Happy Water-Fighting!

Thai New Year has just ended. Called Songkran, this festival is unlike any other I have experienced. After the religious obligations have been fulfilled (if you are one of those wat-going Buddhists), the entire rest of the week is devoted to a country-wide water-fight. People camp out around the moat, outside their houses or stores, in the back of pickup trucks - anywhere really - with buckets, squirtguns, hoses, tubs and bags of water.  It's insane and so much fun, as long as you properly prepare - ie everything in plastic bags, no white clothes, etc. 

Unfortunately for me, I was sick with a stomach bug (as best as I can tell, some combo of traveller's diarrheah and/or giardia?) for almost all of Songkran. I never made it to the moat, which is where most of the action is.  I did however manage on the last two days to venture around Nimmanhaimin a little bit, which was nice.  I had a "cultural exchange" as Emily likes to call it, with a small boy who had to struggle between his wish to drench/bless everyone who passed his parents shop and his concern that he shouldn't splash the farang girl.  Since he was hesitating I turned around and smiled at him over my shoulder, which he correctly took to mean "Splash me already!" So he threw a bucket of water at my face.  *smile* It kinda made my day. 

Other than Songkran and getting well, my time back in Chiang Mai has been filled with work - independent study, human rights class, and a couple other papers to finish before graduation, studying for the Praxis tests (for my life post-asia), setting up teaching observations (also for life post-asia), and finishing those booklets for AIDSNet... oy. Emily and I have found time to go to the Night Bazaar and the Sunday Market, but no getting lost and having asian adventures. 

I hope to be posting pictures later this week, if I can afford internet.  I'll keep you posted. 

Getting ready to ship out.

I currently have 43 mosquito bites, or scabs in the case of the three-week-old ones; seven patches of heat rash; and one area of massive allergic reaction from dust (at least that’s what I think it is... it developed while I was at AIDSNet and coated with a thick layer of the gray stuff). It sucks. Really if the ten or so itchy bites would stop itching and the heat rash would stop itching, I would be golden... But, alas, that’s not how these things work. Oh yeah. And I got most of those bites while wearing bug spray. And my foot is still sore from being run over by the elevator three weeks or so ago. My baby toe isn’t as swollen anymore though, which is stellar.

Aside from wanting to rip my legs off just above the knee, this week has been pretty good. Big accomplishments:

- took the final in Thai Language...didn’t completely bomb the interview part (we covered the second half of our textbook in about a third of the time we took on the first half, which meant that the train of knowledge kind of zoomed past us), and our two skits went really well. Not as fabulous as Ian, Nathan, and Ajaan John’s, which was kick-ass and incorporated pre-made props, but all things considered, it was fun. Catherine played a puppy that I was selling to Jenna. She (C.) made this part of the skit 100x better by looking unhappy when I allowed myself to be bargained down, and “barked” with happiness at the big bag of dog food (ahaan maw) rather than the small one. After that, we cut to the Doctor’s office, in which the doctor-patient consultation ended with “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes” in Thai. That’s right. We translated it - tones and all.

- Since we finished our language class, we’ve now moved on to Thai Writing. We thought the language was difficult... yeah. Whatever. Speaking is easy peasy compared to writing. Aiy. If I learn any letters or am able to read any words, I’ll be impressed. I just have no idea how I’m going to master a new alphabet. (Tips?)

- I have all of my laundry clean. Yes! No needing to pack dirty clothes in my suitcase when we leave for Vietnam!

- I discovered a way of getting through HR class without leaving frustrated - doodling. I write and doodle my angry ideas, rather than get into arguments. Not only does it make me feel better, sometimes my ideas congeal into less angry and more coherent thoughts as I doodle and so not only do I not get angry, I’m also articulate. Woo!

- Today was my last “official” day at AIDSNet. *Tear* AND -- I finished the resource center project! I am the most proud about this achievement. I really wasn’t sure I was going to finish before we left for Vietnam and Cambodia, but I did. And they threw me a “going away party” and want me to come visit. Amazing. I understood little of what was being said around me in Lanna-Thai (the northern dialect they all speak), but everyone was laughing so much, that it was contagious. And they gave me a Thai nickname - Mahlee - which means “Jasmine,” which I find to be the perfect correlation. I’ve also gotten through both booklets on paper once, so I can hopefully finish editing for them in Vietnam.

- Really, I cannot express how much I loved working at AIDSNet...I wish I could take them up on their offer to go back.

Introspection and a Rant

Today I apparently reached a boiling point of sorts.  

It started a few weeks ago, when we got into a debate about Buddhism during our Human Rights class. A sub-group couldn't accept that a religion founded by a prince leaving his wife and child could have as its goal the end of suffering or have anything to add to the study and protection of human rights. This sub-group also took great issue with the buddhist ideal of unattachment.  All of their comments in class went something like this "Maybe it's because I haven't really studied Buddhism in-depth, but I don't understand how (x precept of Buddhism) can be a good thing."  So, those of us (such as myself) who have studied Buddhism, would try to jump in and explain the concept at hand.  Granted we generally did so via trying to relate it to something similar in western culture or Christianity, but even when we didn't, our thoughts, suggestions and interpretations were shot down as invalid. We were wrong every time we tried to defend eastern thought as not less than western thought, just different. Everything had to be value judgements, and our comfort zone had to be ascribed the higher value. 

It was infuriating. My roommate (the other person who attempted to explain Buddhist thought) and I vented for a while after class, and the next day I let it go.  Whatever, people are entitled to opinions, and westerners (particularly Americans) are famous for believing they are always right and therefore better. And I figured I wasn't completely innocent on that count either. 

That next weekend, we went to visit an NGO that works to provide women living in the Burmese refugee camps with a means of income, allowing them to provide for their families while living in Thailand. Like many of the NGOs we're hearing from, most of what they do is technically not allowed by the Thai government, and these women are taking a risk in talking with us.  As with about half of the NGOs, it's run by people who are farang, just as we are.  In this case, the women running the organization are Filipino.  English is their third language.  But to many of my compatriots this does not mean that we should put out any extra effort to understand the complexities of the work the NGO does, or try to work within and accept the language barrier we are functioning through. Rather than showing any understanding, a few people spend the entire walk back from the NGO, opining about how the group doesn't do enough (no shit, the Thai and Burmese governments won't let them), or that the women presenting to us didn't satisfactorily answer a particular question (which she did answer, just not as directly as a native english speaker would have).

Again, I didn't argue much.  It didn't seem like a battle that could be won, so why fight it? But it did start me simmering a little.

This last week, things really started to "overcook my grits." (Come on! Anyone get the reference?) On Monday, Kacie and I met with an Ajaan at Maw Chaw who Drex describes as "a force of nature," which she is.  Ajaan Nok is wildly intelligent and gender/social change oriented and wanted to find a way to hook Kacie and I up with English majors with similar interests to help us with our gender-related independent studies. Ajaan Nok suggested that we attend some presentations of five majors final English capstone projects that were occurring later that week (Wed. - Fri.).  The idea behind the projects is that all the senior english majors due this massive research project as one of their final classes, and then they create some kind of public presentation, whether that's a poster presentation at the Faculty of Humanities presentation day, or something else, they don't care. So this year, 4 students put on dramatic presentations relating to their research and it ended up being all 11 of us that went to each presentation rather than just Kacie and I, which was fine, in general. 

The first of these presentations was on Wednesday afternoon.  It consisted of a series of Bob Dylan songs performed by a group of CMU English students. The English major doing the project played guitar and enlisted friends to sing and play bass, keyboard and drums. Before each song, the researching student would introduce it, telling the title, the album it was originally released on, the year, at a little about the American context of the song. Then they would perform, and after the song the student would explain more about the original meaning of the song in American society and culture and then compare that to contemporary Thailand. After the Dylan performance, there was another on "Black Music" (his - the thai student's - words, not mine).  This one really didn't make a whole lot of sense and didn't seem well researched or considered at all. I was frustrated though on the way home, because not only did people tear apart the second performance, they also ravaged the Dylan one as well.  This continued all week, and grew to include the third and fourth performances (Pocahontas and Phantom of the Opera) as well. 

There is a time and a place for being critical and discussing gaps in a presentation or an argument, but I truly feel this was not it. 

Yes, racial discrimination in Thailand is different than it was in the United States.  There is not the history of slavery and does not appear to be the complete hatred that was pervasive in U.S. culture. But there is segregation to the extreme with hill-tribe people not being allowed to leave villages to work or gain an education and there is a sense that they constitute a different race, a separate people not worthy of full citizenship or rights in Thai society.  These differences do not mean that the situation is any less serious than racism in the United States; it is still a huge problem to overcome and a valid comparison to make.  

Yes, the "black music" presentation kind of missed the boat. A lot. But do we need to continue harping on it for two weeks? Pocahontas as well - yeah it was a disney remake and not a true representation of the Pocahontas story, but how many Americans know the true story? Yeah, not a whole lot. Why should you expect Thais to?

And Phantom was fucking fantastic. Yes, most of the singers were untrained, but let's see you do any better when you perform a condensed Thai opera, okay? Then you can judge. 

Today in our Thai culture class, it was happening again. We had a Thai ajaan come to speak about gender in Thailand. She started her talk by saying that she wouldn't have time to talk about men as much, so her talk was going to focus on women.  Being someone who tries to give simplified talks, I saw this merely as an attempt at full disclosure - saying "Hey - this is usually something I would teach in a semester, and I'm gonna try and boil it down to two hours." This was apparently, though, just another thing to criticize. As was her points about the way children's literature reinforces stereotypical gender roles. Really, the whole argument came down to a complete misunderstanding and disrespect for feminism and feminist thought, but it also was another chance to criticize the Thais and call them stupid. Trying to avoid conflict (as is my m.o.) I head for the song-taow - headphones in hand.  I stop to talk to two other students, who are also fuming (but I think about different issues).  As a result of this momentary hold up, I can't get into the song-taow, get the music playing and turned up loud enough in time to miss hearing all the ranting going on as everyone hops in and sits down... and... I snap. 

Comment: How can you be like "this is a talk on gender" and then say that you're going to completely ignore one gender?!

Me: Okay.  That's not fair - that's just what you call it - even in America - it's "gender studies" when perhaps it really means "women's studies." And while that might be a valid criticism, it's not a reason to write off her whole fucking talk --

Comment: I don't know if that's what we were trying to do --

Me: It's not just this time - there are other instances too.  All the student presentations?  I'm so fucking sick and tired of us all being so critical and condescending of every Thai presentation we go to.  We're supposed to be here to learn about another culture. This is not fucking America, this is their second language, cut them some slack. Be fucking respectful. 

Then I checked out... I really, really did not want to fight, no matter how much those sound like fighting words. I did want to be heard and listened to, just once, which probably didn't happen... but oh well. I wasn't really a bastion of reason when I let that one loose. 

When we got back, I was the last one to get out of the song-taow and I paced around outside for a couple of minutes so that I didn't have to see anyone. Luckily for me it was also my roommate's music lesson day, so she hadn't come back with us, leaving me the room to myself.  I spent the rest of the afternoon alone, and even made someone knock on my door three times before I would open it.  You know I'm pissed when I'm feeling that misanthropic. 

The whole point of this is not to rant about my group, or to badmouth anyone or our trip.  It was an interesting experience for me to work on writing this and discover just how much emphasis I put on respecting others and being curious about the culture around me, and to realize that others to not necessarily place the same kind of emphasis on these things.  I truly feel like a guest and as though I have a job to learn about my hosts (the people of Thailand).  I can't and shouldn't just carry on as I always have.  I need to learn their language, or at least be making an effort to while I'm here - not just expecting to be able to get by with English. And it frustrates me when others feel they can simply decide that Thai is "an ugly language" that they shouldn't need to study - the vendors understand pointing and grunts, why isn't that enough?  In my mind, it simply isn't. It's disrespectful and unacceptable. We are guests and we are students. Be respectful, understanding, open to learning something. 

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?  Am I completely crazy?  If you think so, you can tell me, I'm used to it. And, I'm curious.  These are my e-two cents. Fire away. 

Week of 2/1-2/7

Here are some highlights of the last week or so:

Last Sunday (2/1)... yeah, that's over a week ago... we went to cooking school and learned how to make (among other things) curry, pad thai, and a banana with coconut milk desert. The day started with a visit to the market, where our teacher taught us about the different kinds of rice, various coconut products, and different forms of flavoring common in Thai foods.

Then we drove out to the farm where the cooking school is. There we learned about traditional Thai family farms and the ways they plant crops to encourage soil health and plant health - like planting stinky plants next to others to keep the bugs away. Their green beans are HUGE here - like as long as your arm. For real. It's intense.

Last Monday (2/2) all nine of us trekked out to the UN Irish Pub to watch the Superbowl be replayed. Those of us interested in the game already knew the outcome, but decided to go see it anyway. And we decided to mess with all the other people (at least some of whom didn't know the end) and cheer for the losing team. It was so much fun. Andy, Emily, and I in particular had a lot of fun being loud and raucous.

Best quote of the night came during the booth review for the last Steelers touchdown:
"Oh, come on! His toes are down; he's just being graceful! He's a fucking ballerina, that's all!"

Hilarious.

Also on Monday, a new language teacher started - Ajaan Jang. She's very high energy and is a ton of fun. She sometimes tells us stories about past years of Coe students, such as last year one student kept telling her to turn toward the water buffalo during his midterm. She said she tried really hard, but after the third or fourth water buffalo turn she just burst out laughing. What he meant was turn right - or liaow kwaa, not liaow kway. We also take a 20 minute break about two-thirds of the way through class, which is excellent. Two hours is a LONG class.

On Tuesday (2/3) Catherine got sick. Usually getting the stomache flu is not a huge deal, but since Catherine's pancreas doesn't work (she has diabetes) she can't be left alone while ill. Since I was one of the people that she gave 'betes training to over christmas break, and since Patricia is the one with all the tropical disease knowledge from her years working in Paraguay, the two of us camped out with Cate, making sure she tested her sugar and ate icing and such - did you know you can absorb sugar through your gums? I didn't until Christmas. It was actually scary for a while because her blood sugar refused to climb above the 60s (for reference 180-200 is good, 300 is high, and 40 is coma). Then we discovered the icing Cate was eating didn't actually have sugar in it. Oops. Thanks for that info Google. So I left her to rest with Patricia and took a drunk Becca for a walk to the 7-11 to purchase sugary things for Catherine, and bread-like things for her. There we discovered the group's new fave candy - Chokie-Chokie. It's basically a milk-chocolate fudgey-substance in a tube and is delicious. And two or three tubes absorbed via the gums made Catherine's blood sugar sky-rocket up over 200 so she could sleep.

Wednesday in Human Rights class we reverted to third grade and needing to raise our hands to talk rather than having a conversation like adults, and some people still didn't talk. Ugh. Hopefully we can un-revert this week. Probably one of the most interesting discussions we did manage to have was whether the "vacation mentality" would really enable people to make decisions to do things that they would be opposed to doing at home, as one of our authors discussing child prostitution suggested. Nathan and Ian were very sure that this would not happen, while Becca was convinced that it could. Thoughts? This also lead into later discussions regarding if humans are inherently good, inherently evil/bad/not good, or inherently stupid.

Thursday the program took us out to eat at Drexler's favorite Italian place in town, right across from CMU. It was pretty delicious, about as good as you can get anywhere (and a lot better than Gen, Nikki, John and I had gotten the day before!). Coe alumn, Brad, who is teaching English at CMU this year came with us too. I remember thinking we had a lot of good discussions, but I don't remember what about anymore. Drexler and Patricia talked about living abroad, Holly, Emily, Kacie, Nikki and Gen told ghost stories, I talked to John about Teach for America for a while, but I don't really remember what I spent most of my time talking about. Andy, Chris and Brad had boy talk at one end of the table. :)

Since it was the first Friday of the month, there was a craft market going on in one corner of the campus, and after class Patricia, Holly, Emily and I tried to wander to it, but it took a very long time and we got a little lost. Walking back was much faster. That night Andy, Chris, Gen, Nikki, Kacie, Emily, Holly and I went to a British Pub by the guesthouse for bar food and drinks. When everyone else went to play pool, Gen and I had a really great talk back at the table. I really enjoyed getting to connect with someone new on the trip. And Gen is such a sweetie!

When we left the pub, Gen, Kacie and I decided to go check up on Paul, the saxophonist and co-owner of the jazz bar. Gen is his secret admirer, so at least a couple people from our group go every few nights. The jazz is decent (it really depends on the ensemble playing), but Paul is very good. This night, the combo was short a bassist and drummer. So one guy jumped up to the drum set for a song or two, and when he wasn't playing, Paul would occasionally tap a cymbal or something to accompany a solo or whatever. For the last song of the first set, Paul said they wanted to try something "experimental." I wouldn't say it was that experimental, but it was PHENOMENAL - I mean one of those times when music just reaches all the way to your soul, and you not only hear it with your ears, but feel it in your chest, in your pulse, creeping around your subconscious. A-mazing. I hadn't had that happen in a while, and this piece especially grabbed me.

Saturday (2/7) we went to an elephant show. To be honest, I almost didn't go. First off, we have our Thai language midterms this week, I wanted to get started on editing my NGO's english publications, and I need to read a lot faster/a lot more for my independent study on Thai conceptions of gender and sexuality. And secondly, these sorts of things always feel somewhat like animal exploitation to me, and I kind of wish there wasn't a market for it. I'm fine with safaris and going to see the animals in their own habitat or something replicating their natural environment, where they're wild and untrained. But animal shows kind of bother me. And this was our second one. In the end though, I went and it was fun to coo over baby elephants and marvel at elephant antics with everyone. I did skip riding the elephant though. It just felt like too much money to sit on an old-style throne on the back of an elephant that had just been forced to paint pictures and kick soccer balls in front of me. Instead, Patricia and I wandered around the camp, until we hit the village where all the mankoots (elephant handlers) and their families live. Then we turned around so as to not intrude.

Also on Saturday, I discovered one of the computers in the guesthouse has a slot that fits my camera's memory card!!! Excitement! So I'm working on uploading all of my pictures before we leave for Laos this weekend.

Universal Human Rights?

I promise there is a reason my posts have been so random and lack-luster the past few days. Actually there's two. First is that I've been hella tired. I think I'm on the verge of getting some stomach bug, but cross your fingers that I can bite that bullet.

And second, I've been working on a paper that was due this evening. Granted it was a little paper, and probably not worth all the time or energy I spent on it, but I found that my views on the topic had changed since the last time I had articulated them, so I kept starting over, trying to properly express what I have come to believe. I'm posting the paper below. Please feel free to comment or give me feedback; this is a topic I care about, so I'm very open to hearing other ideas.


The Universality of Human Rights

In order to discuss the universality of human rights, I feel that it is important to give at least a rudimentary idea of what is supposed to be understood by the term “human rights.” At the most basic and, arguably, most important sense, human rights refer to what is needed for survival and to ensure that people retain there inherent dignity. As societies continue to grow and develop, however, the range of human rights broadens and begins to include many rights, ideas, concepts beyond what is needed in order for people to live and even thrive. While I believe that some human rights - namely those which ensure a basic standard of living - are universal, others I feel need to be viewed and evaluated within cultural or societal context and be allowed to develop naturally.

My opinion regarding the universality of human rights is formed both by my Catholic upbringing and also by my studies in college. The Catholic Church’s places great importance on social justice, with the dignity of the human person being the first of the Catholic Social Teachings. Because of this belief and teaching I feel that access to clean water, food, clothing, shelter, and health care are rights that should be universal and unquestioned. Without any one of these rights, a person’s sense of dignity is damaged and their ability to not only thrive but even survive day to day is lessened. Any other human rights are secondary, and need to be seen as second tier goals by the international groups working to promote human rights. This assertion comes from a pragmatism that the study of international politics has bequeathed to me.

When fighting battles in the arena of interstate politics, progress is only ploddingly made. Too many independent cultures, beliefs, peoples and societies are involved to allow fast development. Instead of recognizing this, and acknowledging the pace at which our own societies developed over centuries, the western countries in control of international organizations alternately request and force non-western countries to “liberalize” and “democratize” at lightning speeds. This tactic does not serve any of the interests involved. Rather than jump-starting economic development or gaining political rights for citizens of poorer countries, these policies more often tend to foster anti-western sentiments and keep the poorest individuals in these countries living in poverty. This is where the academic ideals of all the rights we enjoy in western society being universal fails. Rights such as women’s equality, democratic elections, protesting, and other higher level freedoms need to be adopted and instituted when individual societies are ready for them and request them of their own governments. These rights need to be instituted from the bottom up and not the top down.

There are countless examples of countries where western powers and the UN setup elections in a country and the people actively elect a dictator. Then we ask that the country liberalize and allow political opposition, when the electorate chose the dictator because they promised food, water and heath care. Obviously, the citizens in that country have more pressing needs than the right to protest, or equal education for all citizens. Once those basic universal rights have been gained, then people are more willing to look for increased freedoms and demand them of their government. That is the time for the international community to step back in and help set up systems of education, grow a civil society that holds the government accountable, work towards gender equality.