My face is smiling and my heart is crying

After posting that last entry just a few minutes ago, I had a conversation regarding the very rights I discussed in that posting during which my friend said the above quote.

Regardless of the pain here there is so much beauty. Here is a glimpse of an awesome ceremony of sending balloons into the sky on the full moon day last month. We were welcoming Buddha... note, all the lights you see in the sky are balloons, none are stars.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1485682184987415684

Welcome.

Coups are you?

What to do on a typical morning when you roll from your sleeping mat and lift yourself free of your mosquito net to be greeted with news of a coup d’etat in place of the normal rooster crowing?

At first, it was very little. A week ago on Wednesday (the coup occurred Tuesday night here) my class and I continued on with things as normal, pounding in vocab and when to use spatial prepositions. The only true way the coup affected our lives that day was the closure of the post office and an excessive amount of rugrats wandering the street and popping their head into our classroom as their own school was closed.

Since then, life has gone on mostly normally. There is a myriad of subtle differences in my daily life—many of which I am sure I don’t even notice—such as more policemen out, more arrests of illegal immigrants (possibly the majority of the inhabitants of my town), no one selling lotto tickets, and a quieter scene around town (again, due to the illegal immigrants feeling unsettled and passing the time karaoke VCD by karaoke VCD at home). Apart from these subtle differences, there is one change that is neither subtle nor drastic: the lockdown of my acquaintances.

Ahem. What? Lockdown?

Yes, lockdown. It so happens that, like many people in this town, many of my good friends’ fate in working and living here rests on the whims of some authorities who have an agreement with some other authorities and those authorities are talking to some other authorities, somewhere, in some authoritative heaven where the god of authority perches with a lightning bolt labeled “the rules.” Therefore, with the tenuous situation of a military coup in Thailand, most people have been keeping on the safe side and sticking around the house, office, apartment, or what have you. For many of my acquaintances this means confinement to a space consisting of a small house and, if lucky, a front or back yard.

This change is not drastic because many of my friends take serious precautions already, even when a military coup doesn’t happen upon their daily schedule, such as not wandering about town in large groups, limiting leaving their place of residence to one day a week, staying inside when they hear there are a lot of officers around town, etc. This adjustment is not subtle, either, because this is one of the longer periods of time where people are sticking around inside, rubbing salt into the wound that no, not only do they not have rights and freedoms in Burma, but they also lack those things outside of Burma, in a place that is a sometimes democracy (Thailand).

I feel doubly pained by all of this right now when I compare the “lockdown” situation of those I am close to with my own life, needs, and freedoms as a white “farang” (foreigner) here in Thailand. A few weeks ago six of my students left Sangkhla, five to temporarily attend university in Burma (they will likely return here at the end of November), and one to attend a very cool 9-month school in Chiang Mai focusing on human rights and the environment. It has been hard for me to say goodbye to them, all of whom hold a special place in my heart, and accept the new, shrunken class which remains (this is not to say that each member of the remaining class isn’t incredible). What’s more, it seems to me that I am hitting the natural slump after the initial euphoria that accompanies all transitions. In working through this post-honeymoon period, I have found my savior in life outside my house and office with new and old friends on all sides of town, solitary walks, runs, and bike rides, and general wanderings around unbeaten paths of red dust and hopping snakes. I am finding that in these escapes from my house/office (next door to each other) I unearth my patience and energy. And then I think about what my life would be like if I were faced with the situation of most of my good friends here and could not do any of these things that allow me to reach a point of sanity and happiness again.

It’s like a punch in the gut—to hear of the oppression all my friends face in Burma—the forced labor, the whimsical desires of the military junta and the necessity to follow them, the alarmingly low level of education, the theft of property, the poverty that rips them of time to even think about things greater than the next meal—and then learn that they can come here to Thailand where they are away from the junta yet live like caged birds. The pain I feel when a friend compares herself to our scrappy kitten only to say that the kitten has more rights than she does makes me choke back hot ugly tears of sadness and anger.

This pain manifests itself in me as a deep rage and desire to take out this anger somewhere. Maybe I can yell at the person who is telling everyone to stay in. Maybe I can yell at my own friends and tell them to just use the rights they SHOULD be granted by virtue of being a human. But the sharp reality is that neither of these outlets are the true culprits; no, the one to blame is the military regime, a malleable beast that is dispersed in the veins of Burma, staining its teeth blood-red as it chews beetle nuts stolen from rural farmers, and sitting in a building created through the forced labor of numerous citizens.

So I sit here now, back at home, Billie Holiday playing on the ipod and a big beetle buzzing around and occasionally smacking me in the head. And I write to you to communicate the pain and grit and shit that exist here, musing on what I can do to make this inequity inch its way towards equality… it feels like a battle of David and Goliath.

I guess I should keep in mind that David did eventually win that battle, however.

Slice of life

I was touched. I thought you might be too...

sunset in Sangkhla.

Posting and video to come later today.

Love.

Sticky Rice Extravaganza

Fire Breathing Dragons:

Hello and welcome back to my life after, what I admit, was far too long of an absence on the bloggosphere.

In first creating a blog I promised myself very little other than that I would never once start a sappy blog entry with some self-important apology for not writing. This is for two reasons: first, your precious minutes are far more worthy of philosophizing on the important topics of the true creation of human beings, the significance of man, fat-reduced avocados and Trader Joe’s bird’s nest appetizer deliciousness. Second, while I would love to consider this blog fundamental to your daily going-ons, I will shy away from such conceit until I too bring an invention such as TJ’s birdsnests to play in the world arena.

Yet here I am, groveling at your feet: sorry for not writing.

This being said I will now inform you of a new pledge. I will write one blog posting per week and shoot it out into cyberspace come rain, heat, gecko turds or scantily-clad monks. This is my gift to you, oh dear ones, to improve your procrastinating, unproductive moments and give you a slice of life from the border.

A final note on this blog, which I will make part of its permanent description: please share this prose with anyone and everyone you please. My experiences and information are not to be sheltered from the world in my arms alone. The issues, joys, pain, and humor to which I am exposed are facts of the world and deserve to be shared as such. This blog gives you, dear reader, the opportunity for a grassroots glimpse of life in a place likely to be upside-down from your own experiences, and I welcome you to jump in and share it with others. SPREAD THE GOOD WORD.

Ah hah! Now on to the juice:

Laos: Great. A lovely adventure allowing me time to gain perspective on life here at home as well as open my eyes to another country in this region-- its customs, personality, beauty, and the particular issues that plague it. It felt both wonderful and strange to be a backpacker-- wonderful to become anonymous for a few weeks and act on my every whim, and strange to be one among a sea of tourists often much wealthier than those inhabiting the actual land under our feet, outfitted with cameras and passports and ready to be taken advantage of by those willing to take it. I therefore feel conflicted about writing much about Laos, as I know the vantage point of a traveler is limited, and conclusions drawn from cultural interactions are often premature.

Foreward aside, I will now list for you some rather charming/ fascinating aspects about this “Jewel of the Mekong:”

1) The land is unlike any I have ever seen. Due to the rain, a lush green cloaked everything in sight and water seemed to dribble and spill out from everywhere, giving the natural environment the mystique of a long-lost waterworld, inhabited by dinosaurs and mosquitoes so large they ate rats. The limestone karsts jut out from everywhere, adding a sense of drama to each bus ride and rice-field tryst. Rice paddy lines the landscape as far as the eye can see. The beauty of the water now coating these fields is a thin disguise for the pain this earth endures in the dry season-- a close inspection reveals earthquake-like cracks in the land just below the water’s surface.

2) Just as the water spilled over upon everything I encountered, so did the sticky rice. Every meal was served with a delicious bundle of the white and gooey staple, encased in a cloth inside a small or large bamboo basket. The cap of the basket was to be replaced every time you took a walnut-sized ball from it, mainly due to the bad luck that was sure to find you if you disobeyed, and secondarily so the rice would not lose its heat and general deliciousness. The sticky rice was so copious it even found its way onto the sides of the golden and glass-laden temples, left there as a prayer ritual for Buddha. Other diet staples include the delicious lapp (a dish of sticky rice, water buffalo, fish, or chicken meat in a flavorful marinade), water buffalo jerkey, spam wrapped in banana leaves (ehem… this one can be placed on the “let’s leave it in Laos” list), dried and fried rice cakes, dried and fried Mekong river moss, and baguettes, baguettes everywhere, leftover from the Frenchies during their tenure at the Laotian helm.

3) The only things possibly more plentiful than the rice were the bomb carcasses—both alive and dead— planted like seeds in northern Laos from the U.S. offensive in the 1960s. In order to contain Vietnamese guerrillas, the U.S. dropped a record number of bombs in Laos, leaving many dead then and many still dying today as they take an unlucky, unsuspecting step in the wrong direction. Remarkably and not surprisingly is the reaction to the bombs littering the Laotian countryside. Like so many people I have met here in Sangkhlaburi, nothing goes to waste, including old tools of devastation and death. Instead of shunning the metal meant to destroy, Laotians have recycled successfully dismantled bombs into tables, tools, monastery bells and more.

4) Aside from being resourceful, the people I met were friendly, beautiful, and accompanied by a sense of humor both charming and mundane. The friends I made in my short stint there seemed far less interested in “saving face” as they are here in Thailand and to a lesser extent in Burma, and I found this gloriously refreshing.

5) And lastly, the monks reigned supreme. The few cities to which I wandered were dotted with monasteries and temples every few blocks, the image of orange robes cleaned and hung to dry pervading my line of sight. Giving to the monks in the morning was not the humdrum and poorly attended routine on my block at home, reserved only for the most faithful and earliest to rise. Indeed, giving to the monks was a full-on ceremony at 5:30 AM in which entire families, armed with coconut-sweet rice wrapped in banana leaves, lined the streets and a show of orange clad men, shaved heads, and serious expressions prodded along, receiving donations and chanting a prayer from time to time. Come 6:15 the show was over and any unsuspecting tourist hitting the streets at this moment would have no idea of the activity which existed just moments before.

And that, my dear friends, is my wound-up, spout-out, round-about version of Laos for you. For a true taste pack your bags and hoard your U.S. dollars (accepted everywhere there), and hop the next flight to Vientiane.

And as my gecko Stanley makes his mating call, so I sign off for another bloggo entry.

To the moon we go!

Laura