Underwhere? With the underaged.

So, it wasn’t until my friend happened to mention underwear the other day, that I realized how culturally insensitive I am.

I have been handing over dirty…and rather sweaty…laundry to this lovely Burmese woman in my neighborhood for oh…the past year. And every time I collect my clothes, they come back smelling of gentle soap, neatly pressed and folded. Even my underwear comes back looking like a crisp linen napkin you might be served at a five star restaurant. Now, although I am forever grateful for this service after having done the hand washing thing for a few months and never getting anything quite clean, it was becoming a bit expensive. So, I decided to try to get a monthly rate out of her.

Now seeing that my limited Burmese of “Hot no?” and “I don’t understand” and “grandma/grandpa” wasn’t going to suffice a business negotiation of this matter, the next time I stopped at the laundry shop, I called my colleague/neighbor/and friend Sawthwee, to negotiate for me. Now to understand the awkwardness that is about to ensue, you need to understand a bit about Sawthwee.

Sawthwee is a small framed, mild-mannered Karen man who is going on 30 but looks like he’s rounding the corner of 19. He is kind and soft-spoken and softly giggles when discussing something that may embarrass him or when he has no idea how to respond, which seems to happen a lot when I talk with people…hmmm. He is one of the few people I work with who lives in my neighborhood and therefore, according to me, was a good person to talk with my laundry lady. Oh, and he’s also fluent in Burmese, being from Burma and all.

So, standing in the blazing sun with the “laundry lady”, as I suppose she has been deemed, I call Sawthwee and ask him to ask her if I can pay by the month and if so, how much would it cost. Two simple questions requiring, according to my calculations, approximately two minutes worth of conversation, or 2 Baht in phone minutes. So, I pass my phone to L Squared and let the negotiations begin. Well after 2 minutes, I begin to get fatigued standing there in the sun and take a seat on the bench beside the shop. After 10 minutes, I start to wonder what on earth they could be discussing…her family? His new motorbike? The political situation? And then I hear her laughing hysterically and I immediately discount my previous theories of their discussion. Now I’m worried. They couldn’t possibly be talking about me. I’ve been nothing but a loyal, respectful customer this past year, hardly something to laugh about no matter what type of dull sense of humor one may have. Finally after about 15 minutes, a waterfall of sweat down my back, and the point of needing to buy a new phone card, L Squared passes the phone back to me and I have the following conversation with Sawthwee:

ME: So? What was all that about?
SAWTHWEE: Yeah…she says that’s fine. You can pay by the month for 500 Baht.
ME: And? What else did you talk about.
SAWTHWEE: Uh…nothing really.
ME: Well, in that case, there’s another thing I wanted to ask you…a sort of cultural question. I was talking with my friend the other day and she said she never gives her underwear to the laundry lady because they see it as extremely unclean and disrespectful. Is that true? Because she’s been washing my underwear for a year now.
SAWTHWEE: Actually, that’s what we were talking about (nervous giggle, as he tends to do when talking about an uncomfortable subject matter).
ME: (Thinking…”oh so you weren’t going to tell me…thanks!”) Well, is it okay?
SAWTHWEE: Actually no, not really. She can’t touch it and neither can the washing machine, so she has a little girl clean it by hand.
ME: What!?!?! Not only have I offended this nice old lady, but I’m endorsing child labor! I had no idea…I’m so sorry.
SAWTHWEE: (Nervous giggle)

So, after that I decided I had to apologize profusely to this woman. And suddenly realized (again) as I was attempting to do so, that my Burmese wouldn’t cover such an apology. So I resorted to the tried and true charades method of bowing deeply with my hand over my heart and pointing to my crotch.

Guess I’m back to hand washing my knickers. I think that’s the least I can do for that little girl.

Sex Eggucation - Lost in translation

Today was the graduation ceremony of my 22 students this past year. And i can't even begin to describe how emotional it is to see them leave. After being together for this past year, living and learning together, and then to see them off to their own individual and uncertain futures, working for Community -based organizations, going back to their refugee camps and villages, and some going inside Burma, has got me...well...teary-eyed. However, through this emotional storm, I can't help but think of this one story that a student of mine, Kyin Nu, told me at my birthday celebration this past January.

Kyin Nu works for a rather renowned medical clinic here in Mae Sot, and part of her job in the past was working as a backpacker medic. The backpacker medics would go deep into the jungles of Burma to train refugees who are currently living there in basic medical care, prevention, and sexual education. One lesson in the sexual education training is to teach the participants how to use a condom. Because "learn by experience" is such a buzz phrase here on the border...and in many educational programs, they had decided to show the participants how to put on a condom by using local realia...the eggplant. Personally, I think it's a much more realistic replica than the Chiquita bananas used in the US these days, but that's a whole other website. Anyways, they trained their participants seemingly successfully as they had villagers of all ages skillfully putting condoms on eggplants of all shapes and sizes. It is even rumored one of the village leaders could do it with her teeth, but again, you will have to visit the aforementioned website for pics of that lady. So, the backpacker medics packed up and trekked back to Mae Sot, high-fiving each other all the way down the mountain on a successful training.

Now, as responsible trainers, the backpacker medics of course planned to re-visit this jungle community to assess if health needs were being met and if in fact, there were fewer cases of STDs and unwanted pregnancies. They were greeted by the villagers with enthusiasm and proclamations of how these rubber tubes had worked miracles for them. Hurriedly they led the backpacker medics to their garden to prove the effectiveness of their previous training. The backpacker medics stopped dead in their tracks, hearts sunk, and eyes affixed on an entire acre of ripe, plump, purple eggplants....all covered with condoms.

Please...just shower!

To many, travel is a tool for self-discovery, finding your purpose in this world, getting to know yourself after a crushing relationship, figuring out what the hell to do with your life after your “five year plan” has come to an end. And it seems I’m no different. However, rather than discovering my true calling or my soul mate, I’m discovering more and more about hygienic habits with each passing country. My first lesson was in Morocco (please refer to “Shower With Your Pans On,” DATE). In Thailand, however, my bathing self-awareness was a bit more poignant and pungent.

I have been attending this yoga class quite regularly for the past couple of months and take a certain amount o pride in the fact that I am the only “farang” (white foreigner) in a class of about 20 Thai women. I think this sense of pride comes from the fact that many expats like to think they’ve crossed cultural barriers, broken down their foreignness into something that appears “local”…especially to the locals themselves, but that’s for another entry. Actually, I really enjoy the class. Not only for it’s physical benefits, but thus far it is the only Thai I know with any amount of certainty. I can now confidently say “in and out” and “other side” and “breathe” in almost perfect Thai! But these minor feats are nothing compared to how this class has helped me along my way down a path of self-discovery.

So one day, I go to class and the only lady who has pretty good English hurriedly approaches me and requests that I meet her in the bathroom. I politely oblige to this simple request, but then got a sudden sense of urgency as I passed the yoga instructor excitedly waving me in to the bathroom. What could all this excitement be about? Did someone need a tampon or an extra pair of hands to assist them in pulling on their skin-tight spandex? Or maybe they just wanted to compliment me on my insane flexibility and shear strength. Okay, it was probably the tampon, but I soon discovered that I was wrong on all accounts. So once I was successfully ushered into the restroom alone with Dao (the English speaker) everything became quite clear…

Dao: So….(nervous laugh)…..sometimes before we do yoga….we like to shower.

Me: (perplexed)

Dao: (Nervous laugh continued and actually kept going for the entirety of this conversation. So, I’ll spare you the repetition and let you insert it at your leisure for the remainder of this dialogue) Well, I mean….it’s just nice to be clean before yoga.

Me: (Light bulb flickers) Oh! Oh my god….do I smell?

Dao: Well, there have been some complaints…

Me: (Now, I’m the one nervously laughing) Oh my god, I am so so sorry….I….of course I’ll shower….but I don’t have a towel.

Dao: Oh….no problem. We have everything ready (as she motions to a chair with a neatly folded bath towel, topped with shampoo, soap, deodorant, and baby powder—the Thais love their powder).

Me: Oh. Well, it looks like you’ve really thought this through.

Dao: Well, we have been discussing it for a couple of weeks now and I just decided, ya know what, I’m gonna do this today.

Me: Uh…thank you…I really appreciate it.

So, I showered and believe you me…I showered like I’ve never showered before. The brilo pads from the hammam had nothin’ on the ferocity with which I was scrubbing my epidermis. After my full body sanitation, I went to the changing room and began putting my yoga clothes back on. Well, Dao had other plans. She presented me with a “gift” from the entire class consisting of a little pink and black sports bra and spandex to match. Now let me remind you, that I would normally not be caught dead in such a fashionable workout ensemble, but I had been enjoying this yoga class so much that I relinquished all wardrobe boundaries and slipped into the color coordinated clothing.

Once I finished powdering every crevice of my body, applying my new stick of deodorant, and dressing up for yoga, it was time to get to class and exercise. Now mind you, class usually begins promptly at 6PM, however all 20 women or so had been ever so kind to wait for me to finish my bathing bonanza to begin. So at 6:15, I entered a room full of patiently waiting Thai ladies seated in lotus position, and I got the sudden feeling of being on one of those makeover stories on the Lifetime channel, making my grand entrance. This feeling was only accentuated when my fellow yogis turned to evaluate the fruit of their labors and greeted me with broad smiles and about 40 thumbs up. Their work was a success! The smelly, foreign, hippie had been transformed into a jasmine smelling, powdered-faced, dress to impress bathing butterfly. All I needed to do was….just shower.

Burma Byte #2

So I'm sitting in Burmese class, in which I am the only student, learning about my fruits and vegetables, so I can go to the market and ask for an orange, rather than hold my hands up as if I'm holding something small and spherical, and then proceed to get frustrated with the vendor because, for some reason, they can't discern that this means "orange" and not apple, or potato, or small desert mole. So, I find this lesson very valuable, but I was never prepared for the insight it would give me into the world view of Jews.

My teacher is writing each vegetable in English, and the phonetic translation of that word in Burmese. He goes down the list...spinach, carrot, tomato, cabbage, cucumber, Jew's ear, lett--Wait! What? Jew's ear? What the hell is that and why would I ever want to add it to my stir fry? My teacher goes on to enlighten me that this is what the Burmese call mushrooms...you know...because they look like a Jew's ear. I'm wondering if this guy has ever met a Jew and if so, feeling sorry for the poor chap who had a fungus like that of a mushroom sprouting from his ear. So, Burmese class ends and I a little more confident with my grocery shopping a little bit more perplexed by what it is the Burmese could possibly have against the Jews.

Burma Byte #1

My students are obsessed with a computer game to practice their typing skills; however, I think it's the fact that you kill zombies by making their heads explode the faster you type a word that really draws their attention. Anyway, I was talking with a few students in the computer room one day and they told me a bit about their computer class in university in Burma. Apparently, there were 3oo students in one class with one computer. Yes...one computer. So, the students would file behind the sole computer in a line that wrapped around the room, out the door, and into a surrounding field. The teacher would stand next to the computer, monitoring, as each student passed the computer, sticking out their forefinger, and pressing one key. The students would file through the line, typing one letter each, until class was finished. I asked my students if the teacher would tell you a specific letter to type and you had to find it on the keyboard. They said no...you just typed any letter you wanted. The reality of this story became evident as we looked around the room at the other students playing the zombie slaughtering typing game...everyone with one forefinger, erect and strong, frantically trying to type the words flying towards them on the screen.

Culture Shock Therapy

This transition from Morocco to Thailand has been smooth for the most part with an occasional rough tuk tuk ride. But mostly it has been therapeutic. Let’s just say, leaving Morocco has been akin to a bad break-up. And with any bad break-up comes the over sized, over weight, break-up baggage. It wasn’t always easy to see the baggage I was accruing during my two year stint in Ifrane, but after a couple of months in Thailand, it seems I have found the baggage claim and spinning around on the conveyer belt are some slightly damaged goods. I tend to travel light, but for this move from Africa to Asia, I toted one professional briefcase, a social duffle bag, and a personal carry-on. For starters, let’s finger in the combination on that professional briefcase and unpack.

I learned quickly, albeit slightly painfully, that at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, hierarchy dictates everything. There’s the expected stratification of administration, faculty, and staff and the anticipated, but not so easy to accept prestige of the “old boys club” and the astonished faces as if a woman giving her professional opinion was similar to watching a dog speak. I can’t count the number of times I heard the joking remark “she just needs to get married” while discussing a female student having difficulties in class, and witnessed a bright female colleague of mine get hammered with inane questions as she presented her own research. And while fortunately not all of these hierarchical haps were gender-based, unfortunately I saw foreign colleagues of mine bow their heads, seal their lips, and look away when I was looking for support on a grievance we all shared. And now what does this all amount to in my new working environment? A sometimes overbearing presence when giving my opinion in a meeting (where shockingly everyone’s opinion is not only heard but valued), and an unnecessary dose of questioning and skepticism in an organization that has proven many times to be quite flat and transparent. So, I continue to shuffle through the professional paperwork I lugged with me from Morocco, but am grateful to have received the memo that reminds me of the happier and healthier work environment I now find myself in.

Now, we can unzip that social duffle bag. It wasn’t uncommon to wander through the medina of Fez or Marrakech in search for a traditional woven rug to bring home to mom or the leather slippers Rainbow Bright might have donned had she been Moroccan, and get charged ten or even twenty times the amount a local would pay. This we expected and personally, I often accepted if I was willing to pay that price. This blatant form of trickery (as some tourists would say) or economy (as Moroccans would put it) was so common that I often found myself bartering over a kilo of cherries until I had “successfully” talked the guy down a whopping 80 cents. But that’s just the way things were and well, after two years, I had it deeply ingrained in my head that everyone was out to rip me off. So, of course, by transitive logic, the market men and women of Thailand were out to get me for every last Baht. But I wouldn’t let those smiling faces pull one over on me. Nooo sireee! They had no idea that I had just come from the land of bartering boot camp and knew all the tricks. So, it all started and pretty much ended when I was biking about in search of bananas.

Bananas in Thailand are as common as stray dogs with mange. So as I biked past a dozens of stands, I was looking for the perfectly ripened ones (for me, that means just starting to brown). I pulled over to a small stand manned by a little old Thai lady and asked her in flawless Thai, “These, how much?” She replied, “Ten Baht.” Then, true to my Moroccan training, I gave her a gasp clearly indicating that I know those bananas are 8 Baht and that she’s trying to squeeze a whole 2 Baht (6 cents) outta me, but that I aint no lemon and won’t just pass over the extra cash cause I’m foreign. Then (as also learned in training), I turned on my heal and “showed her” by walking away and going to the next shop. Same thing happened there and eventually I went home with no bananas, only later to be informed by a friend that green bananas are 8 Baht and ripe bananas are 10 Baht. It seems the Thai don’t have quite the same “business sense” as Moroccans. Good for me, but maybe bad for business.

Finally, let’s see what the x-ray detected in my personal carry-on. So, one day I’m leaving the office on my bike when I hear a motor bike slowly approaching form behind. Now, I know some have compared me to Lance Armstrong on the bicycle, but it’s just fact that motorbikes can go faster and pass me. However, this guy was just lingering until he pulled up beside me and dished out my favorite pick up line, “Hello, how are you?” and this is how the conversation ensued…(please not that my personal thoughts are italicized)

Me: Yeah, I know where this is going “Fine.” (rolling my eyes)

Him: “Where you go?”

Me: Uh huh. Just as I suspected. Burmese men are just like Moroccans. Next he’ll be asking where I live. “Home.” (said curtly)

Him: “Where you live?”

Me: Yup…case in point. So, now I’m supposed to offer you a fun night with me in my home. Is that how you see this playing out? “I’m not telling you.” (while giving a mean laugh)

Him: “Oh…sorry. You work for World Education, right?”

Me: Now, this is a new turn??? How does he know this?

Him: I did Wide Horizons Program two year ago.

Me: Oh crap…the program I teach! He’s just like one of my students.

Him: “I just wondering how your classes is going this year.”

Me: Oh my god, I’ve turned into one of those women who thinks that every time a man says hello, it means he just wants to get her in bed. And here he’s just trying to be nice and welcoming and I’ve acted like such a b---- and perpetuated that stereotype of the “cold American woman” and… “What’s your name?” (said as sweetly as I possibly can at this point while sounding sincere)

Him: “George.”

Me: “Nice to meet you George.”

So, morale of the story…I need to abandon the personal defenses I have put up in the battle field of horny Moroccan men looking for visas, and just answer the man politely, “I’m fine…really, I’m going to be just fine.”

There's an elephant in the room and no one wants to talk about it.

I visited a refugee camp today. It was my first. Not sure if this is mathematically possible, but the learning curve since I have come to the border has been so vertical I feel like I’m hanging from the ceiling by my nails. Processing what I hear, what I see, what I read is almost too much right now. And on top of that, do I learn Thai? Burmese? Karen? I can’t even order noodle soup in any of them, but right now that’s sort of the last thing on my mind.

Mae La refugee camp has about 55,000 Burmese refugees primarily from the Karen hill tribe, and is growing everyday. It is one of the fastest growing refugee camps on the border because of its easy access from “inside” (Burma) and the limited control the Thai and rebel armies have over the flow of people in and out of the camp. All the people coming to these camps are from many ethnic tribes in Burma: Shan, Karenni, Mon, Chin, to name a few, but they all seek refuge from the oppressive militaristic government of Burma, weather it be in the form of safety in the camp, illegally migrating into Mae Sot in Thailand, or the possibility of resettlement in a third country (the US, Norway, Ireland, etc). You can read about this situation much more extensively and accurately in books and possibly the news, but what you may not read about is what surprised me most.

Our purpose in visiting the camp today was to look at a new model of education being implemented in the Mae La camp and four other surrounding camps. Before arriving to the camp, I got a brief summary of the dynamic border situation from my boss and its ever-changing role in the lives of the people of Burma and in Thai politics. I heard about the various rebel armies from each ethnic tribe and their role in smuggling drugs across the border and human trafficking, the symbiotic relationship between the Thai and rebel armies, the illegal Burmese migrant workers living in Mae Sot, and the NGOs that have rooted them selves there in response and all their contributions to Thai economy. Corruption and fear run rampantly through all these facets of border reality, and is evident on a daily basis. But we don’t talk about these things. We can’t because these relationships are so delicate and interdependent that the shift of one has a butterfly effect on all the others. But this is not what’s surprising. As I listen to my boss give me the brief, watered-down version of the situation here, I have this picture in my head of the school as a small bamboo hut, possibly with a tin roof if they're lucky, and a large group of children from every age, with a range of prior education, and various tribes and language backgrounds learning from the one teacher in the camp who may speak one of these tribal languages (most likely Karen) and possibly a little Burmese. The picture in my mind was well… rather depressing. But upon arrival, and after a muddy hike up to the school, I met the director of the high school and the hopeless situation pictured in my head dissolved. She was a young Karen woman, fluent in English, Burmese and Karen (true of all the teachers in the camps), and took the time out of her unbelievably busy work to explain to me the new model of education they had created for the five camps. She had been educated in India and was replicating a credit-based system of high school education used there, here in the camps. The first two years of school, students would receive general education in various courses: math, science, social sciences, history, Karen, and English. Once completed, they would specialize in one of five areas (i.e. community management, business, political science), each specialty located at one of the five camps. The educators within the camps and Mae Sot had created an Institute of Higher Education to oversee the program, train teachers, and develop a curriculum that would have merit once the students and their families returned to Burma. She was extremely hopeful of this, and the aforementioned “elephant” of corruption and conflict did not seem to deter her. In fact, one issue the camp faces is Thai locals from nearby villages, entering the camps just to be educated. It was known that the education in the camps was superior to most education received in rural Thailand, and legal Thai residents were trying to get in to the camps to have a piece of this rare learning opportunity.

My preconceptions about camp life were rather droll and dreary. And this is not to say that everything is mangoes and mathematics, but really good things are happening and they’re not coming from the UN, or even entirely from NGOs….they’re coming from within. But if the metaphorical elephant has not been clearly communicated, let me end with the literal interpretation. As some colleagues from the organization and myself were feasting on cashew chicken, cat fish salad, and coconut soup at a small restaurant in the local night market, I stopped mid-slurp to stare at the gigantic elephant passing two meters from our table. But I was obviously the “newbie” in the group because no one else wanted to talk about it.