Experience in Rural Thailand Tribal Village Evokes Shared Humanity
by Shannon Boshears
(This is part one of a two part series that will conclude next month.)
We were about three miles from arriving at our first project visit in the mountainous region of Northern Thailand when the fear caved in on me like an emotional avalanche. I was abandoning life as I knew it – never having been without electricity, running water or Western facilities, and surviving on a simple and fundamental existence in an extremely remote area. I was as far from the world I knew as I could get without purchasing a ticket on the next NASA space mission.
After a 25 hour plane ride, and driving six hours on the road from Chiang Mai to Pai, Thailand (notorious for its 762 hairpin curves), I braced myself in the passenger seat of a small cab truck with a driver who spoke no English, while traveling down a road that was as bumpy as the ravaged face of a 13-year-old pubescent boy.
This land of colorful silks, the hot pink skin of the dragon fruit, and the aroma of lemongrass and Thai basil had me absorbed until this point. I was wide-eyed in this mystic place of mopeds, tuk tuks (small motorized taxis) and countless massage storefronts sprinkled across the congested city streets where frantic drivers ignore designated lanes and it’s not uncommon to see a family of four riding on a single-seat scooter, babies in tow.
However, it was the overnight stay in the first village that I was most anxious about on this Heifer Thailand Study Tour. I was overdue to witness first-hand the Heifer mission in action. My last two and a half years as Marketing Director at Heifer Foundation still could not prepare me for my first study tour experience. All the videos and pictures from projects around the world that I’d used in creating marketing materials were about to become a living and breathing reality. So, when that landslide of fear came pouring over me, just outside our first project village, I was forced to surrender to a world where my only reference point was reruns of Gilligan’s Island.
When we finally arrived at the Karen Tribe Village in Mae Chaem and I crawled out of our tiny truck, all the weariness from the travel fell to the ground like a loose garment. What looked like a movie set at Universal Studios was the Baan Huay Baba village, part of the “Empowering Women in Upland Watersheds of Northern Thailand” Project. But this was no staging area for a movie; this was real life and a stark reality for those of us descending on the simple, yet struggling world of the Karen Tribe people.
Their village was cluttered with wood and bamboo-thatched dwellings that were scattered about on the steep, mountainous dirt paths. The houses, all on stilts, served not only to avoid flooding during certain times of the year, but for storage and housing for livestock. Upon this vast landscape of Earthy browns and forest greens, the villagers stood out like rich red cherries ready to be picked in their brightly colored hill tribe clothing. Their skin reflected the same rich tanned color of the soil on which they stood and it seemed to make them resonate even more as people of the Earth.
Our first meeting was with the village self-help group (SHG) and took place on top of the hillside at dusk. The SHG consists of a group of villagers that participate in the project with Heifer and its Project Partner, in this case, The Raks Thai Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO).
On white, plastic chairs, we formed a circle with the members of the tribe while we studied a large sheet of butcher paper scrawled with black and red characters that we couldn’t read. A representative of Raks Thai spoke to us in Thai, while one of our Heifer Thailand representatives interpreted for us. The presentation was an overview of the expectations and current results of the project.
Currently, there are 47 families in this particular village and from that, 15 families are members of the SHG. Women perform the main role in forming and guiding this particular SHG, hence the project name, “Empowering Women in Upland Watersheds.”
The Karen Tribe is the largest ethnic tribe in Thailand and they live mainly in the mountainous area because 64 percent of this regional area is mountainous slope, resulting in poor farm lands. Other regional issues for the various ethnic minority groups include low literacy rate, citizenship problems and a high population of people living with HIV/AIDS.
In this three-year based Heifer project, as in most, efforts include training on:
- Values-Based Holistic Community Development (VBHCD) Program,
- improved animal management,
- feed production,
- group and savings management,
- Heifer Cornerstones,
- gender equity,
- co-learning among SHG,
- sustainable agriculture and natural resource management.
The goal of this training is to increase the participant’s food and income security, raise the capacity for sustainable resource management and create a more equal participation in development, particularly by the women.
This village is called one of the “model villages” because of the success from Heifer’s influence. They have become a good representative of the three levels of impact that are a result of Heifer’s work. First, the “physical impact,” where there is improvement in the household and income for the families. Second, the “deeper level impact,” where they experience a change in behavior after they have been a project participant – when one who was previously selfish becomes willing to share their ideas with others. And third, the “external impact” where it affects other people in the community or government – other villages like what they see and want to incorporate those ideas too.
As we listened to the presentation, the sun lowered across the tops of the banana trees and the village members sat up proud and attentive like new daisies. Nearby, a young, Buddhist monk draped in swaths of orange cloths was perched in a doorway while several young children crouched quietly by his side.
That night, we broke into small groups and were invited into the homes of the villagers, where our host families cooked dinner for us. The metal ladles and spoons clanged against the skillets as our food sizzled and popped over a wood-burning fireplace carved into the bamboo flooring of the house. The man and woman of the house cooked our dinner – steamed rice, cooked greens with small bits chicken mixed in, a bowl of spicy chili sauce and hot tea served in small cups made of cut bamboo poles.
When dinner was ready, the man motioned with his arms for us to sit on the floor around a small wooden riser that was covered in bowls of fresh meat and vegetables. We were pleasantly surprised with our meal; it was flavored well and it lived up to the spiciness for which Thai food is known.
Then, we noticed the family, including their young daughter, was not eating. They sat in the next room, shyly keeping an eye on us, only coming in to refill the bowls when they were only halfway empty. That’s when we realized they would only eat after we were through with our meal. So, we hurriedly finished with our dinner. I felt shocked and embarrassed and it made me painfully aware of the generosity and humility of these people. Later, we learned it is custom for guests to be served first before the family. Finding this out lessened my guilt somewhat, but it’s a custom with which I would never be comfortable.
The short time that we spent in the house with our host family developed into a crash course in communicating with body language. We would simply use the Thai “Wei” – (pronounced ‘why”) holding the hands in a prayer-like fashion up to your chest with a quick and gentle bow and nod of the head. In Thailand, the “Wei” stands for many things – “hello,” “thank you” and “I’m sorry,” to name a few. And we used that gesture again and again as the universal “catch-all” language to our host family.
However, it was spending time with the daughter of our host family that we found most rewarding. She was approximately three-years-old and was very interested in interacting with us, these strange Americans who were staying in her house overnight. Immediately, two of the women in our group pulled out a spiral notebook and pen and they began sketching pictures. They would draw a tree, a house or an animal, and the little girl would study it intensely, and then begin to draw her version of what they had drawn. We sat on pallets on the bamboo floor and held up a flashlight to shine on the notebook pages since there was no electricity in the house except for one bare light bulb that was hooked up to a battery-powered box. It was a very intense moment for us all and we felt joyous and full because we were making a real connection with this young girl – not through words, but through pictures and smiles. Also, respecting their customs and way of life was a necessary requirement. We quickly learned to always remove our shoes before entering a home. Outside of the homes, if people were inside, there would be several sets of flip-flops or sandals in all colors and sizes. In addition, we had to figure out the function of different large tubs of water that were sitting around the house or out-house. One large water tub would be fresh, clean water that you used to wet your hands and then quickly pull them out to use the soap. Another tub of water was just to rinse off the soap. Another one was just for cleaning dishes. In the out house, there was always one large basin of water usually with a small sauce pan floating in the water that you would use in conjunction with their squatty bidet toilet – but that’s another story entirely.
After dinner that night, we met with all the villagers around a large stack of split wood built into a pyramid for a bonfire. As a welcoming treat, they gave us oranges and hot tea. Also, since we were special guests, they served us “sticky rice” – cooked rice packed down inside bamboo poles that were allowed to steam on the heat of the fire. When the rice was ready, they passed around the long bamboo sticks for us to peel back the sides like a banana and pull out the sticky, chewy chunks of rice inside. As we all shared the rice with each other, we felt humbled and honored with each warm bite we swallowed.
We all formed a giant circle around the bonfire – we were on one side and the villagers completed the other half of the circle. They seemed as interested in us as we were in them and we peered across the jumping flames at each other. The Karen women wore brightly colored cloths swirled into turbans around their heads as small children circled around them and tugged on their long skirts. Several of the women carried babies on their backs in woven sacks with snug knit caps on their heads to protect them from the cool mountain air that was more than 90 degrees earlier that afternoon.
Through our interpreter, they asked us questions, “How far did we travel to get there and how long did it take us?” “Did we take an airplane and how much did it cost?” Then, they asked us to tell them our names. One at a time, we stood, spoke our names and what state we were from in the United States. They would repeat our names back to us with enthusiasm in their voices and it sometimes erupted into laughter when a word was hard for them to pronounce.
After we all finished, we asked them for their names too. Surprisingly, we were met with resistance and obvious conflict among the villagers as they began talking amongst themselves. Our interpreter explained to us that these people are so shy that they cannot speak their own names. And actually, they are not even called by their names in their own village. They might be known as “Sam’s mothers” or “Jill’s father.” So, for them to speak their names was very embarrassing for them. Very uncomfortable and hesitantly, several of them did speak their names out loud. This was one of the oddest things I’d ever experienced – people too shy to say their own names. I still shake my head in disbelief thinking about it.
In honor of us being their guests, two of the Karen tribe men squatted down and swayed back-and-forth while they sang a traditional song for us. They both sipped clear liquor in small shot glasses poured from an unmarked bottle by the “witch doctor” of the tribe. One woman from our group was asked to participate in a ritual where the medicine man conducted a welcoming ceremony for us. He took a wooden stick and rapped it in a repetitive beat on a large wooden bowl that housed a bowl of rice, broth mixed with vegetables and a shot of clear liquor. He took a white string and dragged it through the three items then rubbed it back-and-forth across her forearm several times before tying it on her wrist. Then, she was offered a shot of the whiskey, which she sipped and then poured some on the ground in an offering to the Earth. This ritual is said to bring prosperity and long-life to the participant.
In response to the song sung to us by the two village men, we needed to return the gesture and decided to sing a song to them. So, after contemplating it and voting down “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” sung in rounds, we chose, “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” We felt somewhat awkward choosing a song that we all learned in nursery school. However, it was a choice that we would not soon regret.