All for the Pomelo

There are so many images and thoughts buzzing around in my mind right now that it is hard to pick just one to share. Repeatedly during the week, I find myself internally narrating a situation I am experiencing as though it is a story. It seems that many times during the day something strikes me as so far removed from my normal life that I can only see it in terms of a piece of fiction, something that I must record for others, and hope that in that transferring I can further process and understand the reality of the beauty and happiness and sometimes tragedy that I am experiencing.

It is a Sunday afternoon and I am sitting in my room typing away on my laptop (not to be taken as meaning I have internet at home. While I do live in a phenomenal pad and enjoy the company of my laptop hauled from the US—I’ve learned to love my flash drive and create much of my work at home to eventually be printed/ transferred online at the MWO office 10 yards off), smoke from my mosquito coil (a small, green coil slowly burning on the ground beside me—meant to keep mosquitoes away) curling up around me, music from the VCD (a crappier version of DVDs) sneaking into my ears from the MWO office where the students are listening/watching the same music video that is played everyday, at least twice a day.

My room is a light blue color, cement walls, a tile floor, a beautiful wooden window flung open in front of me that reveals the neighbor’s fence, which is adorned with some sort of dizzy pepper plant, and many slugs that cling to it. The sky is blue and gray—a sunny day in the rainy season, and I see the tops of many trees and large bushes in their yard: coconut, banana, mango… the list goes on.

I am kept company by a few small lizards on the wall and my uncaged, larger pets named Stanley and Gretta—two green and red geckos who have permanently moved into my room in the last week. They’re great kiddos—mainly 'cause I can just go over to the wooden panel they live behind and stare at them whenever I please, and I don’t need to worry about feeding them or cleaning up their crap (they only use my floor as their litter box about once a week). They’re pretty sneaky and you might not notice their presence if it weren’t for small signs I am now picking up on: a tiny piece of their tail hanging out below a rafter, only the wings of the moth in my room last night left when I wake in the morning, etc.

So here’s this posting’s main event: the journey I took yesterday with my friend Hong Sar. The main purpose of this escape was to venture into the “jungle”—what we would refer to as the countryside in the U.S., but is far more exciting to call “jungle”—as one feels they might indeed see a tiger or elephant, or discover some nomadic tribe unknown to humanity until today.
We decided on our destination last week, when I declared the superiority of the pomelo (HUGE grapefruit-like fruit) over all fruits in Sangkhlaburi, and Hong Sar revealed the fact that he knew of a location where the pomelo trees were dripping with ripe fruit, where coconuts fell two feet in front of you begging to be consumed, and, best of all, where it all was free: the JUNGLE.

We buzzed off on his motorbike at 10 AM and as we followed the smooth concrete road it quickly dawned on me that in my little house with little geckos and little cats and amazing students and rice and lesson plans and all things that comprise my daily existence how very easy it was to not realize the gorgeous scenery surrounding me. As we took turns and hit bumps we would glance to either side and see green green green. Green valleys filled with all sorts of vegetation morphed into hills in the distance and mountains even farther away until the scene eventually melted into the gray sky. Not an inch of the fertile red dirt that cakes the jungle floor was visible. I felt like a moron with a smile exploding off my face as I realized the damn beauty of it all, and felt thankful that Hong Sar’s rear-view mirrors weren’t positioned to see my uncontrollable smile. It’s hard to express your amazement with someone who knows this beauty as his backyard.

Before hitting the jungle, Hong Sar pulled off for a pit stop in a “safe house” he had told me of earlier. It turned out to be a home for mostly children with HIV/AIDS and other physical and mental disorders. Most of these kids, even the orphaned ones, would normally live in the refugee camps on the nearby Thai-Burma border, but their conditions required the assistance of a nearby Christian hospital, and thus they were torn from their communities in the camp and all a bit sad about it.

It was difficult to be with these kids. They were all beautiful and loving and excited to see some fun visitors. But an overall sadness came over me when I found no one really taking care of them—no one but themselves. Kids helping kids. One five year old made a meal for an older child who appeared to have cerebral palsy. One teenager worked silently at a nearby loom making fabric and absolutely silent. I’m sure someone was around in the distance, but it further disturbed me that Hong Sar and I could just walk into the group of small buildings in this pseudo orphanage and hang out. Other than a heavy heart I wasn’t sure what to feel—what to do—what to say to alleviate some of the loneliness of this place.

We then moved a few yards down the road to an adult facility. We passed through a small opening in a bamboo fence and into a yard where many people sat—about 20—again people with HIV/AIDS and mental disorders (interesting that these two groups were lumped together at both facilities). One woman approached us and was very chatty, seemed very excited to see new faces to speak to, and quiet starved for attention as she followed us out when we left, singing bits of a song she knew for us and unable to say goodbye. She knew a random smattering of English words and while walking around the facility demonstrated them to me. The people living there were of innumerable ethnicities- all sorts of ethnic groups from Burma, one man from China, another from Malaysia. Everyone was pretty much hanging out in silence, sleeping, or making some crafts to be sold elsewhere. The chatty woman ran indoors and back out again producing a photograph for our pleasure. It was a picture of her in Bangkok—a particularly strange thing to see as it is very difficult to get the papers to get from Burma to Bangkok. None of my students have ever been there and see it as an ultimate goal…

As Hong Sar and I left the adult facility he told me bits of the one woman’s story. He first learned of this place when he was writing a news article about it for the publication he works for and he remembered interviewing this particular woman. It turns out she was trafficked from Burma to Bangkok and sold there as a sex worker. She contracted HIV and her status was somehow discovered and she ended up back here, in a small border town, living out the foreseeable future in this facility.

A victim of sex trafficking. How strange to study and read so much about one topic and never know anyone who actually experienced it until one random moment when you pop off the road for a pit stop on the way to pick pomelos in the jungle.

The rest of the day consisted of a visit to the Christian hospital, where I saw a few cases of late stages of HIV/AIDS—emaciated bodies and weak expressions and distant eyes, and then back on the road again to the hot, mosquito-filled jungle.

With distance and some time between us and the sadness we had viewed just an hour before, Hong Sar and I picked fruit, waded through streams, sweated, laughed, joked about the unending shits we would have after such fruit gluttony, and met farmers.

But when I hopped back on my friend’s motorbike I also knew that I was dazed and uncomfortable. Through all the merriment I could not shake the thought of one of those HIV positive children or that one woman one day in the Christian hospital, occupying some bed as they withered away, another emaciated body, another statistic.