Slaughterhouse Tales

[So this post may be a little graphic...]

The slaughterhouse looks like a horror movie – red walls from five feet down, heavy-looking metal doors on sliders, the municipality butchers wearing long aprons. They are blindingly white, and the men carry the sharpest knives I’ve seen. They are acute as triangles, sharpening their edges on tinny plates.

Outside, eighty-odd pigs lie on top of each other in pens. It’s night, so they sleep now while they wait. They will be let in, three at a time, to the holding pen indoors where they will be systematically killed, taken apart, and made ready for the morning’s meat market.

This is your meat, your meal tomorrow, and it’s beginning to snore.

We CIEE students are the witnesses. The Follow the Food activity has raised awareness in our consumption, but probably none of the groups has had as emotional an impact on us. The meat group isn’t even my own. I decided to join them because I thought, as a sometimes carnivore, I should face the reality of slaughter. Now I stand here rethinking my decision. The air is smothering and smells like the foulest outhouse you can imagine. I guess this is what death smells like.

Yesterday, the meat group watched a cow die. I spoke with select members of the group hours after it had happened and something was shaken. Tess showed me pictures of the whole thing. As she was flipping through her camera’s photos and video, she mentioned how viewing through the camera lens had allowed her to feel detatched. A picture of the moment of death. She shrugs. It’s a screen, she explains. It doesn’t feel real.

For a moment I am reminded of a novel I read in Germany, Homo Faber. As the narrator transforms from a disconnected, self-repressed man to a feeler of emotions, he transforms his view of the world from behind to in front of a lens. The screen acts as a barrier; it’s called a “screen” isn’t it?

The pigs are getting restless, they know what’s coming. How could they not? The butchers are excited. It’s not that they’re blood-thirsty. This is their job, and we farang are interested in it. The fact that we care is important. They will make it a good night.

A butcher walks into the pen, holding a thick steel pipe. He corners a pig, kicks the others aside, and bludgeons the animal. The pig goes down. Swiftly one man holds down the unconscious animal, one slits the throat, and another catches the blood in a bag. As the blood is draining, they apply pressure to the stomach to hasten the process. Air escaping the throat passes between the vocal chords and they vibrate. Pig’s swan song, a hoarse call, rushes out, first high-pitched then falling until it fades away. This animal’s life is over, but it will now serve another purpose.

They dip the pig into a vat of boiling water to scald the hair off. The butchers use their knives to shave the hair. Suddenly, the head is removed, the pig hung upside-down from its feet, and the meat is gradually transformed from animal to meat. Corpse to commodity.

It is a difficult event to witness. It may have been the close air, or the fact that I’ve never before seen something so animal-like die, but at several points I become short of breath and feel faint. I step outside and crouch down while the blood returns to my face. People are mostly quiet. We all are affected – no denying that. Some cry, some disconnect, some just stare.

Afterwards we discuss, trying to make sense of it. It’s respectful in that these butchers take pride in their work. I hear at the cow slaughter, they wai-ed, or bowed, to the animal before killing it. Alejandro describes it as a sort of dance, and that’s kind of true, a ritual at least.

I am a vegetarian, and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. My reasons are varied and multi-faced, but I now have learned this has nothing to do with the experience tonight at the slaughterhouse. Animals will eat other animals. As long as the process is not disrespectful and clean, I’ve come to terms with it.

Whatever your views on the subject, I think it is an incredibly fascinating experience. If you get the chance, give some consideration to going. Examine your food – be it meat, tofu, or Coca-cola.
Don't you deserve to know where they're coming from?

Corporate Tools

Following the food [Coke] lead our happy band down to Khorat province in central Thailand. At the crack of dawn – 5:30 AM to be precise – we loaded our tired bodies and pillows into the van for the four-hour drive. Stopping at a rest stop down the highway several hours later, I had a delicious latte. This is noteworthy, I swear. Seeing as Nescafe has sunken its overly sweet talons into Thailand’s coffee culture, every drink I seem to get is sugary.

The Thai Naam Thip factory is located in an industrial park, guarded by more security than I usually see. I suppose that’s only natural, given our previous experience with Coke’s Khon Kaen distribution plant. We arrived at the office and were cordially greeted. Our presentation was held in a conference room, a small, grey, corporate room, the ubiquitous PowerPoint blazing on the plain white wall. Of course there was the Coke “swag”: Thai Naam Thip water, Coke trucker hats, sweet snacks, and obviously a cold bottle of Coke, condensation dripping down the sides of the glass, forming water rings on the table.

Our liaison for the day, a Mr. [something], gave us a presentation about the processes covered under Thai Naam Thip’s Khorat factory and what humanitarian efforts Global Coke (“Mama Coke”) is producing. Thai Naam Thip, (which means “Thai Supernatural Water”) is the company which bottles, develops, and distributes Coca-cola products around Thailand. The factory we were at produces plastic bottles for Sprite, Coke, Fanta, and bottled water; in addition they have a glass bottle reuse program.

The recycling program seems really cool in theory. From what I understand, it works similarly to the German concept of Pfand, in which one buys a product in a glass bottle at an artificially inflated price, but if you return the bottle, you get some money back. Thai Naam Thip will sell cases of beverage to distributors. If the distributors want to continue buying products, they need to return a case of empty bottles for every full one they purchase. These bottles return to the factory where they are rinsed and checked to see if they still look presentable, then filled and sold again. We had heard about this program earlier from the manager of a scrap dealership in Khon Kaen the previous day. If this idea works, I think it’s a great start to a recycling program. But still, it’s not perfect. How well does it succeed in the day-to-day? We still had questions.

A brief tour of the factory followed. They said not many pictures (I guess they don't want us, in an act of corporate sabotage, steal their information), but I'm a rebel photog, and took some anyway. Arty ones!The world’s largest advertiser, and top corporation was actually very pleasant to us. I guess that’s understandable; they didn’t get to their position by being assholes openly to people of certain statuses. Still, while I was skeptical throughout the exchange, it’s really hard to keep up this when the other party is being so personable.

They fed us a lot of Coke too. That might have had something to do with it. I don’t even like Coke that much, but I do like free stuff.

After a cordial farewell, my fleeting delusions of corporal fuzziness were shot down. Our next stop was three hours north at the Mitr Phol sugar factory. This factory acts as a sugar cane refinery, bagasse board producer, ethanol plant, and biofuel manufacturing center. The same type of presentation room was offered. The same Power Point presentation. The same whitewashed walls.

What was different was in the way the conversation went after that. After having spent about two weeks where all we were reading and experiencing pointed toward organic and small-scale as the solutions to many of today’s farming issues, I’ve just come to see organic as a vital system. Mitr Phol and I break in our thinking at this point. The company is blatant in its support of large-scale, chemical farms that practice monocropping. They provide funding for loans to farmers interested in procuring chemical fertilizers. They even lead demonstration of these techniques. At one point, someone asked what the company thought about the harmful effects on the health of those applying the fertilizer. Their response: “What problems? I don’t think they exist, because everyone uses it.”

What a smack-down back to reality.
Later, at the company-owned and run sugar cane farm, we spoke with the manager. When asked about the debt the company might be inflicting on smaller farmers – the fact that these farmers might not be able to pay it back – he brushed it off as unimportant. Seeing as we had just spent the prior week with indebted farmers, this is really – for lack of a better word – fucked up.
The exchange was really stilted. I just couldn’t ask the important, probing, possibly inciting questions that needed to be asked. Eventually Elly and Alyssa stepped up and asked about some of these contradictions milling about in my mind. My reporter’s ability is lacking, I suppose. Before I can become a better journalist, I need to build up the courage to ask “rude” questions.

Mitr Phol was no less polite than Coke was, they were simply… painting a less rosy picture. Not that this was something they meant to do. They clearly believe what they are doing is right. It just conflicts so fundamentally with my current world-view, that I can’t get over it.
We drove back to Khon Kaen, tired from travel and with a little more confusion, a little more understanding of the corporate world we live in.

Follow the Food: Part Saam (3)

So today was a long, long day. I can't quite get to it now, but the coming attractions include coke factory tour, sugar cane monolith, and pig slaughter.

Check this space soon.

Follow the Food, part Song (2)

At the crack of ten O'clock, our follow the food group (pictured partially above) set out on the quest for Coke. Being as our tour of the Coke factory is tomorrow, we didn't have anything too specific to do. Our solution to get to know our product better was to go straight to the source -- that is brewing our own batch.
First stop, the bakery! Surprisingly enough, the bakery had almost all of the ingredients that our recipe called for. On that note, our recipe was found off the internet and apparently is from the papers of Coca-cola creator John Pemberton himself. On another note, we raided the bakery for delicious fresh bread and other sweets.
Here was the fruits of our labor. That is fifteen pounds of sugar right there, along with the essential oils of various and sundry fruits and herbs.
The only things our immensely helpful bakery staff couldn't find were the citric acid, citric caffeine, naroli oil, and alcohol.
So off we went to the medical supply store, in search of the missing ingredients. What we found was creepy medical implements -- clamps and whatnot.
How do we put this all together then? The CIEE office has no kitchen to speak of, neither do our dorm rooms. Ajaan John, our faculty advisor/translator, says his house has no kitchen either. Luckily, before we were stuck with an ungodly amount of sugar, Ajaan John called up a friend of his who lives in town to let us borrow his hot pot and porch. Below, Elly and Stef set up the cauldron on the hot plate.

We went about figuring out the recipe. If you haven't looked at it yet, you won't really realize just how vague it is in quantities of ingredients and exact steps to take. We did our best approximating.This is what our pot of boiling water, sugar, lime juice, and recently added brown sugar (instead of caramel) looked like initially. Aroi mai? (Delicious?)
When it dissolved and cooled, we added the flavoring oils. Until then, we amused ourselves, talked, played with the cat, ... and ordered pizza. Seeing that we were in Thailand, it was a very American afternoon.
Us stuffing ourselves while the pot cools.
We eventually got impatient, trying to cool the concoction by adding ice cubes. Needless to say, they didn't do much but melt exceptionally quickly.
So then we decided stirring would expose the coke to more air flow, thus cooling it. This plan worked much better. (Stevie stirs the coke below)Our cooking had caused some overflow. We cleaned up the area. Incidently enough, the house we worked in is actually a dog breeder's house. There were golden retrievers in pens in the room behind the hot plate.

Stirring with ice cubes. The consistancy wasn't quite syrupy, but still thicker than water, real Coke, or most liquids. It was kind of similar in texture to orange juice.
Soon it cooled enough. The time had come to taste test!
Not everyone was a fan.
We bottled the sugary syrup up in water bottles. In my opinion, it tasted like a really sweet version of coke, but with more lemon flavor. I think we may have added a tiny bit too much lemon. Not bad if you mix with seltzer.Our end product.
Can you spot the difference between ours and Coca-cola's products? Me neither.

Monkey gone to heaven...

Last time: food! Wats! Food! Community forest! Food!
This time: Monkeys!

Yes, oh yes. Monkeys. When I first arrived in Thailand, our project facilitator (former student, like an intern), Stephanie, asked me what I was looking forward to most in Thailand. It was about the forth day in the country, and I didn’t know much about the scope of the program yet, so I glibly answered, seeing monkeys and elephants. Silly me. Now, a month into the semester, my answer would be vastly different, regardless, I have achieved my initial goal as of Sunday. I have now seen a monkey and an elephant in real life.

After bidding farewell to our forest families, we jumped in the van again for an hour-long ride. We unit facilitators sat together and broke down the previous exchanges our groups had, which devolved into a frustrating conversation. People – myself included – were becoming discouraged at our leadership skills. What was making several exchanges not really worth the group’s while? What were we doing wrong?
At a nadir, the van pulled onto the grounds of a temple. Beyond the gate was a sparsely wooded area… and tons of monkeys. This was exactly the break we needed. Piling out of the van, we noticed a change immediately in our expressions.
The monkeys, we learned later from Ajaan Dii, originally lived in a forest that covered the area beyond the gates of the temple. As the forest diminished, the monkeys were hedged into the small area by the temple, and now they pretty much live exclusively on the temple grounds, eating fruit hawked by vendors, which is sold to tourists. It’s realistically a pretty bad deal for the monkeys. There is increased competition for food that may not be a great variety, and the monkeys are now dependent on humans for their sustainance. We even witnessed a monkey fight, West Side Story-style, with two gangs duking it out over territory.
Still, those guys are pretty darn cute.
The wat itself was also neat. There are ruins, but where they’re from, I couldn’t tell you. Just about all the signs were in Thai.
Similarly, the next evening we saw an elephant, as I’ve already mentioned. The way that animals are treated when they are offered up for a tourist trap is pretty horrible. Yet there’s always this voyeuristic feeling, this yearning to see them. Like zoos. I still don’t know exactly how I feel about this whole issue yet.

That evening, we had an inspiring exchange with Sumontha Laochai, an activist for natural farming. Not only was she a wonderful speaker, tying together totally different themes into a beautiful package, but she asked us what we wanted to do with the information we’ve received. We’ve gotten this question before, but it felt personal this time, like she really listened to our different talents, our different interests and dreams. Hearing all of the diverse answers, I’m rediscovering how absolutely cool our group is.

We drove off that night with a high of a great sharing.

Bah-Chum-Chung

How to describe our forest homestay? Hm. Brief?

We arrived fresh from our Green Market exchange (yes, pun intended), worn out from the early morning and hour-long van ride. Emily and I roomed together with our Mae Samphoon, in a pretty nice house with a real bed (exciting! Not just mats on the floor!). Soon we learned about our family, as Mae prepared a delicious – and plentiful – lunch. Mae lived with her husband (whom we never officially met). Like much of the youth in rural communities, her daughter was working or studying in Bangkok, but back home visiting for the duration of our stay. I think she had a son, a cute, wiry five or six year old, but that wasn’t made explicit. That’s the thing about these Thai homestay families. Sometimes, you just don’t know who that strange man sleeping on you living room floor actually is or how he is related to your family. Anyway, the family was definitely significantly better off financially than other families, but we never did find out why. Mae, however, seemed to be fascinated with money, asking us questions about how much we were spending to be here and so on.

Or at least that what I think she was asking. Emily, who had been an exchange student in Thailand for a few months back in high school, was able to divine this much out of Mae, so I’ll trust Emily’s linguistic skill.

Speaking of strange people stopping by homestays who maybe aren’t related to your family, we had an old woman stop by that first day. I don’t think she was my Mae’s mother, but age-wise, she could have been. Anyway, the woman was sitting down next to me during lunch that first afternoon, and repeatedly started calling me “suai”, or “pretty”. I don’t mean to sound bombastic, but this isn’t really the weird part yet. Thai people have as a generality, an attraction to lighter skin, hair, eyes. The skin-care isle of the pharmacy or 7-11 is packed not with self-tanner, but skin-whitening cream. I also think that suai (pretty) in some contexts is a word for white. So we farangs get called “suai” a lot.

What did get creepy is the leg massaging that went on. Kind of awkward what-the-hell-is-going-on, nervous smiles were exchanged between me and Emily. “What is she doing?” I said through teeth clenched in a smile. And then she smelled my hair, smiled, and called me suai again. I don’t really know. So yeah. I guess I have a boyfriend now, and her name is grandma.

We had our exchange, neither horrible nor terribly enlightening. One thing that did come out was this community’s total lack of trust in the government. They have been betrayed so many times by the government, that the leaders are no longer trying to operate through the governmental route. The main issues stem from the communal forest that has surrounded and been a part of the village for centuries. With certain laws in Thailand’s long, tumultuous political history, the control of the forest has been under many different policies. Instead, they just to resist. Most recently, the authorities have claimed the forest as state land, forbidding the villagers from farming the land or entering to gather native herbs and plants, yet allowing a timber company to plant fields of harmful eucalyptus trees. These leach the ground of its moisture, and nutrients and harm surrounding plants, make reclaimation difficult. We visited the forest and saw these rows upon rows of eucalyptus. Beautiful, graceful, but dangerous.

The walk in the forest was informative. Because the community has existed here for centuries, if not longer, the wealth of local knowledge is vast. They have plants that will cure many basic ailmrents – even one, they mentioned, local researchers had come to study as a possible antidote to avian flu. Don’t mess with local wisdom, I suppose.

After a hot, sweaty walk with leaves and roots, we switched gears and terrain. Into the river for a dip! The sun was setting and the light was sublime as we waded off the bank. In the background, a man was tending to his grazing cattle. Across the river we saw a local rowing team on a brightly-painted boat practicing. Their rhythmic calls ebbed with the ripples. To the gaggle of local children on the banks, our group – thirty-odd farangs, jumping fully-clothed into the muddy river – must have looked absurd. In fact, they just gaped at us for most of it, from their vantage point on the concrete pier. From what I could understand and overhear, they were fascinated wth us – our mannerisms, our appearance, our behavior.

When we were getting out, a herd of water buffalo swam down the river and walked out of the river. That was our view as we, dripping wet, piled into the bed of a pickup, drove away from water, sun dipping low in the sky.

In the morning, most of the families went to the wat (temple) carrying silver urn-like containers filled with food. The wat held many families. Many gave a dish to the monks, seated on a raised stage at the front, while the people sat on mats. The monks and community leaders spoke – I’m assuming sermons – and we all said some type of prayer several times. We CIEE students crawled up to the front at one point, where we were welcomed by the abbot, and handed a small, stone amulet with Buddha on it. Monks aren’t allowed to touch women, so when he handed it to me, the abbot dropped the talisman into my hand. Much wai-ing (traditional Thai greeting/sign of respect. Hands in prayer stance and bow head). Much of the super-wai (super-traditional sign of respect, reserved for monks sometimes and Buddha. Involves the wai then touching the forehead briefly to the floor).

Following an hour-long ceremony, we returned to our family groups to eat a large communal lunch. Various members served indiscriminately and families joined together to share food and conversation. Once again, bountiful and delicious food,– certainly a reoccurring theme at our homestays. In fact, I have yet to be truly hungry at a homestay.

Ok, this is getting a bit lengthy, so I’ll take a break. Coming next, monkeys in the temple, inspirational talks, long car rides, and a return to KKU.

O Green World...

We had an exchange on the last night of our farm stay. It started out with such a warm atmosphere – we ate dinner all together on mats in front of the house, so much food, I could barely walk afterwards. People were talking and it seemed really warm as Paew passed out sips of local rice whiskey. Then came the exchange, which, well… didn’t go so well. First exchanges are supposed to run like a flowing conversation most times. However, this flow is really difficult to construct and one of the focuses of our program. Well, our exchange instead went rather stilted and awkward. No one was asking questions, except after awkward silences, when the questions resulting would be scattered. We had no flow, all scatter, really frustrating, especially as I was facilitating. The main speaker, Mae Arangua at one point called us out on our scattered questioning? “Why aren’t you asking about policy?” she asked. “You ask about such little issues.”

Hit the nail right on the head.

The exchange hobbled on from there, not necessarily getting worse or better, just ending. When it ended finally, we had another bai ci (string tying) ceremony. I have fewer strings, but since I bonded more with my Surin Mae, these seem to mean more. We ended with a brief dance party.
Mae must have stayed up all night preparing for Saturday’s Green Market. She was still wrapping bags of chili paste, spicing curry, and packing fruits and vegetables, the television blaring steadily in the background, when Elly, Anne, and I turned in for the night. I woke up several times during the night, and from the sound of it, Mae was still at it.
At 4:30, we students woke up to help our families set up and sell at the Green Market before another exchange. The early mornings always contain such an air of excitement, even if tempered with early-morning exhaustion. Watching the sunrise over the rice paddies from the van, while tje group half-napped on the way, it hit me for the thousandth time – my god, I’m in Thailand.
Like all Thai markets, the Green Market is a condensed flurry of activity. However, the Green Market is all organic food, far more environmentally conscious. Perhaps the best part was the passion fruit that Anne and I found and ate. Or the hour-old slaughtered pig-face on the butcher’s table. Or maybe it was seeing all of the food items we’d seen Mae work on for the days we were there on sale. It brought the situation pretty full-circle.
Once again, I’m struck by the communities that we meet on this program, their internal strength and power through solidarity. Not to sound trite, but it’s inspiring. Our group is learning what we can achieve, and coming together, but where we’re at is nowhere near any of these communities yet. I’m also constantly inspired by our group. We’re such a cool group of people, each with individual interests, specialties. We’re teaching each other, whether we know it yet or not. For example, Tess and Elly wrote an article about the landfill incinerator last week. They didn’t need the assignment to do it, they just got riled up by an issue and felt the need to produce this work that may or may not be able to get real awareness about this real issue. Real issues. This is really fun.

Follow the Food: Part Nung!

Our next assignment is called “Follow the Food”. In it, we take an item of food – vegetables, green papayas, the rest of ingredients in som tom (green papaya salad), meat, and Coca-Cola – from where you buy it in the store back to its origins. For example, if the group is papaya, they start in the market where they sell the fruit, back to its distributors, back to the farms themselves, and even back to the genetically modified organism (GMO) papayas that GreenPeace confiscated from a test field. It's a fascinating project.

My food is Coca-Cola, the big corporationy one. Already on our first day, with little actual footwork, our small group has run into the big business blockade. We started out the activity at the local stores around the CIEE office -- 7-11 (yes, they have them here), local stores -- and found they all got their cokes from the same distribution center about twenty minutes away. We hopped on the song-taew to talk to the workers at the plant, following coke back to its origins. There were seven of us students -- myself, Elly, Josh, Alyssa, Laura, Stef, Stevie, -- plus Vanessa -- one of our four process facilitators, or P-facs -- and Ajaan John -- translator extroidinaire. At the gate to the coke center, Ajaan John went ahead to try to gain entry. No luck. It seems Coke's global policy is to speak to no one unannounced. Also, no pictures please.

So we decided to try another angle -- a small drink wholesale center. Here we got to speak to the man in charge, a Mr. Kaniep, about his interaction with Coke. The details are kind of boring on their own, but I think they will contribute greatly to our results.

Anyway, later in the week, we plan on visiting the main Coca-Cola plant in Thailand, hours away (this time, an appointment has been made); maybe also pursuing the recycling end of things and revisiting the landfill. I'm excited to be an investigator into Coke's seedy (or not-so seedy) underbelly.

In other news, an elephant visited our parking lot this evening. We were having peer tutors, and then an elephant, accompanied by its three handlers, sidled up. They sold shoots of bamboo, which one could buy for twenty Baht to feed to the elephant. I know it's a horrible tourist-trap, but how often does an elephant happen across one's doorstep (quite literally)? So I bought some bamboo, and petted the elephant. Animal rights, have with me what you will.

No pictures, because I didn't bring my camera tonight.

Farmer Chords

I just got back from the first part of the food unit trip, full of different bubbling emotions. We went to Surin province, a province in the south east of Isaan, next to Cambodia. In fact, at our homestays we were about an hour away from the border. Surin is known for many things: its beautiful silk, majestic elephants, and most recently its title as the “organic province.” While the first two items are interesting, we focused our unit on the third one – organic farming.
I lived with Elly and Anne with Mae Sollohai and her family, which consisted of Paew, her son Tuh and his two adorable daughters, May, 8, and Daw, 2. They lived in the farming village of Tap Tai, a village of about eighty households, where thirty-two of those households farm organically.
First some words about the village. They are nothing if not incredibly warm and outgoing. There would be times, Elly, Anne, and I would go walking down the long road that linked the houses, and complete strangers would welcome us onto their front porches to share food or drink or mag (more on that later). We would try to practice our Thai with two families in one afternoon – one with whom we shared a som-oh (pomello, or sweet grapefruit) and talked about our families. This felt great to not only connect with people in our community, but also to connect feel entirely welcome and accepted. Frankly to be able to even brokenly communicate in Thai feels like a great step (although by no means are we fluent yet). Another impression of the village is their warmth toward each other. At one point, before an exchange, we met at the house of one of Mae Arangna, a local leader and member of the sub-district government. Several villagers were to talk to an organic organization from another province later that day. A large group of village women met that day to share food and skill to create a delicious meal for not only the visiting Thai group but for us. Elly, Stephanie, Anne and I helped by chopping garlic, cucumbers, and chili peppers.

The villagers are also incredibly hard working individually. While I didn’t get to farm, much to my disappointment, I watched Mae doing diverse labor all day. She’d get up incredibly early in the morning to gather vegetables from the garden, which she’d label for sale or start preparing. In the late morning, she whipped out the loom and started weaving patungs, the traditional Thai skirts. She also cooked and took care of the baby while the father was out catching fish; still Mae found time to make sure we were doing alright and get us farangs our beetlenut.

Ah, beetlenut. It’s what the Thai traditionally use as a type of chewing tobacco. I heard a (maybe apocryphal?) story that back in the day, black teeth were seen as a sign of beauty. Because long-term beetlenut (or mag) use will wear away at your teeth, turning them black, women started this habit. Now that standard of beauty is outdated, so you only see the older grandmas doing mag, if anyone. Mae’s teeth were white and straight, so I doubt this is something she does regularly.

In addition to staining your teeth a darker shade of delectable, mag gives off a slight tingling sensation in one’s mouth and an overall relaxing feeling for several minutes. Elly, Anne, and I had heard about it from our Ajaans, so we wanted to at least sample the wares. As it turns out, the process of mag is a multi-step process, almost ritual-like. First you need to get the actual beetlenut itself, which looks startlingly like a lime and grows from a tall palm tree. One grew in our yard, but getting it out of the tree proved difficult to say the least. Because it is about thirty feet off of the ground, the way to get it out is to take a long, spindly bamboo stick and whack it out of the tree – harder than it sounds. When Mae tried, this tiny older woman, it seemed possible to aim the stick at the mag, but holding on to it ourselves displayed nothing but our clumsiness. Finally, she disappeared, returining with an equally spindly bamboo ladder, with which the deed was done.

Once the beetlenut is procured, there are two more ingredients. First there is a red paste that we bought from the neighbors, spread on a shiny green leaf. The second is more of the aforementioned shiny green leaves. Spread the paste on the leaf, like peanut butter on toast, then roll like a tiny, skinny burrito. Cut off a sliver of beetlenut and chew on. While chewing, take a bite of the leaf burrito. Do not swallow. When you spit, it’s bright red, and depending on your style, this red saliva will stain your mouth, tongue, lips, finger, chin, and probably your floor.

It’s a really satisfying feeling, living out on those farms. First off, you have security in knowing where everything you eat came from, whether it’s organic or not. The family made or grew almost everything we ate. The freshness of the vegetables, combined with Mae’s great cooking made for some of the best Thai food I’ve had. Furthermore, the sense of community is palpable – something common to all the communities we’ve seen so far. They may be financially poor, but in deep friendship they are wealthy. The nights aren’t quiet (it’s hard to be quiet with all the animals around), but they’re satisfying and peaceful. It’s enough to make you want to settle down in real farmlands. Well, almost I suppose.

I guess I don’t want to idealize the lives of villagers of Tap Tai too much. Yeah, they have their problems. Yeah, they watch TV – a lot of it. Yeah it’s by no means perfect. Still, it is another way to approach life. It sounds cheesy, but we all can learn a lot from one another.

On an interesting note, we were talking with an older gentleman and he was telling us about his paralyzed wife. He suspects it was witchcraft, which rendered her paralyzed, which is a not uncommon belief in this part of Thailand. While it’s still in Isaan, Surin province is more influenced by the Khmer (Cambodian) than the rest of the region, which is Lao-influenced. So jealous we didn’t get to dip into Cambodia!

Sunday Lazy Sunday

Today's the end of the lazies for me. I got to sleep in and fart around all day, but the party ends tomorrow. And even as far as lazing around goes, that can be taken with a grain of salt, with all the reading packets I get to slog through.

The next unit we're dealing with focuses on farming, a topic I didn't know much about until this past week. Now that I'm learning about the whole so-called "agri-business" industry, it's simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. I'll see how the whole rice-farming thing plays out in the fields next week. We're going to Surin province, about 4 hours away from here in Khon Kaen. During the trip, we'll be talking with five or six diverse groups of people -- from the government to the farmers to a conservation group. Should be a broad mix of people and opinions that from whom I'm looking forward to hearing.

For this unit, I and seven other students will be serving as Unit Facilitators. I was having trouble remembering exactly the name of the titles, for CIEE loves these management/jargony words. So many of our work groups are called things such as "Process Facilitators", or "Unit Production Teams" it gets pretty ridiculous. In fact, we call the actual groups "Action Working Groups." In addition to being a unit fac for this unit, I'm in the "Unit Production Team" for the fifth and last unit: Movements and Trends.

Being a Unit Facilitator means we as a group are responsible for making sure the group runs smoothly, everyone's voices get heard, and there's consensus. This is referred to as group process and is vital in everything we do here. Fine in theory, laudable when it works, but let's be real for a minute -- there are thirty-three of us students. Achieving consensus is difficult at best. This evening, the previous group of unit facs and our upcoming group had a meeting at an adorable cafe down the road called Peacetime. They relayed some information regarding what worked and what didn't when they facilitated. What they had to say was pretty daunting; it seems pretty stressful to be in charge, but not have any power to be a dictator.

Ah well, probably a good life skill to learn.

After dinner, we checked out one of the local milk bar. Eating pancakes and strawberry milk -- yum!

Dtaun chao tam arai, ka?

"What do you do in the morning?"

What do I do in the morning? Well, this was how we’ve been experiencing the past four weeks, here in Thailand. Today was a lecture day, one of many we’ve had this week. It's being going like this all week -- lecture and class, lecture and class. This is the end of our first full week here at KKU; although we’ve been in Khon Kaen for the past few weeks, those weeks have been spent mostly shuttling back and forth to home-stays, retreats, and around the night market. Right now, it really feels like school, except even more so, what with having eight or more hours of class a-day, extra meetings, and further obligations to projects related to our studies here. These projects consist of things like the newsletter and projects having to do with the units. Even just talking about these projects is invigorating. Some are dealing with crucial issues, such as Tess and Elly's article about the local landfill’s use of an incinerator, or the special relationships that an elementary school in the area has with its slum community’s children.

Anyway, Friday started out with (for me) four hours of Thai class. Our midterm is on Sunday, so we’re reviewing six units of vocabulary and grammar. Ajaan (professor) Jeab had us ask each other question in Thai, using our current level of speaking, which is considerably meager.

Lunch is always an interesting time. The cafeterias around here are several clusters of food vendors, usually in an open-air setting. Generally, no one buys water – free, communal water is available from huge thermoses, and one serves oneself with a communal cup. Behind the CIEE office, next to one of the cafeterias, lies a fruit stand, which we frequent. They have the most delicious pineapple and bananas I’ve had. Nearby, a friendly woman sells fried bananas and babin, a silver-dollar-sized coconut pancakes, while the stand next door has khao-neeow (sticky rice) and moo-yang (grilled pork). Always saep (Isaan for delicious).

Our afternoon lecture was by our program director, Ajaan Dave, and dealt with the topic of human rights. We discussed human rights, including Economic, Social, and Cultural rights, and how they relate to specific topics we’ll be addressing here. My group looked at the Pak Mun Dam case, which we’ll be visiting and studying in more depth at a later date. Basically, these villagers who lived around the Pak Mun river were fishing, farming, and just living their lives until 1989 when the Thai government decided to begin construction on a dam of that river. With the river dammed, the villagers’ livelihoods, culture, and the ecology of the area began to erode. Poverty spread. The villagers have protested numerous times to get the dam gates open, so that life can continue and improve, but the government has been mostly uncooperative. Furthermore, with several coups and changes in government throughout the past decade-and-a-half, communication has proven unstable. It’s frustrating to think of, but I imagine miles beyond frustrating for those who actually live it.

More on that subject probably to come when we actually study it.


To bring this marathon day to a close, we had two hours of Thai tutors. My tutor’s name is Jah-ae, which means "pleasant surprise" like someone who covers your eyes from behind and says "guess who?", as best as I can understand it. She's a Thai language major and speaks very good English, although she still struggles at time. That’s okay though, because I constantly struggle with Thai.

My language group started Thai class at 8 AM, and we all finished tutors at around 8 PM. So that means some of us pulled a 12 hour class day yesterday – not to mention our hard-working newsletter people who worked later into the evening on the upcoming issue of the newsletter. What’s the best way to end a marathon day, you ask? We here at CIEE know exactly the answer – make it go even longer! Some of us worked on the newsletter, as mentioned above, but others went out to sample Thai nightlife at the U-Bar downtown. Dada, my Thai roommate came with us and she was fun to hang out with, useful too, as we had problems getting enough tuk-tuks (Thai motorized rickshaws). We managed to fit six people in a rickshaw that was designed for three.

Along the highway, speeding down the road, a man on motorcy slowed his bike down to our speed to wave. I can almost imagine him relating this story to his group of friends over rice whiskey and Leo beer later that night. How he saw a clown car-esque tuk-tuk, full of loud, laughing farangs waving out at him, on the inky Khon Kaen highway late at night.

What can I say, we are a hard-working group of students.

(Photo credits: 1) Milk bar by KKU 2) Program facilitator Stephanie and our driver P'Joi 3) Sign by a wat 4)Myself, Josh, and Tess as half of the occupants in the six-passenger tuk-tuk ride)