Not goodbye, but see you soon!

When it comes to saying goodbye, Matt, Anna and Ingrid should be experts.
Let us give you a little rundown on our final week in Pali, which consisted of little more than would-be-goodbyes, loads of food and a barrage of bangles and bindis.

On Thursday evening we travelled to the other end of Pali City (100 rupees away, brought down to a much more modest 70 rupees thanks to our perfected and perhaps somewhat aggressive bargaining skills) to celebrate an Educate Girls staff member, Kalpna’s birthday with her family, friends and our beloved Tejas. I don’t think we have ever seen Anna in such high spirits as we did when the first course was brought out – a large and ornate chocolate birthday cake. It soon became clear to us that the cake fight at Anna’s own birthday a few weeks prior was not a one-off, but a typical India birthday tradition, hence the next hour was spent capturing all involved stuffing one-another’s faces with cake on camera.
Mains were followed by much dancing (if you can call Matt’s Pulp Fiction/Sexy Eyes move dancing), having our names inscribed in henna on our hands (just so that we don’t forget), and more cake.

On Friday morning we farewelled the Educate Girls office staff with samosas and soft drink, a real treat in Pali and then made our full-bellied way to Kesars restaurant to have our farewell lunch with Manju and her boys. Just when we thought we had filled every inch of every nook and cranny of every bodily cavity with food, we were whisked off on motor cycles by Sunil and Navneet to Waves Restaurant for another delicious dinner to farewell our favourite blokes from the office.

On Sunday night the motor cycles arrived again, to take us, and Tejas, to Sunil’s house for dinner and a game of dressups, in which Ingrid and Anna became the jewelled and sari-ed mannequins to Sunil’s female family members, friends and neighbours. This was followed by a lengthy Indian style ‘star shots’ photo shoot in which the girls assumed poses that were supposedly sultry, yet tasteful and modest, perhaps due to the addition of props including vases and faux flowers. Such photos are the centre-piece and pride of most Indian mantle pieces and our own can be viewed on Facebook, for those interested.

On Sunday we farewelled Kesars restaurant for the final time, with Manohar and Tejas in tow and again, a huge amount of food. Saying goodbye to Tejas and watching him ride off on the bicycle he acquired from Matt and promises to ride everyday to achieve that Bollywood 6-pack was perhaps one of the hardest and most emotional moments of the trip so far. No sugar coating required, Tejas really is one of the greatest guys we have had the pleasure of knowing!

And just when we thought we had out-farewelled ourselves, we made two trips to the office on Monday to drop off some bits and pieces (and say goodbye) and a trip to the local police station to sign out of Pali (and to say goodbye). Hugs and tears (mainly from Manju) were followed by a two hour wait for our delayed train, where we were so grateful to have some of the staff there to wave us off to Mumbai. Our 14 hour train trip was taken in a rather sombre silence, very unusual, for the three of us.

So, when it comes to saying goodbye, Matt, Anna and Ingrid should be experts. But we most certainly are not. In fact, it was a word we flat-out refused to use. The phrase on repeat in that final week in Pali was “Not goodbye, but see you soon”, and we truly hope that this is the case.

Over half way through for the Indian interns....

The New Year begins slowly....This week saw our travel-weary team manifest as a mere shadow of its former self; fatigued, recuperating and incapable of all but the most elementary of tasks. Fortunately, the lacklustre state of our collective psyche happily coincided with Rajasthan's school holidays and we accordingly faced an underwhelming workload for the week. In fact, that's a little bit euphemistic: we really had nothing work-related on our plate at all. This stagnant state of affairs was initially a pleasant reprise, enabling us to get back into our groove, but soon the excess of time and absence of creative outlets began driving us a little stir-crazy.

Fate then intervened and our world was plunged into chaos, as Manju, our beloved caretaker was stricken by a violent bout of the flu - no doubt a consequence of the bitter Indian winter, of which the locals incessantly bemoan. Tongue-in-cheek remarks about the climate aside, Manju remains in a very real state of sickness; we've been making daily house visits to deliver apples and medicine (she refuses to consume anything else). Slight signs of progress have been noted, yet despite being on the mend Manju remains bed-bound, leaving us with the perilous task of obtaining our daily meals ourselves.

Matt and Ingrid have resorted to spending the morning wandering aimlessly around the local area, clinging to the hope of being ushered into some generous individual's house and procuring breakfast via that endearing Indian hospitality we've come to know and love. Unfortunately this strategy has been a little hit-and-miss, mainly because of the disconnect between local breakfast time (~8am) and that of our own (~11am), but points for pragmatism.

Despite this semi-successful endeavour, the topic of Indian hospitality - and indeed way of life in general - has been bouncing about what little philosophical conversation our fragile minds have managed to muster lately. In particular, we've all been quite taken aback at how the local community has so instinctively banded together to support Manju during her sickness. Not once have we visited her house (which incidentally is just around the corner from our guesthouse) and found her alone; there is a constant flow of concerned neighbours and friends encircling her bedside and ensuring that every possible measure is taken to get her better. We found this a very touchingly selfless scenario to behold, and one sadly quite foreign to our own society.

India seems to exist in such a perplexing state of symbiosis; at a glance it seems like a chaotic free for all in which man, animal and nature are concurrently clawing for survival, yet upon deeper observation there is an oddly sustainable coexistence lying beneath the bedlam. While there are countless examples of this we could expound upon, one strikingly apt example came this week when we returned home to find a dead cow outside our guesthouse. At its side was one of the many stray dogs that roam the streets of Pali, muzzling into the poor bovine's exposed abdominal cavity. This grotesque sight immediately reaffirmed that initial view of India as caught in a melee of life and death; yet only moments later and a few meters aside from the carcass we then witnessed another mongrel, this time licking and cleaning the ear of a calf with apparent affection. The contrast of these two images really drove home that perennial contradiction of India; the abundance of life amidst the constant threat of death.

2011 update from the intrepid three in Pali!

2011 reached - only just!Wishing you all, somewhat belatedly, a happy and safe holiday season as we observe the halfway mark of our India adventure. We’ve decked the halls of our Pali guesthouse and chopped down a desert plant for a Christmas tree, despite being ardently warned by the locals that its white sap was poisonous (we really were quite desperate). Ingrid and Anna were dressed in traditional Rajasthani garb, bindi, mahendi, bangles and all, whilst Matt played Santa to the local kids, complete with a dismal attempt to fatten his wiry frame with a pillow tummy to enhance the jolliness of his appearance. We enjoyed a scrumptious Indian Christmas lunch with Manju and three of her sons, along with the family of Tejas, an Educate Girls staff member who, aside from being just an all-round top bloke, has already become a demi-god in the eyes of Matt and Anna for revealing the two establishments in Pali that serve meat after maintaining a meatless existence for six weeks.
Our week off began with an eight-hour sleeper bus trip to Jaipur airport along roads that caused Anna to audibly whimper from physical pain from a sustained lack of bladder relief as we drove over the numerous bumps and pot-holes. Prolonged negotiations with the airport guards followed as we attempted to convince them that we indeed had a flight to catch and were not simply there to hang out at the airport in the freezing cold at 3am. A few hours later, our holidays officially began with a flying start as we headed for Kolkata.
Oh Calcutta. We came, we saw. We treated ourselves to an English blockbuster starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp that would’ve been so woeful if it wasn’t for the constant amusement provided by the local Indian audience members. In addition to the original film, we were treated to live commentary as the plot unravelled, cheers and roars as the sexual tension built and an alternate Indian popular music soundtrack in lieu of the original, courtesy of mobile ringtones. As we headed towards the train station to take our leave, it suddenly struck Matt that we didn’t have any visual record of our visit, and he proceeded to start taking photos of the cityscape from the taxi. So, of course, we were then pulled over by a lone Indian policeman, who threatened to arrest Matt for taking photos of government buildings (or something along those lines) if he didn’t cough up a 3000 rupee fine. Verbal fisticuffs ensued and dare we say it, for the first time, all three Antipodeans were poised and ready to inflict some serious damage upon another human being.
Our next stop was Varanasi, a city on the Ganges that is one of the holiest places in India, and also arguably one of the most disorientated, with its maze of alleyways. We took a boat ride along the Ganges, passing by numerous ghats and witnessing the ceremonial cremation of the dead on its banks. We were expecting to be overwhelmed by touts and hordes of Hindu pilgrims washing away their sins, but the city was surprisingly calm despite the heavy police presence following a bombing that took place in the city mere weeks ago.
By the time we reached Agra, an integral part of most travellers’ agendas, we were all at varying stages of sickness (read: near death) from a combination of consecutive overnight travel on the frigid and hard sleeper carriages (it costs $5 to cross hundreds of kilometres overland so we’ll just let you imagine the conditions), an almost protein-less diet and the good old Delhi belly. Matt, who has already visited the Taj, took some time out to rest whilst Anna and Ingrid spent one full hour appreciating one of the modern wonders of the world to take some obligatory touristy shots, before also calling it quits.
And then the journey from hell really began. Our train to Udaipur, the stunning lake city and our preferred New Year’s Eve destination, was cancelled at the last minute. A train to an alternate destination was delayed by five hours. Matt deployed his bargaining skills to find a driver to take us to Udaipur and three changes of vehicles and four drivers later, we managed to make it a whole 50km in 3 hours from Agra due to heavy fog. Convinced that driving overnight would be a futile exercise, we were forced to stay overnight at Motel Rim Jihm’s, waking up with the fear that we had been abandoned by our drivers on the side of a highway on New Year’s Eve, 3000 rupees poorer.
But lo and behold, we were greeted by our driver and yet another new vehicle in the morning with the news that the fog has lifted and we were finally on our way to Udaipur. An eight hour journey turned into 12 hours as we encountered roadblocks along the only interstate highway. By roadblocks, we mean single rows of small rocks placed across the lanes guarded by a group of young men who refused to move them. Apparently, removing the rocks ourselves would have initiated a riot with the Gujjar community of Rajasthan, who are currently in some sort of political negotiations with the government, so we were forced to do battle along rural backstreets that could handle only one lane of traffic at a time.
Sickness, exhaustion and India in general began to take its toll, to the point which even our token vegetarian Ingrid succumbed to the siren calls of chicken for the promise of some nourishment. But we did arrive in Udaipur at 9pm on New Year’s Eve and by midnight were perched over the balcony on the highest rooftop in the city, watching the fireworks over Lake Pichola. Our NYE party ended at precisely 18 minutes past midnight, when we all trudged back to our hotel room for a much-needed rest on an unmoving bed.
Over the past week, we’ve spent 59 hours travelling over 3400 kilometres (almost coast to coast in Australia) and welcomed the new year with two new tattoos and two new piercings amongst the three of us as mementos. Despite having devoured some of the best tasting noodles, pizza, momos (Tibetan dumplings) and chicken in India, we’ve arrived home several kilos lighter (or less handsome in Indian terms) and are so relieved to be back in our own beds.
So Happy New Year and until next time,
Anna, Ingrid and Matt.

Blog Four from India Scholarship winners!

Festivals and Festivities in PaliThis past week has been one of festivals and festivities in the party town that is Pali. The local town carnival was an experience that saw our celebrity status in the region literally soar to new heights, as the only means to escape suffocation by the mobbing crowd was to brave the extremely rusty and rickety ferris wheel and an equally un-sturdy aerial flying swing set. Even more unsettling was that, to enable us to leave the showground, local police were forced to disband the crowd using physical means. This scenario is one that, though not always to such an extreme, we are becoming accustomed to when attempting to depart any venue, be it a school or a local residence.

We also had the privilege this week of attending two children’s birthday parties, which we were pleased to note are, while materially modest, still cause for momentous celebration among friends, neighbours and family. The value and importance placed on friendships and particularly on familial relations here is not just something that you can witness but something that you can truly feel. Matt and Ingrid certainly experienced this first hand when, en route to a local villager’s house for a cheeky chai they were whisked into every house on the street to meet, greet, have a photograph taken and break chapatti with a grandparent, parent, uncle, brother or best friend. This was among a myriad of weekly, if not daily encounters that are reinforcing to us that Indian hospitality is unsurpassed anything we have experienced elsewhere.

On the Educate Girls front, things are going swimmingly, despite the desert backdrop. Though we are still getting used to ‘India time’ (10 minutes is often more like one hour, ‘soon’ could very well mean tomorrow or next week), we are learning a lot about the inner workings of a grassroots NGO in general and about development in the area of girl’s education in particular. This last week we have been working with the communications team putting together success stories based on individual girls, teachers and schools through observational video footage, interviews, photo essays and feature articles. We have also been documenting some of Educate Girls’ (formally FEGG) teaching methods in training sessions. For instance, EG has developed CLT (creative learning techniques), which are slowly being integrated into all schools in the district. These techniques include use of materials such as flash cards, drawings, peer group activities, educational games and educational songs, which are hardly revolutionary in primary schools back home, but are virtually unheard of in schools over here where the basic teaching technique is teacher lectures, students listen and in the majority of students very little is absorbed and retained. Hence the high number of drop-outs after a few years of schooling, particularly among females where domestic duties are deemed a more viable use of their time than receiving a standard, if not poor, education. So this week we have spent several days at a training session for teachers learning CLT, and despite our very scant Hindi, it was evident that initially there was very strong opposition to these methods by the teachers, but, upon testing on guinea pig students there was almost overwhelming sense of enthusiasm and optimism from many of those same teachers.
On a side note, we were treated like guests of honour at this session, literally. We were honoured in a small ceremony (with nil understanding of why) with colourful leis bestowed upon us, hundred of photos taken and handshakes all around.
On another side note, both Anna and Ingrid have fallen hopelessly in love with one of the EG block officers, who is, and Matt can verify, the most beautiful man in all of India. The girls were both devastated and delighted when we went to his house for chai to learn that he had a gorgeous wife and newborn baby boy. Matt continues to shop for his Indian bride.

On the topic of physical beauty, Manju has made it her mission to make Anna and Ingrid more handsome (translation - fat) by tripling our meal portions. To add insult to injury, we have located the local ice-cream parlour, so naturally at least one a day has been integrated into our growing daily staple of sabjee, chapatti, rice and dahl and numerous street-side snacks. In order to counteract our consumption we have borrowed weights from the neighbours, started skipping on the roof and begun jogging around the village to many a bemused stare.

As per our previous blog, we did indeed take in a puppy for all of 24 hours before deciding that the responsibility of feeding and cleaning was simply not going to fit in with our work and particularly our recreational schedule. Kahlua is now blissfully gnawing on the innards of a dead cow.

Latest Update from Matt, Ingrid and Anna in Rajasthan!!

Week Three in Pali This week, following the arrival of Baya and Aparna - two of FEGG's Mumbai-based senior staff members, we received further details of our working arrangements and were sent out on a full-day field trip across Pali district. We were also informed that FEGG (Foundation to Educate Girls Globally) has been condensed to a much punchier 'Educate Girls'.

During our field trip we visited a remarkable primary school where, through the efforts of one dedicated teacher, enrolment figures have increased from a one child to 111 students during the course of a single month. This startling turnaround is the result of an exhaustive door-to-door campaign to convince local parents about the government-funded resources and educational opportunities available for their children. Moreover, and again through his own efforts, the teacher also managed to secure a 80 lakh (800,000 rupee) donation from a local businessman to improve the infrastructure of the school.

To recount the rest of day's experiences would warrant a far longer blog post than our weary minds can currently muster; but rest assured, it was equally as fascinating. We witnessed some of Educate Girls' testing methodologies, met and interviewed a tribal mother whose daughter has recently returned to school and were once again mauled by hoards of enthusiastic girls at a residential school.

In regards to our new work brief we were pleased to find that we have numerous tasks to keep us busy, both from the communications and developmental side of the spectrum. We've been issued a detailed weekly schedule (a much appreciated respite from our previously ad hoc 'India time' working life) and we anticipate a rather chaotic fortnight prior to our Christmas break.

Speaking of which (a convenient segway into some rather more trivial happenings) we've semi-successfully hunted down some Christmas decorations to spruce up our guesthouse. Admittedly, the impetuous here was less to do with an abundance of festive cheer than fear of being outdone by previous interns (turned arch nemeses) Amelia and Claire. Their decorative efforts last year have become something of legend among the local staff - to Manju, our surrogate mother, in particular.

In other, equally absurd, news we've all begun to show signs of cabin fever. Ingrid in particular. Aside from perennially scheming to thieve babies and bestowing obscure nicknames to local fauna Ms. Stear has ensured that life in the guesthouse has become something of a one-woman musical. Additionally, a week-long mystery of why Manju has refused to let us do the washing up was resolved when we were informed "Matt good washing, Anna good washing, Ingrid... no good washing". She has since been schooled on the art of soap and scrubbing, but alas, to no avail.

Matt and Anna have shown similar, if slightly less blatant, signs of mental degradation. While stuck in a rather large traffic jam on our way back to Pali Anna produced some A-grade joke material, stating (and I quote) "Wow, everything's happening in Pali! It should be called 'party'!". Likewise, Matt has successfully scaled the facade of the guesthouse and continued his quest to achieve a oneness with nature, with mixed results. His cow pat tally now stands at a triumphant 29 although he also endured a less impressive incident in which a tortoise unleashed (what seemed like) several litres of urine on his pants.

As a footnote, Anna managed to feature in the local newspaper (Matt suspects her Chinese heritage endows her with greater cultural capital than a mere Caucasian). We have also been conspiring to kidnap a puppy for a pet, as they roam the local neighbourhood in such abundance that its disappearance would surely go unnoticed. We've actually singled out our victim, whom Ingrid has dubbed 'Kangas' on account of her uncannily Kangaroo-esque features.

We bid you adieu!

FEGG Scholarship intrepid explorers conquer week two

Matt, Anna and Ingrid in Pali and Jodhpur!
Our second week began with some eventful trips to the Pali market, firstly for some essentials like toilet paper (which is proving strangely elusive) and secondly to acquire bicycles that would allow us to navigate the town. One lost Ingrid, some traffic-stopping incidents and a fall with bloodied results later, along with two return trips to the bike seller to fix some teething mechanical problems, Anna and Ingrid have come to the conclusion that the streets of Pali are far too hazardous for mere mortals who are unaccustomed to the endless obstacles of bovine, canine, human, and auto varieties. Matt, however, has entertained the locals on several occasions by zipping through the streets of Pali on his two-wheels at top speed with true Indian dexterity.
On the work front we’ve spent the best part of the last week meeting some of FEGG’s success stories (rural girls recently re-enrolled at their local schools) and churning their experiences into a feature article for the NGO’s upcoming digital report. After a long and bumpy drive out to a remote village nestled within Pali district’s tribal belt we were introduced to five young girls, their local teachers and some FEGG field staff. We learned that all the girls’ had been pulled out of school by their parents, either to assist their families with menial labour or in anticipation of being married off, before joint initiatives by FEGG and local community members helped return the girls to education. We saw that by convincing the girls’ parents of the importance of schooling, a step undertaken with the assistance of community leaders and conducted through village meetings, FEGG had helped these girls foster greater ambitions for the future; each had an ambition to become either a teacher, doctor or local health worker in later life.
This weekend we once again donned our tourist hats and pants and took off to the ‘blue city’, Jodhpur. The primary purpose of this trip was to visit the local ‘Reliance Mart’, a towering glass complex we had witnessed on our original trip from Jodhpur to Pali, and, had convinced ourselves (and dreamt on multiple occasions) over the past couple of weeks was an Indian style Woolies where we could pick up the essentials that are near impossible to come by in Pali – toilet paper, tea and chocolate. On closer inspection Reliance Mart had shut down due to poor business. We did however manage to find most of our necessities at the National Handloom (an indoor, multi-level market, closest thing to a supermarket), including one skipping rope – we are becoming a bit soft round the edges, exercise begins tomorrow. Which of course brings us back to food. The weekend was again an eclectic culinary delight consisting of several famous ‘LP Reco’ (Lonely Planet recommended) omelettes, Baskin Robbins ice cream, an indecent quantity of masala dosa and a Chinese Maggie two-minute-noodle dish proclaiming to be chow mein. Despite our first hankerings for western or non-Indian food we did manage to stay well away from the great golden arches, Jodhpur’s very own McDonalds. Oh, and we also squeezed in a visit to the majestic Mehrangarh fort and palace complex, still ran by the descendents of the Maharaja of Jodhpur.
We’re looking forward to meeting some of FEGG’s staff from the Mumbai head office this week and planning our next weekend journey as we sign off.
Slightly worse for wear,
Anna, Ingrid and Matt.

P.S. Matt's cow patting tally stands at a paltry 13, Palinese cows appear edgier than their brethren in Udaipur.

Introducing Matt, Ingrid and Anna: FEGG India Scholarship winners!

Matt, Ingrid and Anna in Pali - week one of their scholarship adventureNamaste,

After an initial misunderstanding with Mother Nature, who apparently forgot that it was meant to be sunny and mild and instead greeted us with rain and mud. With no wet-weather gear or umbrellas, we braved the desert rains in t-shirts and arrived at the FEGG guesthouse in Pali. Week one over and we are happy to report that India is now exactly as we expected: blue skies, sunshine and happiness all round. The guesthouse and immediate surrounds are alive with creatures and critters. So far spotted: geckoes (in the girls' bedroom), a rat (in the house), squirrels (who have been dubbed 'squizzes' by Ingrid), cows (in the front yard), plus numerous spiders and crickets and bugs that we share our house with.

So much has happened already in so few days. Our home, simply known in the area to locals as ‘Guesthouse’ is a modest two story house complete with five bedrooms (we occupy two between the three of us but other FEGG staff are coming and going so the house always seems full), one kitchen, one bathroom with western style toilet (no flush, getting used to the old manual flush method), one squatty potty (good for leg toneage), a shower that on occasion delivers no more than a minute of hot water, a balcony and a beautiful open rooftop.

We have an amazing cook/housekeeper called Manju, who we all adore, firstly because she is absolutely lovely, but also, importantly, because she feeds us and her food is amazing. Breakfast can be anything from toast to halawa, a sweet bready cakey type thing, to rice, potato and veg. Lunch and dinner is generally a combination of sabjee (different types of vegetable dishes), daal, rice and chapatti. No meat here but we definitely will not be shedding any pounds! Oh and at least 7 or 8 cups of chai a day. At least. Which brings us to Indian hospitality. Within our first week we have dined or had tea at three different houses in our village and had three other dinner invitations (from people on the street and shop owners); we are going to need a diary to start making appointments. People here are just so hospitable and so friendly. And they are constantly checking “everything ok? No problem?”.

We've had two days in the field already to see some of FEGG's work first-hand. FEGG is working to improve girls' enrolment and attendance in school through community mobilisation as well as infrastructure (female toilets etc), more female teachers, establishing girls councils in schools, a more female friendly curriculum (focussing on life skills as well as academia) etc. They have tried and tested a model that works on 500 schools in the district and are now operating in over 2400 schools. They are in the process of replicating this model and expanding to 5000 schools by 2011. We are here to help them in that expansion process. After briefings and a day spent in the field visiting schools we were given our first project – interviewing teachers and students on camera for success stories to be used for a digital newsletter. We spent all day Thursday in a very remote area interviewing students and teachers not in English, not even in Hindi, but in tribal dialects - an extremely challenging task. We spent the following day editing the material without the aid of a transcript – hopefully it makes sense.
The girls we've met have really been inspirational. And crazy! They look so innocent and shy when you first arrive but once they are comfortable with you, which doesn’t take long, they all want to grab you and touch you and hold your hand. Anna and Ingrid have been attacked several times, it’s akin to a moshpit in those classrooms when the girls unleash! Not to be outdone, Matt has also experienced a bonding ritual with the male FEGG staff members over a spot of Paan, a betel leaf with filling that seems to be exclusively enjoyed by men.

This weekend we had our first opportunity to do a spot of travel in Rajasthan and opted to visit Udaipur, India's renowned 'City of Lakes'. We braved an early morning start in order to arrive in good time, anticipating a solid three and a half hour bus ride to traverse the 120km standing between us and our destination. Optimistic fools we were; while taking a pit-stop at the three hour mark we were casually informed that there was "only another 3 hours to go". Upon arrival we were all a wee bit worse for wear, but Udaipur did not disappoint - narrow alleyways littered with budget hotels and handicraft shops wind around the city's hilly contours, all set to the scenic backdrop of palaces perched among idyllic mountains and lakes.

As with just about anywhere in India, Udaipur's streets were also littered with cows, and Matt has taken it upon himself to become spiritually 'in tune' with the sacred animal of Hinduism. This is decidedly best achieved through the 'cow pat' (wherein he cautiously pats a bull's head and hopes not to anger the beast) - he aspires to master the art by the end of our stay and has so far accumulated a respectable tally of 10 pats. In equal abundance to the cows are Udaipur's rooftop restaurants and after checking in we quickly found ourselves soaking up some sun whilst enjoy a panoramic view of our surroundings. This soon progressed into a team-bonding exercise that began with sampling local beer and spirits on a variety of rooftops and culminated in each of us enduring an impromptu body piercing.

Shub-raa¬-tri [Goodnight],
Matt, Ingrid and Anna

India Development Scholarhship Winners

   
 

Introducing out 2011 India Developement Scholarship Winners

After numerous applications, interviews and good amount of deliberation – Antipodeans Abroad are proud to announce the 2011 India Development Scholarship winners. Congratulations Anna King, Laura Keenan, Matt Withers and Ingrid Stear on your success. Our India Development Scholarship sends keen and driven university students to India for three months. Whilst there, students work on a pilot project in the heart of the desert state of Rajasthan, gaining unique international community development experience in India.

We rounded up our scholarship winners to ask them a few questions about what they hoped to achieve during their three months in India.

Why did you decide to apply for the scholarship, and what to do hope to get out of it?

Anna King:
Anna is doing her Master of Development Studies at Melbourne University and heard about Antipodeans through a university lecturer.

“I'm a firm believer in positive liberty and that everyone should have equal access to all the opportunities that life presents. I am particularly passionate about gender equality and if women aren't ruling the world, it should be because we don't want to and not because we're not empowered to.”

Laura Keenan:
Laura is finishing a Masters in Development Studies at the University of Sydney, where she’s been specialising in the political economy of public health. This follows a couple of years working for NGOs in South Asia, most recently as a Communications Officer for a charity based in Kathmandu, Nepal focusing on sustainable development in mountain areas.

I heard about the Antipodeans Abroad scholarship through the Peace and Conflict Studies Centre at the University, and thought it would be a great opportunity to gain experience working closer to the field. I’m looking forward to working in an area that has experienced progress in creating access to education for girls, and to seeing the wider social impact of this. It’s also going to be very interesting to see the changes that have occurred in India since I was last there!

Matt Withers:
Matt is a recent Arts graduate from the University of Sydney and is currently awaiting the start of his honours degree in the field of Government and International Relations. Much of Matt’s time at uni has been spent studying developmental issues and his upcoming thesis seeks to explore some of the structural impediments to economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Ideally, I’d like to not only to assist those in very real need but also to better my own understanding of developmental issues. I believe a strictly academic perspective of development has a tendency to bury human suffering under mounds of statistics and runs the risk of painting a very sterile portrait of the everyday tragedies endured by an increasing percentage of the world's population. At the risk of sounding too optimistic, I hope that this placement provides me with an opportunity to transcend the insights offered by study and tourism and get a more authentic impression of the issues facing the developing world.

Furthermore, I hope I can effectively use what modest communication skills I've garnered while working as a journalist in Estonia to make a contribution to such a worthwhile cause. As a tutor, both of schools students on the weekend and of an autistic child during the week, I believe education is of tantamount importance; particularly in an instances such as rural India's, where it so often selectively malnourished along gender lines.


What are you looking forward to/nervous about?

Anna King:
I have terrible sense of direction and am very worried about getting lost in Delhi! But I'm really looking forward to soaking in all the riches of Indian society and culture.

Matt Withers:
Fears? I've been to India once before and was amazed by the size and variety of accidents on Rajasthani highways. As a keen cyclist I'm already harbouring plans to pick up a second-hand bike from Jodhpur; I just hope I don't end up making a contribution to that Noah's Ark of ornate Indian truck victims!

Emily's last Thailand Internship entry before she departs

Week 12 – Reports and initiating contacts

The past week has also been pretty busy with a lot of report writing and funding proposals that are underway.
One of the big projects that I started working on was an ‘about us’ report on the small business here that is an income generation project for women in local villages. What started out as asking questions for my report, and to source information for my friend’s proposed project, has now expanded into a full-blown new focus on the small business. I have been having meetings with the head of the project, to discuss product lists, inventory, analyse colour codes and sizing and style codes in the new catalogue, international pricing, 30% markup, 300% markup, tags, care labels, accessory costs, production costs and final costs, as well as managing to use my basic Excel skills to create data sheets of such information. Myself and another volunteer have been heavily involved in trying to understand the small business and its failings and successes. My friend has had ten years experience in the fashion and marketing industry, so it feels like she is meant to be here! I am like the person that writes all the information down as we collect it. The business is currently constantly in the red, as there is a lack of supply/demand, as well as not enough of a mark-up on the products to generate adequate profit to cover costs. As a result of this, we have created an international price list, and the first step in expanding this business will be to recruit volunteers here to sell packages – either A, B, or C, for which we have compiled product lists, international prices for each product, and an estimated cost of each package. These packages will be sold wholesale to the volunteers, who will sell them at international prices to their friends and family, sending the profits (which are considerably higher!) back to the small business, which can be used to update the project, and expand it. This will involve expanding the building so that sewing machines can be put inside, as well as recruiting villagers for sewing training and women’s empowerment training. It will also involve the current workshop getting repaired, as it has a huge hole in its roof where the rain just pours in!
This whole process has taken a while, and has been very intense and exhausting – and I have been doing this while juggling the heat, and a stomach bug. Fun times. After our meeting yesterday, in the middle of the day I went back to my bunk for a little nap to try to re-energise, and fell asleep straight away. My friend came to look for me (she needed my computer password to access all our documents). She tried to tap me, then shake me awake. I was unwakeable. I finally emerged 3 hours later.
I have also started working on two new funding proposals for the Anti-Trafficking Project – for two different embassies based in Thailand. We have had new information come to us about the villages surrounding the village that we visited the other week, in that brothel owners travel to the villagers to ‘book’ young girls, even pay a deposit on them, so that later in their lives, they will come to the brothels. It is heartbreaking.
The ATP will be applying for a grant to conduct campaigns in the village about labour law, as villagers will not want to probably attend training about human trafficking. The campaign is targeted at changing villager attitudes. The campaign has a couple of phases, and will involve training in labour law in villages in 2 provinces, in a number of districts and sub-districts: two of these districts are on the Thai-Burma border. After this, youth will be invited to youth empowerment camps. Participant youth will be chosen in consultation and partnership with teachers from schools, who will select youth based on criteria that indicate the students are high at-risk. At the camps they will do empowerment activities, learn about sexual health, safe sex, importance of education and be encouraged to follow their dreams. Concurrently, women from villages will be invited on study day trips where they will meet women who have left the sex industry, and NGOs. The idea will be for women to see what it will be like for their daughters and relatives to enter this trade. After this, (and this is my favourite part, and gives me shivers just thinking about it), 4 drama camps will be run, with youth from the previous camps being trained in drama. They will create performances about human trafficking and their desires for their futures and destinies, which will be performed in villages – therefore, giving these youth a platform to tell their communities what they really want to achieve with their lives.
This week I have also completed a funding proposal for the Mlabri project.
However, the big event that happened this week that I loved, was the outcome of ‘farang hunting’ in the Night Bazaar on Sunday. A friend of ours had been standing in the fruit shake line, and another farang behind her said ‘oh, are you with the anti-trafficking people?’ she said ‘no’... but then told us about this little conversation. Nadia and I got excited and proceeded to go to the pad thai stall and pretend we wanted to be in the line in order to find the anti-trafficking people! It turned out that 20 farang interns were in town with another NGO, learning about trafficking issues and had already travelled to Pattaya, and were en route to Chiang Mai and BKK, as well as visit a key project in Chiang Rai. Nadia then invited them to Peace Bar, where we all had a great night, and overpowered the place with excessive numbers of farang! The executive director of the NGO was there that night, and she invited us to the orientation of the interns the next day out at Ba Sang, on the other side of town.
The next day, we met them at one of the most exclusive hotels in Chiang Rai, and jumped in the back of a truck, and drove out to their project. It rained a bit on the way. May pen ray! (No worries). It was so green out there – mountains of forest, green corn fields and everything shining after the rain. We proceeded to hear a presentation about trafficking in Thailand and specifically what this NGO did to combat the issue. Their projects were really similar to the NGO here, and I felt that there were so many strengths that we could share and learn from each other. Their approach was also really similar, in that it was based on relationship with a community. However, this NGO was a ‘farang’ one. And our one is Thai. After this, we went to the local school where they work, and then walked around the village where they work. It was much more well-off than the villages that we work, and had fruit trees and many many trees and endless green. The children and clothes were also much cleaner. Still, this village was one which had established relationships with brothels and one that used to be prey to human trafficking.
It was such an incredible day to be part of, and I felt like each moment was golden. Afterwards, we were driving to dinner, and I pointed out a beautiful restaurant with hanging lanterns and said to Nadia and Emily ‘Oh, remember this restaurant, because I want to come back here!!’ Instantly as I said these words, the truck pulled to a stop. We were going to this very restaurant! To me, that summed up the day for me – that everything seemed to fall into place so perfectly, as I was able to learn more and engage with the issues that are really starting to form a place in my heart and mind.
As a result of this encounter, the NGO are now going to visit our NGO, and have a sharing meeting, sharing ideas and what works and what doesn’t. At the moment, the meeting looks like it will happen on the day I fly back to Australia! But all in all, it has been a great week. I will be sad to go home next week.

Emily's Week nine report - all safe in Thailand and doing some great work!

Week 9 - Reporting, reporting

The past week has been extremely hot. We are in the middle of the hot season, and some of the days here are incessantly, endlessly, hot. The past week has been a battle to get things done, with the heat draining the energy out of everything and everyone (especially me).
However, the past week has been spent doing a lot of report writing. As the NGO does not have very many English resources of reports, I took it upon myself to start creating some documentation about the achievements of certain projects.
Anti Trafficking Project
Firstly, I have been working on a report surrounding the 2010 achievements of the Anti-Trafficking Project. I have been mainly doing work for the Anti-Trafficking Project while I have been here, though it has ranged. I generally work with Salapao, who is from Japan, within this project. Earlier on in my stay here, I worked with Salapao to more effectively translate a report documenting the previous project of the Anti-Trafficking Project, which was a preventative education campaign. The campaign looks incredible, and involved drama and role play in schools, villages and dormitories, discussing the dangers of unsafe employment and the danger of human trafficking. A cartoon comic booklet was produced telling stories of people in vulnerable situations, as well as a clay animation film, which is incredible, and I have watched, depicting two friends and the choices that they make in employment. Another part of this campaign included training in art and the holding of an art exhibition of children’s artwork surrounding the topic of ‘what I want to be when I grow up’ or ‘safe/unsafe employment’. I have since referred back to this document so many times I almost feel that I was there while the project ran – even though it finished a few months prior to me coming here. I have now provided a summary of this project, and of the sexual health education camp, to provide potentially the first ever summary annual report of the Anti-Trafficking Project in English, summarising the projects and providing journal-based research as to the rationales of the projects.
I have also created an evaluation report of the sexual education camp, which was a pilot project that we were running. I figured that producing an evaluation report would also be useful for future funding to show that the pilot project was effectively evaluated.
In addition, a staff member from the Australian embassy in Bangkok wants a summary of the projects here (in English) to send out to various networks to source funding. So I have also been working with another Australian girl here to summarise the projects of Mirror, including a summarised version of the summary of the Anti-Trafficking Project, and the Citizenship Project. I am still working on those things.
Mlabri
I am also writing the funding proposal for a project to assist the Mlabri people. It is a unique position, being able to write funding proposals, as I find that I am actually able to contribute ideas to the project, and sometimes, these ideas even get adopted. I am hoping this is the case with this project because I have some ideas that I think are important to the effectiveness of this project on an ethical level. I hadn’t realised that it can be a bit of an ethical dilemma even writing a funding proposal!
New possibilities
And things are stirring up in this current week.... which are extremely exciting... I had a meeting with the director today, and a project director of the small business we run here producing handicrafts and jewellery. We met on the floor in the director’s house (which is onsite) as the nanny that looks after her son was sick today.... and we sat there with cups of 3-in-1 coffee in our hands. I had emailed a friend of mine last week in Australia telling him about the NGO, and now suddenly, the wheels are in motion, and potentially, a women’s empowerment project training them in sewing, design, marketing and production could all be happening!!! INCREDIBLE! I had a meeting this morning, where we mapped out the project plan of what would happen, with me frantically taking notes on my laptop. I would ask questions like ‘how would we select the women’ and ‘how many’ and then I would contribute ideas about ‘no, I think we could do more. I think it is possible to do more than that’. And then my ideas were getting implemented!! I have always been someone that likes to think of ideas and brainstorm new possibilities... but here, when I am connected to the right people, this skill is somehow utilised... I love it. I’ve just been contacting my friend back, who is writing a funding proposal, so fingers crossed that we get it....
Pictures: Khaw soy, an amazing soup with noodles all inside it with chicken, and crunchy noodles on top
Me and and another volunteer in Chiang Mai on our weekend.

Week 8 Report

Snakes, sex education camp and sport....


The scene: the verandah, outside the girls’ dorm, after rain. Shoes are scattered all over the ground in haphazard lines. Enter Emily.
As I walked towards the door, there was a snake, squirming all over the doorway, trying to get IN TO MY BEDROOM. I jumped up on the seat. I yelled and yelled and yelled. My fear of snakes knows no bounds. Given, it was about 2 feet long and only about 2cm thick, but it was a snake. And it was brown. It squirmed all over our shoes and tried to hide in my sandals and then my friend Luke came running and scared it off with a broom. Since then, we have had a snake get into one of the girl’s bedrooms, hiss and raise its head at someone. We have also had a bug infestation. At night at the beginning of last week, some of us were scared to get up in the middle of the night, for fear that snakes had somehow got into our room... Even now, I look carefully where I step and my eyes sweep a room when I go in. I hate snakes.
Apart from this lovely occasion, I had a great week this week! Another challenging week, as the only farang in a foreign context. However, I think I managed better this time. This week, I was on Sex Education Camp. About 30 kids from a range of different hilltribe villages ranging in age from about 13 – 15 yrs, plus Thai interns, the Anti-Trafficking Project staff and me, travelled to a national park near Mae Sai (border town with Burma) to run a sexual health education camp. The rationale is that there is no standard syllabus for sex ed in schools – and it is up to the discretion of the teacher as to what is taught. Usually kids will learn about menstruation and some basic anatomy, but any further than that – e.g. STDs, condom usage, HIV/AIDS, sexual health.... is generally not taught. I finished a funding proposal regarding sexual health education for the European Commission the week before, so was feeling theoretically prepared for why camp was important. What followed was a range of workshops, covering in specific detail all the kinds of information that we take for granted in PDHPE classes in school in Australia. The kids were wide eyed, paying attention. Workshops were run about anatomy, puberty, diseases, STDs, condoms, contraceptives, and safe and unsafe employment as some forms of employment carry risk of sexual abuse or exploitation.
One workshop was a condom use workshop, and all the kids had to practice opening condom packets (some we surveyed beforehand thought it was ok to open the packets with scissors), and put the condoms on the right way onto specially carved wooden penises and a plastic penis imported from somewhere! What was really excellent was to see the guys helping the girls to do it. And vice versa! One of the guys had to go up the front to demonstrate in front of all the youth, and he couldn’t do it. So a girl got up to help him. I have heard that in Thailand, condom usage doesn’t really get discussed between the sexes, so to see people actually helping one another and talking about condoms seemed to be to be breaking new ground.

All of the workshops were exclusively in Thai, and thus my understanding was extremely limited! While I was there, I watched what happened in the workshops, tried to understand and wrote notes of evaluation to produce an evaluation report, which would also be useful for funding purposes, given this was a pilot project.
One night, we had a drama night, where all the leaders and youth had to produce a drama about a certain topic. The leaders all got together and we performed a drama about a young girl who falls in love, has sex, she gets pregnant, they get married, then the guy leaves her for a farang (myself) and she has to go to work in Bangkok, probably in sex work. It sounds like it is totally unbelievable, but the sad reality is that it does happen here. When people are vulnerable financially especially, sex work presents as appealing, as income can be generated quickly, and a different kind of lifestyle is available rather than physical labour in agriculture. Some of the youth performed dramas about the vulnerability of working in go-go bars, which are similar to pole dancing clubs, with optional prostitution. I was amazed by their insight. In the unsafe/safe employment workshop, forms of employment were openly discussed among the youth that were vulnerable to sexual abuse – including massage parlours, any work at night, housekeeping, go go bars and karaoke. Safe employment discussed included doctor, teacher, nurse, offshore worker. To me, it seemed that there was such a gap – between sexual forms of work, and careers requiring high levels of university education – surely, there is more middle ground... and hopefully, most of these youth will walk that middle ground or higher....

On my return from sex camp, the following two days were a huge carnival here. We had two sports days, with the staff, interns and volunteers all pitted against each other in teams of blue, orange and green. Everyone had to try and find clothes of their team colour, and we painted ourselves with war paint, and wore pipe-cleaners and bandannas in our hair. I was in the blue team, and we were the ones that danced the ‘hippo dance’ the most, to the sound of drums in front of everyone, because we always lost! Games included: three team soccer with all teams against each other all at once with three goals; volleyball, a game like hackeysack but with a ball over a volleyball net; volleyball with water bombs; a game where u had to use every piece of clothing/shoes/string possible your team was wearing to make a line, and a series of relays that involved eating and jumping in the pond of slime and disease. The best game, however, which I played, was playing three-way water polo in the sludge pond, upto our thighs in disgusting water, upto our ankles in slimy mud.
Since returning from sex camp, I also began working on a number of reports: evaluation report of sex camp; overview report of the Anti-Trafficking Project; written summaries of projects and a report on the Mlabri community which will be submitted to a potential funder. The Mlabri report has involved breaking down some of the information from our surveying a few weeks ago, and breaking it into percentages and data, which my inner nerd loved. One interesting fact I found, was that 68% of the Mlabri community we visited was under 20 years old – which is incredible from a development perspective – as it presents a unique window of opportunity to influence the community through education. However, only 23% of eligible students attend high school. 81% of Mlabri families also owed debts to the neighbouring Hmong that need to be repaid.

Emily enjoying Songkran in Thailand

Week 6 – Songkran


This part of the year is the hottest in Thailand.... and the past week has brought welcome relief. This week can be summed up with one word: Songkran.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the NGO was in shut down mode, and dedicated, purely and simply, to Songkran. Songkran is the Thai New Year festival, and has turned into a huge water fight that happens for days and takes over all other activities.
On Tuesday morning, we were told to arm ourselves with weapons, and we all clamoured into three separate utes to head into town (one without a roof, two with roofs). Packed into the back of the utes were about 9 or 11 people, a big plastic tub full to the brim of water, and our array of weapons – plastic buckets, plastic half buckets used to flush the toilets, and water pistols with special water tanks strapped onto backs. As we headed into town, people and children were clustered at points along the way in formidable armies with hoses, buckets and big tubs of water. Our driver would slow down and we were ruthlessly soaked about five minutes into our journey. We retaliated, scooping water out of the tub, yelling ‘LEFT!’ and ‘RIGHT!’ depending on where the next group of people were.
As we drove closer into town, the traffic crawled. There were so many cars, with heaps of people wearing Hawaiian shirts, which everyone dons for Songkran. I wore a pink one, as that was the kitchest I could think of. As we passed trucks, we would throw water all over people. Some sprayed us with powerful hoses. At ten metre intervals along the main street, group after group of people would throw water at you, and yell with delight especially if you reacted really well to the soaking.
As you went down the street, music would blare from little stages set up beside the road, and everyone would start dancing. The cars were so lined up that we would crawl up next to another car and dump water on peoples heads, and both trucks of people would be screaming with the water going back and forth. Beside the road, huge blocks of ice about 2 feet long were for sale, which you could put into your tubs so the water was extra cold. As we drove along, you could definitely tell who had invested in ice. It was sharp pain, slapping you across the back as we drove.
Eventually, we invested in ice of our own. Our truck broke down in the middle of the street, and we had to push it to the side, and while we were waiting for it to recover, went and bought a big block of ice. We ran out of water ‘may mii nam’ (don’t have water) and so we were going around petitioning other people for water. One girl told me, if you drink this whisky i will give you water’. I didn’t take her up on it....
Towards the end of the days of Songkran, the truck was filled about three inches deep with water in the back. As we drove home, the wind was so cold, and we would try and take refuge from people still on the prowl by appealing for mercy saying ‘may mii nam!! May mii! May mii!’ while chewing on lukewarm corn cobs.
Everything came to a total stop this week. In the middle of all this, I managed to submit a funding application which required signatures from people not at the NGO because of Songkran, which was a challenge....
This week, I go on sex education camp. The other day, I walked past my friend Bon, and said ‘khun tham aray?’ (what are you doing?) He looked incredibly sheepish. ‘khun tham aray?’ I said again. I walked over, and there he was with a machete, carving 5 wooden penises. I was like, um, what??? They are for our camp this week. Teenagers from junior high school are being taught about STDs and sexual health – something they don’t get taught in school. So tomorrow I head off to camp in the national park.... watch this space...

Emily Safe in Northern Thailand - Songkran is upon her

Week 6



This week has been a much slower week – I have been working on a funding proposal to the European Commission for a sex education project. I have been working on this for a few weeks now.
As well, I have been teaching English to Koy (I was misspelling it Goi) and Manop...
But the main thing that has been happening here is a big slow down. The heat is quite bad. We turn on all the fans and try to avoid the sun. Today particularly is quite hot. Unlike Australia, where it will be hot for a few days and then pour and bucket down rain, here it is just consistently hot!
A lot of us have also been stopping work early in the afternoons to take part in early Songkran celebrations. Songkran is Thai New Year, and is famous for basically being a big water fight! It has evolved from its earlier traditions of washing an elder’s hands, into now targeting everyone with water. We have been dashing around the NGO screaming with buckets and bottles and getting people. I was drenched from head to toe twice in two days. On the weekend, we went into town, and as we passed through villages on the way in, the driver slowed, and the villagers poured buckets of water in the sides of the truck all over us. In Chiang Rai town, people are starting to set up little forts at the front of shops, with a hose, a big bucket, water pistols and extra water, and they squirt you as you go past, or if you drive past. I was with a friend making her way back home to Surathani and we kept crossing the street to avoid them! This coming week is Songkran, so my plans and operations will have to be raised. I have created alliances that have already been broken... so an alternative needs to be sought...
Also this week we had a party for the Thai interns. About 5 of them were leaving. They range in age – some of them are quite young (about 14) and stay for one month. The others are in first year/second year uni and stay for longer. My friend Ma was one of the interns that left this week. Again, it was heartbreaking. We had a huge party, with little bbqs made of terracotta pots, som tum (papaya salad), fruit, orange and green fanta and much more. We also had karaoke running constantly all night.... in Thai and English. The farang belted out such hits as ‘Can you Feel the Love Tonight’ and ‘I will Survive’. Afterwards, we had a bonfire out the back, where the Thai interns sang and we all chatted under the stars.
I love hanging out with the Thai interns, and have a good relationship with a lot of them. They always say I am ‘ting tong’ (Crazy). We also have private jokes because some of us were together in Mlabri. The favourite to quote in songtaaws is the Thai interns pretending to grab a tree in the air and yell ‘I’M FINE!!’. This was because as when we went fishing, we were walking down a very steep slope, and I was holding onto a tree as we went down. The dirt all slipped away under my feet, and I was left frantically grabbing onto the tree. “Emily, are you ok?” They asked. I was trying to get my footing and grabbing onto the tree all at once and yelled back, ‘I”M FINE!’
In other news, a big opportunity has presented itself to me here. A member of the Australian Bangkok embassy visited here the other day. It may be possible for me to work here for one year, under the AYAD scheme, where the Australian Government would pay for it. I am still considering my decision. There is a lot to think about.

Emily's Week 5 Report

Writing funding proposals



My past week has been filled with ups and downs. At the beginning of last week, I started working on a proposal for a sex education program for hill tribe youth. Poor sex education means that students are at higher risk of contracting STDs and HIV/AIDS. In fact, Chiang Rai has the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of any province in Thailand, yet students only learn basic anatomy in sex ed in schools, and misuse contraceptives in a really dangerous way – for example overdosing on morning after pills (having 20 – 30 tablets) once they find out they are pregnant.

Writing this proposal has been great because I get to offer feedback on the project – and some of this feedback is worked into the project. Today we also discussed further changes such as advocating the provincial government to make a concrete curriculum for sex education in schools.

Teaching and modelling…

I was also teaching English last week.... as well as doing some modelling for e-Bannok, which is the small business run here making clothes and jewellery by the hilltribe women in a women's empowerment project. So I was the model! I did some last week too: last week it was in front of a white sheet with everyone watching me, which was so funny and a bit awkward! This week it was posing in front of buildings and trees. Hilarious.

Going to Mlabri
However, the biggest challenge of my week by far was going to Mlabri Village, which is in Nan province, about 5 hours drive away from Chiang Rai. This week I jumped in the deep end and went to Mlabri with eight Thai interns and three Thai staff from the Hilltribe Team of the NGO. The Mlabri people used to be hunter gatherers and lived in the forest in Nan, but less than a generation ago, moved to their current location in a village about 30 minutes inside the Nan border. Traditionally, they have been looked down on by other hilltribes as being ‘dirty’ and ‘primitive’. They used to wear banana leaves for clothing, however now wear second hand clothes. In Thai, they are given a derogatory name ‘spirits of the yellow leaves’. However they prefer to be called Mlabri. The village we went to is quite small – only about 125 people.
I significantly struggled with not understanding Thai for four days – as conversations went on around me and over my head. It is amazing how much not grasping language impacts on you – it affects your confidence, ability to be yourself and your ability to participate. It seems fitting that I struggled with these things while in Mlabri, which is a village of a group of people whose language is spoken by roughly only 450 people in the world.

Fishing in Mlabri
Still, one day in Mlabri, we went fishing. The team said to me - ‘we’re going fishing, do you want to come?’ I said ‘Yes, I’ll come watch’ – imagining that fishing was - fishing - on a stick, with a rod, and string, and a hook. We went down to the stream with some people carrying hoes and it turned into a massive adventure. People started hacking madly with hoes in the scrub, and created an alternative channel for the stream through the bushes. We scrabbled around for rocks and started building a wall, filling it in with huge chunks of dirt that we passed along a line to fill in the wall. The water was all diverted to further down the stream.
With our hands, we started scooping out the water from the pools the stream left behind, trying to find shellfish, fish (plaa), crabs and freshwater prawns (goong). After a few minutes, someone called out ‘there’s a snake!!’ I jumped up immediately, and people were pointing to the pool, where I just had my hands! There was a snake in there! One of the little boys who were with us (there were about three of them, about seven years old) fished around for it with his hands, picked it up, played with it in his fingers and said its good food... And we went straight back to the pool.
It was amazing. We were there for a few hours, bailing out water with hands and buckets from about fifteen metres of stream stepping through squidgy mud. All the time people were calling out PLAA! PLAA! PLAA! GOONG! GOONG! and you would see a fish suddenly slapping about on the rocks and run over, scoop it up in your hands, run back and throw it in the bucket, hoping it didn’t pop out of your hands on the way! I started to be really good at finding the goong, because you can see their antenna floating on the water. I was a bit scared at first to pick them up because in Australia they have big pincers. (here they don’t) The little kids were mad little machines, running around putting their fingers into every nook and cranny, their fingers emerging thick with fish. Afterwards we returned to the Mlabri village and the little kids ate all the fish with us.

Fieldwork in Mlabri
I will be writing a funding proposal collating what we learnt in Mlabri to a funding organisation to get funding for a project to assist them.
While we were in Mlabri, the Thai interns went around doing field work, and I watched and listened to them - asking questions in Thai to each family, about who lived there, and what languages they could speak/read/write, and information about the debts that the Mlabri owe to the Hmong. Most of the Mlabri could not read or write in Hmong or in Thai. All of their business transactions with the Hmong were purely oral – in a language that was not the first language of the Mlabri.
The Hmong are a different hilltribe group that live in the village just 500m down the road from the Mlabri. They own the majority of the land surrounding, and the Mlabri have just a tiny slice of land for themselves. Therefore, the Mlabri have to go and work in the Hmong fields – they rent the land from the Hmong, plant corn from corn seeds sold to them by the Hmong, reap the corn, and sell it to the Hmong using transport they have bought from the Hmong. The Hmong, as far as I can understand, take undue advantage of the Mlabri – and have used their vulnerability to benefit themselves. The Hmong live in beautiful dark wood homes – simple, admittedly, but good wood homes. The Mlabri live in bamboo huts with banana leaf roofs. The floor is the dirt ground with thick cracks in it. In the wet season, the people must live in mud.
On our first night, a girl called Dian was crying, because of the problems facing her family. Families are indebted more than they can afford to pay back. After the harvest season, and they had paid off some of the debts, her family were still 20,000 baht in debt to the Hmong– and only had 2000 baht (under $100A) in cash for the family to live off for the next year.
One instance which I found particularly unsettling there, was just after sunset one night. It was dark, and we had just been interviewing family after family about the debts that they owed. I was standing with one of the interns, who was my main translator, among houses at the top of the village, and we could see a neon light on a hill in the distance, and hear singing echoing across the hills. It was the Hmong village, singing celebrations into the night. There was such a deep contrast.
It struck me, that it was so unfair, that the Hmong could have so much and the Mlabri have so little, right next door to each other. It seemed so unfair that the Hmong could be singing and happy for all the things they had, when they had earnt it off the backs of the Mlabri. And then I thought to myself – is it such a different picture back home? Of the West, so rich, and so well off, and their relationship with the poor? Is this picture, of the Hmong and the Mlabri, side by side, a much more obvious picture of what goes on every day all around the world... and are we like the Hmong singing ignorantly on the hill in the dark?

Emily in Thailand :-)

Week 4 – Bits and pieces


As I write, there is a massive storm starting to break around us. It is 2pm in the afternoon, and is darker than it would normally be at 6pm. The sky is a dark grey-brown and the rain is pouring down outside with thunder all around us. This is the first storm we have had here. It is fantastic. “The rains are here!” we’ve been saying to each other... I have been just waiting for rain to come, because everything is so dusty. If you think of what it was like in Sydney after the dust storm, with a fine layer of dust over everything, it is a little like that here. After today, everything will be shining and clean.
This week there has not been much happening.... A lot of us started coming down with the flu. As a result, I have had days with not much happening as I haven’t been up to very much with my intern work.
Last weekend we went to Phu Chi Faa to watch the sunrise over the mountains looking over Laos.

Thai interns
We had Thai interns move in with us into our communal living this week, which has made it a bit squishy (14 in one room). Initially we struggled with the different times people go to bed (they would get up at like 5am, whereas the farang always sleep in til just before breakfast). However we have overcome that initial challenge. They also do not speak much English, and I don’t speak a whole bunch of Thai... Still, I have made some friends over the week! They are so generous. While I was sick, they left presents for me at the end of my bed while I was sleeping. They also shared food with me last night teaching me different foods. Last night, two Thai interns also went on the biggest wild goose chase to pick up our 8 takeaway pizzas by motorbike from the police station closest to us, because the pizza company refused to deliver any further from Chiang Rai town. They were gone an hour in pitch black dark, because the police station had apparently moved! I tried calling the Pizza Company to see if the pizzas had been delivered at all and tried to speak in Thai but they couldn’t understand me and i couldn’t understand them. I got transferred to management in Chiang Mai, where I finally managed to establish that my ‘husband’ Evan had ordered pizzas already. After trying to say ‘friend’ (in English) a couple of times, I gave in to ‘your husband? Your husband evan? Your husband?) And just said... ‘Yes, my husband....’

Teaching English
I taught English two days this week to Goi and Manop, who are from Aja village (an Akha village), and I teach them everyday from 1 -3pm at the kitchen from Tues – Sat. I love teaching them. At the end of each lesson, I make them come and practice their new English phrases with the other volunteers (asassama). The outdoor team plus new volunteers went on a homestay this week (about 20 volunteers) to Baan Jalae (Jalae Village), so there were 5 of us left behind here. As a result, I have semi-joined the indoor team this week, as they have only had 5 to run all the indoor programs teaching English to various groups of people. I taught young people English two days this week, for two hours per time, again up at the kitchen, armed with a whiteboard, coloured paper, my Thai phrase book, and another volunteer! Anne Marie and I taught one lesson about ‘make’ (tham). We asked the students to make buildings out of paper that could hold plastic fruit, and then used the lesson to demonstrate the difference between tall, short, strong, difficult etc. Then we got them to dance with a plastic piece of fruit held between two foreheads. It was pretty funny!
I also taught some women in their thirties one night this week, and taught them about past and future tense of ‘go’. When I teach English, I sometimes explain concepts in Thai so that they can understand, eg. ‘ca’ is inserted before a Thai verb to make it future, and ‘gamlang’ to make it present tense. I use these when I talk about the future and present tense in English, and sometimes write words in Thai on the board. Also attending at this particular lesson was a guy from Bangkok, who decided to join us, about my age. He was talking to the women in Thai quietly for a while, after which one of the women asked me ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guy grinning. ‘May mii,’ I quickly answered. ‘May aw’: “I don’t have one, I don’t want one!’. These women continued to press for him – ‘he could teach you Thai’.
I also helped teach a local guide English this week, topography terms like ‘mountain’, ‘river’, and adjectives to describe the path. We then went for a short walk soon after, describing the path: ‘Is this path narrow? Yes this path is narrow. Is this path steep? Yes! This path is steep!’ The path wasn’t slippery but we were pretending to trip to use the word.

Interning
This week I had a meeting with P’Moo, Salapao (who I work with in anti-human trafficking) and another guy. We talked about the Anti-Human Trafficking Project here, and we had a complex meeting that went for over an hour, with them discussing in Thai (that I couldn’t understand), and then them translating for me into English while I frantically typed on my computer. Essentially, it was a project direction meeting, mapping out the work of the project for the next 2 years, which I will put together into a funding proposal. The Project will engage with local government staff in 15 subdistricts in the first year, educating them about human trafficking, and then also running youth camps for youth from those subdistricts, who will create plans for how to engage with their community in awareness raising campaigns. They will receive funding from the Project in the first year, with an aim for local government to work in partnership for funding in the second year.
In other exciting news, I have found out that this week I will be the sole farang (white person) travelling to Naan province, which is two provinces south of Chiang Rai, while still in the north. I will be going with the hilltribe team, who are all Thai, many of whom do not speak much English. So that will be interesting! I will be possibly writing about what I see and what the hilltribe does and...?(watch this space). Even more interesting, I will be going to see who P’Moo described as the ‘banana leaf people’. (?) I have no idea what this will entail. Tonight we will be watching a documentary about the place where I am going in Thai up at the kitchen, where there is a tiny (the only) TV. People will translate for the program for us.
Apparently the organisation here was on Thai TV recently. Stories about the hilltribes have been coming out on TV. We heard one over breakfast: there was a lady from a hilltribe, who was stateless – she wasn’t a Thai citizen (which is often the case). She developed cancer. However, she couldn’t afford medical treatment – which is more expensive if you are not a citizen. As a result, she didn’t seek medical assistance. Eventually, when she did, the cancer had advanced to such a level, that the cancer was terminal and she was going to die. She also had children she would leave behind.
Such stories tear me apart. I would love to raise awareness about these issues more in Australia. However, for that to happen, I still have so much more to learn. In part, that is why I am looking forward to going to Naan.
Something else that has been really hard this week is other volunteers leaving the organisation and going on the next step of their adventuring. Seven volunteers left this weekend, which was about a third of us. In addition, the three volunteers I was closest to, and were my closest friends here, left this weekend. It was heartbreaking. There were many tears. Because I am here for so long, (most people are here only a month or less), I will eventually have to say goodbye to every single person currently here (but one) and see them leave. And befriend, and say goodbye to the new volunteers that are still to come here. I think that is going to be the hardest part of being here. But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
The rain has stopped now. Everything is shining and clean. Even the smoke hanging over the mountains has been washed away.