The (many) days I lived the village life: Karen style

I am SO sorry this has taken me so long to post. Things have been very hectic around here, but I will spend the next week trying to recap everything that has happened to me in the past month. Expect around 3 blog posts, including this one :).

So, at the end of my last post, I said I was staying 3 weeks at a Karen village in the Northeast Region of Thailand. This blog is dedicated to the amazing time I had there.

As I said earlier, we took a road that had over 2,000 turns and climbed mountains and more mountains. We finally arrived to the place we were going to be staying for the next few weeks, and it was a hotel compared to the homes we had been staying in at the Lahu village. We were staying a hostel where students live during the school year, but since Thai schools are out for the summer, we got it all to ourselves! It was such an upgrade- bamboo floors to mattresses on the floor (even if they were rock hard..thai people hate soft mattresses), "squatty potty's" to a toilet with a seat, even if it didn't flush. Excellent food with all you can drink hot chocolate and greeeeeat cooks. The only bad part- the weather. It was unseasonably cold- around 50 degrees, which is cold compared to the 90 degree weather we had been dealing with! All of us were bundled sweatshirts, and my personal favorite, my fuzzy socks. We sat around the table drinking our hot chocolate, hoping to warm up. It made taking a shower very difficult, because they were bucket showers that had been sitting outside, soaking up the cold. You could hear my screams all around the center. Maybe someday you'll get to see the video... if you are lucky. haha

The focus of our time at the Karen village was for us to write a paper focused on an aspect of development within the village. Because I'm an anthropology major, I got the DELIGHTFUL privilege to write a 13 page paper, while most other people wrote 5 pages. I actually really enjoyed it. My topic was "Women as Agents of Cultural Preservation in the Karen Church." The area we were in was mostly Christian, which I found interesting. The church is used as a center where culture can be preserved, as the Western and Thai culture encroaches on them. They are forced to learn the Karen language and wear Karen clothing if they attend the church. If you want, I can send it to you so you can read. Most of my time at the village was spent going around, interviewing people and gathering information.

My best interview was Gosemo- a 107 year old lady. She was absolutely amazing, and so coherent for her age. She was GORGEOUS and had so many good stories to tell. She showed us a shirt she wove when she was 10, and told us stories about her time in the church when she became a Christian- 70 years ago! I can't explain how amazing it was to be talking to such a living piece of history. At the end, she blessed each of us and prayed for us.

Gosemo

While we were not busy gathering information, we got to experience different parts of the village life. It was different from the Lahu village because we weren't living with host families, but they really made us feel like we experienced the Karen lifestyle. I'm going to list out my favorite parts from the village, that did not involve the countless hours of researching and paper writing:

- The Funeral - the first week we were there, we were invited to a funeral in a near by village. Its a symbol of status to have farang at any important occasion, so we trekked up to the funeral that was about 30 minutes away by pick up truck. When we got there, we were given a meal and boiled water. We then sat in on the service, which was very small and held in someone's house. The funeral was for a women that was 80 years old, and was obviously loved by the people of the village. It is not very Thai to show any sad emotion, so during the service many people would hide their faces so no one would see them cry. The body was held in a crate that was gift wrapped, and there were wreathes made of toilet paper. I love that they use toilet papers as decorations for different things, because it is so rare for them. After the service, we joined the funeral procession and hiked up a mountain for about 45 minutes, following the casket and the wooden cross all the way to the grave site. The Karen people are very forest oriented, so they make sure they bury their people in land that is preserved by the forest, which goes back to their animist beliefs. Each person helped throw the dirt over the casket, including myself, and then they broke up all of her personal belongs, such as plates, pots. and her purses, and threw them into the grave. After they were all done, the broke up all of the spades being used to carry the dirt and laid them on top of the grave. It was SUCH a cool experience, to see how Christian funerals can be universal, yet so different at the same time.

about to bury the casket

The Wedding- Literally a day after we were at the funeral, the same village invited us back for a wedding! This village sure had a lot of stuff going on. A 20 something year old boy was getting married to a girl that was 18, and the whole village was a party. First, we went to the service, that mainly consisted of old men standing up in the congregation and yelling out advice to the couple. It is culturally unacceptable here for a woman to look happy on her wedding day, so the bride looked like she was about to cry the whole time, which was a little awkward. Afterwards, everybody went to the brides house for lunch. There were SO many people there, and so much rice! We were guests of honor, so we got to eat inside the house. I don't think I've ever seen so much rice in the house. Some people were doing their papers on Karen courtship practices, so we got to sit around and talk to the bride and groom for a couple of hours. It was an awesome experience, hearing about how they met and what they plan on doing with their lives.

the wedding party

This was just half of my experience in Musikee, there is SO much more I need to talk about. Stay tuned for another post about the Village life in Musikee!

The day I lived the Village Life. Lahu Style.

Long time no see! Internet has been very sparse (and expensive) since leaving Chiang Mai, so I have not been able to update as frequently as many of you would probably like.

Since leaving Chiang Mai I have:
- traveled by tour bus cross country through Thailand. We stayed at wonderful hotels, saw ancient temples and ruins, and even played with a couple of wild monkeys that pulled hair, bit fingers, and stole earrings. Mean.
- went on spring break to the BEAUTIFUL island of Koh Chang where I laid out in the sun, snorkeled in the BLUEST water, hiked to a waterfall, and stayed in a bungalo that cost $6 a night.

- came back to Chiang Mai for one day, where I experienced my first earthquake ( a 4. somthing in Chiang Mai, the center was 2 hours away.. feeling the earth move is a strange feeling!) and frantically figured out my classes for next semester
- Travelled to the beautiful Lahu village

The rest of this post is going to be about my time in the Lahu village, probably the best (tied with Searching for Sanook) experience I've had in Thailand so far.

It took us about 3 hours up windy roads to reach the village in the mountains. This village, consisting of 40 families, is in one of the most beautiful locations I have ever seen. Rolling hill surround the houses, blue sky, clear air, and wonderful people. As soon as we arrived, dozens of kids came out of no where and jumped on us, kind of like the wild monkeys from our cross country trip. They had beautiful smiling faces and loved to play, play, and play. I don't think I've ever played so much Frisbee in my life. I even became best buddies with a little 4 year old girl that would pick me bouquets of beautiful flowers and run into my lap whenever I sat down.



The wonderful part about this village was that they let us into their lives. I got to stay in a real village house, take FREEZING bucket showers, and sit around and play games with my host sister. Our time there was actually unusual because it was the first time in about 40 years that the temperature has been less than 70 degrees outside, so we were all pretty cold (especially the village people..they were BUNDLED like the biggest snow storm had just happened). They slaughtered us a pig to feed us for the 4 days (sad.. I had to help remove all the hair from the pig. Made me seriously consider become a vegetarian). We also went fishing with the people. Now when we think fishing we think..relaxing..sitting on the side of the river with a pole and the nature. Not for the Lahu people. They built a dam out of bamboo and mud in the river, and then we jumped in and caught fish, bugs, and other creatures for our stew for dinner! Definitely an experience, and I am now a professional bug and fish head eater.

The Lahu people are wonderful. They are some of the few Christians in Thailand, as many of the various villagers are because of Western missionaries from over 100 years ago. They love to worship God, dance, and have fun. They make moon cakes out of sticky rice and seseme seeds, and whoever makes the most beautiful mooncake (judged from the elderly mooncake women in the village) gets married next and has the most beautiful children. Guess who won? thats right..YOURS TRULY. Get ready for my gorgeous kids.

We also got to visit an orphanage that some professors on the trip sponser. Its sad, because there are literally only 4 men in the surrounding area. Because the mountains provide such poor farming, many men leave the village for Taiwan or Korea and send money back. Some kids are left behind as orphans when their mother dies, and ar sent to the orphanage. In order to make sure that men don't feel like they have to leave, they are learning how to do sustainable farming...growing such things as coffee and avacados (MY TWO FAVORITES). The Lahu are tradtionally slash-and-burn farmers, so this teaches them how to get the most nutrients out of the soil, for the longest amount of time. Both coffee and avacado trees can live up to over 100 years, and the bring in a huge profit! Its great for the people to learn these things.

After a wonderful farewell party with lots of dancing and food, we left for our second village stay at the second tribal village: The Karen Village. It was a 7 hour car ride with almost 2,000 turns through the mountains. Needless to say, I took 2 Dramamene and was barely awake to experience the waterfall that we visited along the way. We arrived safely, and this village is a little more developed with electricity and (expensive) Internet, which I mean is understandable because I have no idea how they get internet when I can't get any cell phone service, and there are no buildings for miles and miles around, besides Karen villages. I am here for the next three weeks, so towards the end I will write a blog post about my experiencce here!

Sorry I can't provide pictures, the internet is really slow, so you'll just have to wait til i gt back to chiang mai!

Love and miss you all!

Kitty