floor. And for what? Does our presence in the world help other countries? Do we even work to fix the problems we have at home? We just keep drinking. Prada and Lexus, plasma and HD, gold plated and diamond encrusted, private bath and master bedroom, product placement and brand recognition, super sized and double wide, laser guided and rocket propelled, genetically engineered and chemically preserved. If we continue to export our way of life all over the world and into the smallest and most isolated parts of it we will live on a dead black planet full of people who are starving, maybe not for food, but for things and money and companionship and closeness. I worry that it is too late for us in the West to learn what is really important, too late for us to see that what the villagers have is so valuable, too late to change how our economy functions, how power networks, how we decide what to value, or how we construct contentment.

We live in a world where the few people who benefit financially are able to game the system so that they can turn happy people and green ecosystems into slaves and places that cause sickness. And neither those affected nor those who object have any power to stop the few people who benefit.

What did those villagers do? The ones who raised the eucalyptus for the paper company. For 10 years they tried to work with the paper company. They borrowed money to farm and they sold the trees. They asked why they were getting sick and they watched more and more tree farms being built. Things got worse. Then they protested. For 15 years thousands of people and hundreds of NGOs worked to stop the eucalyptus farms. People marched and spoke out. They held conferences and wrote reports. They attacked government and company buildings. They burned tree farms and tree nurseries. Letters and newspaper articles were written. The paper companies and the consulting firms said the villagers, NGOs and citizens were being paid to oppose the tree farms by competing paper companies. In 1997 the government changed its policy: no more new eucalyptus farms. Does this story make me hopeful? Yes, it is good for bedtime. But take a step back and look wide. Take it all in, all over the world, every country. I like Canada, but I just found out that even though, to prevent domestic cancer cases, they made using asbestos in any quantity in any building material or manufacturing process illegal in Canada in the 1980s, they still process and package it for export to third world countries. Health officials in India see increasing cases of mesothelioma every year, tens of thousands of people are dying. I thought we had fixed this problem. But someone still has money to make. Look out at the socio-political landscape. It’s a place where logic and reason does not motivate action or change. There are thousands of uphill battles to fight. I think about who is fighting whom, what the issues are, how everything is interconnected, where the control is concentrated and when it all started to go bad. And I feel hopeless.

My Facial Hair Experiment

It is hard to shave in the hills. The few locals who grow enough hair for it to be an issue probably only do it once every two weeks. And I have no idea how they do it. Taking a shower out there involves bending over a bucket of green water and splashing yourself with a bowl. The ‘water room’ definitely doesn’t have a mirror and I’ve never seen a can of shaving cream for sale within 100 kilometers of the villages. One guy I met only grows hair from a medium sized mole on his right cheek. And he definitely doesn’t shave because the three hairs growing from the mole are about 6 inches long. So when I’m up there I don’t get out my razor and risk facial gangrene. Therefore, Gabe in the hills means fuzzy Gabe. My last 4 day stint in the hills came after a weekend of no shaving. And when I got back to Chiang Mai I figured I’d rock the beard for a little while. I cleaned up my neck and my cheeks and hit the town feeling tough, manly and burly, and also a little scratchier and hotter than usual. I thought it would be hard to stand out more given the rarity of a 6 foot tall, 215 pound, curly haired, white guy in Thailand, but the beard did the trick.

Last Friday my boss comes to my desk to let me know we’re going, on Saturday, to the big once a year National SDF meeting in Phetchaburi. He tells me to bring some clothes and a toothbrush. It wasn’t until hour 11 of the 15 hour road trip that I found out it’ll be a 3 day conference to assess the progress of SDF. Aside from wishing I had brought more clothes and a towel, it was great. I met some awesome people who are passionate about making their world a better place and I learned a ton about SDF. We made PowerPoint presentations, talked about how the coup will affect our work, developed strategies for the next 5 years, discussed funding sources and ate and drank like it was a Roman Bacchanalia. My translator was an interesting chap named Jo. Jo used to be John when he worked for a telecom company in the UK. Then, one day, three years ago, he decided he needed to see more of the world and he moved to Thailand. He took a 90% pay cut and went from working for an international company of 90,000 people to an NGO of 40 people. It was nice to have a phalang friend to share the conference with. Without Jo I would have been very bored and lost. Thanks Jo.

The meeting, held at a Boy Scout camp that served great food, was a nice mix of a professional event involving people committed to the task at hand and a giant casual retreat of like minded people and families. I must have met 30 new people. At first they seemed a little cold and distant. I figured it was the standard Thai shyness towards phalang. But then I started to pick up on people talking about me. Thai Thai Thai Thai Thai Thai Thai phalang Thai Thai Thai Jew Thai Thai America. I realized I was getting described as the Jew from America. And I started to think about anti-Semitism and how people perceived me. Then I remembered my beard and I decided to do an experiment. I took careful mental notes on the various types of facial hair the Thai men at the meeting were sporting and I drew up a plan. On the second morning of the conference I shaved. This was no easy task given that I only had a dull razor, a small bottle of South African shaving oil and my beard was thick. But I persevered. When I looked at myself in the mirror I laughed. Was I really going to go around looking like this?

I had given myself a long mustache that dropped down around the corners of my mouth, a hearty soul patch under my bottom lip and a wider than normal racing stripe to cap my chin. With clean and smooth cheeks I went to my seat at the conference table and began collecting the results of my study. It was conclusive. My attempt to look more Thai was successful. People were more friendly and warm and chatty with me; I felt more “in.” The change was dramatic; it was as if while I was out of the room shaving, everyone was learning English. That night I basked in the social atmosphere of a Thai barbeque, which oddly involves a lot of raw beef. I also played drunken name games with a fun group of twentysomethings who were newer additions to the SDF family. I figure, when in Rome, it’s OK to look funny. Now I just need to decide how long to keep this Thai goatee for.

Hike

This morning I actually went for a run. Can you believe that? I woke up, took my anti-malaria pills, drank a bunch of water, put on my second most dirty pair of shorts and started running towards the park up the hill from my flat. But I had a good reason. It’s a long story.

Yesterday afternoon, after work, I had nothing to do and I’d been sitting in front of my computer all day, so I decide to go for a hike. I drive my moto up to this spot in a nearby park where I saw a trailhead last week. I park and go over to the sign. It’s all in Thai. There is no scale and no numbers to interpret as a distance. The map shows a couple of trails, some waterfalls and some shrines. I say to myself, “Whatever, what could wrong, this’ll be nice, I’ll just take the right fork and stay on the small loop.” So I set out. There’s a lot of uphill, which I like ‘cause I’m getting my heart rate up. I’m really moving. I’m surrounded by some nice dry broadleaf deciduous forest, the groundcover is sparse; you can see lots of dirt. The sky is blue and life it good. Soon the path levels out. Then I start to hear a river. I’m getting closer to it, it’s on my right. I find a nice little side path and shoot over to the river. It’s a great spot. There are pools where you could sit and soak and big banana trees all over; their giant leaves are swaying in the wind. I dip my feet in the water and it’s nice and cool. I have a moment and then decide it’s been enough of a break. I take my side path back to the trail and continue on. I pass a ratty looking dog who gives me a look as if to say, “What are you doing out here?” I expect to see his owner coming up after him but there is nothing. Soon the forest is getting wetter and denser. There are vines hanging everywhere and moss on all the rocks and thick green shrubs cover the ground. Skinny young trees are struggling to grow in the shade created by the tight knit of the overstory. I continue on. For a while I’m walking along a stream. The sound is pleasant but I keep expecting the trail to make a left and begin this loop I think I’m on. Instead the trail slowly veers right and I can no longer hear the stream. Soon there is a moss covered rock wall on my left and I’m in a bamboo forest. It’s not like the clean well ordered one I was in in Hawaii. The bamboo here is in knots. Falling all over itself. I’m ducking under the ones that sag and stepping over the dead. It is dark in there. I’ll take a moment here to answer the question you may be asking. Why didn’t I turn around? I don’t know. It never crossed my mind to do so.

Now it definitely feels like dusk. And the sounds of the forest are getting louder and more diverse. My mind is worried about how this episode will end but my body is kind of on autopilot, moving ahead waiting for an event to signify a new course of action. Then I get to a little stone bridge about 10 feet long that straddles a small stream. The bridge has high walls and a pleasant arch to it. Someone clearly put some time into building this. On the other side the forest falls away and I come to a river. Big broad flat rocks line the bank. I look downstream towards the direction where my hike began and I can see through the trees the lights of Chiangmai. It looks far away and far below my current elevation. I try to think about how much elevation I’ve gained and can’t pin it down. I realize it’s chilly. I must have climbed through the layer of smog that traps the city’s heat. Then I look upstream and can see some light, like a candle flickering. And I smell incense. I look around and find that the path is gone. So I walk upstream, in the stream. I go around a bend and come upon a shrine. Nine life-size Buddha statues are sitting under a large rock that juts out from the hill as if they came here to seek cover and just stayed. They each have distinct facial features and expressions. They are clothed with the traditional single piece of orange cloth. At their feet there are bundles of orchids, brass pots of dirt that hold the remains of sticks of incense, and piles of yellow wax. One of the statues has in front of him a fresh burning candle and a burning stick of incense. I look around but do not see anyone. I take it all in for a moment. I feel very lucky to have found this. But then my thoughts return to the task at hand: getting home. I notice a path that goes around the Buddhas’ rock and start on up.

The path immediately becomes very steep and feels very unofficial. At one point I lose it and then find it. I walk through another bamboo forest and then a stretch where the path becomes a wide space between trees that is covered in vegetation up to my thighs. The good news is this is the right direction. I figure that if this path eventually turns left there is a chance it will make my loop. Then I bump into a wire. I have found what appears to be a power line running from the shrine uphill. It is attached to mini concrete telephone poles about 6 feet tall. I follow the wire. After about 10 minutes I see, about 100’ in the distance, a clearing lit by fluorescent light. The light gives the forest an eerie feel. As I approach I can make out a small A-frame style building sitting on a wooden platform. There is a sink outside and a small leaf covered hut across from the building. It looks like a small camp. I decide this is where the monks who tend to the shrine live. I entertain a brief fantasy of joining them for dinner. Then I remember that they do not eat dinner. As I approach I hear the sounds of a TV or a radio coming from the building. I think about how difficult it would be to describe my situation to a stranger in the forest using only my miming skills. So I walk slowly around the camp hoping to find something beyond it, like my left turn. On my way around the camp I get clotheslined by his clothesline 3 times. He had it zig-zagged between 4 trees. I make it around the camp where I find some stairs cut out of the hill. I climb them to the top of the hill.

When I get to the top of the hill I step out of the forest and onto a lawn. I have arrived at a weather station. There’s the building with the office and I see the tower with all the gauges and instruments on it to measure pressure and temp. I know where I am because I recognize it from my drive up the mountain two Sundays ago to visit the famous temple Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. I passed it. Apparently the camp was for the station’s caretaker. I remember from the drive up that the station was after the smaller lesser temple and before the waterfall. I can’t believe how far away I am from where I need to be. If I remember correctly this was about 5 kilometers outside of town on the road that winds its way uphill. Now I feel screwed. The darkness of night is coming faster. I run around to the back of the weather station to look for the magic path I want so badly to find. Nothing. So I decide that the best course of action is to return to the shrine down the hill because that must be near the lesser temple. How else to explain the fresh candle? I just hadn’t seen the path from the shrine to the temple. From the temple I will be able to catch a ride down the mountain and back to town. Good plan. So I sneak around the camp again and step into a wet patch. I look uphill and realize I am directly below the sink. The sink probably has a line feeding it from a tank of collected rainwater but I doubt there is a proper sewage line hooked up to the drain. I’m standing in the waste stream. So I try to take a delicate step away but instead step into a trail of mud. I slide on my feet for a couple of yards and then hop off my mud skateboard. It is now way too dark.

I jog down the hill taking strategic leaps of faith over bushes. I am moving through the vegetation with reckless abandon. And I am so relieved to make it back to the shrine. I find the path to the temple and walk up the stairs. I take off my sandals and go inside. Inside there is a feminine Buddha about 15’ high with piercing painted eyes. Next to her are two 10 foot ones. And sitting in front of her off to one side is what looks like an old man who was dipped in bronze. The statue is so detailed and lifelike I am worried about disturbing his meditation. I think about the Buddha boy. Someone never moving but still working tirelessly for the benefit of the entire world. Then I look down. I cannot remember a time when I was more dirty. My clothes are soaked with sweat and splashed with mud and covered in seeds, stickers, burrs and there are a couple complete vines wound around my legs. I realize that I will not be getting a ride down the mountain. So I sit on the mats in the middle of the floor to rest my legs. I think I sat there for about 15 minutes. I thought about how I arrived at this place and about how long the walk down would take, I thought about how the temple was built and I thought about putting some money in the donation box. Then I thought about my breathing. And after a couple of minutes I wasn’t thinking about anything. I just sat. And that was really great.

Then I got up and dropped 20 Baht into the donation box. I lit one candle and one stick of incense (jasmine, I think) for the Buddhas in the temple and I took one stick and two candles outside to the shrine for the next foolish hiker. Then I started walking down the mountain along the ‘highway.’ It took me about 2.5 hours. I walked by some strange noises and some dancing lights in the forest that freaked me out. I passed the time but counting to 1000 and trying to not get hit by the speeding cars and motorbikes going up the mountain. I named all the constellations I could see that I knew. I watched the lights of Chiangmai get closer and I felt the air get warmer. Finally, at the bottom of the mountain I passed the national park checkpoint and another temple. I passed the zoo and the university and the office of the Royal Farming Initiative. I bought some carrot juice and a Thai iced tea and some yummy sweet French fries fried in coconut oil from some street vendors. I walked home, I showered and I went to sleep very tired. This morning when I woke up I realized that I had left my moto at the trailhead. So I went for a run. It was right where I left it.

Bamboo

There is bamboo everywhere here. You may think I’m silly for stating that. But it is really impressive. I knew that coming here I’d see a lot of bamboo, but damn. The other day I was watching some dudes build a house. When they need to get up high to put up some sheetrock or to paint, they just walk into the woods with a machete, cut down a 40’ high, 4” thick piece of bamboo, then drag it back to the worksite, hack it up, and throw up some bamboo scaffolding. It is so cool. They use ropes to bind together all the joints. They tie a loose knot and put a smaller piece of bamboo through the knot. Then they just twist it until it is crazy tight and they tie of the twisting stick so it doesn’t unwind. Then they jump up on that joint and keep going higher and higher. There are 5 story buildings here wrapped in bamboo scaff. I love it. I wonder if there has ever been a major accident involving a bamboo collapse. And in the hills I watched a villager cut up pieces of bamboo and weave a rope together in like 5 minutes to tie a bundle of bamboo to his truck. In their huts, the floors and siding, it’s all bamboo. Sometimes I’ll be in a hut and step on spot on the floor that is a little weak, it gives more than it ought to, it lets out a little creak of strain. The villagers love that. So I make a mental note of where not to step. I have a mental map for the floors of all the huts I’ve been in. Did you know you can make paper and fabric from bamboo? That stuff can do anything. And it grows so quickly. In the Karen tradition when a baby is born the umbilical cord and the placenta are placed in piece of bamboo and the bamboo is tied to a tree. Over the years, the tree will wrap around and consume the bamboo. The spirit of the person and the spirit of the tree will become connected. So every Karen person has their own tree. It is forbidden to cut down the tree. And when the person gets old and sick ceremonies will be made at the base of the tree to prolong the person’s life. I saw my first such tree this weekend. I came upon a wide open field in the middle of the forest. There were piles of felled trees on the edge of the clearing waiting to be collected and taken to the lumber yard. But standing there in the middle of the field was one proud giant old tall strong beast of a tree. I wanted to shake its hand. This photo is of some bamboo that a villager said was 20 years old. It was huge, about as big around as a cantaloupe. It’s just sitting in the middle of a village, like they’ve been saving it for something special all these years.

SDF: 1900 - 2006

Here’s what I have learned: The Thai government used to profit from allowing logging companies to harvest wood from its forests. The hill tribes didn’t like this and they sabotaged the logging companies’ efforts. The logging companies complained to the government and it forcibly removed some of the more aggressive hill tribes from their land. Many fires were set in the forests, some by the hill tribes to stop the logging (ironic) and some by the logging companies to disturb the hill tribes (also ironic). Things were violent and destructive. In the 1960s some important government guy visited the US and went to Yellowstone. When he got back to Thailand he established the National Forest system. A huge percent of Thailand became protected land. Logging ceased but life was still rough for the hill tribes. There were more forced removals. The government did not want to acknowledge the rights of the people who had lived in the forests for hundreds of years. The government has tried to contain the hill tribes and restrict their use of the forest. But the hill tribes practice a well developed sustainable organic method of agriculture involving crop rotation. Some fields used to grow crops get breaks as long as six years. This all but eliminates soil nutrient depletion and landslides. And the hill tribes are responsible managers of the wood and bamboo resources of the forest out of necessity; their whole way of life depends on the availability and health of the forest. The government uses helicopters to survey the land and when it sees hill tribe people cultivating a ‘new’ plot of land people are sometimes fined and arrested. In addition, there are conflicts between different hill tribes. Some are more aggressively abandoning subsistence living and pursuing farming for profit. This changes their lifestyles and their resource use. For example, the Hmong people, who live upland of the Keren, have recently begun to grow lumber to sell. But this reduces the amount of water available to the Keren.

SDF acts as a mediator between the various parties. And it makes progress on multiple interconnected fronts using baby steps. SDF is in it for the long haul. It interacts with the media and the hill tribes and the public and the government. It teaches sustainable farming and does advocacy work. It organizes public gatherings and everyone who works here is cool. SDF was started 10 years ago by Mr. Pihiyo Dacho. He is a great guy, hardworking, good sense of humor, he has vision and he is a natural leader, he is powerful and present in that great soft-spoken kind of way. SDF’s main field coordinator is Manop. Manop is the guy who takes me into the field. Manop is Keren (a hill tribe) and he’s a big drinker. Manop’s English gets much better when he drinks but it also gets more useless and rambling. He is a whiz in his red 4WD Nissan Extended Cab Pickup Truck. Manop can drive any road at any incline, even when it isn’t a road. Manop wears a straw cowboy hat that say’s Marlboro on it and as far as I can tell, a typical field trip is all about Manop driving around and meeting with people. Oh yeah, and drinking with them. He is a master networker. He has to know who the major players are and what their major interests are. SDF also has a full-time GIS (mapping) guy. Pau has a Master’s in geography and he makes beautiful sophisticated information-rich maps. When I met Pau it became clear that I was not going to be helpful when it came to using ArcView; his skills far exceed mine.

Right now SDF is working to push a bill through the legislature that will codify the government’s recognition of the basic rights of the hill tribes. This bill is the first ever initiated by the public in Thailand, not a politician. Last year SDF was part of a coalition that organized a march and rally that lasted two months and covered hundreds of kilometers. People walked from Chiangmai to Bangkok to bring attention and media coverage to the issues of the hill tribes. SDF has a project where they are helping some villages grow and produce organic shade-grown coffee that will put no additional demands on water usage in the forest. The coffee is great and the packaging isn’t bad. I helped correct the English.

SDF’s biggest and newest project is the mapping one. This is the one I was brought in to help on. The idea is that if they are armed with maps of where they live and work, the hill tribes will be able to force the government into dealing with the de facto realities of the hill tribes’ living situations. The project started by training the hill tribes to survey and mark their land. Then villagers were trained to use GPS units. They would walk their land and log the GPS information. Back at the SDF offices the data were downloaded and maps were made. However, the government said that the maps’ resolution was not good enough. So SDF is adapting and responding. It is all very exciting.

I’m gonna talk about where we are now on another post. It’s Friday night and I’ve put in two trips to the hills this week and I could use a beer right now.

My Moth Larva

Here's the deal with the moth larvae. I arrive at the village leader's eating hut after the long drive up into the mountains. We sit down by the fire and he brings out the Keren rice whiskey because it is always time to drink when you are in the hills. And Manop, the field guide says something to the leader's kid in Thai. The kid goes to put water on the fire to make some food for us and the leader says something to the kid in Thai. It seemed like, "Hey kid, do we have any more of that snack left over; you know the one that will freak out the phalang (white person)?" The kid goes to a stack of covered bowls in the corner, checks them out and brings one over. I see the contents and my first thought is, "Oh shit, maggots." Manop grabs a bunch and pops them into his mouth looking quite content. He chews and nods his head from me to the bowl. I shake my head politely. They are about one inch long and segmented and they look like they’ve been working out. They are shiny and cream colored and there is some chopped Thai chive in the bowl with the larvae. One end of each larva has a little black dot and I think, "That must be the head." Then I think, "Or it's the anus." Yes, the word anus appears in my mind and that sets my brain off. I’m thinking about all the parts that are in this whole organism that is food to these people. Manop is already aware that I am eating adventurously and starts the pressure. He tries in his broken English to explain that they are good, they have vitamin C and that they turn into bugs that fly. I keep trying to communicate, "No thanks." He makes a flapping gesture, then smiles, then rubs his belly and goes in for more. By now the kid and the leader are munching away too. I realize it's gonna be a lot of work to continue to decline so I grab the prettiest larva I can find in the bowl and put it into my mouth. It tastes oily and salty in a good way. But then I start to think more about what it is that I’m doing and I get a little grossed out. I figure I ought to apply the band aid removal method in this situation and make it a fast big pain, instead of a long drawn out little pain. I begin to chomp but it is squishy and slippery in my mouth. I have a brief flash back to my first time eating escargot when I was in fifth grade. I remember that I survived that experience and proceed more confidently with this one. The moth larva takes more work and more time than I care to invest but I manage to get it into enough bits that I can swallow it and not feel like I’m allowing a giant diseased worm to wriggle down my throat. I’ve done it; the horror is over. I tell Manop that it wasn't that bad and I smile. I’m actually only lying a little. I decline the offer to have more and everyone's ok with that.

Dinner Party

Two nights ago I was invited over to the home of Tuk and her 6 roommates for dinner. I’m going to have trouble remembering all their names. I know I met an Oyi, an Ohn, and an Oha. I think I was the only straight person there. Tuk works at SDF. Her friend, Grib, is my contact person with AJWS, the US-based organization that placed me in Thailand. Grib is butch and drives a big truck and uses a set of dentures as her key chain. Tuk looks way younger then her 35 years and is super sweet. I like them. Thais are very accepting of all sexualities. Last Saturday they took me to the mall so I could buy a phone and sheets. I watched how Thais politely discuss which brand of toilet paper to buy and share a papaya salad by separating out their favorite veggies. Grib has been doing a lot of translating for me as I get to know what it is the SDF does and needs help with. After the mall we went to Tuk's house for coffee. I met some of Tuk's roommates. They have a great porch and an outdoor kitchen that is set back in the jungle. And they have about 7 dogs. 6 of them are great but one doesn’t like phalang (white people) and he always barks at me aggressively. I was told that I am welcome to come over anytime for breakfast, a regular group event. They asked if I knew how to cook and I said, “Yes.” So now they are planning a night of Italian food and there is talk of Chinese and Japanese nights as well. It’s nice to have a community to belong to. Tuk has designed a house that is about 1 month away from being complete. She is using gorgeous recycled teak wood for the doors and windows. The dining room has a huge vaulted ceiling and the master bedroom has a lovely balcony. The tile in the kitchen and bathrooms is beautiful and the best part is that her new house will connect with the great porch of the house she currently lives in. It will be like a fabulous compound of gays and lesbians working for NGOs and arts organizations. The other American here, a journalist named Lisa, works at an NGO across from mine. Lisa has a theory about Thais who work at NGOs being slightly outside of the ‘norm.’ You can read her article on her trip to a Keren village, the one I’ve now been to twice, here.

So at dinner the food was excellent. It reminded me of taco night. It was a dish from Southern Thailand, lots of little bowls of various ingredients that you assemble based on your taste. But instead of tortillas the base is rice. We had fresh lemongrass and there was pomelo, my favorite citrus fruit, and some stuff I had never seen before, like a radish-like pink flower. Desert was papaya and guava and beer and plum wine. So after all the food was gone we sat around for quite some time talking about food and drink and who likes the morning and who like to party. And I looked around at everyone and had myself a nice moment. I had new friends.

To Work

This morning I got to work early. I've decided I love the wind in my hair and I love my motorbike. Nothing gets my day off to a fabulous start like zipping through the narrow winding roads in my neighborhood in the 'suburbs' of Chiangmai. I think that if all my transportation was this fun, I'd be late a lot less.

So I’m at work, at my desk, in front of my computer. Funny that I had to travel halfway around the world to get a normal job. Things here are good. I feel settled and have a good sense of what my experience here will be like in the weeks to come. Today is a big day at SDF but I’m out of the loop. Today SDF is conducting training for the tribal and provincial representatives so that they can clearly and forcefully articulate their perspective on the relevant issues during the conference with the Thai bureau of land management that will go down this Saturday. Then Sunday, SDF will hold a session to discuss how the trainings and the conference went. Then Monday and Tuesday, SDF will be developing its 5 year plan. The people at SDF have been preparing for the activities of the next five days for one year. And what happens will affect how I can best help SDF. It’s huge. Yesterday I was invited to join in all the activity but now I cannot find anyone. I think the training is being held at nearby community center but I don’t know where exactly it is. It’s kind of frustrating. I am quickly learning that there will not be much hand holding and direction.

I think I’ll blog and begin to collect my thoughts on my time here. The one thing that is clear is that I will be writing a report on the activities of SDF so that the next volunteer can hit the ground running and be as productive as possible. I also think that SDF needs help to specifically describe the skills that the next volunteer needs to have. Because it is becoming clear to me that I am a bit of a poor fit for the current needs of SDF. That said, I am interested in being as helpful as I can be. I am also beginning to think that a big part of being a volunteer here is to just be around, to be a white face seems to confer organizational legitimacy.