Stratospherical

Bayankhongor Nights

2007-04-23T04:18:00.000-07:00

Really it's nothing of the sort - not that there aren't nights (see picture above, which preceded a night), but not like the boogie ones. I haven't written my wrap-up on this homestay yet, but it was much improved from the one in Dadal. I mean, I was living in a ger! My family was on the tale end of their winter pasture. (Usually they move 5-6 times per year.) My mother: Mjidorj. My father: Baatar. My brother: Batorgil. My 2-year old relative next door: Sumo! He looks like Davaadorj, one of the two really solid Mongolian sumo wrestlers right now.

Maybe I'll be able to offer some more engaging reflection later, but I've been fairly unreflective lately. That's part of the lack of blog postings, and probably related to some of my hesitations about this here program. Another day, another day. Isn't that a nice silhouette, though? Credit Emily Terrin. We did lots of herding. I am a master with the wooden staff, and I milk goats like, well, not terribly. I'm having trouble getting my photos onto my camera, so I'm relying on others' for now.

I Was Sick in Dadal, Sorry

2007-04-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

Therefore I didn't take many pictures. I did have to write an essay afterwards, though, which may in fact stand in for more analysis here. Should I post it? It would be my usual self-aggrandizement taken to a whole new level. I do like whole new levels, though. Okay I'll do it. Fine! You'll notice it's a little heavy-handed in places, a little too afraid to let my "experiential learning" speak for itself without the helping hands of secondary sources. Alas. Our Academic Director didn't notice, though.

The smiling guy at the top is Ganbat, my host-father while I was in Dadal. Dadal is a soum in Hentii aimag, a province in the northeast of Mongolia. Our homestay sites were about 25km from Siberia, but it wasn't unbearably cold. I took the picture at the top of the mountain that sort of towered over the cabin we - Ganbat, Uranchimeg, and I - were living in. At the top, there is an "oboo," which is a place where Mongolians making offerings to "gazariin ezen," land spirits that watch over the natural environment. We scattered some offerings, and we placed more stones on the oboo. You've probably seen pictures - the piles of stones generally arranged in a small pyramid.

Enjoy the reading. Please don't hate me. Also please don't make fun of me. We are a fragile people, we...people.

"Finding and Losing New York in Dadal"

Anthropologists seem to believe that inspiration emanates from strange sources. In a way, one could argue the entire field is oriented around this possibly banal maxim, this belief that significant meaning may lie not in the obvious places⎯the libraries of the world, for example, or newspaper and television sources⎯but in marginal, or marginalized, spaces. How else could Claude Levi-Strauss, the field’s pre-eminent cultural anthropologist, get away with ending his masterwork Tristes Tropiques with his notoriously feline conclusion? “The essence of what (our society) was and continues to be,” he argues, deeply submerged in his famously urgent, lyrical style, may best be located in the consideration of a mineral, the perfume of a flower, “or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat” (415). So ends what many believe to be the central work of modern anthropology⎯and so ended, as well, my two weeks of living in Dadal, in the cabin of a talkative Buryad named Ganbat.

Indeed, the only difference between Levi-Strauss’ challenging conclusion and what I would consider the critical experience of my time in Dadal is the animal in question. For me, it was interaction with a lamb that opened up for me a sense of social essence, though whether my newfound grasp was upon this Buryad community or my own New York City is difficult to say. On my last evening living with Ganbat, I joined him outside, as I had done on most nights, for the closure of the day’s outdoor chores: picking up manure, milking the cows, distributing the hay for the animals, watering the horses, and herding the animals to their specified places. As we rode away from the cabin, herding some of the cattle towards a feeding location about a kilometer from Ganbat’s fenced-in space with the cabin, the sun was hung low on the horizon, already a fuchsia ghost of its midday self. The sky was all sherbet hues, the breeze crisp and cold on my face as we trotted the horses behind the cattle. Certainly a place rich in sunsets, I thought to myself as we eventually turned back towards the cabin.

As Ganbat gathered my saddle to bring it indoors, his wife, Uranchimeg, who had been milking cows, pointed to the lamb we had been keeping inside the cabin⎯its mother had been refusing to nurse, so Uranchimeg had taken to feeding it from a bottle. I picked it up⎯it, like all of our family’s animals except for one dog, lacked any particular name⎯as my host-mother and father headed inside. For a moment, a moment that for all I know could have lasted quite a long time, I held the lamb as I kneeled on the grassy dirt of Ganbat’s yard. My grainy leather gloves acted the coarse movement of my hands over the lamb’s curly white coat. Even through my quite weathered gloves, softened by ski lifts and hardened by duct tape, I could feel the warmth of the lamb’s barely rounded underside, the knobby spine of its only lightly padded back. Slowly I moved my left hand to the lamb’s face, gently turning it towards my own as I squinted into the sunset rays coming low and piercing over the ridge in the distance. Unlike Levi-Strauss’ visual communion with his cat, though, the glance I shared with the lamb was brief, its eyes quickly averted like those of a nervous child. I stood up, hoisting the lamb in my arms as we faced the last glow of sunset. The lamb, poor and small in its cradle against my chest, was quiet as I made my⎯our⎯way inside Ganbat’s cabin.

As had happened several times already over the course of my stay with Ganbat, the evening light sent rushing a flood of reflection, a chorus of arias singing the wandering thoughts of days spent in immersion. Again, Levi-Strauss is here before me. “And so,” he writes, “it is when…(the sun’s) disc outlines mountain summits like a hard, jagged leaf, that man is eminently able to receive, in a short-lived daydream, the revelation of the opaque forces, the mists and flashing lights that throughout the day he has dimly felt to be at war within himself” (63). The war within me, the mild conflict that surfaced in the lamb’s dark, swirling eyes, had something to do with distance⎯the literal and spatial distance between Dadal and my now-native Manhattan, and the more symbolic, narrative distance between the two apparent extremes, one rural and one urban. One particular image asserted itself against the eyes of the lamb: that of the Statue of Liberty, that great marvel of mossy green that keeps watch, torch aloft, over New York’s harbor.

It is just such an image, in fact⎯and it is very much an image⎯that graces the back cover of a book I gave to Ganbat’s family, a collection of tourist-oriented photographs telling a visual story of New York City. I’d purchased it in Times Square, and now it rested on the cabinet of a Mongolian herder. The focal point of the photo of “Lady Liberty” seems to be her eyes, which like the rest of the statue are set in what appears to be a severe granite, unfeeling and cold to the touch, the huge sculpture cast in a way that harmonizes with its eyes, to which the French sculptor neglected to apply any detail: majesty without empathy, grandeur without feeling. Like the Balinese cockfight for Geertz, the photobook I gave Ganbat depicts a story people tell themselves about themselves: this picture of American liberty, however, is only surface-deep (448). Unlike the lamb, alive, warm, and responsive to my touch, the Statue of Liberty exists behind an antiseptic, even impenetrable, veil of myth. This treasure of American mythopoeic consciousness lives not in our hands but on glossy pages, framed by photographers and guarded by price tags.

So it is that I found the central truth of my time with Ganbat less in structured instances of data collection, valuable as those moments were, and more in the strange comparison of two sets of eyes⎯the one animal, the other carved. New York City, concrete jungle that it is, began to seem, for me, a landscape no less strange than that of the Mongolian steppe, a place with stories⎯told by us, about ourselves⎯no less fantastic than the Buryad creation myth. Therein lies, perhaps, one of the great values of interaction across boundaries: the ability to regard both sides as unfamiliar. How else to achieve the critical insight necessary for an ethical life? In a passage often cited by the literary scholar Erich Auerbach, the twelfth-century Saxon monk St. Victor of Hugo extols this sense of deterritorialization. “The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner,” the monk writes. “He to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land” (Said 185). This preparedness to regard all things as foreign is a huge part of what I now carry with me from my stay in Dadal.

That the seed of this epiphany lies in Levi-Strauss is no unhappy coincidence, his work having deeply informed my own understanding of the anthropological project. Nevertheless, the role of literature in conducting fieldwork, anthropological though that literature may be, would appear to be a minor one, one that logic suggests I should consign to a lesser role upon my own increasing comfort with field research. If, as Levi-Strauss suggests, social science properly takes place in the hinterland of experience⎯with the diamond, the flower, and the cat marking his beautifully weird landscape⎯then the refuge of the printed word becomes instructive more at some later point. For now, though, it seems crucial to acknowledge the extent to which Tristes Tropiques, as truly affective works are wont to do, plays the lens in analysis. Recollection, after all, necessarily requires mediation: the present leaves no moment past untainted by a sentimental film. On that last night of my stay with Ganbat, then, as the stream of reflection flowed towards me beneath the softening fluorescence of sunset, I did nothing to refuse the wave of memory⎯the memory that suggested, in fact, that I had found, and lost, New York in Dadal⎯and the conflicting images it stirred up. I gave way, I gave in, and I surrendered, unwittingly proving yet another of Levi-Strauss’ truths: “Remembering is one of man’s great pleasures…Memory is life itself, but of a different quality” (63).

(Works Cited)
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books: New York, 2000.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes Tropiques. Penguin Books: New York, 1992.
Said, Edward. Reflections on Exile. Harvard University Press: United States of America, 2000.

Right, Blogging

2007-04-23T03:39:00.000-07:00

I knew I was supposed to be doing something this past month and a half. For all of you out there starved - and I mean starved - for new material, feast your beady eyes on the photo above, credit Angela Eastman. Here at SIT Mongolia, we believe in perpetuating stereotypes, and the foreigner's love for the prayer flags does not remain unexamined.

The picture was taken on a ridge just beyond the city's edge. That's UB down below. No other city in Mongolia comes vaguely close in terms of any statistical indicators - size, population, etc. Almost half of Mongolia's entire population, in fact, lives in UB. More thoughts soon to follow, I swear.

In Mongolia: Reflections on Early Days

2007-03-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

It is true: I am in Mongolia. I arrived on February 25 after a day-long delay in Beijing. Currently we of the SIT program are in Mongolia's capital, Ulaanbaatar, living in a student hostel of the University of the Humanities. When we're lucky, we have hot water. I've taken two warm and one cold shower since arriving. We've been going through various sorts of orientation exercises - like a drop-off at the black market and a meeting with the US Ambassador - and beginning our first unit: Politics, Economics, and Social Change. This thematic unit has basically meant lectures from civil society and government figures; and we've supplemented all of this with language training in Mongolian. (They claim it is the secondest hardest language to learn in the world. So far I'm inclined to agree.)

On Saturday, we embark on a two-day journey to Dadal, in Hentii aimag, or province. There, we'll spend two weeks in a homestay with Buryad families, "Buryad" being a phrase that (possibly) comes from the Old Mongolian for "People of the Forest." They reside in log cabins, though they're still considered nomadic, as they have different camps through which they rotate throughout the year. It is a wooded region, so I've been told. This is the birthing season (cows), so we'll be assisting in tasks related thereto.

Thus, a location-focused schedule:

2/25 - 3/9: Ulaanbaatar
3/10 - 3/23: Buryad homestay
3/24 - 4/6: Ulaanbaatar
4/7 - 4/21: Homestays in Bayankhongor and Kharkhorin
4/22 - 5/7: Ulaanbaatar
5/8 - 6/8: ISP Period, location TBD

Something to keep in mind is that travel here is generally a two day affair. As our Academic Director likes to say, with a big smile, "Our roads are a little different here." So it's not exactly 3/9 in UB and 3/10 in Dalad; it's more like 3/10-3/11 are spent en route to Dalad. Internet will most likely be available only in UB. Academically, we're moving through four thematic units in preparation for our ISP, or Independent Study Project: Politics, Economics, and Social Change; Religion; Environment; and Nomadic Arts and Culture. I'll be helping lead discussion for Religion and Nomadic Arts and Culture. The ISP topic is of our own choosing, so I'm thinking about working through some (as yet undetermined) anthropological criticism of development discourse, exploring the interaction between Mongolia's transition to an open market economy and the parallel resurgence of Buddhism, or examining notions of "the beyond" in Mongolia's current transition period. Of course, this could all change. A Field Study Seminar and language training also take place through and within these discussions.

Otherwise, it's mostly been quite a pleasure to settle into this city, which I dare say is a fascinating place to be right now. Highlights? The black market is a really compelling reflection of the excess of the market transition in Mongolia. It's been great making a few trips there, despite getting the 8-person sandwich treatment for pick-pocketing. (They got nothing, suckers. No bag, and nothing in the pockets! Ha!) The one disco outing we've had so far - with our second to follow tonight - was incredibly fun. Dancing from 11pm till 4 in the morning. Dylan, from our program, got (extremely close to) naked for a competition at a disco we didn't know is known as a popular spot for gay Mongolians. Dylan is large, burly, and from New Hampshire. The next morning, our plan to hike a ridge south of the city at 6 am didn't quite happen. But we made it up there by about 2 pm. There are some really breathtaking mountains that ring the city, and being up within them definitely gives you the impression of being very much outside of the city. The elevation of the city is about 5,000 ft., and the mountains rise another solid 1500-2000 ft. or so. The windblown ridges, the prayer flags strung up everywhere, the wooded slopes and rocky promontories - it was like something out of an adventure magazine story about trekking in Central Asia. Below, the city looked like a lake that had collected in the valley, spread out to fill the contours of every piece of undulating land down there.

In the mornings, in these early days, we either walk or take a city bus down Peace Avenue to the SIT building. Looking down, one notices the sidewalk is fairly discontinuous, shot through with cracks, dirt, and grassy patches. Looking ahead, one sees the dour Soviet architecture cliffing the sides of the street with all of the severity of the glare of a former occupying nation. And when one looks up, one sees the mountains surrounding the city, the same "bones of the earth" - as Angela, from our program, put it - that Chinggis Khan once crossed (and recrossed) in uniting Mongolia's disparate tribes and conquering all of the then-known world. For Mongolia, it seems hard not to see - from the perspective of this newly arrived student, at least - the greatest time as past, the present time as broken, and the future as everything that uncertain can be.

Anubha made the point that my description of UB sounds like Pamuk's image of Istanbul, one in which Turkey's once-great capital is now permeated by a kind of melancholy, rooted most obviously, perhaps, in the fall of the Ottoman. And this seems, to me, a compelling comparison - with the caveat, of course, that the fall of the Mongol Empire took place much longer ago than did the collapse of the Ottoman. In that sense, time has either rooted a deeper melancholic streak in the experience of Mongolians, or time has washed over crumbling dominion with the self-reliant individualism of an insistently pasteural way of life. I, unfortunately, cannot say.

But I turn, as is my wont, to Levi-Strauss:

"If men have always been concerned with only one task - how to create a society fit to live in - the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done, but turned out wrong, can be done again. 'The Golden Age, which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is IN US."

(Levi-Strauss quotes from Rousseau, here, and the emphasis is his own.)

I'm having trouble with the internet connection, so I will wait to post pictures. Please forgive me! I do have some good ones to post. But for now, I'm checking out, most likely not to be able to check in again until the end of this month.

Blinking In Red China

2007-03-08T02:51:00.000-08:00

After leaving Bangkok on February 23, I stayed for two short nights - a very, very brief stay, even a mere blink - in Beijing. During my one full day, I took a walk from the hostel to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. My prognosis? Good: old palatial complexes. Bad: Starbucks inside the Forbidden City. Ugly: Mao's face, still over the gate to Tiananmen. Otherwise, I would withold much judgement for the brevity of my stay. What I must wonder, though, is how much the sweet Chinese people I met know about what's going on in Tibet. I'm trying to upload pictures, but I'm not being too successful right now.

The Spring Semester Reading List

2007-03-08T02:37:00.000-08:00

Due to popular demand - thank you Sara Vogel, of course - I offer my spring semester reading list. I'm not in my room right now, but I think I'm only missing one or two books. Check it check it.

Andre Aciman, ed.: "Letters of Transit"
Andre Aciman: "Out of Egypt"
T. Adorno: "The Culture Industry"
K.A. Appiah: "Cosmopolitanism"
Siddhartha Deb: "An Outline of the Republic"
J. Derrida: "Writing and Difference"
G. Flaubert: "Madame Bovary"
Ha Jin: "Waiting"
J. Kerouac: "On the Road"
M. Kohn: "Last Lama of the Gobi"
E. Larkin: "Finding George Orwell in Burma"
Ma Ma Lay: "Not Out of Hate"
C. Levi-Strauss: "Tristes Tropiques"
G. G. Marquez: "Love in the Time of Cholera"
V. Nabokov: "Lolita"
V.S. Naipaul: "Guerrillas"
G. Orwell: "Burmese Days"
E. Said: "Orientalism"
E. Said: "Reflections on Exile"
Pramoedya Toer: "Child Of All Nations"

'Tis a long list; this much I know. Much of it is sort of catch up, as you might notice. And some of it I really have already read, like Kerouac and Levi-Strauss. Furthermore, Deb, Jin, Appiah, and Ma Lay I've finished already on this trip. I know there's at least one more book, but I can't remember it right now.

The Football, The Monastery, and The Ugly

2007-02-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

After a twelve-hour train ride from Chiang Mai to Bangkok last night, I find I'm not particularly thrilled to be back in this steamed-out metropolis. I seriously feel sort of like a dumpling here, you know? Maybe not. Shrivelled, damp, claustrophobic - these are the things I'm trying to communicate. At least my room for this one night is nice, though. It actually has a window to "the outside" rather than just a hallway. That's some serious ritziness for the Khao San area. Tomorrow morning, I'll be headed to Beijing, and then from there on to Mongolia! Mongolia by Sunday. It could be a movie title.

Speaking of movie titles, the attentive reader - attentive enough to realize the obvious, at least - will notice the title I used for this post. Think of it as narrating the photos I'm posting, and then "The Ugly" just had to go in for good measure.

As for The Football, one of the Thai youth national teams - say, under-21 maybe - played an exhibition match against a really strong South Korean club at a stadium in Mae Sot. That's right: a) Mae Sot has a stadium (a sandy one) and b) two well-regarded football teams would visit it. I was surprised, too. The whole town turned out, it seemed. The sidelines were packed. I spent most of the match craning my neck over the bald head of one of the Burmese guys I worked with last summer. For the shoot-out, the result of a 0-0 tie, the whole crowd lined around the 18-yard box. It was sort of the populist thing where it's like "the people's game," where every neighborhood kid comes out to see what's up with the show in town. After the game, everyone swarmed the Korean team (which lost in the shoot-out) for pictures and handshakes, though none of that could happen until after the Korean team's prayer circle had ended - a good compliment to their coordinated dance routine during half-time set to a song "Celebrate Jesus." Turns out their club is called "Hallejulah," and their jerseys say "God Loves You." There were a few hippy-ish white missionaries (I'm assuming) who came in on their bus. Weird stuff.

Then for The Monastery, it's Doi Suthep. It's on a mountain outside of Chiang Mai, and it's definitely super scenic, beautiful, etc. But of course it was choked with tourists. After snapping the obligatory photos, I retreated to a bench down the hill a bit and finished a novel - "Waiting," by Ha Jin - while doing some journal writing. All I could here down there was birds chirping, water running (a brook? no, a water spigot, but still), and monks' robes swishing past every so often.

Which reminds me! I've been meaning to post my reading list for this semester, i.e. the books I brought with me. My list from last summer provoked some of the more interesting comments, so I want to throw them out there again. Along those lines, I just figured out why none of your comments showed up last summer. Because I have to "moderate" them! Somehow that option never made itself known to me; they just disappeared. Until now, that is, when the system was kind enough to let me know I should publish the 24 comments that had been lurking mysteriously. I'm psyched to read them.

Back to the peaceful, windowed room. Ah. The Forbidden City awaits, then a quite forbidding land thereafter.

Applications, Acronyms, and Appearances

2007-02-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow morning I leave Mae Sot to head up to Chiang Mai, where I'll be meeting with some professor-types. Hopefully I'll also see this sweet monastery on a mountain outside the town - Doi Suthep. I'll be sorry to leave Mae Sot, of course, but so it is.

This past week here in Mae Sot has been, well, something (probably) - but I'm finding it hard to characterize. I've kind of been racing to meet the deadline for my first grant application, so much of my time has been spent here in this internet cafe downloading forms and writing short little snippets about "Career Objectives" and "Personal and Academic Interests." (Carol Gluck is writing me a recommendation for the Weatherhead grant, which made me ridiculously happy.) Outside of grant applications, I've also been meeting up with a lot of the people I knew from last summer. I had dinner at a Japanese style barbecue place the other night, where I finally got to say hi to all of my students I taught. Getting to hang with them for a little, even if it was super brief, was incredibly meaningful for me. The whole "Please don't forget us" issue has weighed really heavily on my mind, so I hope I was able to communicate to them that indeed I had not forgotten them.

One of the other main things I've been up to is meeting with the different youth-focused CBO's in town: the KYO, AASYC, SYCB, PYNG, KSNG, etc. In Chiang Mai I'll meet more: the NYF, the PYO. (I'm too lazy to write out the acronyms, sorry.) I'm gathering their input for a project I'm working on through Young People For - that is, I'm trying (perhaps unrealistically) to build an international network of students doing Burma activism. I've been stumbling over its name. Perhaps the International Burma Solidarity Network? The International Burma Student Network? Also I was overhauling my resume yesterday, and I couldn't figure out what my title should be. Currently I'm Secretary General. (I kid.)

Anyway, I'm always sort of amazed by the tenor of Mae Sot, all of the latent currents of meaning flowing through this town. What am I talking about, you ask. And rightly so. I'm not entirely sure, but this town really does seem like a hall of mirrors sometimes, a place of appearances, a place of masks. On the one hand, small Pad Thai stalls serve *unbelievable* food for next to nothing. The fruit stands are overflowing with abundance, and the sunsets make wonderfully spiky silhouettes of the palm trees. In the early morning mists, novice monks in saffron robes weave through town with begging bowls in their hands. And in the night, the stars shine down on Chang-fueled conversations about Nietzsche and morality. And then there's that other hand, the one with human rights violations - nay, crises - scribbled all over it. And then just outside the Pad Thai stall you see the Burmese migrant worker begging, and you realize that the monks in Burma are monks because monasteries are the only places of learning the regime hasn't crushed. And then maybe one of those huge NGO trucks rolls by, maybe IRC, ZOA, MSF, or even UNHCR. Maybe the noise of it breaks the illusions.

The balance is a tenuous one, between the masks and the maimed, if you will. There are all these trucks in town, delivery trucks I guess. The trucks aren't all that big, but they're stacked super high, like so high I'm always wondering if they get clotheslined by either of the two traffic lights in town. And then on top of the boxes stacked so high, way higher than the cab of the truck even, there are always a few people perched, swaying wildly - to my perspective, at least - as the truck rounds a corner or swerves away from a motorbike. That's the balance I'm talking about. That's my Mae Sot: a place where chaos is avoided only by the laws of an invisible physics. The latent meaning remains latent.

Anyway, it's been a good little stay here. I'm actually kind of looking forward to putting on my headphones tomorrow - I've been listening to The Good, the Bad, and the Queen quite a bit - and watching some Thai countryside fly by. I'm staying with friends of friends in Chiang Mai. Hopefully they'll be good people.

Enjoy the pictures.

Reflecting on the Clock

2007-02-10T22:01:00.000-08:00

In "Tristes Tropiques," Levi-Strauss has a phenomenal chapter about the nature of travelling. Unfortunately I don't have the book in front of me right now, but what calls it to mind for me - and it is very often called to mind for me - is that I'm sitting in a very Starbucks-like internet cafe right in Mae Sot. Why does this cafe exist? Is it "a good thing"? Why does such a large part of me dislike it? (If I dislike it, why am I here?)

Even in the six months that I've been gone, Mae Sot has grown considerably. This cafe is evidence of this, as is this *huge* grocery store towards the north end of town called Tesco. It's not exactly Wal-Mart, but it certainly smacks of A&P, or some other such large supermarket. I don't like it.

But what of this dislike? Levi-Strauss encounters a similar issue in his travels in Brazil - that is, he, too, has unsettling "run-ins with modernity" (my phrase, not his) that make him long for some time past, a time in which a "purer" existence could have been experienced. But he is wiser than I. What he argues is that had he arrived earlier, he would have experienced the same wish, the wish to have seen the society at hand another 200 or 300 years earlier. For every present, there is a purer past. It is impossible to find the right moment, in that sense. And what's more, he says - and here he is very much in his role as a fairly scientific anthropologist - that arriving earlier would mean forgoing data sets and lines of inquiry that are available to him now.

The clock, then, is an elusive thing. It can always be turned back. One can always turn it back further, and once one steps out of the time machine in that earlier present, one is still looking for an earlier present. And so it is with me. Had I arrived in Mae Sot in the early 1990s, I would have decried the state of the town as beset by damaging business interests even then - and I would have longed for the 1980s. The lesson, it seems, is to recognize oneself - not without a tinge of sadness, but not, also, without an amount of redemption - as endlessly, hopelessly contemporary, despite all wishes for the crystalline past. As Levi-Strauss says, "Yet I exist." (That is a sentence I can quote without the book in front of me.)

I haven't loaded any new pictures onto my machine yet, so I'll try to get some of those up soon. For now, I hope my sketched out - and sketchy - thoughts may be something more than rambling.

The Road Back to Mae Sot is Nice, Too

2007-02-05T21:56:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, I hoist a very full pack upon my back, send a wave and a smile over my shoulder and poof - I am once again in transit. I am slowly getting in what would seem to be the appropriate frame of mind for my upcoming journey, a frame of mind somewhere between constant daydreaming ("Yes, I'll take two mangos, please.") and constant clinging (to friends and family at home, that is). I will also finally begin checking out the blogs - namely Casey's and Arielle's - of my fellow wanderers.

And a wanderer is what I will be. Hopeful itinerary, forthwith:

2/7 - 2/23: Thailand (Bangkok, Mae Sot, and Chiang Mai)
2/23 - 2/25: Beijing
2/25 - 6/8: Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar and other aimags)*
6/8 - 8/6: Thailand (Mae Sot, primarily)

The picture is from Angkor Wat. I took it - and many others, truth be told - at sunrise. Think symbolism. Setting out. Levi-Strauss, anyone?

* "Aimag" apparently is the Mongolian equivalent of "province," or state - you know. We'll be traveling around Mongolia a fair amount.

The Road Away From Mae Sot Is Beautiful

2006-07-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

I leave Mae Sot on the nightbus tonight: Bangkok, Ko Chang, Angkor Wat, and then back to Bangkok for the flight home. I will miss this town.

This Bracelet Is A Blessing

2006-07-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

When my supervisor arrived at our office today, she ushered me into her office with a smile on her face: "I have something for you, I have something for you." She pulled a chair out for me and took out of her pocket two bits of thread. "I got these for you and (the other intern) this weekend." They were two bracelets, both made of white string. She said they represent prayers for Karen culture - hope for the future, congealed in a humble, symbolic adornment. "They have already been blessed, so I won't say anything now," she explained. She slipped the string around my wrist, tied it, and pulled off the extra length. As has happened many times so far this summer, I was left speechless. After barely stammering a "Thank you," I stared (and stare now) at the threads circling my right wrist. It is a small bracelet, thin and beautiful - a striking contrast to the bulky watch on my other wrist. Power and size, strength and character...

(Another time, perhaps, I will explain these other photos. At this point, I will merely note that they are, in fact, pictures I took myself.)

More Chronicles of a Summer Told

2006-07-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

Amazingly enough, a mere four days separates me from the end of my internship. Work days, that is. What has been most rewarding is teaching English to the younger students - no question. Sharing breakfast and lunch with them - and, since moving in with them, dinner, as well - has been rewarding in more ways than I can really describe here and now. All I can really say at this point is that there is work to be done, and I'm not sure it's getting done. What this town needs, most likely, is not two-month vacationers like myself, but people committed long-term. I hope I can become one of those latter people, sooner rather than later. I hope and even do actually think that I will return here at some point, but I don't know in what capacity. For now, it is more or less enough to know I've done what I could over the past few weeks, and I will take this fight to the United States with renewed strength in the fall.

I'm still going to refrain from saying too much about my internship work in an open forum like this. In lieu of any deeper commentary, then, I will say that Chiang Mai was definitely a good time, and possibly even beautiful. Our pre-game (turned game and then post-game) session at a Thai bar-cum-disco made it more than a little difficult to really, you know, see, but I'm going to go ahead and assume Chiang Mai is as scenic as everyone claims it is. Also, the lack of rain was great.

The most recent weekend was spent trekking in Umphang, which is about 5 hours south of Mae Sot via sawngthaew (Lonely Planet's spelling, not mine). A sawngthaew is a pick-up truck, with the bed outfitted with benches and a roof. Our ride maxed out at 19 people, including two in the cab, four on the roof (myself included), two holding on the sides, and five people on one bench and six on the other. Cozy. The views from the roof - when I was not cowering from the rain under the tarp - were breathtaking, as the road from Mae Sot to Umphant has (again, according to LP) 1190 turns. Mountains, valleys, mountains. Beautiful ones not obscured by disco pre-game goggles. The windy road, unfortunately, left several Thais in the sawngthaew sick to their stomach. Let's just say there was puking. On the tarp. While I was under it. Unawares. ("What's the coughing sound?")

The trekking itself was pretty solid. The rafting would have been better if the water weren't so damn high, a condition which served to hide any and all rapids-spawning rocks. The cliffs along the river - not to mention the impromptu rainy-season waterfalls cascading over them at every possible point, were simply spectacular. We camped that night beneath an over-hanging cliff. The next day we hiked to Teelorsu, the biggest - an imprecise adjective, I know - waterfall in SE Asia. It was, well, big. Apparently it's actually possible to swim at the bottom of it in the dry season. Not when we were there - the force of the water pounding down created really wild swirls and currents that would not have been survivable by any means. The guides said there are 90 different cascades in the waterfall.

Then we hiked another few miles to a Karen village, where we spent the night before boarding elephants that took us back to the trucks (which returned us to the town of Umphang). Staying in the village was a very uncomfortable experience. My anthro experiences were not down with that bit of the trip. The elephants were kitschy but still, really, kind of amazing. We rode them for three hours - long enough to find out that they're actually quite uncomfortable forms of transportation, despite their Hummers-got-nothin'-on-our-4WD traveling capabilities.

This weekend I'm doing some stuff that I'll have to relate at some later point. In case I haven't made it clear yet, Thailand rules. I could stay for much, much longer. Indeed, I basically just arrived. To be honest, the bucket showers and squat toilets at my current abode are a little challenging. I want to embrace them, but they're just not really...comfortable. I guess they just remind me of the fact that I'm an outsider here, which bothers me. I won't miss them, though I wish I could say I will.

(The obvious pictures go with the obvious comments. Otherwise, the Buddha shot is from the pagoda on the mountainside outside of Mae Sot and the shot of the woman with the baby - I'll decline to explain that one for now. The one up top is from Umphang, where we camped beneath the cliff. I tried to post a video, but I was unsuccessful. Ah well. Anyway, as you can see, my camera is back, though I won't say better than ever.)

(Extra credit for whoever picks up on my title of this post. Leave it in the comments. Which reminds me! I've been getting no comments lately. You are bad, bad people. I should say, though, that several people - "hipsters" all - have tried unsuccessfully to post comments. Blogspot discriminates. I swear it's not my settings.)

Postcard From Chiang Mai

2006-07-08T04:30:00.000-07:00

Friends:

I have been derelict in my blogging duties. Thus, I offer you a brief update - perhaps with more in-depth explorations of various events to come later - of the past two weeks or so. As I am in Chiang Mai, I have limited internet access, so I have about 25 minutes until I will have to pay another 10 baht for this comp time. Cliff notes, forthwith...

USA vs. Ghana, 22/6: Myself and the other two American interns at our NGO watched this match at our office. The American to Burmese ratio was about 1:5. They were really into it. We projected the match onto a big white wall, which was quite successful. However, as you know, the US team was less successful. After the game, we attempted to finish the rice whiskey I'd purchased, but the Burmese people - one in particular - warned against it. It cost less than $1. He said, "No! No!" Then he made some crazy hand motions and said, "Jungle bumpy road. Bumpy road!" Instead, we toasted a few Beer Changs with small, whole, fried frogs - legs, head, and everything, into the mouth all at once. Very tasty. A great night.

Saturday, 24/6: After a low-key Burmese wedding reception for one of the staff of the NGO, I went with my supervisor on the back of her motorbike - along with two other Burmese girls and my supervisor's very little son - to a pagoda just outside of Mae Sot. It is up on the side of a small mountain. In order to get there, we had to climb this mountain by way of an incredibly lengthy staircase. There must have been thousands of stairs. The forest was very green and peaceful - teak and bamboo, almost exclusively. The sun, a rare commodity these days, filtered through the leaves. The pagoda was breathtaking, purchased as it was on a rock outcropping overlooking the valley. There was also a Buddha footstep: apparently Buddha was, like, 30 feet tall, judging by the size of his footprint.

Tuesday, 26/6: Myself and (), the other American intern - we went outside into the pouring monsoon rain after work (about 6pm) to join the various football matches that always take place on a big field behind our office. There were puddles easily knee deep, and I had my glasses on, which was a problem with the rain. It was ridiculously fun, though. We played a small 4 vs. 4. Most the other players, as far as I could tell, were Burmese Muslims. They were quite surprised to hear I am both Burmese *and* American. Within a few minutes, my sneakers became utterly pointless, so I played barefoot, along with () and most of the other players. One quite skilled player had cleats, which afforded him quite an advantage. I was dressed in mud by the time darkness ended the game. Mud? Cows and goats graze in the field for most of the day...

Saturday, 1/7 - Sunday, 2/7: Bangkok is best reached in the back of a pick-up truck, in some slight rain, with a crazy Canadian girl to keep you company. An 8 hr ride, and I even managed to get sunburned, which is rare. She and I spent the night on Khao San Rd., rightfully described by her as "the tourist armpit of the earth." Very touristy, lots of white folk, but all in all definitely a good time. I wore my French jersey and cheered loudly - at 4 am - when they (we?) beat Brazil. A British guy bought me a drink: "Well get on with it won't ya?!" Sunday was tame. We visited a wat - a temple, to the uninitiated - before hitting Siam Square, just to remind ourselves that while shopping malls may be indigenous to the US, they are, as well, a dangerous export. Then we went to Chet Ta Chet market (excuse my spelling error(s)), which is apparently one of the biggest markets in the world: 37 acres. Just as we got there, a cloud blacker than I'd ever seen rolled in. We wondered to each other, Is there a fire nearby? An explosion? And people just started making for the exits like crazy. Cabs pulled up, food stalls shut in seconds, and suddenly everyone had an umbrella. She and I took refuge in an indoor part of the market. I looked outside to see the heaviest rain I've ever seen in my life. By this time, I had to get to the bus terminal, so I made a break for a tuk tuk. About 50 ft. later, I turned around, tail between my legs. I waited about 15 minutes, then gave it another go, finally scoring a driver who would take me. Overnight VIP bus back to Mae Sot = mmmm gooood.

Tuesday, 4/7: I had to renew my visa, so I crossed, for the first time ever, into Burma. All it took was crossing the so-called "Friendship Bridge" over the swirling Moei River. I didn't have much time, so I didn't actually enter the small town of Myawaddy on the other side. I simply renewed my visa and came back. I did, however, rub some dirt from Burma between my fingers to see if I would feel anything. Alas, no. I need time to meditate on this event of great resonance, which - thanks to the date on the calendar - carried even more weight than it might have the day before. I spent the day interviewing other Americans in Mae Sot about what their Americanness - to use a crude word - means to them as people who have chosen to live abroad. Look for the piece this week on www.campusprogress.org. A July Fourth I will never forget, for sure.

Saturday, 8/7-9/7: Chiang Mai is, so far, beautiful. I haven't been here for long, though. I'm meeting with a few other people from Mae Sot who are here for a bit. With an Austrian doctor, I'm in a guest house in the "old city," which is full of flowering vines and mountain views. Tonight, we plan to catch the 3rd place World Cup match. Tomorrow we'll hit another market and then I'll book it back to Mae Sot so I don't miss the World Cup final.

My time is up!!! Gotta run.

Flowers, mountains, books, rain, France, Thailand, and AMAZING food - Later.

Monks: Can't Keep 'Em Down

2006-06-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

This article appeared several days ago in The Nation, a major newspaper here in Thailand:

"Soccer-mad monks hit for missing alms-giving"

- Chiang Mai

Local villagers have complained that monks and novices in this northern province have been watching World Cup matches throughout the night, causing them to skip their morning walk to beg for alms.

A woman who asked that her name be withheld said she and her family had prepared food to give to monks at a temple on the occasion of her birthday.

However, at the temple she found a sign saying the abbot was not in.

So she gave alms to a monk who told her that most monks had been watching all the World Cup matches and were too exhausted to wake up next morning.

When she was about to leave the temple, she saw the abbot and some other bleary-eyed monks stumbling from the residence where the sign declared that the abbot was not in.

Wallop Namwongprom, a member of a monks' administration committee, said it was not against the rules for monks to watch football.

"But their viewing TV will be considered against the rules if it affects their morning activities," he said.

It would surely be considered a serious violation if they were involved in gambling, he said.

"We beg senior monks to act properly and warn their juniors to refrain from any improper activities concerning the World Cup," he said.

Meanwhile, Phra Kru Sophonkaweewat, deputy abbot of Jedee Lung Wiharn Temple in Chiang Mai, said the temple has a school and a university for monks under its jurisdiction, attended by some 700 ordained students.

"We have issued strict regulations for the student monks during the World Cup," he said.

"We allow them to watch some matches but they are prohibited from watching all of them and engaging in noisy cheering.

"And no gambling is allowed," he said.

"If anyone violates the rules or excessive TV viewing affects their studies, the maximum penalty is dismissal, he said.

(End of article)

We discussed this article in my classes, and people were relatively split on whether or not the monks should be allowed to watch all of the matches. It seemed like most of the Christian students were okay with it, but some of my Buddhist students - one in particular - said they are monks and have chosen to make certain sacrifices. The vast majority of students said a little bit of football is fine.

My camera seems to be mal-functioning. I took somewhere around 200 pictures and 10 video segments since the last time I loaded photos onto my computer, but these files aren't loading. So I'm still using old pictures on the blog. Does anyone have any suggestions? They would be much appreciated.

Maybe It's Not Okay

2006-06-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

It is 1:33 am. Luckily my fellow intern and I cleared off our plates for tomorrow morning - that is, we canceled our Burmese class for the morning - so the France-Spain match will not be a problem. It will be watched! However, that leaves me with 25 minutes (2 minutes for those last few words) to meditate on a question that has been hanging out in my head with all the consistency of a Western at Bai Fern Restaurant - read: ALL THE TIME.

Is it okay for me to return to Columbia in the fall?

Turn your alarms off - I have no plans to hunker down here in Mae Sot and forget the ol' college try. Ain't gonna happen. However, my good friend Anubha aka "Nubhs" (choose your own spelling) asked in a previous comment (http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=19641725&postID=114985288651166578) how I feel about working for an incredibly under-served population, only to return to air conditioning, hot showers, and $15 meals on campus in the fall.

To Nubhs I say: good question.

I don't know.

There are people here who make me feel like a tourist. One guy I met asked me, "How long are you staying?" I said, "About 2 months. And you?" He said, "I have been here for 10 years." He was from one of the malaria research units; he started the research unit. Tonight I spoke with someone else I've been hanging out with here. We were talking about how people who are new to the town often don't understand the precautions people talk about political secrecy here. Usually people will say to someone they've never met before that they are "just a tourist." This becomes awkward when you continue seeing this person for the next few weeks. Usually after two meetings or so you reveal your position.

The funny thing about this conversation was that she and I had never had an official introduction, but I knew she was working with someone who I speak with quite often. She asked me, "So what are you doing here anyway?" I said, "I'm just a tourist." () On the other hand, then, there are a few real tourist who do stumble into this town. One pair of women from Canada apparently asked a friend of mine, "What's a Burmese?"

I am a tourist, and I am not a tourist. Is it okay for me to hang out for a summer and then return to NYC? Who will benefit? Is there any way for me to do any permanent good while I'm here? Probably not. Two months is too short. Am I growing as a person while I'm here? Am I gaining from my experience? Definitely. Is my stay here, then, selfish in some way? Probably.

I don't know if this is acceptable to me or not. When I check in at Brooklynvegan or Gorilla Vs. Bear, I find that I do miss something about the United States. But what kind of life is there in that kind of thing? What life is there in stumbling from bar to bar in Brooklyn, feeding one's ears with "the latest" and wearing black jeans? (I would add growing a beard, but this kind of thing is impossible for me.)

There are two minutes until game time. Basically, I am not sure whether or not I can justify returning to NYC after this summer. Will I return? Yes. Is that okay? Maybe not. The machinery of self-reinforcement works in mysterious ways. Kind of like God.

(Happy 61st)

2006-06-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

"Please use your liberty to promote ours." Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

Border Sounds

2006-06-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

This is going to be my quickest blog posting ever, as the previous one took almost 3 hours. I'm super tired from staying up to watch the first half of the France match last night, which made it seem like the second half would be fine. It was not. Whoever put the hex on that team meant some serious business, and I'm not talking Italian football scandal business.

This playlist is for one of my students. On the first day of class, he said he likes to play the guitar. He even says he really loves country music! (Unfortunately, my Hank Williams collection, shallow though it is, is not with me here in Thailand.) It's the style of the guitar he enjoys about country - easygoing, good for pre-sleep music, he said. So I tried to track down my acoustic goods that might be similarly applicable.

1. "Good To See You" Neil Young
2. "Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key" Wilco & Billy Bragg
3. "Red River Valley" Woody Guthrie
4. "Seven Swans" Sufjan Stevens
5. "Hell Hound On My Trail" Robert Johnson
6. "Trouble" Ray LaMontagne
7. "Cruel War" Peter, Paul, and Mary
8. "Pink Moon" Nick Drake
9. "Winning A Battle, Losing The War" Kings of Convenience
10. "Heartbeats" Jose Gonzalez
11. "All My Trials" Joan Baez
12. "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" Jeff Buckley
13. "Brushfire Fairy Tales" Jack Johnson
14. "Sodom, South Georgia" Iron & Wine
15. "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt. 1" The Flaming Lips
16. "Rose Parade" Elliott Smith
17. "Now That I Know" Devendra Banhart
18. "The Greatest" Cat Power
19. "My Back Pages" Dylan

There were actually no political considerations that went into this playlist. Hopefully he likes it. I hope all is well with y'all.

(Gratuitous Buddha tourism shot.)

Early Teaching Impressions

2006-06-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

My internship finally began this week. I think I can go ahead and - with little fear from "the authorities" - say that I am teaching English. (There are so many people teaching English here that I don't think the Thai police could really nab everyone, even if they were so inclined, which they are probably not.) I'm teaching twice a day: once to students who are about my age, and once to staff of the NGO that shall remain nameless. Theoretically, at least, I'm also helping conduct research for the NGO; three hours of teaching per day, though, leaves me spending most of my time (so far, at least) preparing for class.

The students who are more or less my age - in the 18-25 range - live about 20 minutes outside of Mae Sot by pick-up truck. The classroom itself is actually quite nice, and the students are well-enough supplied in terms of paper, pens, etc. They are all from Burma, but their ethnicities vary widely: Mon, Shan, Karen, Kayen, Karenni, Chin, Kachin, Arakan, etc. - all of these states are represented in my class. Many of these students, a strong majority of whom are female, grew up in refugee camps or on the run as IDP's in Eastern Burma. One student was born in a refugee camp. None of them live in the camps now, though.

Their English skills are really quite impressive. On the first day of class, we discussed international politics, the place of the United States in the world ("big economic power," they said; "occupiers of Iraq"), some key words from an article I brought (marginalized, impoverished, rampant, indigenous, multilateral - none of these words were any trouble for them), and, of course, football. Ronaldhino's their favorite player. On the second day of class (the third is yet to come), I played some Neil Young for them and they all began singing along without any prompting. "Good to See You": we were working on how to introduce people to one another. I also showed a clip from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but they had a little more trouble following that. The one line they seemed to enjoy was when Butch says to Woodcock, "Would you shut up about that E.H. Harriman and open that door?!"

My other class, that composed of staffers from the NGO, seems to be much less advanced. They were thoroughly confused by Butch Cassidy. And the vocab from the article - they definitely had a tough time with those words. There are 1 or 2 out of a revolving total of about 8 people who are quite excellent, but the others have had very little English instruction in the past. And the office is much more sparsely supplied than the rural classroom: there is no chalkboard to be found, for example.

These students are incredible, though, in terms of what they've already accomplished. As with my rural class, one student was born and raised in a refugee camp, but there's one student who *still lives* in a refugee camp. And he manages to work this full-time job. He left Burma in 1988, where he was an organizer of the student uprisings with ABSDF: All-Burma Student Democratic Front. Splitting with ABSDF over violent vs. non-violent tactics (he stays true to the latter), he managed to make his way to the refugee camp, where he has lived for about the past 10 years. Several years ago he secured an "Identity Card" that allows him to travel to and from the camp on a regular basis. He worries, he says, about being "picked up" - but so far so good, and he's been at this NGO for a decent amount of time now. I don't think I said too much there...

One time on my way back to the office from the rural class, I rode in the back of the pick-up truck, because some of the students we were taking into town don't have papers, and apparently Thai police stop trucks like this all the time. I guess they're more likely to ask the people in the back of the truck. On the ride yesterday, a student inside the cab with me enjoyed singing "Good to See You" on the way back to town. While I was waiting for the truck that time, I played multiple games of table tennis with my students. They're quite good. The table, balls, and racquets are in not-so-great shape, of course, but they play quite a bit, I gather. The student who often wears the Barcelona jersey - he speaks less English than most of those students, but communication via ball and racquet worked pretty well. In a way, the back-and-forth-give-and-take of the table mirrors the kind of interaction I want with the students. As I told them, I have as much to learn from them as they have to learn from me. Every moment of communication - every time the ball crosses the net, if you will - changes the action of or attitude of both participants. Dewey's intersubjectivity...

I was riding back to the guest house from Kung's last night, disappointed that Ivory Coast hadn't triumphed over Holland. The streets were completely empty. What are the approximately 100,000 Burmese migrant workers doing tonight?, I wondered. Are they asleep in their houses right now, or do they lie awake, swatting mosquitos, dreaming waking dreams? What do they say to one another before they turn in for the night? What are their thoughts before their eyes close? What kind of thoughts do they think about the coming day?

In Mae Sot, it's easy to lose oneself in fantasies of self-righteousness. Look at all the good work I'm doing! one is tempted to say. For NGO workers here, life is plenty comfortable. Insulating oneself from the struggle that defines this town is so easy it can even be unconscious. I, personally, think I need to feel my environs more. Soon, I anticipate having an opportunity to do so.

(I've taken a few pictures at my workplace, but it would be foolish for me to post them. Thus, I offer some more pictures from the surrounding countryside, which is spectacularly beautiful. And some from in town, too, and some from a monastery near the border. In the picture at the top, the mountains in the background are in Burma. We're that close.)

Football And The King

2006-06-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Or, Common Ground in a Fractured World Part II

FOOTBALL

Like I said in the last post, all of the 8pm World Cup matches donated their first 20 or so minutes of television coverage to reporting on the coronation ceremonies located primarily in Bangkok. Thus, two incredibly unifying ideas dissolve into one another: football and the king. The former connects people across borders around the world, and the latter connects Thais across political divisions around the country.

I had always heard that Southeast Asia is football-obsessed. And yes, the markets here sell bundles of bootleg gear, and I bought a sweet France ball in town. (At about $15, 'twas a pricey buy.) However, on the opening night of the World Cup - 9 June, for those of you who are a) American or b) newly relocated to beneath a rock - the bars were closed by around 11pm and there were few people on the streets. As it turns out, bars were ordered closed for the night for the holiday. Nevertheless, I found myself with a somewhat non-diverse group of people diversely Western. The United States, Germany, Austria, France, Holland, Australia, Northern Ireland, Colombia, and Britain were all represented in a group of people who piled in the back of two pick-up trucks - true to Thai style, with open Chang beers in hands - to go to someone's house where we watched the opening Germany-Costa Rica match on a big screen.

Every night I watch a bit of the matches, whether it's here at the guest house, at Kung's, Mae Sot Villa, etc. When I come back, the Burmese night watchman at the guest house is always tuned in. We communicate by facial expression, hand gestures, and the occasional, expressive, monosyllabic (for lack of a better word) grunts. He knows; I know. In my English class, I was having trouble drawing a response from my students on the first day. Then I brought up football and suddenly we were in the midst of a lively conversation. My students, mostly people (a majority female) who fled Burma and spent much of their lives in refugee camps, are experts on football. They love Ronaldhino. One of my students has worn a Barcelona jersey the past two days. Having established an amicable relationship about a mutual love for the world's game, today he and I played another game common to much of the non-American world: table tennis. (I won. Haha.)

I've never met so many people from all over the world as here in Mae Sot. Oftentimes these chance introductions occur in party settings, at NGO meetings, etc. And whenever I'm lacking for a conversation piece, I always turn to football, and it never fails me.

A final anecdote. On my way back to the guest house from a game of ultimate frisbee with some French people and a Colombian (I'm permanently staying away from using names from now on, by the way.), I got lost and wound up at the edge of a football field. On one edge of the field was some sort of large warehouse - perhaps a garment factory, since more than 10,000 Burmese "illegals" work in Mae Sot sweatshops - and on the other side was a rickety fence with a stream. The goals were more or less two-dimensional, with wooden posts forming a simple rectangle, and no nets. At one end of the field was an open, thatched structure where several Burmese were squatting, some were standing, watching the game. Only one team seemed to have common jerseys, and plenty of players were without shoes. I couldn't tell what material the ball was made from, but the field itself was full of holes and that stream wandered through it a bit, too. There were at least the standard 22 on the field, but I didn't count. I watched for a while, amazed at the enthusiasm on the field and glad for what must be a welcome diversion from the immense struggle of these players' everyday lives.

In a world seemingly driven by divide-and-rule campaigns like the War on Terror, divisions of all kinds within the human species seem to be increasing, not decreasing. Post-modern fragmentation takes its place in world history. Visions of unity, then, - expressions of commonality, evocations of oneness - become something akin to forms of resistance, testaments to the sometimes eloquence of the "natural course of things." Football and the King: a two-part prayer for common ground.

Long Live the King, and Ole, Ole, Ole!

The Mexico-Angola match is about to begin. I'm hoping for Angola.

(The sports shops in town sell quite a bit of football gear. Top picture.)

Football And The King

2006-06-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

Or, Common Ground in a Fractured World Part I

THE KING

As I mentioned in a previous post, last Friday and the subsequent Monday and Tuesday were declared a national holiday in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the King's coronation. The way people here rally around their King is quite awe-inspiring to an American like myself. Beginning on 9 June and proceeding through 15 June, every single front page of The Nation - the leading English-language newspaper in Thailand - was devoted entirely to showing love and respect for the King. "King of Hearts"; "Our Beloved King"; "A Royal Celebration"; etc. I wish I had the papers in front of me: the selection of headlines is really quite remarkable.

My conclusion? Let's import monarchy to the United States.

Mae Sot was a sea of yellow shirts the entire last week. I bought mine for 130 baht - about $4 - and have thoroughly enjoyed feeling a part of the common experience. Such a coming together I have never before witnessed. One headline in The Nation - maybe 3 or 4 pages inside of it - read something to the effect of "Political Quarreling On Hold For King's Holiday." That seems to me to be the most valuable part of the entire coronation holiday - its (apparently) wholesale transcendence of politics. The April elections here were extraordinarily divisive, and the front page of today's Nation, the first in a week not to be drowned in the color yellow, reported 40 separate bombings in the southern Thailand. Nevertheless, the people here were glued to their televisions to watch the celebrations in Bangkok. Coverage of the coronation events even pre-empted the first 20-30 minutes of every 8pm World Cup match during the holiday. The Brits, perhaps less impressed by monarchy, were also not impressed with sacrificing football for the King.

When I say the US needs a monarchy, then, - and I've said it several times over the past few days - I'm really only about 60% kidding. As for that other 40%, well - one needs only take stock of the bitter divisions in the United States to see what a tonic some unity could be. I'm not talking political unity, either; Unity 08 is a pathetic farce of an idea that I hope will never come to any kind of fruition. I'm talking about a unity that is fundamentally *apolitical*, something that would completely and utterly transcend politics - something the entire country really could share. There are, of course, plenty of reasons why finding this kind of common ground would be difficult or even impossible in the United States, but I personally have a strong hunch that George Washington was on a mission from God. And no one can argue with the Divine Right of Kings. Rewriting national history seems to be a daily agenda item for the Bush administration, so I ask: Why stop now?

(That picture shows just one of the shops selling the yellow t-shirts on sale for the holiday; nearly every street stall and storefront vendor is offering these shirts. This particular vendor is in the Day Market.)

World Cup Heartbreak

2006-06-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

Team USA, RIP. What a tough night at Kung's. This match was really really hard to watch. To see America still very much adrift in the world's game - what a tough night.

Andrew Canales, from ESPN: "It's time for the flag to fly in their hearts, even if it's not painted on the bus. The sports clichés are there because sometimes they are real. It's time to put up, or shut up. Because in this case, it really is all about the ball, and about knowing what to do with it at the right time. Nothing else matters. Win, or go home."

Photo from NYT.

(I'm missing some of my camera gear, otherwise I'd have tons more posts up right now. Football, the King, Mae Sot generally, migrant schools, etc. Soon, hopefully.)

The First Few Days

2006-06-09T04:12:00.000-07:00

My internship was supposed to start yesterday, but some confusion over phone numbers and meetings prevented my commencement. So I've basically been hanging out, exploring the town a bit, doing a lot of reading, etc. Reading-wise, I finished "The Glass Palace" and began two others: Galeano's "Soccer in Sun and Shadow" and Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy." Galeano's an awe-inspiring writer, pure and simple. That Descartes fellow, though - dunno bout him.

Today I went with yet another Burmese artist - there seem to be an abundance of them here - for a little tour. He took me to SAW, which stands for Social Action for Women. The organization began as a women's group but has really expanded in quite a few ways. They have a school with more than 200 hundred students now, a safe house for women in danger, a crisis center for women, an orphanage, and plenty of other services as well. Primarily SAW serves the migrant worker population, and they are one of the first organizations that began to do so. My internship won't begin until Wednedsay now - Thailand declared today, Monday, and Tuesday a national holiday for the 60th anniversary of the King's coronation - so I will return to SAW to hang with the kids, help out a bit, etc. early next week.

Then I went to the artist's house, where he showed me quite a collection of his work. It's mostly charcoal pieces with some pastels, focusing on monks, children, and students. Tomorrow night he'll be auctioning a piece along with two other Burmese artists to raise funds for the Free Burma Rangers. I really, really liked their work. They also run a small art school. My tour guide and I passed a student on the street who said he'd just won first prize in an art contest today - my guide was very proud, as this student is a student of his.

Since my last post, I'm planning on being a little more careful about names, so I'll leave more people anonymous. I also realized I probably shouldn't post pictures of myself. Ah! - the luxuries of political tomfoolery.

(The top picture - at least I think it'll come up as the top one - I took at the "Day Market," possibly my favorite part of Mae Sot so far. I bought a pair of bootleg Arsenal shorts there today. The bottom picture is from just outside of Mae Sot. Mountains surround the town on all sides, it seems, and rice paddies extent in every direction. Praise the longyi.)

Settling In At Mae Sot

2006-06-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

Wow - there's so much to catch up on. I'll try to be brief.

The flight was incredibly painless. They even had Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as one of the inflight movie selections - along with The Constant Gardener and The Big Wednesday, a terrible, terrible surfing movie from the 1970s with some really amazing surfing footage.

I thought I was gonna be all savvy getting from the airport to my hotel in BKK, but I was out-savvied by the taxi driver, surely one of the savviest species around. My plan was to insist on the meter, but no luck. I insisted three times, only to be rebuffed three times with the claim that "big cabs" - ours was kind of SUVish - don't use meters. So I overpaid. Ah well. The hotel was beautiful, clean, etc, but a mere stopping point.

In the morning, after a somewhat fitful, jet-lagged attempt at sleep, I hit up the BKK Sky Train to the Mo Chit station, where I realized I basically didn't know where I was going. I knew I was looking for a bus terminal that would offer buses to Mae Sot, but I didn't know its name, how to get there, etc. After a long, difficult, pseudo-English conversation with some lifesavers at the Sky Train ticket counter, I found out the name of the bus terminal. None of the taxis down on the street could understand me, though, so I wrote it on a sheet of paper and finally someone said yes. A woman from the south of France - traveling through Southeast Asia for the next several months - joined me in the taxi. At the bus terminal - The Northern Bus Terminal - I tracked down my ticket booth, paid for my ticket, and proceeded to wait 8 hrs for my bus to leave at 21:00. It was hot. Plus I had my huge hiking bag and my smaller day-hike bag. I couldn't so much as buy a bottle of water without hauling about 75 pounds with me. I read until I got sleepy, at which point I crashed on the floor in the vicinity of someone reading Vanity Fair. Should I strike up a conversation with her? I decided to let my eyes close instead. Before I boarded my bus, I saw her a few more times. I had some amazing Thai fried rice in the terminal. Mmmm - Thai food.

The bus ride was overnight, air-conditioned, cramped, generally excellent, sleep-inducing, etc. I slept well. We stopped at some sort of market around 1:00 before continuing on to Mae Sot. As we rolled into this sizable town, the sun was rising, silhouetting the mountains ringing us on all sides. I got out of the bus, realizing I didn't know whether or not my guest house was yet open. It was about 5:30. I assumed it was not, though I tried calling, only to be defeated by a very uncooperative pay phone. Taxi drivers were hounding me to get in with them, as I was clearly the most obvious of prey. I wasn't sure what to do - Would I be able to just hang out on the street until my guest house would open? - and rather stressed (tired, too) when somewhat "out of nowhere" (i.e. from an arriving bus) the Vanity Fair reader from the bus terminal magically appeared. Did I need a ride? I supposed I did (playing it cool, you know how it is). A definite relief.

(Her name). From Montreal. The person who came to pick her up was fine with me jumping in, too, and they dropped me off at the guest house. I hung here for a while, reading, meeting people who were up and about, until eventually my room opened up. (I am so lucky to be here. I hope that comes across.) As I was busy unpacking my wares, (name) - the incredibly friendly person who seems to be part-manager-part-everyone's-best-friend - said a friend had come by. She of Montreal took me on a little tour of the town, we had lunch, etc. It turns out she and I are doing really similar work. We also know many of the same people. She was even at the US Campaign for Burma conference in April, where, she says, she remembers me introducing myself as in need of contacts for my upcoming summer in Mae Sot. It's incredibly reassuring that she's around. (I am a definite outsider here.)

This is a very superficial narrative. I plan on offering something more reflective soon. Quickly, some impressions - the market, particularly. She of Montreal and I dodged motorbikes and dipped into street stalls in this narrow, winding assemblage of vendors occupying a few blocks of the town. There were definitely some disturbing products in the raw meat/fish category, as well as some really mouth-watering displays of (cooked) food. Colorful chaos, with an easy breeze carrying a pleasant aroma. (The durien - spelling? - interrupted some of that pleasant aroma.)

Finally... I was talking with a Burmese painter who also works as a medic at Dr. Cynthia's famed Mei Tao Clinic down the road. I told him my father's name and he said Oooh! High society - a city boy, yes? I had to agree, more or less. (Hi dad!) He must be very wealthy, the painter said, basing his observation on the name only. Then I said his mother - my grandmother, of course - knows Dr. Cynthia. The manager here overheard, and he asked me her name. I told him. Ah!, he said. He knew of her husband, a.k.a. my grandfather. The manager knew all about him, but he expressed his knowledge hesitantly, as if he personally was not quite okay with the work my grandfather did in the 1950s. (My grandfather worked in education in Burma.) I can tell they've sort of pegged me as an upper-class Burman, which, I suppose, is not incorrect. I don't think that's bad that they see me that way, though - they all seem very friendly. The manager seems particularly proud of the fact that I'm interning with the (NGO that will remain nameless) - Burmese need people like you, he says.

One final coincidence from a day full of coincidences. Another lodger here grew up on 5th Avenue (he admits it sheepishly) before moving to Boulder, Colorado. I told him I spent a year in Utah. I have to ask, then, he said. Are you the Alta type or the Snowbird type? I smiled: I spent that year as a liftie at Alta, I answered. I am the Alta type. I could tell he appreciated that.

So far, I could ask for nothing better. I'll stop now, as this is quite a long post. I'm sitting outside on their veranda with the guy from 5th Ave. That easy breeze is keeping me very comfortable. So I'll be in touch quite a bit, I expect. If you've made it to the end of this message, please leave me a comment! Let me know how you are...

(One picture is the road leading into the "downtown" section of Mae Sot, and the other is a random stand-up advertisement thought I found visually interesting. Cheers!)

2006-06-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

From Joyce's "Portrait"... :

26 April: Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

27 April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

Leaving New York

2006-06-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

If you're checking this for the first time, welcome. I plan on trying to force myself to publish at least once a week while I'm at the Thai-Burma border, where I'll be interning with the (NGO that will remain unnamed). I'll be teaching English to staff and interns, and if I'm lucky, I'll be able to teach at the refugee camps, as well.

There's one rule: PLEASE DO NOT USE MY NAME if you respond to any of my posts. There is some slight chance it could jeopardize the work I'm hoping to do this summer. Unlikely, yes, but possible nonetheless. Clearly anyone with half a brain could track my name easily enough, but still - the type of people I'm worried about don't half a brain.

I'm skeptical of blogs - namely because they're severely impersonal - but there are a few reasons why I think this format could work. For one, blogs are not exclusive. Anyone can see this by word of mouth, without a password, without a personal connection, etc. Furthermore, I can continue to make use of this when I return to the US and when I go to Mongolia in the spring (crossing fingers). So there is an element of permanence at work in my decision-making, as well. Lastly, I just really think it could work. I think there is potential for multi-personal discourse in the response section that is absent in email communication. I really want people to leave me comments, too, so I won't feel lonely!

Enough about blogs.

This is my last night in New York. I've been having a really hard time trying to make this trip real to myself, and I've been trying to figure out why. Certainly a ridiculously stressful finals season had something to do with it, but even since I've been home, I've had trouble imagining what my summer will be like. Even now, the fact that I will be in Bangkok in less than 48 hours kind of blows my mind.

One reason for this has to have something to do with my family background. Southeast Asia, to me, is a place perpetually shrouded in a mythical mist. The only stories I hear about it are couched in a willful idealism. Mango trees, mohinga (a type of fish soup), and golden pagodas figure prominently in my family lore. How am I to gain any true understanding of the world I am about to join? Even stories of political repression exist within the framework of the democracy movement, a movement that is - especially in its emphasis on non-violence - singularly idealistic.

Another reason for my inability to make real to myself the trip I am about to undertake touches on, I think, global hierarchy. The "developing world" - a term with which I am deeply uncomfortable, by the way - is nearly invisible to the "developed world." How could I possibly know what to expect? If I were to go Germany, Spain, or Italy, for example - three other countries I've never visited - I would have far less trouble being able to imagine my trip. Even China, I would guess, would be easier to imagine. Quite simply, places like Burma and Thailand - along with, certainly, much of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South and Central America, etc. - don't exist in the popular imagination of the so-called West. And to the small extent that they do, they exist as visions of poverty, grainy evocations of struggle and despair, condemned to places of hyperbole - like dramatic photojournalism projects, sensationalist films, overwrought newscasts, etc. - rather than reality. I don't like the metaphor of a divided world - binaries are inherently simplistic - but I can't help thinking I will be crossing some sort of threshold when I board my flight tomorrow.

I've been oscillating back and forth between a happy excitement and a nervous apprehension. Once I've reached Mae Sot and settled into some kind of routine, I think I will be much relieved. I do think I need some disruption, though, in my quietly comfortable life.

From one picture to the other, I set out. (I'm not sure what order they're in.) Please forgive, if you would be so kind, one last Kerouac quote: "So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless, and dont be sorry - "

Summer Reading List

2006-06-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

"The Glass Palace," by Amitav Ghosh
"Moby Dick," by Herman Melville
"On the Road," by Jack Kerouac
"Mexico City Blues," by Jack Kerouac
"Guerrilla Warfare," by Che Guevara
"The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca," by FG Lorca
"Soccer in Sun and Shadow," by Eduardo Galeano
"Discourse on Method" and "Meditations on First Philosophy," by Descartes

Note: Fanon and Milton got cut at the last second when I realized there's just no way I could have made it to them.

Also, for the record, this is my third time reading "On the Road." It's good for the soul. I also plan to do some writing this summer, and Kerouac has a way of putting me in the mood. Kerouac's own advice to a friend about writing: "Don't be afraid to try benzedrine: start writing about 30 minutes after you've taken benzedrine, have mucho hot coffee, cup after cup, beside you (a Samovar!) and your cigarettes right there at hand...and wirte almost with your eyes closed, not thinking of punctuation or capitals or anything, that comes later when you type of doublespace for manuscript neat."

2006-06-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

My profile picture is actually me. Ah, but I was so much older then - I'm younger than that now.