Experience in Rural Thailand Tribal Village Evokes Shared Humanity
by Shannon Boshears
(This is part two of a series that started last month. To read part one, click here.)
We sang through each verse featuring a different animal in each one. We mimicked the cow, the chicken and the pig, and with each verse, we followed it with the animal sounds we had learned early in life – “moo, moo,” “cluck, cluck” and “oink, oink.” With their nods and smiles, they seemed to enjoy our song and afterwards our interpreter explained to them about what we were singing. He turned to us and asked, “tell us again what sound you say the cow makes?” We said, “moo moo.” And now that the villagers understood what we were saying, they all exploded in laughter. But what they were really laughing about was how it didn’t sound like a cow at all to them.
So, the interpreter then asked one of the village men to demonstrate, “so, how do you think the cow sounds?” And the man immediately made a groan that was very realistic to a real cow. Of course, our group fell out laughing because of his interpretation, which was very authentic compared to our “moo moo.” Needless to say, we went through the same process with the chicken and the pig. Our “clucks” and “oinks” sounded nothing like their animal sounds did, as theirs were very authentic. The laughter between the two groups swelled in waves like a great ocean and the banter between us was back-and-forth like a tennis match on center court at Wimbledon. It was a most poignant moment for us. We were two completely different worlds coming together and sharing a common ground not through our own language but the language of animals.
That night, we slept in sleeping bags on pallets under mosquito nets in our host family’s house. We knew we would have an early meeting the next morning and we went to sleep exhausted, yet energized by our surroundings and experiences so far. But at 4:30 a.m., we were jolted awake, like a sharp stabbing pain demanding our attention, by the hair-curling crows of the roosters under our house. We all lay there listening and anticipating as they barked out their calls again and again for hours. We became so tickled by trying to muffle our laughter that none of us ever went back to sleep that morning. At one point, I even pulled out my iPhone, started my audio recorder application and recorded several minutes of them crowing while we are in the background breaking up into laughter. Since then, we’ve discussed making the “rooster recordings” into audio ringtones for our phones.