Where the Rubber Meets the Road

i haven't written or reflected much in the past couple weeks due to a number of other things taking my time. saturday was my first day off in twelve days, and i can't remember being more lazy. it was also the day following a "fancy dress" come-as-a-film-star party in town, in celebration of two volunteers' birthdays. the creativity given to this mini-halloween event in this tropical setting lacking in thrift stores was astounding. i was in a team of two charlie's angels, but everyone from tarzan and jane, uncle rico, wolverine, luke and lea, fred and wilma, john travolta, pinocchio and more showed up using all resources available from here to phuket - the local tailor shops probably making a killing from the suits and dresses people had made, and it's amazing what small supermarkets can offer by way of materials... saturday and sunday were lazy days for everyone, needless to say.

the fact that i've really hit the ground running has made itself clear. the woman filling in as fundraising coordinator at the tsunami volunteer center (tvc) until i got here went on vacation recently and i feel like i've taken on the reins. there's a good foundation here to draw on, if only i knew where all the documents were located, and knew how to navigate the somewhat mysterious lines of communication i need in order to work out budgets, donation conversion rates, which projects need most funding... i've been working on integrating fundraising into all of the various other work we do - speaking to the new groups of volunteers every monday morning (we average at least 12 new volunteers every week, and hold strong at about 120 volunteers at any given time!) and giving updates to the whole lot of volunteers to offer more transparency about where the money is being used and exactly how they can reach out to their communities to help keep our work going.

i've also started taking a day every week or every couple weeks to do some hands on work onsite. last week i spent wednesday at the cape pakarang boatyard helping paint and oil a newly finished longtail, leaping up sirenlike to the stern of a boat we were gingerly moving out of the boatshed to help the stem clear the top of the trap doors especially built for this tall part of the boat (the thai boat builders got a kick out of my beauty queen style wave from up there), and taking a refreshing wade in the crystal blue waters off of the gorgeous white coral sand beach. there are worse settings to labor in. luckily the crew was also delivering a boat to a fisherman in the village of nam khem that day, so i sailed along in the boat behind the pickup truck and watched with fellow volunteers as it dropped at one of many piers in the fishing village to join dozens of other brightly painted wooden boats, hopefully creating the possibility of a strong livelihood for another fisherman. i watched the road pass from atop the boat trailer on the way back that day, recognizing the tire catching the pavement as a meaningful metaphor for the beginning i've forged here, again.

i've been initiated into driving these thai highways again as well. last week i was the driver for 11 of us needing to go across the burma/myanmar border to renew our visas. a few people have secured three month visas, but the norm in thailand is to get a 28 day visa upon entry. so if you're here for longer than a month, the day long visa run is an inevitable journey. for three hours north, and three hours back driving a pick up truck converted into a songthaew (a two benched covered truck bed commonly used as taxis here), i navigated the two lane highway that mimics a constant video game, on alert for dogs that stare you down from the middle of the road - somehow not comprehending you're hurtling toward them at speeds at least 100 km/hr, the two stroke engine motorbikes buzzing along to your left while trucks full of tree trunks come into your lane to pass other laden down vehicles on the right, and the languid pace of pedestrians in the villages dotting the roadside - all the while trying to get a glimpse of the gorgeous lush landscape stretching out from the ribbon of pavement. anchored in this one small area of southern thailand, it becomes easy to forget that one?s scope changes as the distance you travel increases. does the texture of a place, an experience, become more concentrated? less concentrated? perhaps less pixilated in the sense that only outlined areas become filled in slowly and more clearly with color, sounds, scents.

scents like the harbor at the thai departure point for burma in ranong. The water in this border town is incredibly polluted, from the ranong pier to the thai and burmese immigration checkpoints, shacks elevated above rickety pilings you don?t have to leave the boat to enter, entrusting your boatman with your passport as he questionably balances the length of the 30 foot boat with the stack of them in hand. the water becomes a bit clear again at about the midpoint, where pink jellyfish skirt the surface and are caught by men with long poled fishing nets and hurled into their longtail boats to be dried into strips for a salty snack, and where the gold leaf buddhas and tall narrow burmese temple buildings rise into the bright blue sky welcoming you to the neighbor country to the west. our group was in and out of burma quickly, not choosing to purchase black market ?lady viagra? or burmese made whisky and cigarettes which are harsh mirrors of anything bottled or produced ANYWHERE else. our trip was about an hour longer than usual due to our boat breaking down in the middle of the trip toward burma. i was pleased that all 11 of us have really cultivated the mai pen rai (never mind) attitude prevalent in thailand and patiently waited as we were towed by another longtail boat to the checkpoints, as the engine was completely dismantled and rebuilt, and as the sun beat down on the lot of us. none of us had the forethought to bring umbrellas, although in each boat with thais or burmese that passed they were prevalent. i treated myself to a thai massage later in the evening to help work out the kinks of driving all day.

also during that long weekend, i took part in a pilot day for our ecotourism project being developed. as the communities we work in settle into their new homes, as they slowly reforge businesses such as restaurants or shops, as they begin to take fishing boats out to the waters, the work of rebuilding is not yet done. in the community of laem pom, once a tin mining and fishing village, the tvc built 30 homes at the end of last year. some of the nicest houses I have seen in the communities in terms of design, this is an idyllic community set around scattered ponds used in the mining of tin, hugging the coast along a stretch of beach full of pine and coconut trees. this community, formed by decades of migrant workers entering it, has been struggling with land rights since before the tsunami, and real estate efforts to claim the area for tourism have only increased after the disaster last december.

our environmental restoration team has continued to work in the village following construction, cleaning tsunami related debris from the beach and water ? for example on a nearby cape there are still remains of over 40 concrete houses lodged in the surf obstructing the fishermen?s ability to get to their boats ? and working with the community to replant and landscape individual homes, plan community parks, and create environmental education clubs for sustainable living. several of us went to work alongside the villagers, share food, stay in their homes overnight, and learn about life in the village. many of the volunteers spend all week on building sites, interacting with villagers during the day, then come back to the tourist town of khao lak each night to forget all the thai phrases learned, and where we are all intimately acquainted with the various beers and whiskies of thailand. opportunities like the ecotourism project allow volunteers to get a sense of what life is like after the bricks have been laid, and once the work day subsides into evening. a couple of us noted that we retained most of the thai learned during this trip, and were hip to more subtleties of thai culture than in the weeks we had been here prior. we are modeling our developing program on other homestays related organizations north of here have researched and with our own thai staff?s guidance and experience, hoping to offer a ten day stay to future tvc volunteers in the next few months.

i wasn?t able to stay overnight in laem pom as i had a meeting scheduled that saturday night with a donor I had to rush off to. it must be becoming obvious to you all that my work week is not your typical 9 ? 5 m ? f affair. this meeting was a discussion of future funding over dinner at the donor?s nearby five star hotel. from the village to the five star with a shower and a change in between. did I mention all the levels one can live at here?

the tree trunks in the rubber plantations up the road behind my house were freshly cut the other day, in downward diagonals allowing the creamy white fluid to emerge and drip down into the tacky coconut half shells attached below. how many slowly flowing trunks are needed to create the beige welcome mat sized sheets I see drying in front of houses along the road? by this slow extraction and production I am taught about patience and intention for my continued integration into this, my new home.