Traveling

Hey everyone! I'm traveling in the region for the next 10 days, and I can't really blog where I'm gonna be, so I'll blog when I get back!

Playing in the Mud and Family Bike Rides

So today Jordan and I (with the help of Go-ED student Bianca!), worked much of the day building our rocket stove - a stove that has numerous health and environmental benefits, as well as being more efficient. It's built entirely out of local materials, so that it will be easy for villagers to use. We still have some work to do, but this is what it looks like so far!

That means I got to play in the mud.

For some reason I'm not wearing my awesome Thai farmer hat, but you can see that in the story picture series below! (sorry for the harsh sunlight and shadows in the pictures)

So last week, Jordan and I were working on the stove, digging up clay and sifting it into finer pieces. It was a very hot day, and the heat was zapping our energy, as you can see in our defeated faces under the blazing sun in this picture.

However, Boss Kenny, and Fellow Intern Anna soon showed up with Thai farmer hats and delicious iced coffee!

Our spirits were rejuvenated, our bodies replenished and we were able to continue our work, unimpeded by the physical hardships of the midday Thai sun.



So at the end of the day, we were greeted with a pickup truck of our new stylish bicycles for all the interns and students! Yes, that's a Playboy bunny on the basket. There's an apparent fascination with it, and I'm sure nobody knows what it actually means, because EVERYONE has it on their vehicles, bikes, etc.

Shortly before dinner, we all went on a peaceful, enjoyable "family bike ride." Every Thai we passed looked at us with funny looks and clearly thought, "What is up with that whole group of farang riding ridiculous bicycles?" (as seen below)

This said bike ride consisted of riding through the local villages with vistas like these:

Actually, these two pictures are a view from my room, because I didn't take any pictures of the view on my bike ride today. But our view was quite similar.

Absolutely beautiful.

Posts

Sorry I've been lacking in posts and suddenly inundated you all with posts. I'm sure it's too much too read all at once. I had been working on numerous posts simultaneously and hadn't got any of them finished to post until now.

Coming up soon, hopefully:
-pictures!
-my weekend trip (including a few hours in Burma!)
-and some thoughts on suffering

My Projects

Kenny, Jordan and I have been working on building a stove. Yes, a stove. In Southeast Asia, whole communities are being destroyed due to rapid deforestation. (I couldn’t find any good satellite imagery, but the same thing is happening in Africa too, as seen here)

Agricultural expansion (transforming forest to agricultural land) is one of the main reasons, but another cause includes the simple over-use by the local population. Traditionally, villagers might simply put their cooking pots on three rocks that form a triangle, and in the middle of that triangle is a fire below the pot. This is highly ineffective in terms of heat use, and requires much firewood. A stove has been invented which uses all local materials and is significantly more effective in the use of heat and uses significantly less firewood. One hope of using such a stove is that a decreased demand of firewood will ease up on straining the land and its resources and create more sustainable practices.

As Kenny, Jordan and I are building the stove (a Ugandan example of it that I pulled off of the web here is pictured left), we will take pictures and create a curriculum or handbook that can be used to teach villagers how to make these stoves. We hope to include Lahu students in the pictures so it looks more natural to villagers in SE Asia, instead of having a bunch of white people building the stove in the picture. Once we have the curriculum written, we will share it with other workers in the region who can teach it to the locals they have relationships with.

I’m also working on an agricultural market development project. I’ll be interviewing people to gain a better understanding of the local economy of selling agricultural products. Through the research we hope to find with the farmers more beneficial and efficient ways for them to access markets and sell their produce for a higher profit.

For now I’m working on these two projects while also sitting in on two classes with Kenny and Jordan that the students are taking. Through these classes we aim to gain a better understanding of the region to make our work more effective. The first class I’m sitting in on is about the exclusion and exploitation of ethnic groups in the region. People are trafficked for sex and labor, people are driven into prostitution, and many people are victims of land exploitation, slaughter, and even ethnic cleansing by their own government. This class is taught by Christa Crawford, an American woman who runs an organization in Chiang Mai called Garden of Hope which aims towards ministering to the women and children exploited in the red light district of Chiang Mai. The second class is a class on Thai history and religion which taught by a fantastic old Thai man named Dr. Amnuoy. For my Go-ED Africa friends, he’s the Thai version of Dr. Mpagi.