The 3rd week since the Year Out and Uni Break volunteers started. Lots has been happening; I will see what I can remember.
Jane has been getting more heavily involved with the E.Bannok shop – I think designing some new items.
Andrew has been a bit sick, but has come good again and has been a great teacher and tutor to both the ICT staff and to the “Top Kids” – local kids who come here after school to learn more English.
They are both finishing pretty soon. L And were trying to plan this weekend so they could get into Myanmar and Laos before departing Chiang Rai on Tuesday.
Kristin has also been doing great and I think went to a Karen village last night for a home stay with Nu and some others. She was also helping us dig the foundations for our new office on Thursday.
Amelia is also getting quite involved in the E.Bannok shop. Great! And helping me organizing many other tasks.
Ashleigh has been helping Jeed to prepare a proposal for a project to utilize drama to teach youth camps about various social issues.
Emily is a bit homesick at the moment but great at teaching. She has some medical research to do regarding the large incidence of kidney disease here.
Louise is also doing great with the teaching and next week will hopefully be helping us build a bio gas project in one of the villages. This will utilize pig dung to produce cooking gas and will mean the owner doesn’t have to go out collecting firewood from the forest.
Charlotte is now a member of the Thai Citizenship project and this weekend she has given up her planned holiday in Chiang Mai to instead join the team on their survey of some villages. J Great to see the volunteers really wanting to get involved with things.
Teaching English is still the main focus but this group seems to be lucky to be here at a time when we have a lot of other things going on as well.
Yesterday we all went to the temple to offer food to the monks for the start of Buddhist Lent, and then in the afternoon we went to Baan Apa, (an Akha village) where a death had recently occurred.
The elders in the village walked through the village calling for the ancestors to come and take the spirit of the dead man away to live with them.
Then later, another man chased away the bad spirits from the village, as is necessary after a death or bad event.
This is done by having a young man paint his body. He wears a big straw hat and also a large phallic symbol made from a banana tree and he runs through the village to scare and chase away bad spirits. Everyone in the village, including guests, must run away from him also so as not to get hit by his object. It is all done in a fun way, with shrieks of fear as he comes close mixed in with the laughter.
At first, as we hadn’t told the volunteers exactly what to expect, just “DON”T GET CAUGHT!!!”, they were a bit fearful and weary. But they quickly came to really enjoy the experience and perhaps understand the Akha’s way of getting the whole village together in a fun way, after such a sad event, whilst also chasing away the bad luck.
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