Emily's Week 10 Post – Ideas, ideas, boiling, bubbling, into new projects...

The past week has been a week of ideas. A lot of ideas jumping back and forth, new ideas for projects, bursting at the seams. This has been my week.



To follow up from last week, I had contacted a friend in Melbourne to tell him about available products here at the NGO for his business. We contacted back and forth for a bit, and then he suggested a project to me, wherein he, his high-end fashion designer friend (who designs and sells jackets that cost $500!) and a filmmaker, would come to the NGO, and run dressmaking, fashion design, marketing, pricing workshops, for ten days at the end of the year. The filmmaker would capture the journey, and use the film to promote fair trade principles and development issues in northern Thailand, at special events which would be used to also sell the NGO products. INCREDIBLE!
This led to me sitting on the kitchen floor with P’Moo and P’Aor, and mapping out the entire project: and how the current project functions. How there is actually only one woman, who is HIV positive, who has access to a sewing machine, and the others do not know how to sew. The need for two phases in the project – Phase 1 being buying sewing machines and training 18 women in basic textile design. Phase 2, being the advanced dressmaking training provided by the Australians to 12 of these women.
I assisted my friend to apply for funding for a certain funding grant, including writing the NGO referral letter and editing the application. I also skyped him and showed him around Mirror over the internet! The miracles of technology. Now there is talk of trying to get funding for sewing machines anyway, regardless of what happens with the grant. There has been a fresh injection of life into the project. The clothing/jewellery business here at the NGO has great potential for expansion, but needs significant nurturing. This upcoming project could be that!
Underwear
In addition, there have been other ideas bouncing around. For instance, some of the girls from the local village down the road, were onsite at the NGO and came to talk to Salapao. At the time, we were chilling out in the rainbow hammocks sharing ideas. Because of what she had taught them at sex education camp, they wanted clean underwear so that they would be healthy. Each of them had only about 4 pairs of underwear, that were old and with holes. They were going away to stay in the dormitory while attending school, and Salapao suspected they were also ashamed of having old underwear that people would be able to see when it is hanging up to dry after being washed. Salapao arranged with P’Moo for the girls to be given new underwear.
Sanitary products
Salapao is also keen to start a new project, where sanitary items are made available to young girls that are made of cotton and are ecologically sustainable. They are apparently a hit in Japan, and are pads that are made in all kinds of colours and prints, but are washable, reusable and cheap. Salapao wants to get a project started where these girls are provided with such items, potentially on the sex education camps. On the sex ed camp, many of the girls were asking her about sanitary items, and where they could buy them, and what they should buy. This alternative would provide the girls with an option where they could take control and be independent as well in their use of it – and not have to depend on their family for money to buy them. We discussed intensely how this project could take off, including recruiting sewers of such products in our home countries.
Field work research... about recruitment....
Then today, we went to visit a village, called Pa Moob.
We had been told that there was a girl from the village, who moved away to another city, and worked in a massage parlour. And in this massage parlour, she also offered and worked in sex work. She then returned to the village, with lots of money, and built a concrete house for her parents. And then the other parents wanted a big concrete house. She asked her friends, “Come work with me....” and now there are at least ten girls working in Bangkok or Southern Thailand. Most probably in massage parlours. Today we went to the village to research the true situation.
We sat inside a house on the bamboo floor, with pieces of clothing hanging from hooks on the wall, and all of the men sitting leaning against one wall, facing us. I noticed that Surchaay (one of the NGO staff) moved to also sit against that wall, as a way of identifying with these Lahu men. Surchaay spoke in Lahu to the men for us. We were careful not to ask directly, ‘so are people from your village involved in sex work?’ And nowhere was it stated explicitly. But it was made implicit as we were told that the girls worked in massage parlours. For me, it was as though the pages of my coursebook reader for Anthropology 360 were coming alive. I thought of the articles talking about girls from the North of Thailand moving to Pattaya to work, and I thought of these girls that we were hearing about, living and working in Bangkok and the south of Thailand, and my heart was sad.
It seemed that so many areas of life were stacked against them. We were hearing about their schooling – and how they could not afford to study further, because they are poor. I know that the cost of schooling is often so prohibitive, with even just the cost of textbooks, stationery and uniforms. Within families, the male would usually farm, and the woman produce handicrafts. The men work on rented land – which also links to their lack of Thai citizenship, as it is due to their lack of Thai nationality that they are unable to own land. The lack of opportunities for the villagers also seemed so unfair – to be involved in agriculture or handicrafts, that are not even being marketed at a high price – seemed so limited in choice, so limited in ideals of career, or desires to participate in a different way in society.
We were walking down the hill, on a concrete road that was baking in the sun, and three beautiful little girls came running from afar, calling ‘Hello, hello’. With faded clothes and short black shiny hair cut in bobs around their faces, they ran upto us. Later they followed us, dashing down the hill, with fistfuls of handicrafts in their hand, to try to sell to us. They were in first and second grades of school, and their mums had made the handicrafts. One bag, embroidered with a silver sequinned elephant, they said cost ten baht. Such handbags are sold for at least double this price in the market. P’Pi talked to them, while looking at the handicrafts, asking them where they went to school and their names. We didn’t buy the handicrafts.
As we walked down the path, back to the car, the little girls called out to us repeating phrases and making gestures. I asked Salapao what they were saying. Apparently, their cry was, “Give me money, give me money”. Who could have taught them that? I asked. She said, that probably tourists, who come to the village, had encouraged the practice by giving them money. But then she said, ‘At least they’re not saying “I’m poor, I’m poor, give me money.”’
As they ran, I could not remove the image from my mind, that these little girls, five, six and seven years old, were one day going to grow up into the girls that moved away to the Big City to massage the farang and Thai men that would come to them seeking sexual favours. These girls are the next generation of such a cycle, unless it is broken by education.