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.