Field Course #1--Mae Ta & UHDP

A couple days ago, we returned from our first field expedition course. My half of the group went to Mae Ta first which was awesome. Mae Ta is a village with a co-op that supports organic and sustainable farming. Not everyone in the village belongs to the village, but about 400 families out of 1000 or so belong. We stayed in host homes, but luckily this time it was in pairs. We spent about a week there, learning about our families' farms, interviewing locals, visiting an upland farm and a lowland farm, and having some sabai time. Sabai is my favorite Thai word. It means kind of a mix between relaxed and happy. My host family told Kari (my host home buddy) and I to "tom sabai" quite a bit which means relax, take a load off, just hang out. One day, literally all we did was do our readings for school while hanging out in some hammocks and ate. It was amazing.
After Mae Ta, we went to a couple different villages before going to Fang. We spent a night in each of the villages, and all slept in a longhouse. We split a mosquito net between two people, and it was pretty rustic but really fun. After the first village, we ate breakfast and packed up our bags and hiked to the next village. At first there was a serious uphill hike, and then it was pretty much downhill after the first 30 minutes or so. For those of you that don't know, I have weak ankles from gymnastics and stuff when I was little sooo my ankle gave out from the downhill and I fell. Into a hole. That had a rock in it. (Don't freak out grandma, I'm fine). I cut my knee pretty badly, not a big cut but pretty deep. I stopped to have Pi Carrie patch it up, and started to get a little woozy from the blood. Franchi came and held my hand and fanned me with a sunhat, and I felt better after about 15 minutes. I got up and hiked to the next village, one of the guides from the village offered to carry my pack which I was very thankful for. After about 10 more minutes, we made it to the next village and set up camp in the longhouse. I stayed back from the hike during the second half of the day because my knee hadn't stopped bleeding, and it was kind of nice to have some alone time. Being around 16 other people for so long, no matter how great they are, gets kind of tiring. The next morning we woke up and had a quick walk to the vans that took us to Fang where UHDP is.
UHDP (Upland Holistic Development Project) is an NGO that focuses on developing agroforestry farming techniques for upland villages who don't have ideal farming land. Their goal is not to grow their own food, but develop strategies for others to be able to. They do a lot of experiments testing which crops grow well together and it what type of soil etc. We didn't really help them out much, but we were able to learn about a lot of the crops that they grow. One day we did a biodiversity plot survey and had to stake out a plot of land in the forest and label each crop and do some other measurements. One day, we foraged for our own food for lunch. One group caught fish and frogs, another collected bamboo, and my group collected rattan and fishtail palm along with a couple other things. If you don't know what rattan is, you're lucky. I'm convinced that it's the devil's plant. It produces "climbers" that shoot off in all directions and have tiny little thorns that dig into your clothes and skin. It's awful. It's useful for the villagers because they can eat it, and use it for construction purposes. But I think it sucks. Another day, we spent feeding the animals and then killed the pig. I was leader of the day along with Leigh Ann. The night before we had drawn names to see who was going to stab it. Seven people put their names in, but only one person can actually stab the pig. Adam's name was drawn, so he was in charge of applying pressure to the knife while one of the villagers guided it. The other 6 people that weren't chosen had to hold the pig's body down. That day, the UHDP staff member (Pi Apat) decided that they were going to do things differently than they usually do. Usually they hit the pig on the head before they kill it in order to knock the pig out a little bit. On our day though, he decided just to let it out of it's cage, push it over and hog tie it, then put it up the platform and stab it. The screaming noises that came from that pig when they knocked it over will be with me for the rest of my life. It was traumatic to say the least. That initial noise was without a doubt the worst part for me. After the pig died, we got to butchering. They did a traditional burning of the pig almost immediately after it died. They lit thatch on fire and burned all the hair and skin off. Then they used machetes to scrape the excess off. I don't remember the order exactly, but they proceeded to cut it's head off, cut it down the spine, cut off it's feet, and pull out all of the internal organs and intestines and everything. For me, once the head was off it was much less gruesome. After the pig was in manageable pieces, we brought it up by the kitchen and finished up the butchering. Then we got to cooking. We helped the staff make ribs, and grill up some of the other meat. I could only bring myself to eat one rib (my first rib ever!) and a couple pieces of pork. It's still a touchy subject among some of us...we all opt for chicken when given the option between the two. All in all, it could have gone worse. I'm glad that I witnessed it happen because I think it's important for people who eat meat to know where it comes from, but I'm also glad that it's over. The last few days at UHDP were pretty relaxed.
We got back to Chiang Mai on Wednesday, had a final class period on Thursday wrapping up the course, and went to Burma with school on Friday. We went to Burma because we needed extensions on our visas because they only give 90 day non-immigrant visas in Thailand and in order to stay for 4 months, we needed another stamp. The ISDSI people talked to the Thai immigration people, and they said the easiest way to go about doing that was just crossing a border into another country and then coming back over. Burma is scary. It looks like Thailand obviously because they're right next to each other, but everyone just looked sadder. The infrastructure was also a lot lower quality. We only spent 2 hours there, thank God because it was so depressing I don't think I could have handled any more time there. They sell a lot of cheap things in the market right across the border, but I couldn't bring myself to buy anything because the majority of the money spent goes straight to the military dictatorship. Again, something I'm glad I saw but I'm glad it's over and I hope I don't have to do it again.
Our next field course starts in a week. We're going to Mae Hong Son which is the hiking intensive course. After that, we have one more week in the city, then off to the beautiful islands in the South, then home for Christmas. Time is flying by.

freedom at last

Exactly a week ago we moved into apartments, and it has been glorious. I'm living in a suite with Laurie, Ally, and Franchi. It's not luxerious, but it's ours. And we can be as "mai riep roy" as we want. "Mai riep roy" means something is not appropriate or okay. "Riep roy" means everything is in order. That means in our apartments we can wear tank tops and put our feet up, both of which are not appropriate in Thai culture. On Monday, we leave for our first field study which is the agroforestry course. The trip is split into two parts, the first part half of us will be going to Mae Tah which is south of Chiang Mai and the other half will go north to Fang and then we will switch. I don't have anything too exciting to share right now, I'm going to try and add a few photos and also add an entire album to facebook so check those out. I'll post again when I get back in 3 weeks with something more interesting to say hopefully :)

Oh and the Thai dance went well, the pictures are hilarious so look out for those.