If Only Darwin Were Here

The mosquitos in my bathroom are adapting for the privilege of biting me.

Let me back up. There are always at least 6 mosquitos in my bathroom, usually more, because of perpetual standing water (it’s a wet bathroom; no shower curtain) and a free entry from outside when my balcony door is propped open to do laundry. I have yet to absorb enough DEET to have it renew itself by radiating out of my every poor when the DEET on my skin runs off in the shower, so showering is my most vulnerable moment (I still have high hopes to spray enough DEET into my system in the remaining three months that I become a pungent presence no matter what).

The presence of mosquitos makes my shower time quite a challenge, and I have learned how to reach out and kill a mosquito with just my left hand. And I’ve gotten quite good at this skill; during one killing spree I felled 12 mosquitos and only sustained one bite in six minutes.

But what has added to my challenge is that the mosquitos in my bathroom are adapting to me. I’m not kidding. As my aim and accuracy have improved, they have become faster and more darting in their movements, sometimes even flying on my right side where they know I am more vulnerable (I now apply shampoo and soap with just my right hand). I don’t know how fast it takes the genes for speed and zig-zagging flight paths to become part of the larger population, but it took 9 weeks for the mosquitos in my room to stop seeing me as an easy and pathetic meal to a warrior, a meal that should be feared and respected while feasting on her.

I’m not saying I’m worthy of my mosquito’s respect (I have many more skills to learn); rather, I’m saying that if Darwin had come to Khon Kaen Thailand and used a bathroom like mine, he would have published his theory on natural selection in a few months rather than all those years he spent on The Beagle.

 

The Asoke

I stayed in an Asoke Monday night, and I learned a lot.
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It all started Friday afternoon. My Ajaans (teachers) mentioned a community called an Asoke that wanted to host students while we studied a dam near the community. Thais, they explained, view Asokes the way most Americans view the Amish community. And there are lots of parallels; Buddhist living in the Asoke all live together for free, working for the good of the community and sharing everything, are self-sustaining and forbid sexual misconduct, alcohol, drugs, stealing and killing. Placing us in an Asoke, my Ajaans said, would be the equivalent of having a foreign exchange student in America and placing them in an Amish community for the night. You just wouldn’t do that; they don’t have the tools or understanding to succeed in such an environment.
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Flash forward to Monday afternoon. Unknowing to my Ajaans, the Asoke was slated to house 3 CIEE students, yours truly included. We arrived at the compound and, greeted by stares from the community, my two program mates and I met our guide. I never got her name, so I will refer to her as “Shadow” because she followed us everywhere, asking questions in English about how we were doing and could we please do ….? Well, she and the silent monk who followed us with a video camera, filming us while narrating in Thai for unknown purposes.
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Shadow and my Ajaans talked for a bit in rapid Thai, and the ground rules were translated. This was a vegetarian community. We would not pay for our stay (CIEE normally compensates for food); working for the good of the compound would be our way of paying for the meals they fed us. We would teach English to the children in addition to cooking and cleaning. We would get up at four in the morning to pray. We would dress conservatively (no elbows, collar bones or knees showing). We agreed, smiles plastered on our faces. The Ajaans left, half laughing, half looking apologetic. And then my stay began.
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We deposited our backpacks in an open air loft area where we, our students, and the older women slept. After a dinner of vegetables and rice, Shadow guided us to the classroom area and, greeted by 8 students, age 12-15, we were told to teach English. After a lot of bumbling along trying to figure out their English ability, we settled on teaching the names of body parts then singing “head shoulders knees and toes” and playing “Simon Says”.
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After watching us teach for an hour, Shadow took us to the shower.

The shower area.

The shower area.

Those large tanks water are full of off-color rain water, and you use the pink or blue buckets to dump water on yourself to shower. And while I have bucket-showered before, it has always been in the privacy of the bathroom. So I tried, and failed, to use my patoom (a long piece of fabric you tie around yourself to shower in for modesty in such settings) and dumped some questionable looking water on myself to shower. The good news was the monk did not film me in this setting, or in the sleeping area.
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After showering, we grabbed a few blankets and lay down on the hard floor with a thin straw mat. I maybe slept for three hours that night. It was freezing cold, the ground and pillow were hard wood and the old women nearby kept hacking and snoring.

The sleeping area. (Some mosquito nets are already put away by the students).

The sleeping area. (Some mosquito nets are already put away by the students).

Shadow collected us at 4:10am to pray. We knelt and bowed to the monk who I now believed had the video camera permanently attached to his hand. After some prayers and chanting, the monk started asking questions, with Shadow as a translator, about who taught us to be good people if we weren’t religious? Why do we do good things? Do we do good things? How can we have morals without religion? Finally one of my program mates said she wanted to open a free school for girls, and the compound dwellers visibly relaxed, assured that goodness does exist in the world.
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After our hour of interrogation and two hours of peeling garlic and shucking beans (still being followed and filmed by the monk), we were allowed to eat breakfast, then start cleaning dishes. The compound held 30 people, and Thai culture has at least three dishes plus sticky rice per meal. This makes for a lot of dishes, and we did not finish before we had to go to school. But that was all right, Shadow told us. We could make up for this by teaching English that night.

My time in the Asoke served as a wake-up call for me where I realized I still have so much to learn. I was thrown into a community I knew absolutely nothing about, and I did my best to learn as much as I could in the short time I was there. And I did learn a lot; about how to interact with people with incredibly different world views from myself, how to smile cheerfully to maintain my “Buddhist temperament” at 4 in the morning after 3 hours of sleep, and how to intentionally engage with and understand complex ideas and world views while operating in a stressful environment, while feeling the pressure of representing America to the compound dwellers. It was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience and while I do not want to return, I certainly appreciate the time I spontaneously and adventurously spent in an Asoke outside a small village in rural Northeast Thailand.

And Then I Raced a Chicken

WARNING: This blog post contains (almost exclusively) information related to bowel movements and fecal matter, as well as no pictures. Read at your own risk.
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        I just finished my second homestay and the first rural one of my study abroad experience. And what I went through the past week wasn’t culture shock so much as culture “wait what is going on???”. I stayed with another girl from my program in a house a mile or two outside a small village in Northeast Thailand. For a week we lived with our host Mom (Mea) and Dad (Pa) (both organic farmers), dozens of chickens, a cow, her calf, and a dog named Fie. And what a week it has been. I’ll bullet point some things I’ve done then dive into one ongoing interaction.
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In the past week, I have:
  • Pooped twice in 7 days
  • seen my first tarantula (in the bathroom)
  • used a bucket shower for the first time (you scoop water out of a bin onto yourself to shower)
  • Eaten star fruit for the first time
  • Weeded. In five days I developed two large callouses on my fingers from helping my parents weed their giant green onion plot.
  • Studied types of farming (chemical, GMOs, organic) and their impact on community dynamics
  • Continually confused the Thai language. Instances where I thought Mea was asking me to chop chicken for dinner when she actually wanted my teachers phone number were commonplace.
  • Freely talked about my bowel movements with Mea.
I’ll focus on the last bullet point.
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On Tuesday, I, again, weeded the green onion acre. However, being in the crouched, hunched position did little for my ongoing intestinal problem (see the first bullet). Our teacher came to check in on us, and I asked if he had emergency laxative pills. He didn’t, but translated my request for Mea. She went from her usual sassy self to super concerned, picked me papayas from her garden and cooking bunches of fresh leafy vegetables. She brought me warm milk right before bed, every thirty minutes asking if I had pooped yet. My failure only made her more determined for me to succeed.
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The next morning, I dejectedly emerged from the outdoor squat toilet bathroom area. Mea  she asked the usual question, with the usual universal hand motions for flushing something out of your system. Again, I sadly shook my head. She gave me a can of cold milk, then a glass of water. I was then told to run. And that’s how, at seven in the morning, I found myself in school clothes and Choco sandals, running alone down a beautiful, dusty road in rural Thailand.
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Now, I find most motivation to run through friends or music. I had neither of these things, as she shooed me out the door crying “run run run” before I could get music or change. Alas, the road was deserted except for a few wandering cows. And then I found a chicken. It started clucking away from me and, spying a potential running buddy, I chased it. Chickens run surprisingly fast, and I happily drew next to it and we ran down the dusty road for a few glorious seconds.
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When I returned half an hour later, Mea gave me a cup of warm milk and another papaya, then walk for twenty minutes. Lo and behold, success came half an hour later. Huzzah.

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This did not prevent Mea from asking me at least twice every day if I had pooped and how I was feeling. When I relapsed the next day, she gave me more milk and never let me eat white sticky rice, only red rice because it was apparently better for me. Her parting words were: “study hard. I love you. Drink lots of milk in Khon Kaen (my home university).”
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But the powers of papaya, milk, and running aren’t my takeaways from the experience, nor are lessons of stubbornness, hard work and good humor. No, it was more amazing what great lengths Mea went to to help me out in my hour(s) of need, and how much concern she had for my wellbeing and happiness.
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And once again I am blown away by the lack of need for a common language to connect. She’s sassy and blatantly laughs at my attempts to do even the most menial chores like sweeping (it’s done differently in Thailand, apparently). But she still loves and cares about me, wanting me to come back next year and visit. And with all my heart, I would love that opportunity.