EARLY NOVEMBER UPDATES
These are random updates but it’s a blog, right?
I got bit by my first centipede. It was in the night and in my sleep. I had a familiar “hot” feeling of being bitten on the top of one foot, assuming it was a mosquito, my foot typically hanging out the end of the short mattress. Then a while later (and who knows, because it was in my sleep) but my other foot had the same feeling, and then sooner or later I had to wake up because I was quite uncomfortable. I took a flashlight and looked at my feet, but no sign of a mosquito bite. My feet were intensely itching, but also just a little bit paralyzed with the feeling. I turned out the flashlight and lay back down, but it was impossible to get to sleep because from my knees downward, every couple of minutes my legs and feet would shake, almost like a spasm. And it didn’t stop. So I got up again and went into the bathroom and soaked my feet in cold water, which felt a little better. I probably stayed there about an hour until I felt I could get back to sleep. When I went back to bed I looked again with the flashlight and there was the centipede on the floor a few feet away. I killed it with the flashlight, but it sure didn’t want to die. The next day I told Mae and Pa (the Thai word is “takaap”), and they were very sympathetic. If Pa gets bitten by a centipede he’s apparently levelled for twenty-four hours, and in big pain.
Pa, by the way, is feeling much better and it’s great to see him with energy back (and just in time for harvest). For two or three weeks before harvest, everyday he worked on his fish traps. He makes all of them by hand, slivering bamboo, bending it into shape, finely threading the netting. The nets are stunningly beautiful, and he’s justifiably proud of them. A net will last about two to three years before he has to build a new one. They are not big nets, but a cylinder about three feet long. Fish swim into one of two chambers, and then can’t get back out. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but the fish he brings home each morning before dawn have also changed almost entirely in the last month. We’re back to the ones that I really love, especially a rather narrow fish around six inches long. These are fried a long time in hot oil so that we can eat them just crunch crunch, head tail and all. I am gathering Thai names for all the fish, but I look forward to my next trip to the Bangkok bookstores to see if I can find a book which will help cross reference the fish from their Thai names. For a person (me) who grew up in southern Wyoming not eating many fish (apart from trout), it now seems like such a luxury to live every day around a bounty of fresh water fish. In the mornings I like to sneak in the back door of Mae and Pa’s house, into the kitchen, and nibble on the fish from the night before (cooked foods – leftovers - are never refrigerated, but kept under a sort of netting, like sleeping under a mosquito net). With rice in the rice cooker, and leftovers under the netting, there’s almost never a time when one can’t forage an impromptu meal.
One more thing about Pa and that’s that I’ve noticed he’s moved his daily activities (like making the fish traps) from the covered porch at the front of the house to the garage and rice barn at the back of the house. And I think I know why! Pa is basically not a big talker, not a big socialiser (Mae is just the opposite). Right now (for reasons I won’t go into here), we’ve lost three-year old Tey (back to Bangkok) and six-year old Boom from across the street (whose parents went to live in another part of Thailand with the paternal grandparents as opposed to the maternal grandparents). Our child population has temporarily dwindled from five to three, and especially in the case of losing Tey (who is so funny!), I think Pa’s interest in being in the front of the house (which is the primary social place, and the primary place for kids) has dwindled. I fully expect Tey to be back, and probably Boom, but until then I think Pa will stay in the back. He loves the kids; I think more than the adults. I don’t blame him. They are far better than TV!
One more thing briefly, yet again admitting to ignorance. But in writing about the Two White Cows I failed to understand one very important thing. Cows are lawn mowers! In a place where everything grows at a rapid rate (especially in rainy season), and never stops growing, on farmsteads it’s imperative to keep the grasses down. No one here has lawn movers, but they have cows, and the cows are moved throughout the day and then tied, restricting their grazing. Mae (unlike her sister-in-law across the street) is meticulous with her two white cows, making sure that they graze in exactly the area she wants. The other day one escaped, she yelled, and it obeyed. Amazing (the cows can be very stubborn). Father’s sister number two, Boom’s grandmother (who I think I’ve written about), the person who is quite small and has two huge white cows, is not on par with Mae. Her cows are always getting untied and creating havoc. And by the way, when Boom moved away, the next day a truck came and they carted away one of the two huge cows. She sold it!
Friday, November 6, 2009
time, and the beginning of harvest
TIME, AND THE BEGINNING OF HARVEST
Time seems to be passing in a very unusual way right now. I went to Laos by bus to get a new visa, about a four or five day trip altogether, and when I came back everything was very different. For one thing, it hadn’t rained but a tiny bit, so the ground was hard again like baked clay, and getting a shovel to go through was difficult. Also, people are going around in coats, sweaters, and stocking caps! “It’s the start of winter,” someone told me, not understanding at all why I might find the statement funny. There’s definitely a turn in the weather, and even I happily put on a long sleeved shirt the other night, but “winter”. No.
But the biggest changes are in the rice fields. It seems like such a short time ago, maybe about three weeks, maybe four, and I was walking in the back fields of the Yindichati farm and I was so surprised to see that some of the rice was starting to seed. And then about ten days later the color of almost all the fields changed in a dramatic way, from mid-summer, mid-rainy season intense grassy green to a tinge of yellow. It may not sound like a lot, but when the landscape’s flat and rice grows in all directions, a change in the color of the land vis a vis the sky is a very big change. The color of the sky looks different, set against a plain of greenish-yellow. And it all seemed to happen in just a couple of days.
Now, back from Laos, the harvest is already five or six days in. The villages are quiet and feel almost abandoned because everyone is working early morning till dark with sickles in the fields. One of the few signs of life is the yellow of the harvested rice set out on the paved roads to dry in the sun, and people with long wooden rakes raking the rice back and forth so that all the rice gets uniformly dried.
Harvest, I think, has come early this year. Last year I was here for harvest and it was a good three weeks into November, not the beginning of November, like it is now. People are happy because the rain has stopped - making it possible for harvest to happen - and the harvest is a good one. Pa’s leg seems to be holding up fine so far, and Mae’s back hurts (like everyone’s back). It’s a very no nonsense time of the year. There’s not a question about what everyone does each day, and harvest will continue for another three to four weeks. It’s a stunning amount of labor. Each day in Mae and Pa’s fields there are anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five people working, relatives and close neighbours (some people at seventy years old). There’s no way harvest can happen here without extended family.
Since going to Laos I’ve been working (writing), so I haven’t spent any time in the fields, though I want to. But the days have felt really weird. I’ll think that it’s one in the afternoon and then I’ll look at a clock and it’ll be ten in the morning, or even nine-thirty. The time each day is passing incredibly slowly; days feel especially long, and yet the dramatic change in the fields is happening so rapidly. Also, I look down at my arms and my skin is dry – not desert dry – but dry! So I bought lotion, which seems like a very odd thing to do based upon the humidity of the last five months.
I guess I expected the change in seasons to happen slowly, but yet again I’m wrong.
Time seems to be passing in a very unusual way right now. I went to Laos by bus to get a new visa, about a four or five day trip altogether, and when I came back everything was very different. For one thing, it hadn’t rained but a tiny bit, so the ground was hard again like baked clay, and getting a shovel to go through was difficult. Also, people are going around in coats, sweaters, and stocking caps! “It’s the start of winter,” someone told me, not understanding at all why I might find the statement funny. There’s definitely a turn in the weather, and even I happily put on a long sleeved shirt the other night, but “winter”. No.
But the biggest changes are in the rice fields. It seems like such a short time ago, maybe about three weeks, maybe four, and I was walking in the back fields of the Yindichati farm and I was so surprised to see that some of the rice was starting to seed. And then about ten days later the color of almost all the fields changed in a dramatic way, from mid-summer, mid-rainy season intense grassy green to a tinge of yellow. It may not sound like a lot, but when the landscape’s flat and rice grows in all directions, a change in the color of the land vis a vis the sky is a very big change. The color of the sky looks different, set against a plain of greenish-yellow. And it all seemed to happen in just a couple of days.
Now, back from Laos, the harvest is already five or six days in. The villages are quiet and feel almost abandoned because everyone is working early morning till dark with sickles in the fields. One of the few signs of life is the yellow of the harvested rice set out on the paved roads to dry in the sun, and people with long wooden rakes raking the rice back and forth so that all the rice gets uniformly dried.
Harvest, I think, has come early this year. Last year I was here for harvest and it was a good three weeks into November, not the beginning of November, like it is now. People are happy because the rain has stopped - making it possible for harvest to happen - and the harvest is a good one. Pa’s leg seems to be holding up fine so far, and Mae’s back hurts (like everyone’s back). It’s a very no nonsense time of the year. There’s not a question about what everyone does each day, and harvest will continue for another three to four weeks. It’s a stunning amount of labor. Each day in Mae and Pa’s fields there are anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five people working, relatives and close neighbours (some people at seventy years old). There’s no way harvest can happen here without extended family.
Since going to Laos I’ve been working (writing), so I haven’t spent any time in the fields, though I want to. But the days have felt really weird. I’ll think that it’s one in the afternoon and then I’ll look at a clock and it’ll be ten in the morning, or even nine-thirty. The time each day is passing incredibly slowly; days feel especially long, and yet the dramatic change in the fields is happening so rapidly. Also, I look down at my arms and my skin is dry – not desert dry – but dry! So I bought lotion, which seems like a very odd thing to do based upon the humidity of the last five months.
I guess I expected the change in seasons to happen slowly, but yet again I’m wrong.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
furniture
FURNITURE
One of my primary activities here besides the garden is making furniture, or I should say “working with wood.” Sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch to call what I make “furniture”. I try hard, but a mitred corner doesn’t quite work, or a length of wood I’ve “ripped” isn’t straight. A tiny bit of my mistakes I blame on bad quality tools. A much bigger part I blame on my poor craftsmanship. And an even bigger part I blame on working with unbelievably beautiful wood, wood that I’ve never remotely had the experience of working with.
Daeng, pradoo, yang, ma muang: all tropical woods that I’ve never even heard of, let alone used. All the woods are so hard that in five months I am already on my third drill. I’ve gone through so many drill bits that I now buy three at a time, not one. I bend one out of three nails, and break the head off one in ten screws. There’s no way of “moving” the wood (as in working with pine); the wood moves me!
But sanding the wood is like polishing a gem stone, each variety of wood so different, each board so different one from another. A few long boards I’ve purchased in town (an adventure in itself), but ninety percent of what I’ve worked with comes from Pa, boards that are laying around the farm, laying idle or caked with mud from rainy season.
The first thing I built was a desk to write at. I bought a belt sander and a skill saw, then I looked around for scrap wood. A few months ago I took down an old pig sty and chicken coup, just helping to clean around the farm. I knew from then, from hoisting the old weathered boards, that all of it was “hardwood”, heavy dense wood, even deeply grooved from twenty years in the rain and sun. I sanded a few boards from the burn pile just to get started, and instantly I was hooked. The smells were all totally new to me, and the surface of the wood barely “moving” under the power of the belt sander.
Pa saw me sanding and smiled. The next day he told a daughter and the daughter told me where to find “good” boards. I found them, sanded a couple, and wow! But I felt bad, like using the manure. These were not just good boards, they were precious boards: rosewoods, ironwoods, woods heavier and denser than teak! I used several long rosewoods as table legs for the desk, but found and bought the wood for the desk top in town.
Pa again told a daughter and the daughter told me. “Use the wood around the farm. Father has many trees,” she said, pointing to the forest.
Now I am many months in, sanding, cutting, and drilling. I haven’t even begun to use up the scrap around the farm, and like with everything, now I see with very different eyes. In town I’ve spent days on the internet trying to learn about the wood. One man in Laos is building very high-end guitars from the same kinds of wood, and another man here in Thailand is building canoes. The website is thaivisa.com/forum/local-wood-varieties-t201757.html. It’s been immensely helpful, but still I feel like I’m in kindergarten and wondering if I will ever get to high school. There’s very little written in English about the wood that I’ve been able to find.
I’ve learned a few things. One is that there are almost no soft woods, nothing like pine or spruce. There’s coconut wood and jackfruit, and even wood from mango, and when they are freshly milled they’re soft, but as they dry they harden quickly, and harden hard. Also, most all the boards have very little noticeable grain, unlike oak, maple or pine. They grow quickly and because there’s no winter, no dormant season, there are very few tree rings, and thus very little grain. Wood here is also relatively expensive compared to cement, brick, and plastic, so there’s less and less construction using wood.
Today I finished a small table that I’ve been working on the last few days. I broke another drill bit, and at least half the nails are bent or crooked. Still everyone is nice to me: “soowai, soowai.” Beautiful.
Thais have very few words borrowed from English, and so it’s always interesting when one pops up. The Thai word for furniture is “furniture.” The word for sofa is “sofa”. Why am I building furniture you might ask? For fun! And to learn.
One of my primary activities here besides the garden is making furniture, or I should say “working with wood.” Sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch to call what I make “furniture”. I try hard, but a mitred corner doesn’t quite work, or a length of wood I’ve “ripped” isn’t straight. A tiny bit of my mistakes I blame on bad quality tools. A much bigger part I blame on my poor craftsmanship. And an even bigger part I blame on working with unbelievably beautiful wood, wood that I’ve never remotely had the experience of working with.
Daeng, pradoo, yang, ma muang: all tropical woods that I’ve never even heard of, let alone used. All the woods are so hard that in five months I am already on my third drill. I’ve gone through so many drill bits that I now buy three at a time, not one. I bend one out of three nails, and break the head off one in ten screws. There’s no way of “moving” the wood (as in working with pine); the wood moves me!
But sanding the wood is like polishing a gem stone, each variety of wood so different, each board so different one from another. A few long boards I’ve purchased in town (an adventure in itself), but ninety percent of what I’ve worked with comes from Pa, boards that are laying around the farm, laying idle or caked with mud from rainy season.
The first thing I built was a desk to write at. I bought a belt sander and a skill saw, then I looked around for scrap wood. A few months ago I took down an old pig sty and chicken coup, just helping to clean around the farm. I knew from then, from hoisting the old weathered boards, that all of it was “hardwood”, heavy dense wood, even deeply grooved from twenty years in the rain and sun. I sanded a few boards from the burn pile just to get started, and instantly I was hooked. The smells were all totally new to me, and the surface of the wood barely “moving” under the power of the belt sander.
Pa saw me sanding and smiled. The next day he told a daughter and the daughter told me where to find “good” boards. I found them, sanded a couple, and wow! But I felt bad, like using the manure. These were not just good boards, they were precious boards: rosewoods, ironwoods, woods heavier and denser than teak! I used several long rosewoods as table legs for the desk, but found and bought the wood for the desk top in town.
Pa again told a daughter and the daughter told me. “Use the wood around the farm. Father has many trees,” she said, pointing to the forest.
Now I am many months in, sanding, cutting, and drilling. I haven’t even begun to use up the scrap around the farm, and like with everything, now I see with very different eyes. In town I’ve spent days on the internet trying to learn about the wood. One man in Laos is building very high-end guitars from the same kinds of wood, and another man here in Thailand is building canoes. The website is thaivisa.com/forum/local-wood-varieties-t201757.html. It’s been immensely helpful, but still I feel like I’m in kindergarten and wondering if I will ever get to high school. There’s very little written in English about the wood that I’ve been able to find.
I’ve learned a few things. One is that there are almost no soft woods, nothing like pine or spruce. There’s coconut wood and jackfruit, and even wood from mango, and when they are freshly milled they’re soft, but as they dry they harden quickly, and harden hard. Also, most all the boards have very little noticeable grain, unlike oak, maple or pine. They grow quickly and because there’s no winter, no dormant season, there are very few tree rings, and thus very little grain. Wood here is also relatively expensive compared to cement, brick, and plastic, so there’s less and less construction using wood.
Today I finished a small table that I’ve been working on the last few days. I broke another drill bit, and at least half the nails are bent or crooked. Still everyone is nice to me: “soowai, soowai.” Beautiful.
Thais have very few words borrowed from English, and so it’s always interesting when one pops up. The Thai word for furniture is “furniture.” The word for sofa is “sofa”. Why am I building furniture you might ask? For fun! And to learn.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
It finally happened #2
IT FINALLY HAPPENED # 2
There were two things of note today, and the first came early in the morning. As I wrote about before, I leave my work boots outside at night because having shoes inside is not something acceptable in Thailand. But I always worry a little bit in the morning when I go to put my boots on, about creatures living inside. And again, as I wrote about before, sure enough, a large toad started living there and scared me the first time, and the second time, but I gradually got used to it.
But this morning I went to pick up my boots, and there was a not a toad but a snake! It wasn’t a big snake, but it’s my first real close-up with a snake at the Yindichati farm, and I know that unlike where I have a farm in Canada, and where I’ve almost grown accustomed to snakes, here there are many very deadly snakes, big and little. There are pythons and cobras!
I backed away and yelled for someone to help. A sister arrived and looked at me perplexed. “Kill it,” she said.
“Can you kill it?”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes, a little.”
She smiled, then picked up a hoe and killed it.
But today, day two, the same kind of snake was in the same place! What happened to the toad?
The number two thing of note today involved Mae. I was sitting in the shade in the hot of the day and I noticed Mae walking around the outside of the farmhouse with a curious look on her face. She looked in one direction and then another, then glanced at her hand and started to laugh out loud. She looked at me looking at her, and still laughing she explained in Korat that she had been searching everywhere for her flipflop, but that it was in her hand the whole time!
There were two things of note today, and the first came early in the morning. As I wrote about before, I leave my work boots outside at night because having shoes inside is not something acceptable in Thailand. But I always worry a little bit in the morning when I go to put my boots on, about creatures living inside. And again, as I wrote about before, sure enough, a large toad started living there and scared me the first time, and the second time, but I gradually got used to it.
But this morning I went to pick up my boots, and there was a not a toad but a snake! It wasn’t a big snake, but it’s my first real close-up with a snake at the Yindichati farm, and I know that unlike where I have a farm in Canada, and where I’ve almost grown accustomed to snakes, here there are many very deadly snakes, big and little. There are pythons and cobras!
I backed away and yelled for someone to help. A sister arrived and looked at me perplexed. “Kill it,” she said.
“Can you kill it?”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes, a little.”
She smiled, then picked up a hoe and killed it.
But today, day two, the same kind of snake was in the same place! What happened to the toad?
The number two thing of note today involved Mae. I was sitting in the shade in the hot of the day and I noticed Mae walking around the outside of the farmhouse with a curious look on her face. She looked in one direction and then another, then glanced at her hand and started to laugh out loud. She looked at me looking at her, and still laughing she explained in Korat that she had been searching everywhere for her flipflop, but that it was in her hand the whole time!
Bangkok
BANGKOK
I’m just back to the farm after eight days in Bangkok. The trip started out as a two-day visit but ended up as eight. Sister number two, Malai, announced that she was getting divorced after fourteen years of marriage (the two of them not talking, more or less, for twelve). It was a big deal, of course, but procedurally remarkably not a big deal. The two of them, plus sisters, went to one district office only to find out that their marriage was registered in a different district office. Everyone drove to the other district office, waited in line, and by the end of the day they were divorced. The couple, and their twelve-year old daughter Ning, live in a house with a large extended family, and they will continue to live there, only now they are divorced.
Four, sometimes five, sometimes six of the Yindichati sisters live in Bangkok. I remember the first time I went to visit, and how surprised I was. Bangkok is an enormous spread out city, and somehow I imagined everyone living far apart, but it’s just the opposite. They live in Bang Kum, a town like scores of others now swallowed up by the great metropolis. Sister number one and sister number seven, plus significant others, live together with one more couple (also from the village). They live in what is referred to as the “condo”, but it’s actually a shop house and they have the ground floor. Sister number three lives about a five minute walk away, as does sister number two, and when sister number five is present (she is now working three years in Taiwan), she lives next door. And then there are cousins and many other people from the village, all of whom now live and work in the city. To throw a party on a Saturday night, anywhere from twenty to forty people can instantly arrive.
It’s a Bangkok I’ve never known before now. I have once or twice seen another foreigner in Bang Kum, which is a little wild for cosmopolitan Bangkok. My sense is that most people here, like the Yindichatis, come from northeastern Thailand (Isaan). The food on the street is all Isaan; the dialect in the shops is all Isaan. It’s essentially the village transplanted in the city, only almost entirely without the older generation. Sister number one, who just turned forty, is an “older” person in the community.
No one, with the exception of Sister number two, has a good job, but everyone has a job. That’s the point of living in Bangkok. Many of the women have two jobs, piecing together a living. They work in factories, they clean, they work in kitchens. The men drive taxis, or motorcycle taxis, or they work construction. The wages are not much better than in the village, but there is more work to be had.
After eight days in Bangkok, returning to the farm felt like a very welcome culture shock. I turned off the highway and instantly the road was dirt and potholed, the fields of rice lush and green. Boys were fishing in the ponds by the side of the road, birds singing.
I’m just back to the farm after eight days in Bangkok. The trip started out as a two-day visit but ended up as eight. Sister number two, Malai, announced that she was getting divorced after fourteen years of marriage (the two of them not talking, more or less, for twelve). It was a big deal, of course, but procedurally remarkably not a big deal. The two of them, plus sisters, went to one district office only to find out that their marriage was registered in a different district office. Everyone drove to the other district office, waited in line, and by the end of the day they were divorced. The couple, and their twelve-year old daughter Ning, live in a house with a large extended family, and they will continue to live there, only now they are divorced.
Four, sometimes five, sometimes six of the Yindichati sisters live in Bangkok. I remember the first time I went to visit, and how surprised I was. Bangkok is an enormous spread out city, and somehow I imagined everyone living far apart, but it’s just the opposite. They live in Bang Kum, a town like scores of others now swallowed up by the great metropolis. Sister number one and sister number seven, plus significant others, live together with one more couple (also from the village). They live in what is referred to as the “condo”, but it’s actually a shop house and they have the ground floor. Sister number three lives about a five minute walk away, as does sister number two, and when sister number five is present (she is now working three years in Taiwan), she lives next door. And then there are cousins and many other people from the village, all of whom now live and work in the city. To throw a party on a Saturday night, anywhere from twenty to forty people can instantly arrive.
It’s a Bangkok I’ve never known before now. I have once or twice seen another foreigner in Bang Kum, which is a little wild for cosmopolitan Bangkok. My sense is that most people here, like the Yindichatis, come from northeastern Thailand (Isaan). The food on the street is all Isaan; the dialect in the shops is all Isaan. It’s essentially the village transplanted in the city, only almost entirely without the older generation. Sister number one, who just turned forty, is an “older” person in the community.
No one, with the exception of Sister number two, has a good job, but everyone has a job. That’s the point of living in Bangkok. Many of the women have two jobs, piecing together a living. They work in factories, they clean, they work in kitchens. The men drive taxis, or motorcycle taxis, or they work construction. The wages are not much better than in the village, but there is more work to be had.
After eight days in Bangkok, returning to the farm felt like a very welcome culture shock. I turned off the highway and instantly the road was dirt and potholed, the fields of rice lush and green. Boys were fishing in the ponds by the side of the road, birds singing.
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