It's funny when you get to the point of language comprehension where you can understand things you're not supposed to. Like yesterday, when Gertie was talking to Betty in Thai about one of the volunteers.
It's important to note here that Gertie is terrible with names. It took quite a while for my name to register with her - the double whammy of foreign consonants is enough to thoroughly intimidate most people here - and even then she called me by a simplified nickname for a long time, mostly because I thought it was adorable and didn't bother correcting her. In a similar case, we had a volunteer named Ruth back in January, who Gertie routinely called Fruit. (ADORABLE.)
Yesterday, the volunteer in question was a British girl with natural hair who had been working with Gertie for several weeks. Betty asked where something was, and Gertie told her to go ask that girl. "You know," she said, gesturing wildly around her head. "Hair."
I burst out laughing, and they both looked at me. "You understand?" Betty asked, a tad guiltily.
Gertie just grinned. "Gertie is a bad person," she said in Thai.
She is. She's also one of my favorite people. My computer is set up in the workshop where Gertie works, and I teach her English every afternoon, so we spend a lot of time together. She's been through all kinds of hell - trafficked, raped, blackmailed - but she is goo-goo in love with her daughter Opal, and she adores babies in a way that'll make your ovaries tingle. She's got spunk, too, and she's probably one of the funniest people I know. During our class yesterday, she told me about how she accidentally wore a belly shirt to a friend's funeral. (Maybe it doesn't sound funny to you, but you didn't see the way she pantomimed "dead," or the way she kept saying, "Seck-SEE! Seck-SEE!")
Gertie is going back to Burma next week, for two months. She wants to see her family for the first time in years, to finally introduce Opal to her grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. I'm worried that she won't make it back, that she'll get caught sneaking in or out. She's worried too. She told me that she's afraid Opal will speak Thai in front of the wrong person and give away their secret.
I wish I had a witty insight or humorous anecdote to wrap up this post, but I don't. Gertie is risking everything by going home. I love her, and I'm scared for her. I hope that she comes back to us safe and sound and on schedule, because this joint won't be the same without her.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
thai for beginners
Hey, guess what? I can read!
This may not sound like such an accomplishment to you. Probably most of you possess a similar skill yourselves, or else you've hired someone to read your RSS feed aloud. (In which case, hats off for having that kind of disposable income in this economy.)
I'm told that my ability to read took my mother by surprise. Not because I was some kind of Baby Einstein, or the second coming of Matilda, or anything. In truth, I learned to read much later than my vexingly bright older sister, around the same time as most of my peers. But I kept it a secret, I guess, until the day my mother stumbled upon me reading a book aloud in the library. When asked why I hadn't told her that I knew how to read, I imagine myself shrugging and saying snidely, "You didn't ask."
Anyway.
I've been studying Thai for the last two months with the long-suffering Khruu Aajaan. George and Ruthie have also been studying, mostly basic vocab, but they're the only other farang who take lessons. Pippi studied with Khruu Aajaan for a couple days when she first arrived at the shelter, but she got fed up with the alphabet and the memorization. She's more concerned with practicality than academics, and so she now learns a handful of new words every day by asking people the words for telephone, purple, inside. The other volunteers do the same, with varying levels of success.
I, on the other hand, am a nerd. I don't particularly like studying, but I do like learning, and I've grudgingly come to accept that you can't have the latter without the former. I want to learn Thai; I need to learn Thai. Because it's rude not to. Because it'll make my life and my job easier. Because I like a challenge. Because I want to prove that I can. Because that brat Alma speaks four languages, so I really ought to be able to handle three.
Because, really, when am I going to have this opportunity again?
It's commonly agreed by everyone with attached brain stems that immersion is the best way to learn a new language, and I am nothing if not immersed. However, immersion in this particular environment does raise some difficulties, among them the fact that there are about a million different kinds of Thai. I'm learning Central or Standard Thai from Khruu Aajaan, but many of the women speak Northern Thai or Isan - that is, if they speak Thai at all, which brings us to the point that most of our women are not native Thai speakers. They're from Laos, Vietnam, Burma and various hill tribes, and Thai is often their second or third language. I try out my new vocabulary on them, and they stare at me blankly, leaving me to wonder which one of us is the dummy. (Spoiler alert: it's usually me.)
But we're giving it the old college try anyway, me and Khruu Aajaan. One hour every day, we sit together in the little gazebo and attempt to cram knowledge into my "brain" (i.e., a dense, petrified mass of assumptions, beliefs and phenomenally tenacious radio jingles).
From the start, my classes have been a mix of alphabet and vocabulary. In a typical class, Khruu Aajaan will teach me several new phrases or categories of words, quiz me on phrases and words I'm supposed to know, test my grasp of vowel sounds and tones, and have me write the alphabet over and over again.
In case you're wondering, the Thai alphabet is an absolute bastard. I know I'm lucky that there's an alphabet at all, that it's not like Mandarin or Japanese with thousands of symbols you have to memorize, but it's unforgivably complicated all the same. There are forty-four consonants. Some of them sound the same, and some of them look the same, but there is little overlap between these categories. When I first started, the symbols were wholly foreign. They looked like nothing, like little kid doodles, and I had a hard time processing that these squiggles translated to sounds. I learned to differentiate between the groups of similar-looking consonants by thinking of each shape as a vague sketch of some object or animal. "Gaw gai," my teacher would say, and I would think, Is that the tooth? The snake? The owl? The arched cat? The camel?
Once you've mastered the consonants, there are vowels to contend with - thirty-two of them. There's the quarter note, the turtle, the candy cane, the slug, and dozens of others. You can write different vowels before or after or above or below the consonants, or sometimes before and after and above if you really want to be a dick about it.
And then there are the tones: high, low, middle, falling and rising. The same arrangement of letters can make five entirely different words depending on the tone. Some people say tone doesn't really matter. These people are known in Thailand as "dumbasses."
So it's been slow going. I'm spurred on by three main things:
(1) the constant pressure to speak better, understand more, catch up to the other staff members;
(2) my stupid pride; and
(3) the occasional breakthrough.
Which brings us to today, when, as he often does, Khruu Aajaan wrote some syllables on the board to practice consonant sounds. There's a certain ritual to these exercises: he reads off the syllable on the board, I ignore the written letters in favor of parroting the sound coming out of his mouth, he shakes his head and repeats himself, I parrot him again, and he gives up and moves on to the next syllable.
Today, though, he suddenly stopped short in the middle of the exercise and gave me a funny look. He pointed to the board. "You read."
What? I don't read. I can't read. I can barely read English. Recognizing slugs and teeth and camels isn't reading; it's the linguistic equivalent of Concentration.
"You're reading," he said in Thai. "You can read. OK! I write and you say."
He wrote. And, despite my better instincts, I said.
So I guess I can read, sort of. Don't get me wrong - I'm not going to be tackling the Thai translation of War and Peace anytime soon. I stutter and hesitate, and there are plenty of less common letters that I still can't identify on sight. Besides which, being able to read sounds off a page does me very little good if I don't know what they mean.
But still, this is progress. Better progress than I thought I would make, frankly. I can read. Maybe my brain isn't so unyielding after all. Maybe there's hope. Maybe I will actually speak Thai someday. Eventually. Some time before the Earth is swallowed by the sun.
Now if I could just get these goddamn jingles out of my head, we'd really be in business.
This may not sound like such an accomplishment to you. Probably most of you possess a similar skill yourselves, or else you've hired someone to read your RSS feed aloud. (In which case, hats off for having that kind of disposable income in this economy.)
I'm told that my ability to read took my mother by surprise. Not because I was some kind of Baby Einstein, or the second coming of Matilda, or anything. In truth, I learned to read much later than my vexingly bright older sister, around the same time as most of my peers. But I kept it a secret, I guess, until the day my mother stumbled upon me reading a book aloud in the library. When asked why I hadn't told her that I knew how to read, I imagine myself shrugging and saying snidely, "You didn't ask."
Anyway.
I've been studying Thai for the last two months with the long-suffering Khruu Aajaan. George and Ruthie have also been studying, mostly basic vocab, but they're the only other farang who take lessons. Pippi studied with Khruu Aajaan for a couple days when she first arrived at the shelter, but she got fed up with the alphabet and the memorization. She's more concerned with practicality than academics, and so she now learns a handful of new words every day by asking people the words for telephone, purple, inside. The other volunteers do the same, with varying levels of success.
I, on the other hand, am a nerd. I don't particularly like studying, but I do like learning, and I've grudgingly come to accept that you can't have the latter without the former. I want to learn Thai; I need to learn Thai. Because it's rude not to. Because it'll make my life and my job easier. Because I like a challenge. Because I want to prove that I can. Because that brat Alma speaks four languages, so I really ought to be able to handle three.
Because, really, when am I going to have this opportunity again?
It's commonly agreed by everyone with attached brain stems that immersion is the best way to learn a new language, and I am nothing if not immersed. However, immersion in this particular environment does raise some difficulties, among them the fact that there are about a million different kinds of Thai. I'm learning Central or Standard Thai from Khruu Aajaan, but many of the women speak Northern Thai or Isan - that is, if they speak Thai at all, which brings us to the point that most of our women are not native Thai speakers. They're from Laos, Vietnam, Burma and various hill tribes, and Thai is often their second or third language. I try out my new vocabulary on them, and they stare at me blankly, leaving me to wonder which one of us is the dummy. (Spoiler alert: it's usually me.)
But we're giving it the old college try anyway, me and Khruu Aajaan. One hour every day, we sit together in the little gazebo and attempt to cram knowledge into my "brain" (i.e., a dense, petrified mass of assumptions, beliefs and phenomenally tenacious radio jingles).
From the start, my classes have been a mix of alphabet and vocabulary. In a typical class, Khruu Aajaan will teach me several new phrases or categories of words, quiz me on phrases and words I'm supposed to know, test my grasp of vowel sounds and tones, and have me write the alphabet over and over again.
In case you're wondering, the Thai alphabet is an absolute bastard. I know I'm lucky that there's an alphabet at all, that it's not like Mandarin or Japanese with thousands of symbols you have to memorize, but it's unforgivably complicated all the same. There are forty-four consonants. Some of them sound the same, and some of them look the same, but there is little overlap between these categories. When I first started, the symbols were wholly foreign. They looked like nothing, like little kid doodles, and I had a hard time processing that these squiggles translated to sounds. I learned to differentiate between the groups of similar-looking consonants by thinking of each shape as a vague sketch of some object or animal. "Gaw gai," my teacher would say, and I would think, Is that the tooth? The snake? The owl? The arched cat? The camel?
Once you've mastered the consonants, there are vowels to contend with - thirty-two of them. There's the quarter note, the turtle, the candy cane, the slug, and dozens of others. You can write different vowels before or after or above or below the consonants, or sometimes before and after and above if you really want to be a dick about it.
And then there are the tones: high, low, middle, falling and rising. The same arrangement of letters can make five entirely different words depending on the tone. Some people say tone doesn't really matter. These people are known in Thailand as "dumbasses."
So it's been slow going. I'm spurred on by three main things:
(1) the constant pressure to speak better, understand more, catch up to the other staff members;
(2) my stupid pride; and
(3) the occasional breakthrough.
Which brings us to today, when, as he often does, Khruu Aajaan wrote some syllables on the board to practice consonant sounds. There's a certain ritual to these exercises: he reads off the syllable on the board, I ignore the written letters in favor of parroting the sound coming out of his mouth, he shakes his head and repeats himself, I parrot him again, and he gives up and moves on to the next syllable.
Today, though, he suddenly stopped short in the middle of the exercise and gave me a funny look. He pointed to the board. "You read."
What? I don't read. I can't read. I can barely read English. Recognizing slugs and teeth and camels isn't reading; it's the linguistic equivalent of Concentration.
"You're reading," he said in Thai. "You can read. OK! I write and you say."
He wrote. And, despite my better instincts, I said.
So I guess I can read, sort of. Don't get me wrong - I'm not going to be tackling the Thai translation of War and Peace anytime soon. I stutter and hesitate, and there are plenty of less common letters that I still can't identify on sight. Besides which, being able to read sounds off a page does me very little good if I don't know what they mean.
But still, this is progress. Better progress than I thought I would make, frankly. I can read. Maybe my brain isn't so unyielding after all. Maybe there's hope. Maybe I will actually speak Thai someday. Eventually. Some time before the Earth is swallowed by the sun.
Now if I could just get these goddamn jingles out of my head, we'd really be in business.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
a letter
Dear Tobias,
Listen, kid, I understand that you've grown a bit attached to me. And don't get me wrong: I like you a lot.
I like how the gentlest tickle causes you to writhe around like you're being stuck with a cattle prod, banging your head against my chest, my arms, and occasionally the floor. (Yeah, it's probably not great for your developing brain, and you'll most likely end up incontinent and unable to tie your own shoes, but just think - this way you'll get toy trucks for your birthday for like the rest of your life!)
I like how you climb on my lap while I'm trying to eat and insist that I zoom you around like Superman. (Because once I've showed you something once, you decide that it's all you want out of life and we must do it constantly. See also: allowing you to bang around on my laptop keyboard, slinging you over my shoulder and running around in circles, aforementioned tickling.)
I like how, unlike most of your peers, you have never peed on me. (Though I've heard it said that you're the one who likes to whiz on everyone's shoes outside the office. If I ever confirm this rumor, I will skin you alive.)
But you, my small friend, are hands-down the filthiest kid here.
Your poor little baby teeth are rotting in your mouth, and while I understand that this isn't your fault, your breath is still technically classified as a biological weapon.
You have a habit of shoving huge spoonfuls of rice into your mouth, then getting bored and holding it there in a gooey, glutinous mass rather than chewing and swallowing. And then climbing onto my lap, laughing with your mouth open, and spewing your cud in my face.
You have a constant stream of snot running from both nostrils, and you flail around like a madman when I try to clean you up. Combined with your foul eating habits, this results in a nauseating mess on my shirt when you bang your face against me during tickle sessions. Worse still are episodes like yesterday's incident at the nursery, when I was bouncing you around face-to-face and you somehow managed to wedge your mucous-glazed nose and upper lip into my mouth. And I wonder why I keep getting sick.
I want to keep playing with you, I do. All I ask is that you make a token effort to clean up your act. Like swallowing your food, for example. Allowing me to wipe your nose. Keeping your slobbery, rice-speckled hands out of my hair.
And stop peeing on my shoes, you little bastard.
Kisses,
M
Listen, kid, I understand that you've grown a bit attached to me. And don't get me wrong: I like you a lot.
I like how the gentlest tickle causes you to writhe around like you're being stuck with a cattle prod, banging your head against my chest, my arms, and occasionally the floor. (Yeah, it's probably not great for your developing brain, and you'll most likely end up incontinent and unable to tie your own shoes, but just think - this way you'll get toy trucks for your birthday for like the rest of your life!)
I like how you climb on my lap while I'm trying to eat and insist that I zoom you around like Superman. (Because once I've showed you something once, you decide that it's all you want out of life and we must do it constantly. See also: allowing you to bang around on my laptop keyboard, slinging you over my shoulder and running around in circles, aforementioned tickling.)
I like how, unlike most of your peers, you have never peed on me. (Though I've heard it said that you're the one who likes to whiz on everyone's shoes outside the office. If I ever confirm this rumor, I will skin you alive.)
But you, my small friend, are hands-down the filthiest kid here.
Your poor little baby teeth are rotting in your mouth, and while I understand that this isn't your fault, your breath is still technically classified as a biological weapon.
You have a habit of shoving huge spoonfuls of rice into your mouth, then getting bored and holding it there in a gooey, glutinous mass rather than chewing and swallowing. And then climbing onto my lap, laughing with your mouth open, and spewing your cud in my face.
You have a constant stream of snot running from both nostrils, and you flail around like a madman when I try to clean you up. Combined with your foul eating habits, this results in a nauseating mess on my shirt when you bang your face against me during tickle sessions. Worse still are episodes like yesterday's incident at the nursery, when I was bouncing you around face-to-face and you somehow managed to wedge your mucous-glazed nose and upper lip into my mouth. And I wonder why I keep getting sick.
I want to keep playing with you, I do. All I ask is that you make a token effort to clean up your act. Like swallowing your food, for example. Allowing me to wipe your nose. Keeping your slobbery, rice-speckled hands out of my hair.
And stop peeing on my shoes, you little bastard.
Kisses,
M
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
a primer
THE PLACE
I work at a women's shelter on the outskirts of a city in northern Thailand. The shelter aims to support women who are either pregnant or have very young children. Some of our residents are still children themselves; many have been disowned or expelled from their villages. Some have been trafficked into the country, while others are from hill tribes and don't have Thai citizenship. Many have been raped or abused or both. Most have nowhere else to go.
The shelter is located on a farm, where we grow everything from lemongrass to papayas to pumpkins. And by we I mean people who are not completely lazy, which obviously excludes me. As a rule, you won't find me doing anything more strenuous than kicking chickens or throwing children into the fish pond.
The farm is home to the residents and their children, several staff members and their children, and a handful of long-term volunteers. Then there's the "9-to-5" volunteers who live in the city, the staff members who live in the nearby village, and the Vietnamese refugees who live together about 1 km away. Altogether, we routinely have 30-40 people milling around during the day.
THE JOB
THE STAFF
I work at a women's shelter on the outskirts of a city in northern Thailand. The shelter aims to support women who are either pregnant or have very young children. Some of our residents are still children themselves; many have been disowned or expelled from their villages. Some have been trafficked into the country, while others are from hill tribes and don't have Thai citizenship. Many have been raped or abused or both. Most have nowhere else to go.
The shelter is located on a farm, where we grow everything from lemongrass to papayas to pumpkins. And by we I mean people who are not completely lazy, which obviously excludes me. As a rule, you won't find me doing anything more strenuous than kicking chickens or throwing children into the fish pond.
The farm is home to the residents and their children, several staff members and their children, and a handful of long-term volunteers. Then there's the "9-to-5" volunteers who live in the city, the staff members who live in the nearby village, and the Vietnamese refugees who live together about 1 km away. Altogether, we routinely have 30-40 people milling around during the day.
THE JOB
I'm the shelter's volunteer coordinator. We have all kinds of volunteers: young and old (mostly young), Thai and foreign (mostly foreign), living on the farm and commuting from the city (mostly commuters), working here for as many as six months or as few as one (mostly one), superstars and space cases (I am not at liberty to clarify this point).
Harriet is the director of the shelter and therefore my boss. She is married to Albert, who handles most of the construction projects and financial stuff. Their delightfully weird kids are Dexter (14), Elsa (12) and Dotty (8).
Robin (33) is the assistant director and a former resident. She lives on-site with her daughter Priscilla (6) - who is currently learning to play the air guitar courtesy of one very mature volunteer coordinator - and son Otis (11), a sweet terror of a boy who will bring you a flower one minute and punch you the next.
Gertie (27) is our seamstress, a Burmese former resident. She is a tremendously sweet and funny woman, but her sense of complementing colors is absolutely demented. She lives off-site and comes to the shelter every day with her daughter Opal (2). She is currently visiting her family in Burma for the first time in years. I worry about her every day.
Nell (25) is the teacher at our daycare. She puts away an astonishing amount of pizza, especially considering that she is as tiny as a three-month-old kitten.
Nancy (33) is in charge of the shelter's kitchen. She is married to Maurice (34), the caretaker, and they have three daughters who are forever climbing up my back: Polly (3), Prudence (5), and Sheila (9).
THE VIETNAMESE
Rosalind (25) is quiet but secretly ridiculous, whether she's talking about her zits, stealing one of the shelter's kittens, or smearing cake frosting on everyone's faces. Until recently, she was the shelter's administrative assistant, but she quit because of her migraines and other health problems.
Winifred (34) spends about half her time working in the garden and the other half causing trouble. We spend a lot of time sneaking up on each other and grabbing each others' waists. Her daughter, Alma (11), speaks and reads flawless English, Thai, Vietnamese, and their tribal language. She also does a mean fishbone braid. Someday she will make the world her bitch.
Then there are the Vietnamese men who make up the shelter's construction team. I don't know some of them very well, but Saul likes to talk politics with me, Julius always keeps my glass full of Singha, and Herbert has very patiently taught me a handful of Vietnamese phrases (notably "I'm full" and "cheers!").
THE VOLUNTEERS
Pippi (23) is my roommate, a long-term volunteer from Australia. We spend a lot of time arguing about food. ("You put butter on sandwiches? What the hell is wrong with your country?" "You eat chocolate with peanut butter? What terrible thing happened in your childhood to lead you to this?") She keeps a jar of Vegemite in our fridge and eats pizza with a knife and fork, but I'm very fond of her anyway.
Teddy (24) was a long-term volunteer from Australia. We spent a lot of time arguing about whether women are obligated to shave their legs. I'm fond of him, too, but I'll deny it in a court of law. He left in mid-March.
George and Ruthie are an older married couple from the U.S. I like them, too. Maybe I'm getting soft and sentimental in my old age.
Khruu Aajaan is our sole long-term Thai volunteer, the teacher so nice they named him twice. (Possibly that joke is only funny to people who speak Thai.) He teaches Thai to (a) refugee or hill tribe women who don't speak it at all, (b) uneducated women who don't know how to read and write, and (c) dumb farang who are determined to learn despite the fact that they can't tell the difference between the five distinct K sounds.
THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN
Fran (26) is an undocumented Burmese woman. She is far and away the best cook at the shelter, and she totally knows it. She gave birth to her enormously shaggy baby boy, Blue, in late December 2009.
Sally (14) is a hill tribe girl whose village banished her. She gave birth to a teeny-tiny baby girl in late December 2009, and named her Pippi Two. She left the shelter at the end of January and was allowed to return home.
Minerva (22) is a shy but very bright Hmong woman. She has been doing the administrative work since Rosalind quit. Her son is Isaiah (3).
Daisy (29) is a Lahu woman and Fran's roommate. She came to the shelter with her baby girl, Bertha, and son Tobias (3).
Blanche (23) is a Thai Chinese woman. Her son is Abraham (1).
Pearl (15) is Hmong, and currently our youngest mother. Everyone is madly in love with her son Winston (1).
Etta (27) is from northern Thailand. Her son is Oliver (6 months).
Olive (20) is a Hmong woman currently finishing her last year of high school. Her daughter is Flo (3).
Betty (39) has an astoundingly huge, warm smile that splits her face and will knock you on your ass. She was recently named head gardener, so I suppose she's actually staff now. Her son is Harvey (5).
Duckie (3) was abandoned by her very young mother. She is attached to Pippi like a barnacle to the hull of a ship - that is, if barnacles were known to strip off their pants in public, hold up their arms to be carried to the bathroom, and demand, "Chee!" She left with her mother at the end of February.
Monday, February 8, 2010
odyssey
Welcome to Thailand! Oh, I'm so glad you've decided to visit me at the shelter. You'll love it, I promise. It's an easy trip out from the city, as long as you follow a few simple instructions.
The shelter isn't too far from the city, but the trip can take more or less time depending on the time of day and your mode of transportation. Traffic is relatively light in the late evening, and if you're riding pillion on a motorcycle driven by a complete lunatic, you can easily make the trip in 15 minutes, especially if they're driving "Thai-style" (i.e., ignoring the laws of traffic and human decency).
(And I definitely don't know this from experience, so you can stop clutching your pearls, Mother.)
If you value your life and have some time to kill, you can take a songthaew, a pick-up truck outfitted with benches in the back. They're cheap but slow, and often crowded to the point of uneasy physical contact. (Also known in Thailand as "any physical contact whatsoever, especially between a man and a woman, or with a farang, or if God forbid the head or feet are involved, or if it's hot outside, or on a day that ends in -day.")
If the songthaew is full, you can avoid the crush by hanging onto the little metal ladders on the back of the truck. This can be a fun way to observe the passing scenery, which usually includes buildings, uglier buildings, empty fields, lunatics on motorcyles, an absurdly large hamburger sculpture, and countless drivers with their fingers up their noses. A word of caution, though: if you are weighed down by the standard American Weeble-esque ass, you may wish to thread your arms through the rungs of the ladder so as not to end up on the pavement at the mercy of the lunatic bikers.
Once you've been on the songthaew for about half an hour, you can get off, either by ringing the little bell on the ceiling or by allowing your now-aching feet to slip off the back of the truck. As for when to debark, the trick is to know your landmarks. I tell new volunteers to count the temples and then look for the little sign with our shelter's name, but I personally tend to look for the big purple billboard near the turn-off. The day they change that billboard is the day I can no longer find my way home.
From this point, it's about a 1.5 kilometer walk to the shelter. Though "kilometer" probably doesn't mean much to the Americans reading this, does it? I might as well say, "It's about a banana Klingon to the shelter." To put it in perspective, I will say that the walk is comparable to 2/3 of a Friends rerun on TBS, but with more snakes. (Or fewer snakes, I guess, depending on how you feel about Jennifer Aniston.)
We do have a fair number of serpents out in these parts. One day I was out on the motorbike with Winifred, one of the Vietnamese women, and we barely avoided running over a massive python squirming across this very road. "Was that a bad snake?" I ventured, hoping that I had merely hallucinated its incredible girth and the toddler-shaped lumps along its middle. "Very bad," Winifred said, laughing nervously. Ever since then, I've sworn off walking down this road after dark. Except for that one night. Actually, maybe twice. Four times at most.
(Totally kidding, Mom! Oh, come on, stop writing me out of the will.)
Moving right along... You probably won't see any snakes yourself, but you will pass a few dogs along the way. Most of them will be stretched out on their sides, baking in the sun. The odd alpha dog will offer a token growl, but the majority of these mutts will size you up through one slitted eye, decide you're not worth the energy, and go back to sleep.
Having said that, it's at this point that you should pick up a good-sized rock from the ground. Stick it in your pocket. You might need it later.
You'll notice that the road has changed from pavement to dirt. You could have gotten off the songthaew earlier and taken a different route, on a paved road, but it's a longer walk and the road is busier and less pedestrian-friendly. There are also more people milling around shops and homes along that road, which means you're guaranteed to be laughed at. A volunteer once speculated to me that the Thais were laughing at us because we were walking, while anyone who's anyone has at least a bicycle to transport them from place to place. It's a solid theory, but I don't buy it. I think they laugh because we're farang. That's the only punchline you need.
Anyway, on your left, you'll see some cows. On your right, you'll see more cows. Up ahead, you'll see - well, you get the idea.
The road passes by a number of rice paddies. If you'd walked this way a month ago, you would have seen dry, hard fields that seemed to be producing nothing much besides cow poop. Most of the farmers have irrigated their paddies now, turning them into a patchwork of murky mirrors, interrupted by sprouts of bright, bright green.
You're now passing a chicken factory on your right. I can't lie: it's pretty grim, even for someone who hates chickens. Step lively, now.
Up ahead is the crematorium. I'd guess from the architecture that it's used for Buddhist cremations, but I've never asked. For all I know, it's where they burn dead cattle, or the bodies of farang who ask dumb questions. Then again, there's a soccer field in front, so maybe it's a Maya thing.
We're getting close to the shelter. That's our neighbor's house, just ahead. Oh, look, their dogs have come out to greet you! Why hello there, fellas! Why hello!
That reminds me. Remember the rock in your pocket? You can take it out now. Get a good, firm grip on it, like you're holding a baseball. Or a grenade.
Hey, one of the dogs is coming up to you! Cute little guy. You're an animal lover, right? Me too. So anyway, what I want you to do is to take that rock in your hand and throw it right at that dog's stupid mangy head.
I'm sorry, man, there's no way around it. Cujo over there may look friendly, but he will not hesitate to chase you, and if he catches you, he's going to sink his cute widdle teeth into the meat of your leg. Everyone throws rocks at him to keep him at a safe distance.
But hey, you've made it! You've survived Thai traffic, the midday heat, possible snake attack, demented dogs, and probably a fair amount of laughter by Thai onlookers. Now you're safe in the loving embrace of the shelter, with our giant bathroom spiders, monstrous mosquitoes, displaced cobras, insolent pigs, shrieking jam-covered children, and Vegemite-eating Australians. So now that you're here, what would you like to -
Hey, where are you going?
Come back!
Don't leave me here with the Australians!
The shelter isn't too far from the city, but the trip can take more or less time depending on the time of day and your mode of transportation. Traffic is relatively light in the late evening, and if you're riding pillion on a motorcycle driven by a complete lunatic, you can easily make the trip in 15 minutes, especially if they're driving "Thai-style" (i.e., ignoring the laws of traffic and human decency).
(And I definitely don't know this from experience, so you can stop clutching your pearls, Mother.)
If you value your life and have some time to kill, you can take a songthaew, a pick-up truck outfitted with benches in the back. They're cheap but slow, and often crowded to the point of uneasy physical contact. (Also known in Thailand as "any physical contact whatsoever, especially between a man and a woman, or with a farang, or if God forbid the head or feet are involved, or if it's hot outside, or on a day that ends in -day.")
If the songthaew is full, you can avoid the crush by hanging onto the little metal ladders on the back of the truck. This can be a fun way to observe the passing scenery, which usually includes buildings, uglier buildings, empty fields, lunatics on motorcyles, an absurdly large hamburger sculpture, and countless drivers with their fingers up their noses. A word of caution, though: if you are weighed down by the standard American Weeble-esque ass, you may wish to thread your arms through the rungs of the ladder so as not to end up on the pavement at the mercy of the lunatic bikers.
Once you've been on the songthaew for about half an hour, you can get off, either by ringing the little bell on the ceiling or by allowing your now-aching feet to slip off the back of the truck. As for when to debark, the trick is to know your landmarks. I tell new volunteers to count the temples and then look for the little sign with our shelter's name, but I personally tend to look for the big purple billboard near the turn-off. The day they change that billboard is the day I can no longer find my way home.
From this point, it's about a 1.5 kilometer walk to the shelter. Though "kilometer" probably doesn't mean much to the Americans reading this, does it? I might as well say, "It's about a banana Klingon to the shelter." To put it in perspective, I will say that the walk is comparable to 2/3 of a Friends rerun on TBS, but with more snakes. (Or fewer snakes, I guess, depending on how you feel about Jennifer Aniston.)
We do have a fair number of serpents out in these parts. One day I was out on the motorbike with Winifred, one of the Vietnamese women, and we barely avoided running over a massive python squirming across this very road. "Was that a bad snake?" I ventured, hoping that I had merely hallucinated its incredible girth and the toddler-shaped lumps along its middle. "Very bad," Winifred said, laughing nervously. Ever since then, I've sworn off walking down this road after dark. Except for that one night. Actually, maybe twice. Four times at most.
(Totally kidding, Mom! Oh, come on, stop writing me out of the will.)
Moving right along... You probably won't see any snakes yourself, but you will pass a few dogs along the way. Most of them will be stretched out on their sides, baking in the sun. The odd alpha dog will offer a token growl, but the majority of these mutts will size you up through one slitted eye, decide you're not worth the energy, and go back to sleep.
Having said that, it's at this point that you should pick up a good-sized rock from the ground. Stick it in your pocket. You might need it later.
You'll notice that the road has changed from pavement to dirt. You could have gotten off the songthaew earlier and taken a different route, on a paved road, but it's a longer walk and the road is busier and less pedestrian-friendly. There are also more people milling around shops and homes along that road, which means you're guaranteed to be laughed at. A volunteer once speculated to me that the Thais were laughing at us because we were walking, while anyone who's anyone has at least a bicycle to transport them from place to place. It's a solid theory, but I don't buy it. I think they laugh because we're farang. That's the only punchline you need.
Anyway, on your left, you'll see some cows. On your right, you'll see more cows. Up ahead, you'll see - well, you get the idea.
The road passes by a number of rice paddies. If you'd walked this way a month ago, you would have seen dry, hard fields that seemed to be producing nothing much besides cow poop. Most of the farmers have irrigated their paddies now, turning them into a patchwork of murky mirrors, interrupted by sprouts of bright, bright green.
You're now passing a chicken factory on your right. I can't lie: it's pretty grim, even for someone who hates chickens. Step lively, now.
Up ahead is the crematorium. I'd guess from the architecture that it's used for Buddhist cremations, but I've never asked. For all I know, it's where they burn dead cattle, or the bodies of farang who ask dumb questions. Then again, there's a soccer field in front, so maybe it's a Maya thing.
We're getting close to the shelter. That's our neighbor's house, just ahead. Oh, look, their dogs have come out to greet you! Why hello there, fellas! Why hello!
That reminds me. Remember the rock in your pocket? You can take it out now. Get a good, firm grip on it, like you're holding a baseball. Or a grenade.
Hey, one of the dogs is coming up to you! Cute little guy. You're an animal lover, right? Me too. So anyway, what I want you to do is to take that rock in your hand and throw it right at that dog's stupid mangy head.
I'm sorry, man, there's no way around it. Cujo over there may look friendly, but he will not hesitate to chase you, and if he catches you, he's going to sink his cute widdle teeth into the meat of your leg. Everyone throws rocks at him to keep him at a safe distance.
But hey, you've made it! You've survived Thai traffic, the midday heat, possible snake attack, demented dogs, and probably a fair amount of laughter by Thai onlookers. Now you're safe in the loving embrace of the shelter, with our giant bathroom spiders, monstrous mosquitoes, displaced cobras, insolent pigs, shrieking jam-covered children, and Vegemite-eating Australians. So now that you're here, what would you like to -
Hey, where are you going?
Come back!
Don't leave me here with the Australians!
Monday, February 1, 2010
retro: the scorpion king
I talk a lot of crap about Paraguay. Tripe this, Nazis that, demonic host mother wah wah wah. It's actually a fine country, and I don't mean to discourage anyone from going there. The thing is that, on a personal level, my time in Paraguay was without question the most unpleasant travel experience I've yet had. To this day, I have semi-regular nightmares about being sent back to live with my host family.
There is one arena, though, in which Paraguay stands heads and shoulders above the competition: bugs.
As in, there really weren't any. There was the occasional spider the size of your hand, but they were fairly passive and easy to kill. Our most serious pest problem involved frogs. And fleas. And foot parasites. Okay, on second thought, there were plenty of bugs in Paraguay.
Nicaragua, though - Nicaragua presented a whole new set of plagues. The latrines were filled with equal parts human waste and genetically-enhanced cockroaches. I was beset by swarms of mosquitoes, which had been virtually nonexistent in Paraguay. Worst of all, Nicaragua was the country where I discovered scorpions.
Scorpions are the worst.
I was only stung once during my first summer in Nicaragua, but it was more than enough to put me off the whole thing for life. The incident in question occurred when a scorpion of unknown size, species and political loyalties scampered over my hand in the middle of the night and thoughtfully decided to leave his calling card. If any of you would like to experience such a thing for yourselves, I would recommend that you get a friend to wake you up by stabbing you in the hand with a cattle prod. And then have them turn up the voltage. And then kick you in the stomach, just for laughs.
I jolted awake to a burst of fiery agony, pain flaring across the back of my knuckles and up my pointer finger. "HURGH," I said, clutching my hand to my chest. "GLRRK. HRBRBTL." Deprived of both oxygen and vowels, the only coherent thought I was able to process was that I had to be quiet, so as not to wake anyone up. Imminent death is one thing, but there's just no excuse for inconveniencing folks.
I rocked back and forth for a while, mouth open in a giant, wheezing O - the only time in my memory that I have ever been too incapacitated to curse. My fingers didn't seem to be moving very well, but I figured that was just a side effect of my failing nervous system, so I wasn't too terribly concerned. I looked forward to it, actually. Sensory deprivation sounded like an excellent idea at that point.
Looking back, it's clear that I probably should have said something. "Hey, Josefina," I might have whispered to my host sister in the next bed. "Listen, I hate to bother you, but I think I'm dying." Instead, I heaved one shaky breath after another, fingers fever-hot and swelling up like balloon animals, and eventually passed out.
I was fine, of course. My hand was swollen in the morning, but the searing pain had given way to a dull throb of discomfort. Within days, the soreness and the swelling had both vanished, and I pushed the incident to the back of my mind, a mildly amusing story to tell my friends when I came home.
Looking back, it's clear that I probably should have said something. "Hey, Josefina," I might have whispered to my host sister in the next bed. "Listen, I hate to bother you, but I think I'm dying." Instead, I heaved one shaky breath after another, fingers fever-hot and swelling up like balloon animals, and eventually passed out.
I was fine, of course. My hand was swollen in the morning, but the searing pain had given way to a dull throb of discomfort. Within days, the soreness and the swelling had both vanished, and I pushed the incident to the back of my mind, a mildly amusing story to tell my friends when I came home.
A few days later, my partner J and I were sitting on my bed, preparing for the next day's class. I was sitting against the wall, head tilted back against the rough dried-mud surface as I tried to think up a better strategy for wrangling 45 small and insolent children. Anything had to be better than our current tactics of menace and bribery - though, admittedly, we would happily have carried on with these if they had actually worked. (Is it any wonder I went on to study politics?)
Out of the blue, J said, "Hey, M, could you come over here for a minute?" In retrospect, she was remarkably calm, especially for someone whose own run-in with a scorpion had resulted in the kind of screams known to shatter glass and knock satellites out of orbit.
"Why?"
"Just come here," she said evasively.
Confused, I scooted over to her part of the bed, at which point she grabbed my face and turned me around to see the World's Largest Scorpion sauntering up the wall right next to where my head had been.
It is impossible to exaggerate the size of this scorpion. It was larger than my hand; very possibly it was larger than God's hand. I've owned smaller cats. I could not believe that something so huge and evil-looking was allowed to exist. It seemed to upset the natural balance of things. Like, surely if this monstrosity was allowed to roam free, the world should also be filled with giant kittens and bunny rabbits, to compensate.
When I get to this point in the story, people invariably ask me the same question: So how did you kill it?
To which I invariably reply: Motherfucker, are you high?
Because, of course, I did not kill it. I didn't happen to have my armor-piercing bullets with me, and a grenade might only have made it angry. In all seriousness, the only weapon that could have taken this thing down was a machete. Besides, it was almost certainly some sort of god, and I wasn't willing to risk bringing its wrath down upon my unprotected head.
Too stunned to beg for mercy, J and I just watched with shock and awe as the scorpion strolled up and over the wall, easily slipping through the gap between wall and roof, and disappeared from our lives forever.
I've since encountered lots of scorpions: big scorpions, baby scorpions, brown and red and orange scorpions. I've found them under my cot, inside my mosquito netting, investigating the contents of my backpack. I am notoriously trigger-happy when it comes to bugs - except for the occasional pet spider - but despite the fact that I hate and fear scorpions above all other vermin, I have yet to kill one. I'm intimidated by the difficulty of such an attempt, especially considering that my hand-eye coordination leaves a lot to be desired. But I'm also worried that, should I succeed in slaughtering one of the little bastards, I'll wake up one night to another visit from the scorpion king...and He won't be happy.
Too stunned to beg for mercy, J and I just watched with shock and awe as the scorpion strolled up and over the wall, easily slipping through the gap between wall and roof, and disappeared from our lives forever.
I've since encountered lots of scorpions: big scorpions, baby scorpions, brown and red and orange scorpions. I've found them under my cot, inside my mosquito netting, investigating the contents of my backpack. I am notoriously trigger-happy when it comes to bugs - except for the occasional pet spider - but despite the fact that I hate and fear scorpions above all other vermin, I have yet to kill one. I'm intimidated by the difficulty of such an attempt, especially considering that my hand-eye coordination leaves a lot to be desired. But I'm also worried that, should I succeed in slaughtering one of the little bastards, I'll wake up one night to another visit from the scorpion king...and He won't be happy.
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