Emily's Week Two Blog

I have had another wonderful week! I love it here!



This past week I travelled with other volunteers to Phukai Village which was a predominantly Lahu village in the mountains. We stayed near the top of the village, in a building made entirely of bamboo.... bamboo woven floors, walls and roof. From the open verandah where we slept, at night you could see Chiang Rai town sparkling in the distance.
 
We were there as volunteers to assist with the Phukai Information Centre and the child care centre. When we arrived, there was a new building at the front of the village with plain grey cement walls that the Japanese volunteers had helped to create. Our job was to design a mural for all four walls of the building, and paint it. In a few days. In this time, we also decided to strip the inside of the child care centre and paint it. When we arrived, the child care centre was extremely grubby, with fine dust and dirt caked over everything. The walls were unpainted cement bricks covered with paper. We decided to paint the walls, which was extremely difficult, as the cement in between the bricks was so uneven we had to paint all the cracks as well as the bricks. Afterwards the others hung up the resources they had made, and the centre looked so much more clean and brighter.
 
The information centre
 
For the information centre, my friend Lisa and I designed the basic design of what would go on each wall: she designed the side wall, and I the front one (it is the one with the words on it in the photos: "Phukai Life and Culture Centre"). Then we all worked hard priming the walls, and then painting them white. For our task, we had two big tubs of white paint, a tub of bright blue, bright red and bright yellow, and two of apricot. The colour mixing feats that we achieved were amazing. We decided to paint the hills all different colours and to paint trees that would be continuous over the walls to join them. A boy from the village, Jatna, also joined us for painting. He did not speak any English but he painted the tree on the left hand side of 'my' wall. He was lovely. One night, the kids came and watched us play the game "Mafia" at the place where we stayed. The children were very shy, but then joined us for a game of murder winks. Jatna was one of the quickest to pick it up and hung around with us in the village.
 
Interviewing the village
 
Two nights, we also interviewed the head of the village. As the NGO is focused on restoring and preserving the culture of many hilltribes, we were interviewing about the village so that we could produce the answers into information in English that will be printed out and put up on the walls inside the centre. I was partnered with another volunteer and we asked questions about demographics and history. So at night, the head of the village came to meet us and we all sat down and listened to his answers spoken through Pi Ay our translator. Two facts to share with you: the average income of one person per day would not exceed 150 baht. If there was a family, only the husband would work as the mother would look after the children. That means 150 baht per family per day. As a comparator, 27 baht = 1 dollar. One night's cheap accommodation costs 100 baht, and an average meal out costs 40 baht.
 
Another fact - one that I am growing to have a deeper interest in - about 38% of the village was stateless. I.e. - they did not have a nationality. This is a basic human right, but impacts on so many other human rights eg access to education, health care (stateless persons need to pay, whereas Thai citizens don't), and work. Stateless persons cannot travel very far to work or they will get into trouble with the police.
 
I have recently (late last week) started my intern work and my first assignment is writing a funding proposal applying to make a short film about stateless people. It will aim to raise awareness about statelessness and reverse trends of discrimination against hilltribe people.
 
In the past week, I have also hiked to a waterfall, and ridden an elephant! On the weekend (which we have off), I also travelled to Chiang Mai, and walked for five hours through the Sunday Walking Market, where they closed off what must have been about 16 blocks of roads. Even though I was there five hours, I still didn't cover the whole thing!
 
I love it here. Now I am running off to teach English to a hilltribe girl who is coming here specially for a 2 hour daily intensive which starts today with just her and me. Her name is Goi and she is 24 years old.
 
The last photo is a picture of the rice field down the road from where we are, which we pass as we go to the shop.