Elephants Heal

Linda is down by the river laughing and bathing elephants. We're in northern Thailand at an elephant conservation park an hour outside of Chiang Mai. The valley here looks like it's right out of southern Wisconsin (except for the elephants.) It's hilly country covered with green forest. There's also a river that is brown and swift because it's the rainy season.

I'm sitting on a covered skywalk enjoying watching Linda enjoy herself. Linda and I are both widows. She is in her second year of grief and I am in my sixth. We are both our usual edgy selves. But all told, we seem OK. Maybe we are--especially here in this sanctuary.

It's cloudy. The mist has lingered all day-rising and then falling around the tops of the hills. There have been brief periods of rain. I've been here before in a different season when the sun beat down relentlessly and penetrated me like an x-ray. The clouds and rain feel better.

Our guide told us that there are now 34 rescued elephants and two babies who were born here. One is about a month old. There are also 450 dogs rescued in Bangkok from the gruesome dog meat trade. Plus a hundred water buffalo. There are lots of cats who have a their own place to live separate from elephants, dogs, and water buffalo. Cats come and go as they please and and so their numbers are hard to come by. I don't really need to know how many cats there are. It's just pleasant to see them.

A group of very sour smelling tourists have just surrounded me. They are speaking a European sounding language I don't recognize. Some of them are eyeing me. Or rather, hungrily viewing the comfortable wicker chair on which I'm sitting. Such acquisitive eyes!

Linda and I will be spending the night here in a hut. After most of the visitors leave when it grows dark, maybe we will hear the elephants snoring. The elephant sounds I have heard so far include trumpet, growl, roar, gurgle, and squeak. I'm a sound junky and want to hear more. And like elephants, I have poor eyesight, but keen hearing and a good sense of smell. Plus, I never forget. At least, I never forget when it comes to voices. Some people remember faces. Not me. Faces come and go. But voices. Those stick. And the voices of elephants are especially memorable.

I'm listening to those voices as well as the sound of splashing, gurgling, and laughing as people are filling buckets in the river and throwing the water on the elephants to bathe them and each other.

The elephants come here in various states of abuse but a tiny woman with a large heart named Lek Chailert rescued them and started a foundation/park to save elephants in Thailand and nearby Myanmar. In addition to saving elephants, this park supports the local economy by providing a consumer for locally grown produce (elephants are vegetarians and eat a lot every day) and giving jobs to unemployed mahouts (elephant handlers) who also mostly happen to be refugees from Myanmar.

Linda and friend

All the elephants have stories. Linda and I have been able to walk around and meet and touch and communicate with the animals who are highly social and tend to live in families or with female companions. All the elephant females (our guide calls them ladies) have friends and the babies are protected by mommies and nannies. If there is any potential threat to a baby, there is much trumpeting and jostling as the females form a protective circle around the little one.

Mommy, nanny, baby

The three rescued males are kept chained because they are so aggressive they hurt the females. But the female led families visit the males and keep them company so they don't get too lonely.

One lady we met on one of our walks was Mae Tee who was born between 1945-50. Her name is the Myanmar Karen ethnic group's name for river. She was forced into logging in Myanmar and was made to take amphetamines so she would not stop working. This overwork has left her with stiff wrist joints and deteriorated ankle joints. As a result, Mae Tee is unable to lay down so she only sleeps a couple of hours every day while standing and putting her head in a wooden headrest the mahouts have constructed. She goes to the onsite elephant clinic twice a day to get treatment for her injuries. Mae Tee's best friend and companion was an elephant named Mae Kham Geao who died a year ago and is buried on the facility. Mae Tee visits the grave each day and doesn't tend to roam too far away from it. I now foster Mae Tee in memory of my mom who died a few years ago.

Mae Tee

Another lady we met was Mae Jokia who was blinded in both of her eyes by her logging mahout. Born around 1960, she suffered a miscarriage while pulling a log uphill. She wasn't allowed to stop working to see if her calf was dead or alive so she sat down and refused to get up. And that was when her handler blinded her by hurling rocks into her eyes.

Mae Jokia

There are many more stories about the elephants who are now in this place where they are loved and cared for. And being healed. Linda and I fit right in with the rescued creatures here for in fact, we are being healed as well.

Share and support goodness. Learn more. Donate. Spread the news. Foster an elephant. Visit.
www.elephantnaturefoundation.org

Number of elephants left in the world

Piggy Bank

Lots of people spend spring break on a beach in Thailand. Not me. Last spring break, I went to a Thai garbage dump. It’s not that garbage dumps are my thing. Quite the contrary. But a group of people in Chiang Mai, where I live, invited me to join them on a service trip to a medical clinic for Burmese refugees run by a remarkable woman named Dr. Cynthia, sometimes called the Mother Teresa of Thailand. I was eager to see her clinic and to meet her.

The clinic is located in the city of Mae Sot on the Thai/Burmese border. The trip to the garbage dump was a last minute add-on. One of the women in our group said she had heard there was a community of Burmese refugees, including many children, working and living in the Mae Sot municipal dump. She had been told the community was very poor and in need of everything.

We bought a bunch of children’s’ clothes and went to the dump. And that was where I met a little girl named Suu. Suu and her mom, along with 500,000 other Burmese, have fled their country to escape the war that has been waging there for sixty years. Suu and her mom had learned that there was work and a safe (compared to Burma) place to live in Mae Sot. The place was the Mae Sot municipal garbage dump. They decided it was better to live with trash than to be treated like trash in their native country. So they moved to the dump, constructed a shack to shelter from the rain, and now sift through the trash to make money from recycling bits of plastic.

Hundreds of other Burmese refugees also live at the dump even though there are no toilets, food is scarce, and the water is polluted. Often people get sick. The recycler does not pay much so everyone, including Suu and the other children, work long into the night. Despite working hard, people go hungry. Suu and her mom get by as best they can.

Suu and her mom invited me into their “house” and offered me-- by the way they handled it-- a precious cup of soda pop. We couldn’t speak the same language but we communicated anyway. I was touched by their generosity.

Many of the people who flee Burma have little but the clothes on their backs. They labor as illegal immigrants in Thailand and elsewhere and live as unwelcome guests wherever they can. They do the backbreaking labor no one else wants to do. The situation in Burma is changing but it is still not safe for many refugees, like Suu, to return home due to continued military action against them there.

Many people visit the dump when they come to Mae Sot. They take a lot of pictures as though they are in a zoo. “How can people live like this?” they ask with disgust. “Why don’t they go back to their own country?” Suu and her mom and the others at the dump are friendly to all the visitors even though they do not ask permission to take photos or understand why the refugees live at a dump. 

What I learned from Suu and her mom is that no one wants to live in a garbage dump, but it is safer and offers more opportunity to work than Burma. At the dump, Suu and her mom and the others can live with less fear. At the dump, they have community.

But what they do not have is clean water, sanitation, or much food.

The stench and flies overwhelmed the group of visitors I was with. In addition to the squalor, the fact that the people living at the dump were refugees made the situation seem too complicated to do anything long term to help. The group also knew that many well-meaning people in the past had seen this poverty and tried to assist but had failed.

Unfortunately, the well intentioned projects the people brought were not discussed with those who lived at the dump. Not being of or rooted in the community, the projects did not gain ground and withered.

After meeting Suu, her mom, and the others, it was impossible for me to walk away without trying to do something that would be effective and not repeat past mistakes. Through a process of trial and error and a lot of research, I met an expat here in Chiang Mai who had international development experience and an approach that made sense to me. It’s an approach that is deceptively simple: in order to do effective development in a community, it’s important to communicate with the people who live there. It’s vital to find out what kind of help the community thinks will be effective and then to partner with it to bring about change.

Raising pigs at the dump for extra income to help alleviate hunger is the community’s idea and goal. Pigletsforprogress.org is a grassroots group of progress minded people including Christina, the community leaders at the dump, and others like me who want to help the community reach its goal.

I think of pigletsforprogress.org  as a piggybank for Suu. 

Same Same But Different

Customer service operates differently in Thailand than in other places I have lived. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

“Come get money,” the female voice on the phone insisted. It's not often that I get such messages. Usually, I’m being asked for money when someone I don't know calls. 

“This Centahl in Kad Suan Gaew. You buy watah bottah Satooday. Leave cawd.”

I checked my wallet. My credit card was nestled in its usual spot. Remembering that I had shown my Central Department Store discount card at the time of the purchase, I checked for that. It was next to my credit card.

The voice continued. “You leave change. Come get. Bling passplawt.”

 So that's where all my money had gone. I hadn't picked up my change when I bought a cheapo water bottle. 

"Where I go?” I asked. Kad Suan Gaew is a big place.

“Custoomah Soovie.  Second flah.”

“OK. OK.” Since moving to Chiang Mai over a year ago, I have taken to saying many English words twice like the Thais do. This provides a certain rhythmic comfort--kind of like a small child gets from rocking back and forth-- and gives me the illusion of fitting in. 

I have also learned to speak English Thai style because my Midwestern American is often incomprehensible to Thais. This involves dropping verbs from sentences whenever possible and using the present tense when I keep them. In the Thai language, verbs aren't conjugated. The present tense is always used. Time is revealed through contextual words like leuw, (already), ja (will), and gamlang, (doing now). 

 I get refund already; I will get refund; I am get refund now.

Northern Thai style English--Chiang Mai where I live is in northern Thailand-- also means substituting the letter “l” in the place of “r” in many English words. “Rice” is “lice”; "fried" is "flied". 

Yes, it felt odd the first time I ordered "flied lice" at a restaurant. But no complaints. It’s been easier to adapt my English than to learn Thai. 

Eager to reclaim my money, I allived at the Central Department Store, housed in Kad Suan Gaew, a mazelike and moldy mall in Chiang Mai. Kad Suan Gaew translates as crystal garden market but it's actually a dark and ponderous structure built out of brown bricks in the Lanna Thai way. 

Kad Suan Gaew houses a lot of shops that sell plastic knickknacks, designer knock offs, pirated dvds,  and cheap phones.

It also has a dank movie theater and a bowling alley that has seen much better days.

Many of Kad Suan Gaew's corridors lead nowhere. There are entire wings that house nothing. Before entering Kad Suan Gaew, it's important to know where you are going because it’s easy to get lost there.

I walked around the second floor of the Central Department Store. No customer service.

"Yuu tiinye (where is) customer service?" I asked a clerk behind the jewelry counter who was looking at photos on her phone. She smiled at me and pointed up. "Third floor?" I asked. She nodded and returned to her phone. 

Sure enough, on the third floor there was a long customer service counter. Miming a conversation on the phone, I showed my passport to a tall older woman behind the counter and said "Refund." Three young female clerks immediately appeared. In Chiang Mai, when a job needs to be done--any job--it is done by groups of employees. I was told by the tall woman to go to the far end of the counter and to take a seat. She and the three other clerks followed, smiled at me, and spoke Thai to each other on the other side of the counter. After a few minutes of this, the tall clerk, who spoke pretty good English, asked me for my passport.

There were the usual multiple copies made. I was required to sign them. Then the tall clerk disappeared. I waited. In Thailand, you either get used to waiting or you flee the country. (Please note: you won't be able to flee quickly because you'll have to wait and sign a lot of forms.)

But no worries. Those customers who are waiting--basically all customers--are offered seats by banks, government offices, cable and utility companies, hardware shops, furniture malls, department stores, and so forth. Frequently, beverages are offered, too. 

The tall clerk returned with five more copies of my passport. These required my signature. Then she left. An officious woman vested with the authority to carry refunds marched over to me with an envelope. And forms. These also required my signature. Then the refund bearer slowly counted the money. Based upon the amount I was about to receive, I had given a 1000 Thai Baht note ($30 USD) to make a 100 Thai Baht ($3 USD) purchase but had not realized it at the time and left without my change. 

Since I had used my discount card, the store had a procedure to look up my telephone number and contact me to return the money.

But Thais haven't quite worked out the procedural glitches for many other things like on-line bill paying, internet banking, applying for visas, connecting subscribers to cable, and using credit cards. Thai ways are not efficient by Western standards. Many Western expats consider Thai ways to be dysfunctional.

But Thais value relationships more than efficiency. They are so social that it is impossible to be anonymous here in the manner that is common in the West. I suspect that Thais would consider a society where people can be anonymous to be dysfunctional.

Thais in Chiang Mai like to do business face to face. It's unusual to resolve problems by phone or email here. Conducting all business face to face is time consuming and often frustrating for Westerners, especially for type A driven Westerners like me.

But then something happens like a department store calling to return forgotten change. Or a cafe owner chasing after me to return my left behind umbrella. The cable company asking that I come into its office to give me a refund because it has calculated an overcharge. A computer shop owner carrying my broken printer to another shop because she cannot fix it.

And all of this is done cheerfully.


"Same same but different" is something Thais often say. It means that whatever is said or done is true. And the opposite is true also. It's a way to maintain harmony and equilibrium. Everyone is right. No one is wrong. Perhaps this mentality is why Thais are known for their tolerance. 

So the Thais cheerfully and patiently tolerate farangs' (foreigners) need for efficiency while conducting business in their own highly social style. 




                                         Sometimes efficiency discussions get heated in Thailand

Trendy Chiang Mai

Living in Thailand is a daily non-stop language lesson. I keep discovering new meanings for English words I thought I knew and learning Thai words I have never known.

Take the word “trendy” for example. My condo is in a trendy neighborhood in Chiang Mai. Here as elsewhere, trendy means that there are many boutiques, cafes, restaurants, banks, and other services all within short walking distance. Given the neighborhood’s proximity to the airport as well as to lots of nightlife and traffic, trendy means pretty noisy, too.

My neighborhood also has some of the same features as regular non-trendy ones in Chiang Mai. These include having no walkable sidewalks, trash on the streets, thickets of overhead electrical wires, and more than a few stray dogs.

Before starting to sound like a crusty and critical expat, let me point out that there is a community where I live. Although I’ve only resided here a short time, there are many neighbors in my building that I could ask for help and vice versa. The building security guard and receptionist greet me with genuine pleasure when they see me. There is a wonderful masseuse in the lobby of my building whose seven-year-old son loves to tell me about swimming and his pool adventures when I get massages from his mom.

After telling the Thai shopkeepers on the condo's soi about my concern for the stray dog that lives on our lane—I was carrying a plate of food for the dog and searching for him at the time—they started looking after him as well.

There are two restaurants on the soi where I am a regular. One is a place called Mu’s Katsu operated by a gracious young Thai couple named Mu and Paul. The food is excellent and inexpensive. I eat at Mu’s about three times per week.

“Where is Gally?” Paul asked one evening recently.

“I don’t know Gally.” 

“Yes. Yes, you do,” Paul said.

“Really, I don’t.” I smiled. Smiling is very important in Thailand.

Mu’s Katsu is a small restaurant popular with Thais and foreigners alike. On this particular evening, most of the patrons were Thai.

Everyone in the place suddenly became interested in Paul’s and my conversation. It was unusual for Paul to be so insistent.

“Gally. Gally. You know Gally.” Clearly, Paul was not going to let this go. I looked around. All eyes were on me. “Please just tell him you know Gally so he will be happy and we can eat in peace,” they silently pleaded.

But I did not know Gally and had no idea where he was.

Mercifully, Paul suddenly added, “Gally. The guy from Austaylia.”

“Oh, Gary,” I said. Paul smiled. The whole restaurant breathed a sigh of relief but remained curious. Gary is a condo neighbor who is also a Mu’s Katsu regular. We have eaten there together several times.

“Gary is coming back from Australia next week.” 

“I tell you you know him,” Paul beamed triumphantly. Yes indeed. Silly me.

Oddly, the other restaurant patrons now seemed more interested than ever. Somewhat daunted by all the attention, I finished my dinner quickly and left.

Later, I told a Thai friend about my exchange with Paul. She laughed. A lot.

“You know that in Thai language ga rii means woman who sells body for sex?”

No wonder everyone in the restaurant had been so interested.

No, I did not know. Ga rii. Gary.

It is doubtful that ga rii will be a useful term. But how wonderful to have added yet another meaning to an English name and a new word to my fledgling Thai vocabulary all at the same time.

(This was originally posted on InterNations, a social network for expats. Please see link on the right of the page.)

InterNations: A Good Way to Meet Expats in Thailand

Friends in the United States, my birthplace, often ask me how I meet people in Chiang Mai, Thailand where I now live.

Actually, for me, it has been a lot easier to meet people here than it has in any other place I have lived. Chiang Mai is friendly. You have to go out of your way not to meet folks here.

InterNations has played a significant role in my social life as an expat in Thailand as well as in Hong Kong where I lived previously. InterNations is an international social (in person and online) network, that sponsors events around the globe. I have belonged to InterNations since moving from America to Hong Kong in 2010. Chiang Mai now has a fledgling chapter.

Through InterNations in Chiang Mai, I have made several meaningful connections. One was with an adventurous woman named Colleen who has been traveling around the world this past year. She sent me an email me through the InterNations message board. We then met at an InterNations event when she was in Chiang Mai and got together for lunch a few days after. Colleen and I hit it off and ended up going to Hanoi together. After she returned to Thailand from Vietnam, I made sure I went to Bangkok to see her off on her trip to Europe. It's pretty much a sure thing that we will travel together again.

Through InterNations, I also met Christina, an international development consultant. We share a lot of values about how to demonstrate respect for people living in poverty. Together, we have embarked upon an adventure that we hope will help a community of people living on a garbage dump near the Thai Burmese border.

So, if you are planning on relocating to a new country or just passing through, I encourage you to make connections through InterNations. It's free. There are no meetings, dues, or obligations. Solo travelers are welcome and warmly included at events.

And it's not just an American thing. Through InterNations, I have met expats and travelers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, Austria, Germany, the UK, Korea, Mauritius, Panama, Thailand, Denmark, Australia.....you get the picture.

If this sounds like an infomercial, it's because it is. But no one paid me to publish this. InterNations events are interesting, welcoming, and fun. Check it out at http://www.internations.org

Also see this article about international women in business. http://www.internations.org/magazine/international-women-15279

Goat Story

When does a goat story become a ghost story? In Thailand, of course, where belief in ghosts and spirits is so widespread it influences most aspects of daily life.

Actually, to say that Thai people believe in ghosts is an understatement of monumental proportions. Belief in ghosts is such an integral part of the culture, it is as though the Thais themselves manifest spirits whether they exist in "objective" reality or not. Oddly, as a Westerner who does not share Thai ghost beliefs, I am not immune. Upon moving to Chiang Mai exactly one year ago, I sometimes sensed unseen presences or caught glimpses of shadowy figures out of the corner of my eye in my condo.   

But the ghosts have since moved. After becoming more acclimated to Thailand, my unwelcome guests and I had a polite but direct conversation. I asked them to relocate to the condo building's san phra phum (spirit house). They obliged. Because I was a farang (foreigner), the ghosts assumed that I didn't know Thai cultural rules so they had pushed the boundaries.

There are spirit houses near all Thai homes, temples, hotels, condominiums, car dealerships, fitness centers, shopping malls, etc., etc.. The spirit houses are usually elaborately painted wooden structures the size of large doll houses on big pedestals with miniature replicas of people, furniture, and animals inside and around them. A Buddhist monk typically advises about the optimum placement of the spirit house on a property.

Traditional spirit houses 

Spirit house figurines

Modern spirit house near trendy Bangkok hotel

I will get to the goat story. Promise. 

But first it's important to know about the most popular form of transport in Thailand. There are thousands of motor scooters here. It's not uncommon to see two or three people riding on a scooter while also juggling a baby or a ladder. 

But not to worry. There are helmet laws. They are enforced in a relaxed way but they exist nonetheless.

While eating dinner one evening with a group of Thai friends from my Rotary club, I told a story about my visit to a town in southern Spain where there had also been many scooters and helmet laws. Regarding the latter, however, frequently only the driver wore a helmet while the passengers did not.

One day in the Spanish town, I saw three people on a scooter--a man, a woman, and what appeared to be a child wedged between them. Only the child was wearing a helmet. Upon closer inspection, it became clear that the helmeted child wasn't a kid in the human sense. It was a goat. This I thought was pretty funny. "That goat must have been important to those people," I told my Thai friends, expecting laughter.

Instead there were incredulous stares and silence. Finally, Suparie, a woman who has spent a lot of time in New Zealand, America, and Europe and who is comfortable with the questioning ways of Westerners asked, "How did you know it was a goat?"

What a weird question, I thought. 

"Well, it had hooves and long spindly furry 'arms and legs'," I sputtered.

"How do you know that goats look like this?" she demanded.

"Well, what do goats look like in Thailand?" I had seen goats in the villages around Chiang Mai. They looked very similar to their Spanish counterparts.

There were more blank looks and silence as my dinner companions seemed to be wondering how I knew what goats looked like.

Then it dawned on me. Although my friends and I speak English, we pronounce many words  differently. They thought I was saying that I had seen a helmeted ghost on a motor scooter! "You know that I am talking about the animal that makes the 'baa baa' sound?" I started bleating. A waiter walking by the table looked dismayed. 

Suddenly, smiles flashed all around.

"Ah," said Suparie. "We thought you were saying that you had seen a ghost with a helmet on a motor scooter. Now we know that you saw a goat. You were trying to make a funny story!" She smiled. Everyone else smiled, too. No wonder they had reacted so coolly. Who ever heard of a helmeted ghost on a motor scooter? Clearly, a ghost wouldn't need a helmet!

And then it suddenly occurred to me that maybe some Thais, just like some Spaniards, put helmets on their goats when they take them for rides.

I made a mental note to self: do not tell any more goat stories in Thailand.

So far, this has worked well.

                                     

This Is Not a Fairytale

Once upon a time there were two kingdoms separated by a narrow river. In the Kingdom called The Land of Smiles, the people were happy. The king was kind and cared about his subjects who he loved and protected fiercely. Unlike neighboring lands, foreigners had never conquered his kingdom. The land was beautiful and fertile. Food, clothing, and shelter were enjoyed by most.

The Kingdom across the river was called the Land of Tears. The king of the Land of Tears had waged war upon his own people for half a century. In his greed, he turned what had once been a rich country into a very poor one. The king’s armies stole land and money, burned forests, destroyed roads, farms, schools, clinics, and libraries. They bombed villages. The soldiers cut off the hands and tongues of anyone who objected, forced children to become soldiers, and placed landmines everywhere to prevent people from escaping.

A beautiful queen who loved her people spoke out against the king. She was imprisoned for many years so that she could not tell the world what was happening in her country. The king was so determined to keep what he was doing a secret that few were ever allowed into the Land of Tears. And in truth, not many wanted to go.

After plundering his country for 50 years, the king of the Land of Tears began to see that there would soon be little left to steal unless he allowed foreigners into the kingdom to make investments. But the foreigners were afraid of losing their money. They knew that if the king continued to act in the same way, they also would be robbed. So they demanded proof from the king and his armies that their money would be safe. 

The king promptly released the queen, (although he still did not allow her to have any real power). He also talked about democracy—a word he knew the foreigners loved to hear. The foreigners, whose own kingdoms were also struggling due to their leaders’ greed, were reassured and started to invest. In the meantime, the king continued to wage war upon his own people. The foreigners pretended not to notice.

Despite many dangers, 500,000 people from the Land of Tears managed to flee to other countries. Some found their way to the Land of Smiles. However they came with little but the clothes on their backs. They were not only from the Land of Tears but poor as well, and so they were not welcome.

Some were put into camps from which they could not come and go freely and where there was no work. Others labored as illegal immigrants and lived wherever they could. They did the backbreaking labor no else wanted to do. Without legal rights, people from the Land of Tears could not object when their employers did not pay them or the police beat them.  Many others were bought and sold as slaves.

It so happened that a little girl named Suu from the Land of Tears and her mother learned that there was work and a safe place to live in The Land of Smiles. This place was a garbage dump in a city called Mae Sot near the river. There they could pitch a plastic sheet to shelter from the rain and sift through trash in the hope of making money from recycling bits of plastic. Hundreds of people from the Land of Tears already lived there even though there were no toilets and the water for washing and drinking was polluted. Often people got sick. The recycler did not pay them much so everyone had to work long into the night, including the children. Many times, people despite their hard work, went hungry. Suu and her mom got by the best they could.

Many people visit the garbage village when they come to the city on the river. They take a lot of pictures as if they are at a zoo. “How can these people--especially the children-- live like this?” they ask with disgust. “Why don’t they go back to their own country?” Suu and her mom and the others in the village are friendly to all of the visitors even though they know that they do not really understand why Suu and the villagers live there.

What the visitors do not realize is that no one wants to live on a garbage dump. But this garbage dump is safer than the Land of Tears. Here they can live mostly without fear. Here they have a community.

But what they do not have is clean water, much food, and medicine. Suu's future does not look promising unless people who are aware of her situation do something effective to help.

pigletsforprogress.org is a grassroots group of progress minded people in Chiang Mai who spoke to the community at the dump to find out what kind of help the people there thought be effective. Raising pigs at the dump for extra income is their idea. 

Please help Suu and her community have a brighter future.

Rough Landing: A Thai Tale

It was July and the wet season in northern Thailand. Today, the rain was falling steadily without breaks. This was a penetrating rain. No wind to speak of. The sound of falling water had begun around midnight.

She watched the water drip from the leaves of the trees that clung closest to the house. The garden surrounding the place where they were dog sitting was alive with flowers and shrubs she had never seen before. They glittered like emeralds in the rain. 

In a corner of the garden was a spirit house. Every building in Chiang Mai had one. These elaborate wooden structures on pedestals were erected to shelter and placate the spirits of the land. They looked a lot like dollhouses. She wondered if the spirits and their houses came alive at night. Fear of the mosquito hordes who feasted after dark prevented her from checking.

The inside of the place where they were staying was just as alive as the garden and perhaps even the spirit house, but much less appealing. At night, the walls were covered with geckos. Another bigger lizard also lived in the house. It let out a loud call whenever it caught a gecko. Rats could be heard scurrying to and fro in the kitchen, leaving mounds of droppings that needed to be cleaned off the table each morning. The window screens were in poor repair, making it difficult to sit for any length of time without getting bitten by mosquitoes and gnats.

Basically a huge, dark, dusty box, the house had little cross ventilation. Stifling by mid-day, it did not cool down until well after dark. They had long given up trying to sleep on the lumpy mattress in the sweltering bedroom on the second floor to which the owner had assigned them. A long tattered couch in the living room where it was slightly cooler was less lumpy. The only comfortable thing in the place was the dog, an affectionate mutt with an expressive face who leapt with joy to greet them whenever they returned from errands.

The house was in a neighborhood north of the city. Unlike the ancient golden templed tourist section where they had stayed on their first visit, there were no expats to speak of here except for the occasional few who could be spotted at a run down hotel several blocks away. The Thais in this part of the city, unfamiliar with tourists, spoke little English. This made getting transportation or ordering food in restaurants for people who did not speak Thai unpredictable and frustrating.

Weedy sidewalks with wobbly tiles dotted with piles of food led down the main road from the house to the superhighway. Who was the food for, she wondered-- the dogs or spirits? Or was it one and the same? The traffic of the superhighway swarmed with trucks, tuk tuks, cars, and song taws unimpeded by crosswalks or traffic lights. Overhead, a thick tangled vine of telephone and TV wires attached to poles lining both sides of the street sprouted frequent loose ends that dangled to the ground. She learned to dodge them and the packs of dogs that roamed freely.

Everything about this said developing world. She had always thought she could live in that world because of her travels in Nepal and Tibet. There she thought she had learned that along with the dogs and wires and traffic came a perspective more grounded in human connection than in material possessions.

Then again, that might simply have been what she wanted to see at the time.