Final days.

I legitimately have 4 days left in Thailand, you guys. 4. Freaking. Days.

I’ve certainly had an adventure while I’ve been here, but first, I’ll fill you all in on what I’ve been up to since Na Nong Bong and my Thai assignments.

Basically, we had 2 weeks of final project time. Since our group was so small, there were lots of projects to do. So I signed up for the Na Nong Bong campaign project (with Katie, Brett, and Alex) as well as the Baw Kaew legal report project (with Katie).

So first, the Na Nong Bong project consisted of all of us working on campaign materials and activities for a high school and a university back in Loei, all facilitated by the Dao Din kids that we worked with during the last unit. It was supposed to be a “fun” informational campaign for those in the area to raise awareness about the mine and how awful it is. It was pretty smooth sailing for us CIEE kids, since we went through the whole planning process a million times over the semester and knew what was going on. But we ran into a bunch of problems while working with the Dao Din kids this time. First, only the first years were able to do the event with us because the older, more dedicated members weren’t free. So there were varying levels of participation and engagement right from the get-go. Also, apparently these kids don’t know what a freakin’ clock is. With the exception of 2 kids, everyone else would come to meetings from 30 minutes to even 1 hour late. Or they wouldn’t come at all, which presented even more issues. A proud moment came when I facilitated the students IN THAI. It really just shows how far I’ve come since the beginning of the program – with no facilitation experience and little Thai speaking abilities to being able to do both at the time. So anyway, with this project, we CIEE kids basically just worked on our materials and activities, action toolkits for people who were interested at the high school and university, and other CIEE-y materials while the other kids did their regular school thing (which is so weird to me because I’m going to be returning to that in like 2 weeks…).

But even before we could go to Loei for the campaign, Katie and I had to do our legal report on Baw Kaew. On the 6^th and 7^th, we were able to go back up to Chaiyaphum (where all the nasty mosquitoes were…) to do some further research on the charges of contributing to global warming that the villagers were facing. I know, I know, it sounds ludicrous. But it’s true. Thanks to the Land Reform Network and Ajaan John, who was our translator and pretty much our saving grace for both the Na Nong Bong campaign and this project, we were also able to visit a few communities in Phetchabun province to further get material to write our report.

Essentially, the villagers we visited had lived on their land for generations upon generations but didn’t have full land ownership through specific land titles. Though the villagers had officially been given the land by the King himself, the central government decided to make the forest around their land into a wildlife sanctuary and national park. They are also currently trying to make that land into a World Heritage site, which costs money and also requires for the villagers to vacate the area. So, for the past few months/years, the government has been charging the villagers with global warming and fining them ridiculous amounts in order to try to force them off. For example, the government told one villager to cut down all of his rubber trees or else he would be charged for global warming. After doing what he was told, he was charged with trespassing and damaging government property (criminal) in addition to contributing to global warming (civil). No, I’m still not kidding. After performing some ridiculous “environmental tests,” they determined the exact fines in baht that he would have to pay for his apparently horrible deed. The charges included loss of water, increased in temperature, loss of soil, and loss of potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus in soil, and the guy had to pay over 400,000 baht. And do you know how they conducted those tests? Well, for the loss of water, an officer from the Ministry of Natural Resources would come into the area, pour 2 liters of water on the ground, and wait until all the water has evaporated. Then, he would take that number, put it into a computer program designed by academics (not necessarily scientists, from our knowledge), and then come up with the fine for that amount of time that the water took to evaporate. And if you think that sounds crazy, the other tests were, you know, just as ridiculous.

We were also able to visit a community of villagers who went out one day to pick corn for their private employer. Before they knew it, they were surrounded by government officials and driven away by the police, who didn’t even give the villagers time to tell someone to take care of their children. They were all charged for trespassing, destroying government property, and contributing to global warming. One was charged with obstructing the duties of an officer or something. And they were all pretty baseless claims.

Needless to say, Katie and I were pretty riled up. So when we got back from the Loei campaign, we sat down and wrote a monster 26 page paper when we were really just required to write like, 5 pages. Mostly, it was a pass-on for future students and a very detailed account of the information we received so that the program can use it in the future. We’re pretty proud of that. :D So here are some pictures!

Oh, PS, we also got to see an amazingly beautiful view of the national park and wildlife sanctuary while we were in Phetchabun. Pictures are courtesy of Lindy and Katie because I forgot to charge my camera battery.

When the time came to actually go to Loei for the campaign on the 8^th, we were only expecting our most dedicated first years (ชมพู่ ท๊อป โต้ง what up?!), but ALL of our buddies came along, despite not coming to any of the meetings. Thanks so much for your hard work แคน แท็ก สมา ทราย!

I would say the campaign was a success, despite there being over 100 students (when we were expecting like 30 students) at the high school (which really wasn’t a high school and actually had those from 2^nd – 9^th grade) and despite there being a super boring powerpoint by the villagers which drove tens of people away every 10 minutes or so at the university. Our activities ran well, and the Thai kids did really well in facilitating. Speaking of, after the event, we all sat down back in the village and did a +, -, delta, which is a tool we CIEE kids were familiar with. It consists of a notetaker/facilitator on the board and then everyone throwing out ideas of what went well, what needed improvement, and what we could change for those things that needed improvement. I was doing the main facilitating, and I decided to do it JBO-style. This basically consists of setting time limits on each section and putting pressure to stay on task and get things done. The namesake is JBO, who famously does this style of facilitation whenever we need something done quickly yet still thoroughly. When I said, “Okay, you all have 2 minutes to think about good and bad things about the program and what we can change. GO,” and then later, “30 seconds,” the Dao Din kids got pretty freaked out. On a positive, we got the whole process done in 30 minutes instead of the regular 2 hours that we probably would have spent. Another proud facilitation moment for me. So yeah, here are some pictures. J

สมา and ท๊อป at the high school

โต้ง , freakin' rockin' it at the high school

ท๊อป and ชมพู่ emcee extraordinaires.

Villager panel at the university

Ajaan John, P'Fac Sam, and Alex with some girl answering a question for our Q&A prize game

So that was kind of it for project time. Don’t get me wrong; it was 2 weeks filled with stress, work, and sleep deprivation, but looking back on it, that was the simplest explanation I think I could have given about the whole process.

Last, we had a human rights festival on the 10th! We partnered with the law faculty and put on an awesome conference! Certainly not Bangkok/unit 3 level, but much, much better. :P

Now, I just got back from a “retreat” where we discussed the program – what we liked, what we didn’t like, what we’d like to change, etc. It was a nice place to reflect on the entire semester and provide insight as to what we could potentially change for next time. I’m also proud that next semester might have a land reform unit just because of my and Katie’s final project about global warming charges! Yay! So essentially, that’s all for the actual Thailand bit. I’m probably going to write one big reflective entry once I get back to the states, but for now, bye~ ^^

Makin' history, nbd.

So, I just came back from the first international human rights conference in Southeast Asia. You know, no big deal.

These past few days have been a whirlwind experience for me. First of all, I was one of the facilitators (every unit has 3.. so I did this one and will do the mining unit later in the semester). That includes helping the group through the ~process~ of getting the most from the unit and planning briefings and workshops and all that stuff. So that also entails working with 2 other people and 2 program interns as well as really, REALLY long planning sessions. Often, we wouldn't get to go home until 1 or 2 in the morning because we were planning a particular session. Never have I ever specifically scheduled time to take a shower in my planner. Never have I ever specifically set aside time to take a poop. Until now. So... I basically learned a whole lot about how I deal with certain situations and stress and... yeah, just a lot about myself in being a facilitator.

So for the human rights unit consisted of one day of prep, 3 days of going to Bangkok and going to the human rights conference, and one day of debriefing of sorts and writing a group paper about our experience.

The going to Bangkok bit was great. The conference itself was also super interesting; the 2 days of the conference were split up into 2 keynote speakers, 2 plenary sessions (one about ASEAN and the other about sexuality an human rights), and 4 groups of parallel sessions which included about 6-7 focused panels in each session. I attended panels on the rights of indigenous people and ethnic minorities, self-determination and development, rights of children and disabled persons, and rights-based approach to economic and social issues. I would say that I'm satisfied with going into those sessions, and I definitely learned a lot. Even though I didn't get to go out into Bangkok because we were planning so much (sorry grandma, aunts, cousins, Phan, and Tana!), I was still okay with the trip as a whole.

So the drama mainly came when the group wrote the report about the conference. I love the other two facilitators like they're my own brothers. I have absolutely no problems with anyone in the group. But the fact that we facilitators had an aggregate 5ish hours of sleep every night or less mixed with the fact that all three of us were sick BECAUSE of the stress and lack of sleep (currently, one has acute tonsillitis, one has an infected eye, and I have hopefully just a cold) made for a day full of emotional breakdowns (for me) and a not-so enjoyable experience for the rest of the group members. But I guess from all of that, I learned a lot about myself and my limits, as I mentioned before.

Sorry guys, I'm really, really sleepy now. Tomorrow, a few of the members of the group and I are taking an overnight bus and going to Chiang Mai for 4 days! And we also have to finish like, a zillion assignments before then. So time to get those done and finally take care of myself! Yay!