block party

After class last night I stayed an extra half hour while some of my students drilled me on the Thai alphabet: spoken and written. It was pretty fun, I wonder if they’d be up for making that a regular thing, I might learn a lot faster that way.

Then leaving the site on my bike, there seemed to be a block party, maybe 1/4 kilometer away from school. I had to get through, and so without using my acceleration, I footed my way through the crowd, flinstones style. There was jovial traditional Thai music, colorful lights, a tent, food and a crowd of smiling faces, staring at me as I passed by. I feigned a slight smile, wondering what this celebration was all about. A wedding maybe? I got through the end of the crowd after maybe 2 minutes and at the end I saw a wreath of roses on an easel and large pink structure that looked like it might have been in a parade. I passed by it and looked up from the side: There was a casket and a portrait of a young looking woman with the dates 2517-2549 written on it. I had just crashed a Thai funeral with my motorbike.

Today I had to go back to the site and as I pulled around the corner, I saw that block party was still going on. I decided this time I’d just park my bike and walk through the funeral shindig. Maybe I could be a little more subtle without a motorkbike. Again, all of these faces were smiling at me, and I felt so awkward. One man said to me in Thai, “hey whitey, eat with us.” And I just turned back to him and gave him a slight bow, “Thank you so much, but I can’t” It was all I knew how to say…and I honestly don’t know what was ruder…crashing the funeral party TWICE, or turning down someone’s offer for food…or maybe it would have been worse if I had accepted his offer, and he was just playin with me. But it was strange. It’s a ritual that’s done in the tradition of saving face. No tears, just smiles.

Radio

On Wednesday morning, Cindy and I DJ and speak on the English radio show from 8am-9am. The great thing about English radio in Mae Sai is you can talk about pretty much anything you want because few people are listening…and if they are, they probably don’t understand a lot of English. Sometimes I come in with a clip from a Newspaper or the book I’m reading and Cindy and I have an exchange of meaningless banter occasionally interrupted by a song or two. Sometimes, we’ll get a phone call from a Thai person, requesting the song “Zombie” by the Cranberries. Thais LOOOOOVE Zombie by the Cranberries and I think this is weird because that song came out when I was in the 6th grade.

This last Wednesday, having stayed up late the night before grading a test, I came into the radio show without any books or articles to discuss. Even worse was that by 7:58, Cindy hadn’t shown up yet.

Another thing: At 8 AM, every radio station and every television station in Thailand is supposed to interrupt whatever programming they have to play the Thai National Anthem. It’s a very big deal around here. It’s even broadcasted onto the streets and traffic comes to a complete stand still while the anthem is playing.

So of course, despite the fact that Cindy’s gone, I know I’m supposed to broadcast the Anthem and so I start looking for it on the computer….and I can’t find it. I successfully pulled this MP3 up on the computer last week, but today there were no searches coming in. I got really nervous and didn’t know what to do and so I just pulled a random song onto the playlist. I think it ended up being Elvis Presley’s “Love me Tender.” So Elvis was being broadcasted over the air when the National Anthem was supposed to be playing and I’m sitting there in the studio biting my nails, not knowing what to do. Then when 8:03 rolled by, the phone rang and I got even more nervous. I answered it in Thai and the man on the other end said something really fast that I didn’t understand, until the end, “ZOOOMMMMBIEE, ZOOOOMBBBIEE” “Zombie?! Ok, sure.” Thank god, just a song request and not someone yelling at me for neglecting to play the national anthem. So Elvis finished, I played Zombie again and by this time it was 8:07 and Cindy still hadn’t shown up. I had to start adlibbing over the air. Here’s what the show might have sounded like once I started speaking into the mic.

“ Good morning, you’re listening to Child Voice Radio…............... Sorry I didn’t play the National Anthem, I couldn’t find it….................Today’s weather is maybe 25 degrees Celsius with a little bit of overcast...................…and Cindy’s not here and so today’s show is going to be a complete monologue by myself…............what to talk about…hmmm, I guess I’ll tell you about the book I’m reading. I’m reading my second Dan Brown book, and I hate it. Here’s why…”

and then I kept going for 5 minutes and put on another song. I took off my headphones, turned off my mic and started breathing really heavily. Then Cindy finally came in. She found the Anthem over the computer; someone had changed the title into Thai letters. Totally not my fault, but it was too late. The rest of the show was smooth sailing as Cindy had brought in some materials for us to discuss, but I sooooo did not inherit any radio broadcasting persona from Dad.

Here’s some information on some of the students I’ve neglected to mention so far:

Most of the kids that live on site go to a different school during the day. A bus comes in every morning and trucks them all out to some government school in town that requires them to wear uniforms. I teach 16 of them at night when they come back for that fast track English course. This night class has been keeping me pretty busy. I'm not sure what I'll do with myself once they take that test. Saturday night I spent the last half hour with them playing Billy Joel’s “Through the long night” on a CD player. I wrote the lyrics on the board and they started singing along to it. It moves slow enough so they can catch almost every word but Billy Joel just sounds really funny when its done Karaoke by a group of kids with thick Thai accents.

I made a mistake last night distributing a Xerox from a workbook. It was intended to test the students’ ability to conjugate “To be” correctly and it forced them to use possessive pronouns and superlatives and other basic things like that. One line from the worksheet reads “_____father____________ years old. _____mother________years old.” I started asking each student to say each of these sentences out loud, and unfortunately many of them would say, “My mother/father is dead.”

It was very awkward...and against my better judgment. I was looking at the grammar exercise and not really the content of the worksheet, but I should have been paying better attention. But I guess it's almost an inevitable subject of conversation at some point when learning another language.

During the day, the site is a school for undocumented refugees, hill tribe and other underprivileged children. It’s called the “Phatak” school or the Half Day school. The first half of the day is academia and the second half of the day is life skills training, skills that they will more likely use in their adult lives(farming, sewing, cooking, etc). Very recently, Fridays have turned into “fundraiser day.” In other words, the entire day, kids are making food and selling it to fundraise the organization. I don’t really understand this. The site’s kindof in the middle of nowhere and the only people that seem to buy anything are volunteers and staff members. This recent change in Fridays means that my lowest level class, the group of kids that don’t understand the phonetics of the English alphabet, now meets once a week. The higher two levels only meet three times, sometimes only twice a week. It just isn’t enough to chart progress. Especially now that it’s in contrast with a class I meet with 6 times a week for sometimes twice as long as the daytime students.

Update on Judy: She was ambulanced over to a hospital in Chiang Mai just a few days ago. Cindy told me they had asked me to ride in the ambulance car (Why? Beats me), but she kindly reminded them that I’m preparing a night class for a big test in a few weeks and she jumped in my place instead. It’s comforting to know that she made it out to a better hospital.

My fast track students are amazing for their complete honesty. The other day I lost my rhythm and train off thought after the first 45 minutes. I was just OFF. I wasn't making sense, they stopped understanding me and some of them were getting a little bit frustrated. one of my best students said to me, "Pi Jamie, you-ah-bowring-too-day," and to be honest, for a split second, my pride was wounded. But in retrospect, I'm more appreciative of the fact that they feel like they can tell me this sortof thing when it happens to be the truth. Because otherwise, they convey enthusiasm and enjoyment out of being in class, despite the fact that they have a test to take in less than three weeks. I almost won't know what to do with myself when they finally take that test, I'll have so much more time on my hands.
I started taking Thai lessons again and I'm learning the Thai alphabet. It's a combination of Sanskrit, Kamair and Pali. I have an alphabet book where I practice my handwriting, just like in 1st grade. My tutor is Pam. She's a native Thai who moved to Australia when she was 12 and now she's bilingual. She works for a different NGO educating prostitutes on safe sex, HIV, the works. My organization doesn't support them because ideally, they think, our efforts should be to stamp out prostitution. Realistically speaking though, the mindset of society will not be altered to the extent that it will eliminate the world's oldest profession. Might as well educate the people walking into that industry. At least, that's the counter-argument.
OK! being kicked out of the internet cafe, gnight!

Things got really busy really fast in the last week. The scholarship program finally materialized and so I met with my night class for the first time a few nights ago. Since this is intended to be a prep course outside their normal curriculum, I let them make their schedule with me. I asked them, “How often do you guys want to meet? Four times a week?” This, of course, had to be repeated a few times, with my drawing a small calendar on the board marking days of the week where we could meet up. One student finally got it and explained to her classmates what I was asking in Thai. They all discussed with each other and then almost in unison, they turned to the front and shouted “seven times!” Whoa, whoa WHOA. I am soooo for a not ready to sign myself up for 7 classes a week. I asked them, “not too much? You’re sure?”
“Yes! Seven!!” I thought about this for a second…and then I asked them, “How long? We start at 7:00pm and end at 8:00pm?” One of them chimed in, “End at 10 PM!” Holy crap, this scholarship really means a lot to these kids. But I knew my own limits and told them 6 times a week and that class meets from 7-8:30, Monday through Saturday. Except in the last hour, I was just informed these guys have to take a test in early March. Three weeks. I still don’t know how to speak French fluently and I’ve studied that language since the stone age, basically. THREE WEEKS. Maybe I need to do more with them during the week. Just maybe.
But as of now, I’m teaching for 20 hours a week with my day classes. That doesn’t include the hours spent preparing lessons and grading homework assignments. I’m still acting as volunteer coordinator, meaning I read up on applications we get and I do head hunting for specific positions we need help with. Another volunteer’s family has been over and so I’ve been covering her administrative tasks too. I’m a little tired! I haven’t read for leisure in over a week. This wouldn’t be out of the ordinary back at home, but I don’t really have anything else to do here but work, read and eat. And I haven’t stopped eating, I’ll give you that much.

Judy

Border Child Protection and Rights is a different site under DEP, in Mae Chan, a half hour south of Mae Sai. The children there have been rescued from abusive or hazardous living situations with their families, usually involving drugs. Judy, the 9 year old girl I met this week, was taken out of custody from her mother two years ago. It was discovered that Judy was held at knife point by her mother, who made her hold live dogs and cats down while her mother slaughtered them live at the scalp. In two years at the new site, she was able to rekindle a different kind of family; one where she could act like a child, play and learn, and never have to worry about someone threatening her with a knife. Two weeks ago, Judy had an epileptic seizure that put her into a coma. They told the director of our NGO, Sompop, “Prepare.” Surprisingly, however, she did wake up a few days ago, but not as herself. The director explained all of this to me as I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car and he drove to Chiang Rai’s hospital. Chiang Rai would be the closest “major” city to Mae Sai, but its hospital is still pretty ghetto as far as hospitals go…maybe not quite as bleak as Mae Sai’s, but still a bit pathetic in its equipment and inventory.

Having never met this girl before, I didn’t really understand why Sompop asked me to come with him to the hospital.
Rather, I’m not really sure I believed him in the car ride back when he told me the doctors wouldn’t talk to him unless there was a white person beside him asking some of the questions. That would be an intense and self-deprecating, xenophobic thing to do, if it happened to be the case. Not to mention completely despicable and appalling, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions based on what one person tells me, even if he is the director of the organization I work for.

We found Judy in a room with other children where she was lying in bed. A staff member from BCPR was holding her hand. It looked like she just completely lost control of her motor skills. One hand and one leg was tied to the bars of the bed and her other limbs and head struggled and flailed about from one side of the bed to the other. There was a tube going into her nose and a contraption taped to her mouth; looked like something that was intended for a throat cancer patient. There was no doctor around at that point and so we hung out with Judy for a while, felt her head which had broken out in sweats. We tried to see if her eyes would focus on anything. They were open, but they weren’t registering anything, at least it didn’t seem like they were.

An hour later, when a nurse told us a doctor was on his way, we were ushered into the doctor’s office where there were chairs for us. We sat down for a while in silence when Sompop turned to me and asked, “What do you think her chances are?” I looked up at him, “Chances of living?” He nodded, “Yes,” My eyes darted around the floor in confusion and discomfort. Is this a trick question? “Um, I really have no idea, Sompop” I’m a stupid 22 year old, I don’t know anything, “I think the doctor should be answer that question better than I could.” Was he being serious? Is that just supposed to be small talk? The doctor came in.

She and Sompop exchanged some apparently meaningless banter in Thai because after a few seconds, Sompop turned to me and asked, “What are your questions for her?” Like I was supposed to have had a set of questions written on a legal pad in front of me. “Um…has she suffered brain damage?” Sompop translated for me and the doctor spat something back out. Sompop said to me, “The brain scan came out normal, so no.” Could have fooled me. Sompop looked at me again, anticipating my next question. This was all because I’m white, he said so himself. “Is she going to live?” Again it went through Sompop before it went to the Doctor. And again through Sompop once the answer came back to me. She didn’t know. These were really obvious questions that I’m sure Sompop was wondering himself and would have asked if I weren’t there. It seemed ludicrous to me that this dialogue, which really only needed two people, somehow necessitated three people, specifically me. This went on back and forth for a while until we established that once Judy recovered enough of her strength, she’d be ambulanced over to Chiang Mai. And from there, if necessary, helicoptered over to Bangkok. As of now, she wouldn’t survive the ambulance ride over and they said there’s no place for a helicopter to land anywhere in Chiang Rai. Sompop seemed placated somewhat and it seemed all of his questions were answered. So we left and he thanked me, as if I was doing something out of the realm of his capabilities.

I’ve yet to decide if this was supposed to be a lesson of sorts from Sompop or if he really needed a white person at his side to talk to the doctor. He was very adamant about the fact that without Judy’s parents around, the next best thing to show to a doctor was that a white person had something invested in her. I haven’t the foggiest idea where this comes from. Maybe because they see foreigners as an asset to their economy, they wouldn’t want to do anything that would displease us. But with or without this dynamic between locals and foreigners, does this change a doctor’s volition to help a dying patient, a nine year old kid, to the best of his abilities?

I need to become more proficient in Thai. I guess that’s stating the obvious, living in Thailand and all. Yesterday I was asked to help a Thai staff member write English translations of 14 interns’ resumes, all students from Laos, Myanmar, China and Thailand. The woman running this operation, Pen-si, tried explaining to me that one intern accompanied impregnated victims of human trafficking to the hospital. In her super thick Thai accent, she explained to me very slowly, “Dey go visi- doctaw fo check fo,” and she paused, emphatically pointing her finger to her head “fo check, uhhh, IQ” Impregnated victims of trafficking visit the doctor to take an IQ test? “IQ test?” I asked “Yeyes” she nodded. I looked at her blankly for a few seconds before I pulled out my Thai English dictionary and looked up IQ, Intelligence Quotient. I was on the section that translates the English into the Thai word, using the Thai alphabet, so I just pointed it to her. “Yeys,” was her response. Something got lost in translation, me thinks. Something. If only I could have asked her what she was talking about in her own language.

The week of language immersion in Chiang Mai did very little for me. Things like the sortof foods we order in restaurants, gas and bike jargon, and commands like, “Careful!” “Sit down!” and “Go to class!” all came rather quickly. But let me tell you, the basic exchange of “Hello, how are you?” “Fine thanks! How are you?”: none of that does jack when you want to explain to a police officer that some you just got hit by an SUV breaking some fundamental traffic laws and you’d like to be taken to the hospital. It also doesn’t get you far when you try to ask a kid why he’s crying.

That happens just about everyday. It’s not unique from any school with young children, I imagine. A kid comes into the office with tears streaming down his or her face, I ask in Thai, “What’s wrong?” and then usually they’ll go off on some tangent that I don’t understand and I can do nothing but stare up at the ceiling and pat the kid on the back. Then most of the time a cough drop or a sticker is enough to placate the kid and the situation is, for all intents and purposes, resolved.

Sedteng worries me (the kid with the cigarette burn on his face). I was alone in the office after school today when I heard this sobbing sound coming from behind the door. I clumsily got out of my chair and knocked a notebook off my desk limping into the hall to find Setdeng sitting on the floor, clasping his neck with his hands. He had stopped crying once he heard noises nearby, but he was still holding onto his neck when he saw me. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He just stared at me, either knowing I wouldn’t understand him anyway or because he was hiding something. I knelt down and sat beside him and took his hands away from his neck where there was a bruise about the size of a pringle. It wasn’t brand new. “At home or at school?” was the most I could ask him in his own language. He looked down and pulled a plastic toy car out of his pocket and started rolling it on the floor.
We hung out in silence for about 2 minutes while I stared at him rolling this toy back and forth. Then Cindy came by and asked me, “Did you see that bruise?” “Yeah, can you ask him about it?” “I have, he just ignores me.” “Can you ask him again?” and so she did and then Sedteng just got up and walked outside to be by himself. We filed a memo to the social worker on site. It kindof seems like some sort domestic violence case: two cigarette burns on the face and a bruise on the neck within 3 weeks, all of which the kid refuses to talk about. Packing up my bag for the day, I watched through the window as a motorcycle pulled up the driveway with a middle-aged man with gray hair mounted on top talking on his cell phone. Sedteng ran up to the bike and hopped up the back, clutched his dad around the waste and the bike drove off.


Wednesday, February 1st

Last week I got to distribute English-Thai, Thai-English dictionaries to my higher level classes. A few kids were really excited and expressed their gratitude immensely. Cindy suggested I do a few exercises with them to get them used to finding words in the dictionary as most of them hadn’t seen one in their entire lives. She was right. Some of them had no idea how to use them. There’d be a word they didn’t recognize on a worksheet, like “continent”…and so rather than drawing a picture of a globe and pointing to every individual continent, I’d ask them to find it on their own in their dictionaries…three minutes later, no one’s found the word “continent” and I notice that they’re all looking at completely different parts of the dictionary. I looked over the shoulder of one of my front row students and he was on the “Y” section. So there was a little more hand holding involved in this process than I’d expected. But I figure it’s just as much of a skill in learning another language as anything else, so we practiced this a bit more before tackling the worksheets again.

I had a bad realization in my level 4 English class this week. They’re nowhere near any proficiency that a dictionary will do them any good, so I haven't bothered getting them any. My first class with them I tried giving them an exercise involving prepositions like “in,” “on,” and “under” and even with illustrations this was totally lost on them. Cindy told me they’re not ready for this kindof comprehension…but she’s not kidding, these kids won’t do anything that doesn’t involve just a series of nouns with games and colorful pictures and word searches in crossword puzzles.

So after dealing with the same 16 words with them again and again and again with pictures, mixing and matching and word searches, where I’d say the words over and over and over, I tried to test them. Individually, I’d walk up to each student and point to the words they were successful finding on the word search…I’d ask them to read out loud the word my finger was on. I pointed to the word “apple,” which now had no picture of an apple on top of it and the first student said “elephant”. “Never,” I thought. That’s not just a phonetic mix up, elephant was a different word on the list. I corrected her and tried pointing to the next word, “snake,” she paused and looked up for a few seconds before saying “pencil.”
This happened over and over with almost every student in class. So basically, while a lot of these students now know the few words I’ve tried to teach them, they’re illiterate, and I had no idea. I don't feel too horrible about not noticing this by class 6 with them. Some people in the states have graduated from highschool without knowing how to read. The Level 4 English students can recognize letters in our alphabet, but for the most part, they don’t know what sounds they make. I don’t know what I was expecting. I mean, I’m illiterate in Thai, but these kids have been doing exercises with our alphabet for the last 2 years. Where do we even begin?


P.S. Accident update: So I'm off the crutches and I'm back on the bike. I'm told sprains heel painfully and so I take it it's normal that last night was the first night I really wanted those pain killers the doctors gave me. Though I couldn't have them because I had locked them in my desk at school, worried that one of the kids might go through my bag and take them. This morning, my ankle was shiny purple. In the last 24 hours, there have been moments where it's hurt so much I've wanted to scream, but oddly, I can still walk with both feet, without the crutches. That is all.