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.
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| Gosemo |
- 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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