Mae Jo and Pun Pun continued

1 Oct 08 -

Each day is structured the same: eat breakfast with the host family (which is cooked and ready whenever we get up), meet the group at Pun Pun at 9 to learn about organic farming and sustainable living for a few hours, eat lunch and loll around for hours, at 5 we meet with the local children and play games, then we're free to do as we please. The first day we played with mud, the second day we played with mud again and made adobe bricks with it, and today we planted kale.

We usually began with a lecture from Pee Joe. Now let me stop for a moment to describe this man because he is someone I truly admire. He shared his story with us - working in a factory in Bangkok for 12 hours a day and still starving. He came to New Mexico to learn about earthen building and brought this knowledge back to Thailand. "People spend their whole lives saving and going into debt for a house, but within a year he had built four houses and still had no money," he said with a friendly laugh.

He established Pun Pun with almost no money, which he did on purpose to prove to local farmers that it was possible to start with nothing. He bought a cheap patch of ungrowable land, for which the villagers all laughed at him. But through his extensive knowledge of soil and farming, within five years he was growing sesame, passion fruit, bananas, papaya, kale, legumes, rice, and a host of other crops. He also grows them all organically to prove to farmers that chemicals are not necessary. He firmly believes that teaching by example is the only way. Instead of lecturing farmers on the importance of sustainable living, he lives it himself and waits for them to approach him. And that they do. He has a steady stream of workshops, trainings, and interns. He charges a reasonable fee from foreign first-worlders in order to teach local Thai farmers for free. I would estimate that he now has about 20 earthen homes on his land. That is why I admire him so much - he walks everything he talks. In fact, he's so hardcore about it that for asthma and allergies he drank his own pee rather than getting medicines, which he claims is very effective.

He described how TV had negatively impacted the lives of villagers. The average life-span decreased sharply because people went from an almost completely vegetarian diet to eating all the things they saw on TV. Many of these foods contain high-fat meats, chemicals, MSG, and other horrible things that people get hooked on. People began working much harder because all of a sudden they wanted the things they saw on TV. The economic system changed from primarily bartering to capitalist, and people began to work so much harder because they needed money for the first time to buy all the products they wanted. To make matters worse, the government swooped in after WWII and told people, "You're poor," a concept which did not previously exist, and forced them to begin growing cash-crops rather than simply what they needed to live.

I felt partly responsible and it strengthened my resolve to exclude TV from my life. Forgive me for sounding so communist, but for the first time in my life I began to question whether capitalism is really all it's cracked up to be... It seems to have destroyed something beautiful here as people went from being perfectly content to insatiable consumers. And who is that really helping? Certainly not them. All of a sudden corporations are swooping in and having them grow their cash crops for them. They say, "we'll pay for the chemicals and the seeds, you just grow it and we'll do the rest." People grow it thinking they're making a decent living when in reality they're getting completely ripped off. But they aren't educated enough to do the math. Now they have to buy all their food back from these corporations because they're not growing their own anymore.

It's a rather depressing story to me, but at least it's not that way in this village. We live the good life here. I spend my 5 hours off in the middle of the day meditating, reading and sipping fruit smoothies at 'You Sabai Cafe,' which overlooks the village. 'Sabai' is a popular term in Thai which means a state of wellness, satisfaction, and contentment - appropriate indeed.

Last night our house was ransacked by a group of small children who wanted to show us a freakishly large insect they had found. We played with it for a couple of hours and I was astonished by the sheer size of it. Everything is much larger here, except the people (I have bumped my head on things at least 10 times). I keep thinking back to Gary Larson's Far Side images of insects the size of humans in the jungle. Tonight I watched some of the guys train in Muay Thai (famous Thai boxing), then some of us did yoga, meditation and reiki. Today was overcast, which was a welcomed break from sweating to death all day. Although whenever I comment on how hot it is here the villagers laugh at me. They somehow never seem to break a sweat.

An old woman died the second night we stayed here and we had the honor of participating in the ensuing festivities. The entire village threw a party for three nights. Then on Tuesday there was a procession to what I'll refer to as the 'cremation station' - a large platform surrounded by benches. The whole village was there and we all had a blast. It was more of a pyrotechnics show than a funeral and many fireworks were lit off as they burned the body. Everyone seemed to be in higher spirits than the funerals I'm accustomed to and it was really nice that the entire village comes. I think the whole thing is viewed more like a celebration of rebirth here - a continuation rather than a loss.

3 Oct 08 -

Yesterday we learned how to make paint au naturale from tapioca flour, clay and sand. Then we had a ton of fun painting an adobe wall with, of course, our hands. That night the villagers dressed us all up in traditional clothing and threw a huge going away party. We ate a pot-luck feast, and then participated in a traditional going away ceremony. We proceeded down a line of the village elders who gave us each their blessing and tied strings to our wrists. The string is meant to align our bodies and spirits. Sometimes when travelling our body arrives at a destination but our spirit is elsewhere - the string helps to unite them.

Next, we lit giant lanterns that floated up into the night sky. And as I looked up at them, suspended under a backdrop of infinite starscape, I felt that blanket of joy come over me once again. The love from these people was palpable - as evidenced particularly by all the tears that were shed while saying goodbye the next morning. I found myself really missing my host mom, Pee Mon. She had taken such good care of us and I had grown attached to her. This was despite the fact that communication was reduced completely to a series of grunts, hand-gestures, and smiles. But what more do you really need? I feel that language is often too distracting anyway - too full of unnecessary chatter, BS, and self-glorification - particularly in the West. "What do you do? Where do you go to school? How much money do you make?" As if that were all that truly mattered. How about, "Who are you? What do you believe in? What are you passionate about?" Anyway, that's quite enough ranting for today.