Thursday, September 24, 2009
Cremation
CREMATION
My intention was to write about the cremation immediately after it happened, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if I can now. It happened about a week ago
The man who was cremated was from the next village, age forty-four. As I understand, he’d beaten up his wife and then felt so badly about it that he took an overdose of “pharmacy”. For several days we had reports from the hospital in town about his condition. One day he was okay, the next day not. One morning I drove Mae in to stay with him through the day, and that evening picked her up.
“He’s going to be fine,” was the last word I heard. And then he was dead.
The villages instantly mobilized. On the way back from town I drove into the grounds of the wat (a Thai Buddhist temple), and already there were people cooking outside over large charcoal fires. There was a heavy mist after a heavy rain, and the grounds of the wat were eerie as could be, but filled with human voices. I dropped off a forty kilo bag of rice donated by the Yindichatis (someone helped me carry it from the car). There are many wats in the countryside here, but this one I know the best. Roads merge here, five kilometres from the farm. There’s a large tower, signalling the crematorium.
The next afternoon the cremation took place. There were about two hundred people (most all of the people that I now know if only by face). It was the “village” (the four villages actually), taking care of village, just like elections, weddings, and ordinations. Lem and Nue helped carry the casket, and we all dropped unlit incense onto the corpse. Then the body was cremated.
In town that same night we went to listen to music at Tawan Yam. When we arrived something felt wrong. A friend who waits tables there told us that the night before a young man committed suicide by drowning in a canal just adjacent to the restaurant. It was a person who I know, a person who sings and plays drums in my favourite band. His wife fell in love with someone else.
“Singer burn tomorrow, four afternoon,” the friend told me in English.
My intention was to write about the cremation immediately after it happened, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if I can now. It happened about a week ago
The man who was cremated was from the next village, age forty-four. As I understand, he’d beaten up his wife and then felt so badly about it that he took an overdose of “pharmacy”. For several days we had reports from the hospital in town about his condition. One day he was okay, the next day not. One morning I drove Mae in to stay with him through the day, and that evening picked her up.
“He’s going to be fine,” was the last word I heard. And then he was dead.
The villages instantly mobilized. On the way back from town I drove into the grounds of the wat (a Thai Buddhist temple), and already there were people cooking outside over large charcoal fires. There was a heavy mist after a heavy rain, and the grounds of the wat were eerie as could be, but filled with human voices. I dropped off a forty kilo bag of rice donated by the Yindichatis (someone helped me carry it from the car). There are many wats in the countryside here, but this one I know the best. Roads merge here, five kilometres from the farm. There’s a large tower, signalling the crematorium.
The next afternoon the cremation took place. There were about two hundred people (most all of the people that I now know if only by face). It was the “village” (the four villages actually), taking care of village, just like elections, weddings, and ordinations. Lem and Nue helped carry the casket, and we all dropped unlit incense onto the corpse. Then the body was cremated.
In town that same night we went to listen to music at Tawan Yam. When we arrived something felt wrong. A friend who waits tables there told us that the night before a young man committed suicide by drowning in a canal just adjacent to the restaurant. It was a person who I know, a person who sings and plays drums in my favourite band. His wife fell in love with someone else.
“Singer burn tomorrow, four afternoon,” the friend told me in English.
Ants and Earth Shaping
ANTS AND EARTH-SHAPING
These days I’m most of the time thinking about the garden and everything I learn each day from Mollison at night (reading his book) and Mae and Pa in the daytime. I learned recently from Mollison to pay attention to the ants, and how to think of them as good as opposed to bad (a long ago post, maybe “Powder”). Ants aerate the soil in the tropics, same as termites, like worms do in temperate climates. They also break down organic matter adding humus to the soil (and I am probably getting this all wrong – sorry Mr. Mollison!). He explains to follow their paths and see which plants they like and which they do not like, and what effect it has on the individual plants.
About two weeks ago tiny red ants made a super-highway from one of the old mangoes directly for one of the flowering perennials I’d brought home from the nursery. It was instantaneous, and there was nothing I could do to deter them. Bottom leaves started turning yellow as the ants devoured the plant (but interestingly, didn’t touch an identical plant about four feet away). With every day that passed I figured the plant was doomed, but then suddenly the ants departed, about half the leaves having died. Now the plant is in by far better condition than its neighbour. It’s like the ants knew exactly when to “prune”.
Mollison writes about people in tropical Australia, Queensland (where I think he hails from), deliberately putting out baby plants in anthills so that they can thrive in the well-aerated soil. Amazing.
Also, these days, I’m trying to do “earth shaping”. The monsoon rains are now almost torrential, and I know that there are at least six to eight weeks of heavy rain remaining. To hold onto the soil that we moved in order to build the bungalows and establish the garden, a few weeks ago we built (or five people built for us over the course of six long days of labor), a retaining wall with rebar, cement, and cement blocks. It was a beautiful job, but it shortly thereafter caved in at the back. When there are six inches of rain in 24 hours, a lot of things happen....
Reading Mollison, and particularly the chapters about the monsoon corridor, he devotes a lot of time to “earth shaping” and to “mulch” (which I have written here about before, and will no doubt write about again....). The obvious problem in this climate is that strong rains leach soil and valuable soil nutrients. The blazing hot sun appears and bakes everything into instant red clay (which defines my “garden” at the present moment.)
Okay, so if the retaining wall didn’t work, what other options are available? Earth shaping, suggests Mollison. So out I go with the hoe, thinking about “terracing”, as well as ridges, mounds, and furrows. My idea with this particular problem is to contain the water and mud within the area, as opposed to letting it gather into “rivers” that bring down well-laid cement retaining walls.
But, now three days into my labor and I’m immensely curious if any of it works. And after weeks of rain, suddenly there are three days of no rain! Tomorrow we will get four days of backed-up rain, and all my work will be quickly washed away, rain water to mud to bulldozer force.
An update: Rain came (and is still coming), four days backed up! So beautiful and so powerful. My projects? Well, fifty-fifty I’d say at this point. In theory I think they’re a success, but oh my back hurts, and oh such a long way to go.
Update number two: A few days ago, at dusk, I was headed out to the forest with a machete and the wheel barrow to cut some “green manure.” Pa was walking the other way, walking home, but when he saw me he stopped and smiled (his incredibly great smile), then told me not to bother with the green manure but to take what I wanted from the stash of cow manure created by the two cows. I said thank you, but then kept heading to the forest. The manure, I know, goes back onto the rice fields, and the rice fields are why the farm is a farm. My garden is just a garden.
But the next day Naa came up and told me that Pa wants me to use the manure. Partly, I was thrilled. The manure! But then I wondered through the day about what I am doing in the garden. What am I doing? What I know that I am doing is that I’m learning. I am trying to learn by copying exactly what Mae and Pa have already built, and about which Mollison writes. Hopefully it will positively affect the farm. And hopefully, other people can come and learn what I am learning.
Now each day I load a bucket or two of manure and feed the garden.
These days I’m most of the time thinking about the garden and everything I learn each day from Mollison at night (reading his book) and Mae and Pa in the daytime. I learned recently from Mollison to pay attention to the ants, and how to think of them as good as opposed to bad (a long ago post, maybe “Powder”). Ants aerate the soil in the tropics, same as termites, like worms do in temperate climates. They also break down organic matter adding humus to the soil (and I am probably getting this all wrong – sorry Mr. Mollison!). He explains to follow their paths and see which plants they like and which they do not like, and what effect it has on the individual plants.
About two weeks ago tiny red ants made a super-highway from one of the old mangoes directly for one of the flowering perennials I’d brought home from the nursery. It was instantaneous, and there was nothing I could do to deter them. Bottom leaves started turning yellow as the ants devoured the plant (but interestingly, didn’t touch an identical plant about four feet away). With every day that passed I figured the plant was doomed, but then suddenly the ants departed, about half the leaves having died. Now the plant is in by far better condition than its neighbour. It’s like the ants knew exactly when to “prune”.
Mollison writes about people in tropical Australia, Queensland (where I think he hails from), deliberately putting out baby plants in anthills so that they can thrive in the well-aerated soil. Amazing.
Also, these days, I’m trying to do “earth shaping”. The monsoon rains are now almost torrential, and I know that there are at least six to eight weeks of heavy rain remaining. To hold onto the soil that we moved in order to build the bungalows and establish the garden, a few weeks ago we built (or five people built for us over the course of six long days of labor), a retaining wall with rebar, cement, and cement blocks. It was a beautiful job, but it shortly thereafter caved in at the back. When there are six inches of rain in 24 hours, a lot of things happen....
Reading Mollison, and particularly the chapters about the monsoon corridor, he devotes a lot of time to “earth shaping” and to “mulch” (which I have written here about before, and will no doubt write about again....). The obvious problem in this climate is that strong rains leach soil and valuable soil nutrients. The blazing hot sun appears and bakes everything into instant red clay (which defines my “garden” at the present moment.)
Okay, so if the retaining wall didn’t work, what other options are available? Earth shaping, suggests Mollison. So out I go with the hoe, thinking about “terracing”, as well as ridges, mounds, and furrows. My idea with this particular problem is to contain the water and mud within the area, as opposed to letting it gather into “rivers” that bring down well-laid cement retaining walls.
But, now three days into my labor and I’m immensely curious if any of it works. And after weeks of rain, suddenly there are three days of no rain! Tomorrow we will get four days of backed-up rain, and all my work will be quickly washed away, rain water to mud to bulldozer force.
An update: Rain came (and is still coming), four days backed up! So beautiful and so powerful. My projects? Well, fifty-fifty I’d say at this point. In theory I think they’re a success, but oh my back hurts, and oh such a long way to go.
Update number two: A few days ago, at dusk, I was headed out to the forest with a machete and the wheel barrow to cut some “green manure.” Pa was walking the other way, walking home, but when he saw me he stopped and smiled (his incredibly great smile), then told me not to bother with the green manure but to take what I wanted from the stash of cow manure created by the two cows. I said thank you, but then kept heading to the forest. The manure, I know, goes back onto the rice fields, and the rice fields are why the farm is a farm. My garden is just a garden.
But the next day Naa came up and told me that Pa wants me to use the manure. Partly, I was thrilled. The manure! But then I wondered through the day about what I am doing in the garden. What am I doing? What I know that I am doing is that I’m learning. I am trying to learn by copying exactly what Mae and Pa have already built, and about which Mollison writes. Hopefully it will positively affect the farm. And hopefully, other people can come and learn what I am learning.
Now each day I load a bucket or two of manure and feed the garden.
What's true and why not
WHAT’S TRUE, AND WHY NOT?
I am having a bit of a sick day. It’s not a big sick day. Maybe it’s not even a sick day at all, apart from a somewhat loose stool and a mildly sore throat. I just woke up from a deep deep sleep of an afternoon nap, having no idea where I am. Then immediately I flashed on the election, of Lem coming up one vote short, and of several people that I know not voting for him.
There is so much that I don’t know about here, or don’t understand, or both. But here it’s an easy observation: a different culture, a different language, etc. But the same is true for me in Toronto, where I generally share a culture and a language. I often used to think, driving from downtown in the city out to the farm, driving at least an hour through the density of urban population, that here I am driving among four or five million people and in some part of my semi-educated 1970’s social science-influenced way of perceiving the world, that I can ever really think that I understand all these other human beings. Sixty-three percent are pro-choice, thirty-two percent support the present government, seventy-one percent of households having incomes over two hundred thousand dollars send their children (if they have children) to private schools, yet almost unanimously declare themselves “proud” of public education in Canada.
For two years we (Naomi and I) wrote a column once every two weeks for the National Post, a right-leaning newspaper in Canada. We wrote about food, and we weren’t happy that it was the National Post (politics-wise), but it was a great job. I remember, though, the first time a piece ran and I anxiously went to the corner store to buy a copy of the paper. The Saturday edition, in which it always ran, was a hefty bit of newsprint, and when I got home it was a long time searching before I found the article (an esoteric food-related feature didn’t quite make the first five or six sections).
For me, when I at last found the piece, I was shocked. The print was so small and the newspaper so big! Who reads this deeply into a newspaper that I myself I have never before now even purchased?
It was a strange feeling that quickly became a somewhat lovely feeling, a little bit like this blog. When I was recently in town I had a chance to be on the internet, and like the time before, and the time before that, I noticed that the same number of people (20) were “following” the blog. A nice friend wrote an email saying that I should “jazz up” the blog, adding photographs and thinking about using sexier titles for entries.
I am using real people’s names, and the names of real villages, and I am writing about the things that I learn and observe. No part of my being wants to do anything but bring good fortune to these people who have been so wonderful to me. Yes, someone on the election commission could read in English that I gave some amount of money to my friend to aid in his campaign, but between that big stack of newsprint and my twenty “followers”, I don’t think so. Not in English, not now, and nobody cares anyway.
A woman down the road from me in Grey Country in Canada wrote a book I liked very much in a quiet sort of way. It’s called LAMB’S QUARTERS, and it’s about her twenty or more odd years as an urban transplant raising children in the country. I learned a lot reading her book, and I enjoyed it. It helped me better understand our farm, etc. It was a good book, for me. But when I heard her speak about it (at a local reading), she talked about her decision to change the names of the people, the names of locations, etc, something I found really odd. The book is about people she loves and admires, and about a place she loves and respects. When I heard her answer questions about changing the names, the word that came up was “privacy.”
Don’t sell your book as “non-fiction,” was what crossed my mind. Here at the YIndichati Farm, is everything that I write TRUE?
It’s TRUE as I know and currently understand, which is always in flux. The world’s not on edge whether or not the botanical classification of a particular tree is an acacia or an annona. I don’t think the world is on edge whether Lem won or lost yesterday, or whether certain Yindichati sisters voted for or against him. But I won’t change names, not in non-fiction. And I will never believe that what I write is true.
I am having a bit of a sick day. It’s not a big sick day. Maybe it’s not even a sick day at all, apart from a somewhat loose stool and a mildly sore throat. I just woke up from a deep deep sleep of an afternoon nap, having no idea where I am. Then immediately I flashed on the election, of Lem coming up one vote short, and of several people that I know not voting for him.
There is so much that I don’t know about here, or don’t understand, or both. But here it’s an easy observation: a different culture, a different language, etc. But the same is true for me in Toronto, where I generally share a culture and a language. I often used to think, driving from downtown in the city out to the farm, driving at least an hour through the density of urban population, that here I am driving among four or five million people and in some part of my semi-educated 1970’s social science-influenced way of perceiving the world, that I can ever really think that I understand all these other human beings. Sixty-three percent are pro-choice, thirty-two percent support the present government, seventy-one percent of households having incomes over two hundred thousand dollars send their children (if they have children) to private schools, yet almost unanimously declare themselves “proud” of public education in Canada.
For two years we (Naomi and I) wrote a column once every two weeks for the National Post, a right-leaning newspaper in Canada. We wrote about food, and we weren’t happy that it was the National Post (politics-wise), but it was a great job. I remember, though, the first time a piece ran and I anxiously went to the corner store to buy a copy of the paper. The Saturday edition, in which it always ran, was a hefty bit of newsprint, and when I got home it was a long time searching before I found the article (an esoteric food-related feature didn’t quite make the first five or six sections).
For me, when I at last found the piece, I was shocked. The print was so small and the newspaper so big! Who reads this deeply into a newspaper that I myself I have never before now even purchased?
It was a strange feeling that quickly became a somewhat lovely feeling, a little bit like this blog. When I was recently in town I had a chance to be on the internet, and like the time before, and the time before that, I noticed that the same number of people (20) were “following” the blog. A nice friend wrote an email saying that I should “jazz up” the blog, adding photographs and thinking about using sexier titles for entries.
I am using real people’s names, and the names of real villages, and I am writing about the things that I learn and observe. No part of my being wants to do anything but bring good fortune to these people who have been so wonderful to me. Yes, someone on the election commission could read in English that I gave some amount of money to my friend to aid in his campaign, but between that big stack of newsprint and my twenty “followers”, I don’t think so. Not in English, not now, and nobody cares anyway.
A woman down the road from me in Grey Country in Canada wrote a book I liked very much in a quiet sort of way. It’s called LAMB’S QUARTERS, and it’s about her twenty or more odd years as an urban transplant raising children in the country. I learned a lot reading her book, and I enjoyed it. It helped me better understand our farm, etc. It was a good book, for me. But when I heard her speak about it (at a local reading), she talked about her decision to change the names of the people, the names of locations, etc, something I found really odd. The book is about people she loves and admires, and about a place she loves and respects. When I heard her answer questions about changing the names, the word that came up was “privacy.”
Don’t sell your book as “non-fiction,” was what crossed my mind. Here at the YIndichati Farm, is everything that I write TRUE?
It’s TRUE as I know and currently understand, which is always in flux. The world’s not on edge whether or not the botanical classification of a particular tree is an acacia or an annona. I don’t think the world is on edge whether Lem won or lost yesterday, or whether certain Yindichati sisters voted for or against him. But I won’t change names, not in non-fiction. And I will never believe that what I write is true.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
the yindichati farm in phots
i've never posted a picture before! hope it works. these photos are from harvest last december, when i was here with a digital camera (which i don't have now....). to the immediate right is Mae rocking Tey to sleep after lunchtime so that she can return to the work of the harvest.
top right are Moo Noi and Tey in the back of the car.
top left are kids coming home from school.
middle right is Nue who just won a seat on the village council in the last election, and middle left is Pa, a smile that beats all.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
a tiny post
A TINY POST
I’ve come to terms with the fact that the toad lives in my boot at night. And I think the toad has come to terms with being rudely tossed out to the ground in the morning, perhaps waking up from deepest sleep.
Today Norm and Moo Noi caught a dragon-fly-like bug, only bigger and making a lot more noise than a dragon-fly. I was outside and not watching, but I could hear the commotion and it lasted for a long time. Finally, Moo appears (and okay okay, not politically correct....), but Norm had carefully tied one end of a thread around the body of the bug and the other end around Moo’s wrist, and like a kite, the bug was buzzing around in all directions, occasionally down Moo’s shirt and in his hair, when the buzzing would be accompanied by ecstatic giggles. Clearly it was something that Norm had learned in her childhood, in the same house, the same farm.
“Kreung bin” Moo Noi kept saying. “Airplane!”
Moo, who will soon be four, has far greater knowledge of (and immunities for) his physical environment than I do. He and Tey, perhaps I have mentioned before, will without hesitation pick up a spider that’s the size of my hand. Their days are spent in constant exploration. But last week I noticed a seriously mean looking hornet-like bug in the window, and instantly appeared Moo and Tey, giggling, reaching up to grab the bug.
I thought “they know, they know far better than me,” and I disappeared into another room. Moments later I heard a shriek, a sound as sharp and painful as a dagger, and then there was Moo, every part of his body in pain, holding up the palm of his hand as if he’d be happy if I severed it off!!!
I’ve come to terms with the fact that the toad lives in my boot at night. And I think the toad has come to terms with being rudely tossed out to the ground in the morning, perhaps waking up from deepest sleep.
Today Norm and Moo Noi caught a dragon-fly-like bug, only bigger and making a lot more noise than a dragon-fly. I was outside and not watching, but I could hear the commotion and it lasted for a long time. Finally, Moo appears (and okay okay, not politically correct....), but Norm had carefully tied one end of a thread around the body of the bug and the other end around Moo’s wrist, and like a kite, the bug was buzzing around in all directions, occasionally down Moo’s shirt and in his hair, when the buzzing would be accompanied by ecstatic giggles. Clearly it was something that Norm had learned in her childhood, in the same house, the same farm.
“Kreung bin” Moo Noi kept saying. “Airplane!”
Moo, who will soon be four, has far greater knowledge of (and immunities for) his physical environment than I do. He and Tey, perhaps I have mentioned before, will without hesitation pick up a spider that’s the size of my hand. Their days are spent in constant exploration. But last week I noticed a seriously mean looking hornet-like bug in the window, and instantly appeared Moo and Tey, giggling, reaching up to grab the bug.
I thought “they know, they know far better than me,” and I disappeared into another room. Moments later I heard a shriek, a sound as sharp and painful as a dagger, and then there was Moo, every part of his body in pain, holding up the palm of his hand as if he’d be happy if I severed it off!!!
one winner, one loser
ONE WINNER, ONE LOSER
The election’s over as of yesterday, and like most events that happen here (as seen through my eyes), it was an event even bigger than I expected. People came from Bangkok, the many family members who live and work in the city (in order to help support other family members who still live here in the country). It was a familiar feeling for me, seeing faces that I now know well, but faces I see only on special occasions: cremations, ordinations, weddings. It’s always a very good feeling in the village, everyone happy. There are lots of little kids playing, running across and up and down the dirt road. Older folks find a place to sit in the shade. People constantly ride bicycles or motorbikes back and forth to the shop, buying ice, buying snacks, stopping for a bowl of noodles. (No-one, however, is buying or drinking booze in public. It’s illegal for shops to sell booze for a twenty-four hour period, ending two hours after the polls close.)
For me, and probably for others, the day was extremely tense. For this past month there has not been a single day not influenced by “the election” (the next election is in four years). People campaign as numbers, as in “number one”, who in this election was Lem. Nue was Ber Song (number two). All day everyday old pickup trucks drive up and down the potholed road with load speakers: ber nung, ber song, ber samn. And yes, it gets tiresome, but the trucks are a small part of what’s going on. There’s hardly a conversation that isn’t about “the election.” Bottles of rum and lao khao (rice whiskey) are consumed in quantities that put weddings to shame (a very good month for the shops.....).
As I wrote before, there are 380 people eligible to vote in this four village area. Yesterday, 380 people voted. The votes were read out one by one in a covered community gathering spot (which all villages have). The election committee was cordoned off so that no one could tamper with anything. There were police, but not that it was in any way that sort of situation. The one man announcing the votes would read the vote and then hold the ballot up so that everyone could see. Ber nung, ber see....
Nue took a large lead, Lem coming second, and ber see (a young man from a neighboring village who used to date sister number seven)(in a family with seven daughters, in a small village, who didn’t date a Yindichati sister!). Ber Sahm, or number three, ran a distant fourth.
As he patiently read out every single vote, and the person behind him patiently tabulated it on a large chalk board, the atmosphere was incredibly tense. I was incredibly tense! I haven’t lived here long, but these are my two closest friends, and this is a BIG DEAL. Lem kept second (two seats to be won), but as the basket of ballots came closer and closer to being empty, number four serged and beat Lem by a single vote. Nue had 126 votes, number four had 91, and Lem 90. The man announced that the vote was finished, and everyone cheered. I went and put my arms around Lem (I, a foreigner, can get away with things like this...). His daughter, 19 years old, tried to hold back her tears.
I’m fifty-five years old and I’ve always like politics and elections, but I can seldom remember a time when I felt so tense, or cared so much about an outcome. Yes, Obama winning, and McGovern losing horribly. But this was different. This was raw. Nue, my friend, is a good person, but not the same caliber of candidate as Lem. But Lem didn’t grow up here. Nue is one of twelve children, brother of Mae. Nue and Lem are best friends. Nue could’ve brought Lem along (everyone gets to vote for two candidates). Many people in the extended family (including Mae) voted only for one candidate, Nue, in order to increase his chances. And Lem lost by one vote.
The election’s over as of yesterday, and like most events that happen here (as seen through my eyes), it was an event even bigger than I expected. People came from Bangkok, the many family members who live and work in the city (in order to help support other family members who still live here in the country). It was a familiar feeling for me, seeing faces that I now know well, but faces I see only on special occasions: cremations, ordinations, weddings. It’s always a very good feeling in the village, everyone happy. There are lots of little kids playing, running across and up and down the dirt road. Older folks find a place to sit in the shade. People constantly ride bicycles or motorbikes back and forth to the shop, buying ice, buying snacks, stopping for a bowl of noodles. (No-one, however, is buying or drinking booze in public. It’s illegal for shops to sell booze for a twenty-four hour period, ending two hours after the polls close.)
For me, and probably for others, the day was extremely tense. For this past month there has not been a single day not influenced by “the election” (the next election is in four years). People campaign as numbers, as in “number one”, who in this election was Lem. Nue was Ber Song (number two). All day everyday old pickup trucks drive up and down the potholed road with load speakers: ber nung, ber song, ber samn. And yes, it gets tiresome, but the trucks are a small part of what’s going on. There’s hardly a conversation that isn’t about “the election.” Bottles of rum and lao khao (rice whiskey) are consumed in quantities that put weddings to shame (a very good month for the shops.....).
As I wrote before, there are 380 people eligible to vote in this four village area. Yesterday, 380 people voted. The votes were read out one by one in a covered community gathering spot (which all villages have). The election committee was cordoned off so that no one could tamper with anything. There were police, but not that it was in any way that sort of situation. The one man announcing the votes would read the vote and then hold the ballot up so that everyone could see. Ber nung, ber see....
Nue took a large lead, Lem coming second, and ber see (a young man from a neighboring village who used to date sister number seven)(in a family with seven daughters, in a small village, who didn’t date a Yindichati sister!). Ber Sahm, or number three, ran a distant fourth.
As he patiently read out every single vote, and the person behind him patiently tabulated it on a large chalk board, the atmosphere was incredibly tense. I was incredibly tense! I haven’t lived here long, but these are my two closest friends, and this is a BIG DEAL. Lem kept second (two seats to be won), but as the basket of ballots came closer and closer to being empty, number four serged and beat Lem by a single vote. Nue had 126 votes, number four had 91, and Lem 90. The man announced that the vote was finished, and everyone cheered. I went and put my arms around Lem (I, a foreigner, can get away with things like this...). His daughter, 19 years old, tried to hold back her tears.
I’m fifty-five years old and I’ve always like politics and elections, but I can seldom remember a time when I felt so tense, or cared so much about an outcome. Yes, Obama winning, and McGovern losing horribly. But this was different. This was raw. Nue, my friend, is a good person, but not the same caliber of candidate as Lem. But Lem didn’t grow up here. Nue is one of twelve children, brother of Mae. Nue and Lem are best friends. Nue could’ve brought Lem along (everyone gets to vote for two candidates). Many people in the extended family (including Mae) voted only for one candidate, Nue, in order to increase his chances. And Lem lost by one vote.
money
MONEY
I’ve always wanted to write a book about money, if only to understand it better. It’s not like I am interested in stocks or investments, but travelling a long time I’m always interested in how I can get into an airplane, sit for five or twenty hours, and get out in a place where people have so much money, or so little money (most often the latter). I know that’s sounds pretty simplistic, and it’s not like I haven’t learned a lot already about “why” and “how”, but still.
Tonight, for example, the Yindichatis, smiling, told me to listen for many dogs barking outside (it’s also, by the way, a full moon night). “Dogs barking?” I asked, as I often ask, totally not understanding.
“Tonight many people walking, so dogs barking.”
“Why people walking?”
“Gam ma gaan. You know gam ma gaan?”
“No.”
Out comes the dictionary and sooner or later we find it: “gam ma gaan” is the election committee. Turns out that tonight, thirty-six hours before the election, is the time when people walk house to house offering money in exchange for a vote. Going price is about 200 baht (this is for the “big election”, the ten village election, not the four-village election). Two hundred baht is approximately six dollars, the same amount a skilled labourer makes in a full day’s work here in the countryside.
It’s not the candidate who walks house to house, but a cousin or close friend. If the “gam ma gaan” was to see or be aware of the candidate paying money, the candidate would be out of the race. But everyone (I’m told) with a chance to win, has to do it.
“Oh,” adds the Yindichati sister, “and don’t tell anyone about giving the money, the five hundred baht. Taking money from a foreigner would put them out of the election for sure.”
Hmm?
So off we’re going to an election party. Booze is apparently a permissible inducement.
And one other thing, and by far more important when it comes to money, is that tonight at dinner I learned that two women might be arriving in a car from the city, and that sister number seven, who lives here, owes them 20,000 baht (which is a lot of money!).
You may think me inappropriate for writing about some of the things I am writing about here, and I hope I am not being inappropriate, even in this amazing age of information (another blog altogether). BUT, as if it matters, THERE’S A TON I AM LEAVING OUT!
This was not happy news. Levels of personal debt here are shocking, as they are almost everywhere probably. But here right now for me it has a very human face. Three of the seven sisters in the Yindichati family, all of whom I like a great deal, are totally clueless about how money works. They work very hard; they don’t complain. They will work two jobs seven days a week and look after children. BUT then they’ll take ten and twenty thousand baht loans that no way in the world they can ever repay. And they are not unusual; they are the norm. They were unable to continue their education passed grade six, but they’re no different than people in well-educated countries in the west.
Debt. Governments, everywhere, are shameful in this regard.
I’ve always wanted to write a book about money, if only to understand it better. It’s not like I am interested in stocks or investments, but travelling a long time I’m always interested in how I can get into an airplane, sit for five or twenty hours, and get out in a place where people have so much money, or so little money (most often the latter). I know that’s sounds pretty simplistic, and it’s not like I haven’t learned a lot already about “why” and “how”, but still.
Tonight, for example, the Yindichatis, smiling, told me to listen for many dogs barking outside (it’s also, by the way, a full moon night). “Dogs barking?” I asked, as I often ask, totally not understanding.
“Tonight many people walking, so dogs barking.”
“Why people walking?”
“Gam ma gaan. You know gam ma gaan?”
“No.”
Out comes the dictionary and sooner or later we find it: “gam ma gaan” is the election committee. Turns out that tonight, thirty-six hours before the election, is the time when people walk house to house offering money in exchange for a vote. Going price is about 200 baht (this is for the “big election”, the ten village election, not the four-village election). Two hundred baht is approximately six dollars, the same amount a skilled labourer makes in a full day’s work here in the countryside.
It’s not the candidate who walks house to house, but a cousin or close friend. If the “gam ma gaan” was to see or be aware of the candidate paying money, the candidate would be out of the race. But everyone (I’m told) with a chance to win, has to do it.
“Oh,” adds the Yindichati sister, “and don’t tell anyone about giving the money, the five hundred baht. Taking money from a foreigner would put them out of the election for sure.”
Hmm?
So off we’re going to an election party. Booze is apparently a permissible inducement.
And one other thing, and by far more important when it comes to money, is that tonight at dinner I learned that two women might be arriving in a car from the city, and that sister number seven, who lives here, owes them 20,000 baht (which is a lot of money!).
You may think me inappropriate for writing about some of the things I am writing about here, and I hope I am not being inappropriate, even in this amazing age of information (another blog altogether). BUT, as if it matters, THERE’S A TON I AM LEAVING OUT!
This was not happy news. Levels of personal debt here are shocking, as they are almost everywhere probably. But here right now for me it has a very human face. Three of the seven sisters in the Yindichati family, all of whom I like a great deal, are totally clueless about how money works. They work very hard; they don’t complain. They will work two jobs seven days a week and look after children. BUT then they’ll take ten and twenty thousand baht loans that no way in the world they can ever repay. And they are not unusual; they are the norm. They were unable to continue their education passed grade six, but they’re no different than people in well-educated countries in the west.
Debt. Governments, everywhere, are shameful in this regard.
two white cows
TWO WHITE COWS
The Yindichatis used to have at least twenty cows, or so the daughters remember, but now they keep only two. The cows are white, and look like most cows here. I know cattle breeds little if not at all, but this particular breed of cow I have seen a lot here, in Cambodia, and in Vietnam. At first glance they look thin, with flappy necks, but to be around them every day they now seem very healthy living a life of luxury!
These two cows go through their day being escorted by a Yindichati from one delectable place to eat to another. Each is tied with a long rope to keep it from wandering too far, and every few hours the cows are tied to a different fence post or a different tree, allowing to cows to eat in a new location. Many different things grow in a very small area, so if a cow were allowed to eat anywhere, as I’m sure sometimes happens when a cow becomes untied, it spells big trouble.
But for the most part the Yindichati cows seem not at all interested in exploring new terrain. Why should they? Every afternoon Mae or Pa, or both of them together, jump on the motorbike carrying the two wheeled wheelbarrow behind (and their sicles tied to their bodies), and they disappear down the road for at least an hour. When they return the wheelbarrow is piled high with a certain tall grass that the cows especially like. The cows are definitely pampered.
Cows, it occurs to me almost every day in my constant search for “buie”, are an enormous part of the system here. The only other animals doing anything in terms of fertilizing are chickens, of which there are many. It’s not that chicken manure accounts for much in terms of volume, but as I learned in Mollison (I learn everything in Millison...), chicken poo is great for redistributing seeds across a large area, keeping biodiversity thriving. The Yindichatis used to keep pigs (I helped take down the old pig sty, which was made with fabulous hardwoods that I am still recycling), but they haven’t for a long time, or have I seen a single pig in the four village area.
Cows here, as far as I can tell, have an incredibly diverse diet (as do people), but their primary food is a mountain of rice straw from the December harvest. At the Yindichati Farm they basically live with the rice straw at their back door, eating when they please. One night I was outside on a full moon night, and looked over and there were the two white cows glowing, standing atop the mountain of straw!
I am completely guessing here (as in not knowing...), but the cows are as close to a “pet” as it comes in this family. As I wrote before, Pun across the street has four dogs, and there are dogs at almost every farm, but the Yindichatis don’t have dogs (Pun’s live here all the time anyway). Pun’s dogs are tolerated, but certainly not loved. The cows, on the other hand.... It’s not like they name the cows, or talk about the cows, but they definitely always take care of the cows, and never seem to approach it as a burden.
When sister number one (Soora) was in the hospital after being beaten up badly by her boyfriend, a family cow was sold to help pay for all the expenses that resulted. On several different occasions, in stories I’ve heard retold, a cow’s been sold to cover an extraordinary expense, almost like insurance. I also find it interesting that at least four daughters that I am aware of don’t eat beef. Moo Noi, whose name means “little pig”, is certainly not encouraged to eat beef.
I have one last thing before closing on the cows, and it’s better as a photograph than I can do in words. Father’s sister number two, grandmother to Boom, lives almost directly across the street, but one house toward town from Pun. Maybe I have mentioned her before because her husband’s a boozer beyond help, and he’s the one person in the village that people would rather not exist. Part of everyone’s dislike, I think, is because two of the four children are enormously loved by everyone. One is daughter number four who escaped to Bangkok, and the other is a son who is gay, borderline transsexual, and an extraordinarily nice person.
Anyway, I digress. But father’s sister number two, like father, is a remarkable person in her own right. I don’t know how old she is, but she is sixty up. Like everyone else, she is short, but carries herself as if she were a ballet dancer, perfectly erect, shoulders strong as a short-distance swimmer. Every day she wears shorts down past her knees, flip-flops, and tank-tops, with her hair pulled back tight, her high cheekbones and long forward all the more pronounced.
She has one cow, as far as I know, a white cow, and the cow is taller than she is. Many times each day, like the Yindichatis, she escorts her cow to a new location. And again, I’m sorry, it’s a better photograph than it is in words (or at least my words), but here is this woman leading this cow, dwarfed by the cow (her cow is tall, and big!), and she is so in charge.
I just finished dinner, and one thing at dinner was a pickled green brought over from father’s sister number two.
Oh, and one important thing I forgot. She and her husband don’t own land, having lost it all at some point or another. She wants Pa to give her land, but he won’t because he knows it will end up the same as the rest.
The Yindichatis used to have at least twenty cows, or so the daughters remember, but now they keep only two. The cows are white, and look like most cows here. I know cattle breeds little if not at all, but this particular breed of cow I have seen a lot here, in Cambodia, and in Vietnam. At first glance they look thin, with flappy necks, but to be around them every day they now seem very healthy living a life of luxury!
These two cows go through their day being escorted by a Yindichati from one delectable place to eat to another. Each is tied with a long rope to keep it from wandering too far, and every few hours the cows are tied to a different fence post or a different tree, allowing to cows to eat in a new location. Many different things grow in a very small area, so if a cow were allowed to eat anywhere, as I’m sure sometimes happens when a cow becomes untied, it spells big trouble.
But for the most part the Yindichati cows seem not at all interested in exploring new terrain. Why should they? Every afternoon Mae or Pa, or both of them together, jump on the motorbike carrying the two wheeled wheelbarrow behind (and their sicles tied to their bodies), and they disappear down the road for at least an hour. When they return the wheelbarrow is piled high with a certain tall grass that the cows especially like. The cows are definitely pampered.
Cows, it occurs to me almost every day in my constant search for “buie”, are an enormous part of the system here. The only other animals doing anything in terms of fertilizing are chickens, of which there are many. It’s not that chicken manure accounts for much in terms of volume, but as I learned in Mollison (I learn everything in Millison...), chicken poo is great for redistributing seeds across a large area, keeping biodiversity thriving. The Yindichatis used to keep pigs (I helped take down the old pig sty, which was made with fabulous hardwoods that I am still recycling), but they haven’t for a long time, or have I seen a single pig in the four village area.
Cows here, as far as I can tell, have an incredibly diverse diet (as do people), but their primary food is a mountain of rice straw from the December harvest. At the Yindichati Farm they basically live with the rice straw at their back door, eating when they please. One night I was outside on a full moon night, and looked over and there were the two white cows glowing, standing atop the mountain of straw!
I am completely guessing here (as in not knowing...), but the cows are as close to a “pet” as it comes in this family. As I wrote before, Pun across the street has four dogs, and there are dogs at almost every farm, but the Yindichatis don’t have dogs (Pun’s live here all the time anyway). Pun’s dogs are tolerated, but certainly not loved. The cows, on the other hand.... It’s not like they name the cows, or talk about the cows, but they definitely always take care of the cows, and never seem to approach it as a burden.
When sister number one (Soora) was in the hospital after being beaten up badly by her boyfriend, a family cow was sold to help pay for all the expenses that resulted. On several different occasions, in stories I’ve heard retold, a cow’s been sold to cover an extraordinary expense, almost like insurance. I also find it interesting that at least four daughters that I am aware of don’t eat beef. Moo Noi, whose name means “little pig”, is certainly not encouraged to eat beef.
I have one last thing before closing on the cows, and it’s better as a photograph than I can do in words. Father’s sister number two, grandmother to Boom, lives almost directly across the street, but one house toward town from Pun. Maybe I have mentioned her before because her husband’s a boozer beyond help, and he’s the one person in the village that people would rather not exist. Part of everyone’s dislike, I think, is because two of the four children are enormously loved by everyone. One is daughter number four who escaped to Bangkok, and the other is a son who is gay, borderline transsexual, and an extraordinarily nice person.
Anyway, I digress. But father’s sister number two, like father, is a remarkable person in her own right. I don’t know how old she is, but she is sixty up. Like everyone else, she is short, but carries herself as if she were a ballet dancer, perfectly erect, shoulders strong as a short-distance swimmer. Every day she wears shorts down past her knees, flip-flops, and tank-tops, with her hair pulled back tight, her high cheekbones and long forward all the more pronounced.
She has one cow, as far as I know, a white cow, and the cow is taller than she is. Many times each day, like the Yindichatis, she escorts her cow to a new location. And again, I’m sorry, it’s a better photograph than it is in words (or at least my words), but here is this woman leading this cow, dwarfed by the cow (her cow is tall, and big!), and she is so in charge.
I just finished dinner, and one thing at dinner was a pickled green brought over from father’s sister number two.
Oh, and one important thing I forgot. She and her husband don’t own land, having lost it all at some point or another. She wants Pa to give her land, but he won’t because he knows it will end up the same as the rest.
Hoe, spade and shovel
HOE, SPADE AND SHOVEL
Just lifting Pa’s hoe (called a jorb) is a workout. Hoes, or well, not exactly hoes, but something similar to a hoe is the number one tool here. Pa’s hoe is much longer in the head than it is wide. It’s maybe ten inches long with two sharp teeth at the edges, and about seven inches wide. I don’t know what the long wooden handle is made from, maybe mai dtang, but the total weight of the hoe is substantial. Pa takes care of all his tools, but his hoe is always sharp and clean.
When I first started working here, I went to town looking for a shovel (which I have come to call a “spade” living in Canada). I thought it would be no problem because tool stores in Thailand, especially when it comes to the basic tools like sickles, axes, chisels and hatchets, are supremely good in their utilitarian way (my good friend, Jon, a barn restoration person, and barn builder – and writer, photographer, and all around great person – tells me that Thai chisels are not worth a damn... I’m sure he is right, because he knows. I think I just have an ongoing love affair with hand-forged and sharpened hunks of iron). Anyway, in the tool stores you buy the tool, and then if you want, a handle.
But looking for a shovel, I couldn’t find anything. Finally I found a flimsy short shovel, and because I was desperate, I bought it. But the first time I went to use it with any stress, it bent! A useless shovel.
When I started planting trees, I again went in search of a shovel thinking surely a good shovel can be found. But again, no, at least not in Nang Rong. When I embarked planting trees people came to help, everyone using a hoe, everyone being extremely good using a hoe, a jorb, the number one tool of the farmer (excluding perhaps the sickle, so essential for harvest). But the motion of using a hoe is completely different than that of using a shovel, and it’s still very hard for me, and it still doesn’t entirely make sense to me. I’m thinking of starting a business importing shovels.
Tonight I am absolutely pooped. Several hours late this afternoon I spent moving soil with Pa’s hoe. Using a hoe is a little bit like using an axe, extending out, up, and forcefully down. But lifting and transferring soil with a hoe is - back-wise - for me, a disaster.
There is something essential that I don’t get. People move soil here every day, and in quantities that are mind boggling. It’s not that I think a shovel would be better; what I think is that I haven’t figured out the hoe. One thing is for sure and that is that no one here, absolutely no one, doesn’t have incredible muscle in their shoulders and arms.
The hoe.
Just lifting Pa’s hoe (called a jorb) is a workout. Hoes, or well, not exactly hoes, but something similar to a hoe is the number one tool here. Pa’s hoe is much longer in the head than it is wide. It’s maybe ten inches long with two sharp teeth at the edges, and about seven inches wide. I don’t know what the long wooden handle is made from, maybe mai dtang, but the total weight of the hoe is substantial. Pa takes care of all his tools, but his hoe is always sharp and clean.
When I first started working here, I went to town looking for a shovel (which I have come to call a “spade” living in Canada). I thought it would be no problem because tool stores in Thailand, especially when it comes to the basic tools like sickles, axes, chisels and hatchets, are supremely good in their utilitarian way (my good friend, Jon, a barn restoration person, and barn builder – and writer, photographer, and all around great person – tells me that Thai chisels are not worth a damn... I’m sure he is right, because he knows. I think I just have an ongoing love affair with hand-forged and sharpened hunks of iron). Anyway, in the tool stores you buy the tool, and then if you want, a handle.
But looking for a shovel, I couldn’t find anything. Finally I found a flimsy short shovel, and because I was desperate, I bought it. But the first time I went to use it with any stress, it bent! A useless shovel.
When I started planting trees, I again went in search of a shovel thinking surely a good shovel can be found. But again, no, at least not in Nang Rong. When I embarked planting trees people came to help, everyone using a hoe, everyone being extremely good using a hoe, a jorb, the number one tool of the farmer (excluding perhaps the sickle, so essential for harvest). But the motion of using a hoe is completely different than that of using a shovel, and it’s still very hard for me, and it still doesn’t entirely make sense to me. I’m thinking of starting a business importing shovels.
Tonight I am absolutely pooped. Several hours late this afternoon I spent moving soil with Pa’s hoe. Using a hoe is a little bit like using an axe, extending out, up, and forcefully down. But lifting and transferring soil with a hoe is - back-wise - for me, a disaster.
There is something essential that I don’t get. People move soil here every day, and in quantities that are mind boggling. It’s not that I think a shovel would be better; what I think is that I haven’t figured out the hoe. One thing is for sure and that is that no one here, absolutely no one, doesn’t have incredible muscle in their shoulders and arms.
The hoe.
Naa
NAA
Naa (sister number six) left home (the Yindichati Farm) to work in Bangkok when she was fifteen years old, having completed grade six. She’s now twenty-eight years old, and as I’ve written, is living here back with Mae and Pa after losing her job in Korat, a big city about an hour from here. She’d been living in Korat for two years, having moved there to be closer to Mae and Pa (Bangkok is about four and a half to five hours away). It’s a northeastern Thai (Isaan tradition) for one child, and most often the youngest unmarried child, to stay behind to help look after Mae and Pa. Sister number seven, Kantung, mother of Tey, was already married and with child (and also with a high school diploma), so more or less unspoken, the being in proximity to Mae and Pa was left to Naa.
Naa I am coming to know quite well, and I like her a lot. When we first met she had very little English, but not a day passes when she’s not lying in the hammock reading the dictionary, and her English is rapidly improving. We have a deal that I help her with English and she helps me with Korat (as no other Yindichati seems to be at all aware that I might be confused between Korat, Lao, and Thai!).
“I am not a butterfly, but I am a single girl,” Naa will say when I tease her for flirting with any available single man.
“But you are fat,” a sister will say. “Fat!”
Naa’s not fat, but in Thai terms when people are either bones or fat, Naa is fat. She wakes up at dawn, comforts Tey if he’s crying, then starts preparing breakfast. If she’s cooking outside (she shares cooking with Mae and Norm, but mainly with Norm because Mae does “farm”, and Naa and Norm don’t “do farm”), she starts the charcoal and does the dishes from the night before. On days she doesn’t cook, she sweeps and then wet mops.
After preparing breakfast or mopping, there’s sakpa (washing clothes), always mixed in with looking after Tey, and often Moo. When at last there’s down time, when Tey takes a nap, Naa most often lies in a hammock and reads Thai romance novels. “Romantic” is one of those rare English words brought into Thai.
If Naa is not reading a romance novel, she is sitting on a motorbike using the mirror to clear blackheads (or whatever they are) or to pluck her eyebrows. She spent time in Korat as a salesperson for cosmetics, so Naa is the resident expert on beauty. Not uncommonly during the second “downtime”, late in the afternoon, after four, Naa will be stretched out on the cement floor of the veranda plucking underarm hairs for sister Norm, or looking for nits in her cousin’s hair, or in her aunt’s.
Naa, even though she is five years younger than sister Norm (sister number four, the only one to go to college), knows how to transplant rice and to use the Kubota, the two wheeled tractor. She treks off to the forest with Tey and Moo in search of wild mushrooms, or tree legumes.
Naa (sister number six) left home (the Yindichati Farm) to work in Bangkok when she was fifteen years old, having completed grade six. She’s now twenty-eight years old, and as I’ve written, is living here back with Mae and Pa after losing her job in Korat, a big city about an hour from here. She’d been living in Korat for two years, having moved there to be closer to Mae and Pa (Bangkok is about four and a half to five hours away). It’s a northeastern Thai (Isaan tradition) for one child, and most often the youngest unmarried child, to stay behind to help look after Mae and Pa. Sister number seven, Kantung, mother of Tey, was already married and with child (and also with a high school diploma), so more or less unspoken, the being in proximity to Mae and Pa was left to Naa.
Naa I am coming to know quite well, and I like her a lot. When we first met she had very little English, but not a day passes when she’s not lying in the hammock reading the dictionary, and her English is rapidly improving. We have a deal that I help her with English and she helps me with Korat (as no other Yindichati seems to be at all aware that I might be confused between Korat, Lao, and Thai!).
“I am not a butterfly, but I am a single girl,” Naa will say when I tease her for flirting with any available single man.
“But you are fat,” a sister will say. “Fat!”
Naa’s not fat, but in Thai terms when people are either bones or fat, Naa is fat. She wakes up at dawn, comforts Tey if he’s crying, then starts preparing breakfast. If she’s cooking outside (she shares cooking with Mae and Norm, but mainly with Norm because Mae does “farm”, and Naa and Norm don’t “do farm”), she starts the charcoal and does the dishes from the night before. On days she doesn’t cook, she sweeps and then wet mops.
After preparing breakfast or mopping, there’s sakpa (washing clothes), always mixed in with looking after Tey, and often Moo. When at last there’s down time, when Tey takes a nap, Naa most often lies in a hammock and reads Thai romance novels. “Romantic” is one of those rare English words brought into Thai.
If Naa is not reading a romance novel, she is sitting on a motorbike using the mirror to clear blackheads (or whatever they are) or to pluck her eyebrows. She spent time in Korat as a salesperson for cosmetics, so Naa is the resident expert on beauty. Not uncommonly during the second “downtime”, late in the afternoon, after four, Naa will be stretched out on the cement floor of the veranda plucking underarm hairs for sister Norm, or looking for nits in her cousin’s hair, or in her aunt’s.
Naa, even though she is five years younger than sister Norm (sister number four, the only one to go to college), knows how to transplant rice and to use the Kubota, the two wheeled tractor. She treks off to the forest with Tey and Moo in search of wild mushrooms, or tree legumes.
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