Arrived! Again.

We've decided it's okay for me to blog while i'm in Laos... so here i am again! 

As I bounced, jerked and slid around in the very back of the beat-up 15 passenger van that was taking us through the night to Laos, I realized this could be the first time I considered throwing up from motion sickness. I felt like a nomadic stow-away that snuck into the back of a vehicle to find some sort of restless sleep and un-luxurious transport. My eyes wanted so badly to sleep, but the bumps and jerks were way ahead of that longing to rest. They would barely give me enough time to think about it. To be honest, it was lonely. I wondered what my parents and siblings were doing. I thought about how many people who never had to experience this same sort of unknown and lost sense of location and time. And then I thought about the people who have.

I thought about the illegal immigrant trying to reach America for a better life for his family, not even having enough money to pay for a visa and forced to stow away in the back of a van. I thought about tribal refugees from Burma trying to flee to a safer country. At one point, I woke from my restless sleep as we slowed down, only to find that we were surrounded by police and construction. I thought about the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees attempting to escape their genocide-stricken country but were stopped along the way, only to be ruthlessly slaughtered. No person should have to go through that, I thought. 

After a very long night of interrupted ‘sleep’, we finally crossed the boarder, and the night got lighter. In our van were two British girls backpacking around South East Asia, one quiet but quirky Israeli girl, and one man who seemed to be Laotian. After crossing the boarder, we were waved over to a song teaw (like a truck with seats in the bed) and drove off – only to be dropped off on the side of the road twenty minutes later with no cell phone reception, no language skills, and no sense of where we were or how to call anyone (our cell phones only worked in Thailand). We finally borrowed a cell phone from a Laotian man and called Kipp, the director of ARDA (where we are interning), and found out we never were suppose to get into that song teaw. Whoops.

As we waited for him to find us, Christine and I sat down with the Israeli girl for a nasty cup of sweetened-condensed milk coffee. Finally when Kipp and Jaime found us, they took us to an over-priced American style coffee shop to get coffee and scones. We stopped at Kipp’s house, groggy but attempting to be perky, to meet his family. Kipp is a Hmong man who lived much of his life in America and Malaysia and married an American woman. They have five very outgoing kids who were eager to show us their exotic pets: a leopard kitten, a black panther cat, two hedgehogs, a green iguana, turtles, fish, a dog named Pup, and a bunny. They showed us where we would stay at the ARDA campus and let us get settled in. 

After living abroad a lot of my childhood and college-career, I have found a love for the word ‘home’. Home is such a wonderful thing; that sense of comfort and knowing. It is where one finds peace and rest. Moving around a lot of my life and college career, I can’t wait to experience home again, not always feeling like a stranger wherever I go. Because no matter how long you live in another country, you’re still white. You're not African, you're not Asian, you're not Arabic, you're not Bohemian. But more importantly, I can’t wait to experience a home where there is no suffering and there is no pain. That home will be the best one.

Speaking of home, one of my good friends is working at ArgopointLLC on Beacon Hill

No place like this home

On My Way

This past week has been busy getting ready for the end of our first two classes of the semester – Social Context for Community Development and Thai Cultural Arts. We have been writing papers, making presentations, and creating our final art projects. We have learned how to do traditional Thai batik from a famous Thai artist from Bangkok, learned how to cook deliciously savory Thai dishes from a restaurant owner down the street, learned how to roast coffee beans, and have learned how to make our own soap and ginger beer (non – alcoholic, don’t worry mom!) from Adele, the wife of the director of our program.

I have been writing a paper for my Thai Cultural Arts class based on the internship I will have this summer at Journeys of Hope: an organization based in Salem, MA that serves homeless and at risk youth between the ages of 18-23 in and around the North Shore. Journeys of Hope is an incredible grassroots organization that is serving people in our own back yards. We don’t have to go across the world to serve, to places we are ignorant of. We can and should be influencing the people in close proximity to us, being aware and caring for those in our own communities, because needs are all around us. Journeys of Hope is the only organization on the North Shore to address the needs of young adults who are homeless. They truly understand holistic development work in the communities they know best. This is the JOH website if you want to learn more or donate to their amazing organization: http://johma.org/

 On Saturday we will be on our way to our practicum sites. Christine and I will be headed just north of Thailand to the country of Laos to intern with a foundation called ARDA Skills. ARDA Skills was started by the Anglican Church of Singapore and is primarily an education center, teaching language skills in Lao and English, as well as vocational training for students to be trained in community jobs. The students are mainly from the Hmong hill tribe who cannot afford to go to high school and further their education. The Hmong are a minority group in Thailand as well as Laos. The skills center addresses business development and other skills that would make one employable to the community. One of the projects we will work with is teaching women how to run and operate a coffee shop to make a living.

 I will not be posting on my blog while I’m there because Laos is a very isolated communist country that monitors the kind of things like blogs, letters, emails, etc..

 In order to just play it safe, I will post about my time there as well as email friends and family when I’m back here in Thailand March 23^rd. Don’t worry though, Laos will be a safe place for us to be for that month and we are in very good hands - more importantly, in God's hands. 

PS- This is an awesome blog about elephant advocacy in Thailand made by one of our friends here in Thailand. You need to read it, it is awesome.  http://theelephantquestion.wordpress.com/

also we found kittens in our rice shed! 

Peace! 

"Where There Are Karen, There Are Forests"

Last week, our group took a bus into the very northern city of Chiang Rai and a small truck about two hours north to a village in the mountains of the Karen hill tribe. One of our professors, Scott Coats started an organization called Mekong Minority Foundation which administers to the marginalized and exploited people groups of the hill tribes here in Thailand. He is an admirable man: someone of humility, meekness, and faith. What is even more admirable about his organization is that he successfully passed it off to local leadership of hill tribe people. This is the number one goal of development work and is rarely done. So many development organizations started by westerners believe they are doing good, but are really just keeping people in poverty. The typical western development worker facilitates dependency by keeping the white man in the position of the provider, and the local people in the position of the receiver. Scott truly understands the medium he works with. He understands the culture, the people, the context, and holistic development work. Scott took us to the Karen village so that we could learn about development projects that have gone on in the village by outside resources, as well as the conservational lifestyle of the Karen people.

The Karen people are, naturally, forest conservationists. One of the village leaders said to us, "where there are Karen in Thailand, there are forests. Where there no Karen, there are no forests." How true though. Being a minority group, the Karen people struggle with citizenship rights in Thailand, as well as simply being treated as lowly and dirty. But the Karen people are amazing. Historically animists, many Karen are now becoming Christians. Their lives are consumed with rice fields, church services, and living in community. How refreshing. When we arrived, one of the village leaders and elders, Ajan Suphon, told us when he heard we were coming, he thought he was going to learn from us, the westerners. Little did he know we were there to learn from him - sixth grade education and all. How sad is that though, that westerners are the teachers, and the rest of the world are the students. That just simply shouldn't be. We should not be setting the standard for quality of life. Our life may be consumed with materialism and success rates, but when can we just live in community and take care of God's perfect creation?

The Karen people are not in poverty, like someone passing by might think. They have what they need and they are happy with that. This is hard to find in many other minority groups in Thailand who have fallen into the materialistic trap of debt and dissatisfaction. The collection of Karen villages might be far away from other civilizations, but they are not suffering by any means. They have cows, chickens, loud roosters, pigs, and plenty of rice and vegetables to eat. They have a flowing water supply from a stream in the mountain, and beautiful teak houses.

So what defines a good life anymore? Is it having a great job? a boat? frequent vacations? lots of money? Or is it family, community, and belonging to a people who love you and love others like Christ  wanted. Ajan Suphon told us The Karen people's top priorities are harmony within the group and unity with each other. They have turned down thousands of dollars in grants because not every one in the village agreed to the project - because they make decisions collectively. True democracy i guess. Money doesn't govern their lives, like it does in many of our lives. The Karen just see happiness different than us. They don't consider themselves in poverty or suffering at all. They believe they have a fulfilled life because they tend to their spiritual life instead of their economic life.

Ajan Suphon and Ajan Liger teaching us about the village 

The Karen people are very intent on the preservation of the forest and natural life. Taking care of the environment around them just makes sense to them. It is down right clear in the Bible that God gave us creation - literal plants and animals. He didn't give us cars, money, and chemicals that pollute our bodies because those things are not essential to living a good life. If they were, God would have included them in his creation. He gave us, as humans, a job to be stewards of real creation. We are not only to just care about creation, but to care for it. Caring for something requires more than just thinking about it and saying it looks nice. It requires action. God gave us natural life - so why have we messed it up so much? Maybe we should simply use what God gave us instead of trying to always obtain more, using Karen life as an example. If we only look for the short term goods, our lives will certainly not make us happy.

"Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created" Revelation 4:11

Side Note: Remember my post about Namipan's amazing hand weaving? You can find her beautiful creations on Etsy.com here: 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LiveLoveWeave?ref=search_shop_redirect

who wouldn't want a beautiful hand woven creation by a Lahu hill tribe woman in Thailand? 

Adventurous Weeks and Some Rants About Justice

This week was filled with so many adventures, and so many thoughts. As we are mainly learning about minority ethnic groups here in Thailand this first month, a lot of our adventures were based around these groups: mainly the Lahu hill tribe and the Karen hill tribe. These hill tribes are not Thai - they are immigrants from the north - and because of this, are looked down upon by the Thai community. 

As we left the comfort of our little home in Doisaket, the group ventured up the steep hills of Chiang Rai to the tribe of the Karen people – a very peaceful, community-oriented, and accommodating group of minority people who live in the forests of the hills as to preserve the natural earth amongst the ever growing industrious cities of Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok. (Our time in the Karen village will have to be my next blog post because I could talk for hours about their lifestyle and theologies). Living and simply being in a village setting so rural and cut off from any other civilization or society really makes you think. It makes you think about how others live and about how you live. For me, being interested in communities and the very messy field of development work, it makes me think about how many westerners so wrongly view other cultures.

We as westerners are so dangerous in our modes of thinking. Pulling from what author Dorthy Sayers writes about, we tend to see things as problem and solution; but the world is just simply not that black and white. We see things that are foreign to us as problems to be fixed instead of beautiful yet different, and we end up exploiting others, and making the world a problem. We end up creating the problems that don’t exist, and then we don’t know how to fix the problem we ourselves have created. 

We westerners all have one goal in life: to be successful, to be happy and problem – free, always attempting to be better and better. We might have a certain vision of what life should look like for a certain group of people, but that vision is so many times not applicable for them. You can’t just take something that works in one context and plop it in another, expecting it to work. That is like going to a different country expecting everyone to speak your language. It is simply ignorant and arrogant. Meaning for life in all its fullness is different for different people. Many times we are too caught up in all our ‘things’ to really see that. For the Karen people, life is about harmony with one another, and harmony with God – intended nature, preserving as to not use and abuse the very thing that God has given us from the beginning.

That’s why we need to ask ourselves: why do we want what we want? Why do we really want that nice big house when only two people actually live in it? We create things because society tells us to, and we don’t ask why. We should ask ourselves, what really defines a good life? A white picket fence and a boat? (and try not to write this question off if you don't have either). We might need to start asking ourselves the intangible questions. Things might look good on the outside – like cheap stuff at Wal-Mart, or nice new Nike sneakers – but are so horribly wrong once you look under the table – like the child labor, exploitation, and physical poverty that both these companies ruthlessly drown innocent people in. Is that really what we want to be apart of? Do we really want to be apart of the process of physically hurting, exploiting and starving people to death? Good things are not always easy to find.

I have found we tend not to associate ourselves with the hard facts of life. We won't identify ourselves as wealthy people because to us, we are the middle class; even though to someone else, we are the upper class. But we would never identify ourselves as the poor either, not even spiritually speaking. There is always someone "poorer". We want to stay in the safe zone. We want to be on middle ground, so we don't ever 'shake the boat'. We wouldn't want to identify ourselves as exploiting the powerless and weak, even though we go to Wal-Mart every month and have three pairs of Nike shoes. We do this because of selfishness. We don't want to be rebuked or looked down upon because it doesn't feel good. But this creates an "us" vs. "them" dichotomy, not being one in Christ, but rather believing we are in the "safe zone" while those other people are sadly poor, and those other people are ruthlessly hurting the poor - but we would never be considered in either of those parties - right? 

However, we can find the good. Jesus said, “My power is made perfect in weakness”. We can take things that are seemingly bad and bring justice to that, because we are capable. Now we don’t necessarily have to go picket Wal-Mart or Nike or even go across the world to eradicate human trafficking, but maybe we can all act with discernment, love and grace on a daily basis – to those we see every day, and those who come into our lives unexpected.

“He has shown you what is good. What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8