The other day I posted up my pictures and waited for people's reaction to one photograph of one of my students' garb: a blue swastika with Adolf Hitler's name on it. If you didn't see it or if I neglected to send you my photo album, let me know. The kid wearing a swastika with Hitler's name on it isn't a Nazi. He's a really good kid, in fact, and he's Buddhist. He doesn't know who Hitler is and he's not even familiar with the Jewish religion. He can't even pronounce the name "Adolf Hitler," he just thinks the swastika looks cool. I chalked it up to a crappy education system and for a combination of reasons, mainly because the kid owns about 3 t-shirts, I've never pressured him to stop wearing it (though truly, every day i see him wearing it my heart sinks into my stomach). Swastikas are actually pretty popular around these parts,: You'll see them on flags waving on the back of people's motorbikes and in the market places they appear on t shirts and jackets. Funny thing is, no Thai person I've spoken to, adult or child, can explain what the swasitka represents. Where do you even start to explain something so complicated? Out of curiosity, I just drew a swastika on a sheet of paper and wrote Hitler's name on top of it. Then I passed it around to the Thai staff, asking, "What's this?" 15 adults: Nothing, they don't have a clue. I thought maybe they might have explained what the alternative symbolic reference was, but no.

That's not all though.

I started tutoring the woman who designs the website for the organization. She actually has a rather firm grasp of the English language (compared to most of the students I teach). I gave her an assignment to read a short story and she asked me what the word, “dictator,” meant. There was a rumor that this woman had a year long internship in Germany. I asked her if she knew who Adolf Hitler was, just to give an example. She said rather nonchalantly, “no”. I was taken aback and I asked her, “really?” And I googled a few Hitler images on the computer and he didn’t look familiar to her at all. And she is, in fact, educated.

I'd judge them really quickly as a populace if I didn't remind myself that I knew nothing about Burma issues before coming here. I still know nothing about the bloodshed and atrocities in Angor Wat from only recent years past. And really, is it all that different from the trend of white people getting tatoos of chinese characters when they have no way of knowing that what they're wearing actually says, "strength" or "love" or "harmony."

I bought my first T shirt with Thai writing on it the other week, but I know how to read it now and I've had enough people confirm for me that it actually reads, "Grateeng Deng" (Red Bull, the soda or Thai boxing, as it's interpreted here) and not "Fascist," "Dumbass," or a "Satan."

When I walk into a public restroom and see that there's just a hole in the floor and a hose to substitute toilet paper, I don't react anymore. Still, there are some things that don't get old: the swastika gets me every time I see it around here. Suggestions anyone?