Village Life, a New Year, Thanksgiving, and an Anniversary

This is my first post since moving to the village full-time, and I think I should begin with this morning.

Bright and early this morning, probably around 5:00 am, a certain scream erupted my peaceful dreams. In my initial half-dream state, I was pretty sure someone in the house was screaming at the top of their lungs, "No, I won't! I can't! I won't! No, I won't! I can't! I won't!" It sounded like a fight for one's life. Strange terror gripped my heart at such a horrifying awakening, as slowly my mind processed that it was highly unlikely that someone was screaming in English, and secondly there was only my husband and me in the house, and my husband was only vaguely stirring from the sound of the screaming.

My panic settled and quickly turned into chicken soup anger, as I realized one of our roosters had discovered our place of sleep and placed himself exactly under our partially open window. It was not a scream of danger; he was demanding food! No, I thought to myself, I will not reward screaming chickens. Both my husband and I shielded our ears and refused to give in to the rooster's tantrum for the next eternal half hour. Eventually I heard the faint sounds of huffing and him moving away. We had won and returned to sleep. For some reason, this morning we have been discussing the best timing for our next pot of chicken stew.

Anyhow, as to other updates, Shan people around the world have celebrated the start of a new year: the year 2109! Yes, the Shan have been living in the 22nd century for the last nine years. Look to the Shan to see what lays ahead, young Westerners. Soon you too will enjoy termite delicacies and blood soup. It is only a matter of time... Anyhow, we had a great Shan New Years celebration here in Thoed Thai, though I'm not how sure I got pulled into helping to carry the banner for our neighborhood in the village parade. Nevertheless, a whole lot of people were able to legitimately and openly take my picture, instead of stealthily pretending to play on their phones, facing me, while their cameras made weird flashes. I think my husband vaguely considered charging 20 Baht per photograph (kidding... just kidding). Here are a few highlights...

 The handsomest guy around... :)

The "VIP" truck for very special people who don't mind paying 20,000 Baht to break the rules and annoy the community. 

The stage

 This little guy and his father, in front of the Shan flag, were just too photo-worthy. Sadly, I cannot seem to upload the version, where I fixed the coloring. His dad wanted him to take a photo with me, but he shyly refused.

Getting ready for the parade. Everyone finding their places. 

 Lovely.

No comment. 

These girls all performed in the traditional dancing later.

Almost immediately following Shan New Year, I realized Americans would soon be celebrating Thanksgiving. As I am big on the tradition of eating a large meal for Thanksgiving, I suggested to my husband that we go into Chiang Rai (a city), where we treated ourselves to a grand Japanese lunch, complete with sushi. I'm sure our meal differed slightly from many of our American friends, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. And we were thankful, of course, which was the whole point.

Then yesterday marked a very special day: Mong's and my one year wedding anniversary. To mark it, I made a Thanksgiving feast, which we enjoyed after church with everyone who came. It was a bit of a culinary stretch for most of our guests, but it'll provide them something to tell others about. ;) 

In honor of being married one year and one day, here is a sneak peak of the photos that will soon be uploaded onto Facebook:

Cameras, Traveling, and Poverty

Lately I've been struggling with the role foreigners, particularly privileged foreigners, play in visiting or living in communities struggling with poverty. For any of us who have been regulars in this struggle, we know there's always a bit of an awkward factor--and there's also the just downright "bad feeling" that comes with it.

It's awkward to be seen has having dollar signs on your forehead, for sure, and then it's simply painful to walk into a house with simple clothes on your back and feel like a queen for what you're wearing.

I think most people who've been involved in development work or simply Christ-centered "downward mobility" have struggled with this. For me, I didn't shop for a time. My clean clothes always had holes. Forget make-up splurges. And still we might feel like royalty. We get asked for money. And it's such a struggle! How do you answer? Maybe you've been offered a baby and there was no legal way to take that child and bring him/her to safety (I was--back before I even knew my husband, and it affected me deeply).

I have often not known what to do, but one thing I felt compelled to do was take pictures. Of children laughing. Of clouds settling far below the mountain peak where I resided. Of gardens, full of vegetables, conveying hope in the midst of trying circumstances. Of fires blazing during the dry season. Of kids studying at school. These were beautiful moments, and I wanted to record them, and I believed that in capturing them I could, perhaps, explain just a bit of the life I'd chosen to those far away.

That's the context for what I need to write and is the source of a great deal of inner turmoil right now.

You see, there's a certain camp for IDPs (internally displaced persons) that my husband has had the privilege of visiting many times. He has also taken doctor teams to the camp to assist the clinic with training or in other various ways.

On a recent visit, a villager in the camp came up to him and said something along the lines of, "Look, I need the money that the last team raised for me."

My husband understood immediately (I wouldn't have) and had to explain to the man that the team had simply enjoyed taking photographs around the village and with people they'd spoken to when they had finished at the clinic.

This man was still quite confused, because, after all, they had taken photos of him. What's the point of all those photographs, in the midst of his poverty, if not to show the world and raise funds? He did not see the potential beauty worth capturing in his surroundings. In fact, he still felt that funds must have been raised, and either the team or my husband was holding it back from him. He had to be reassured a lot.

To my surprise, this was not the first time my husband has dealt with this issue. Apparently in the village we live in (which is far more comfortable than the IDP camp), there had been several similar events. Westerns come, do their thing, then take pictures, and villagers begin hoping for the help that is not coming.

What I realized is that when Westerners have often felt they were capturing a beautiful place, moment, or event, what so many local individuals have felt was an unpleasant exposure, to which they willingly succumbed, because Westerners have represented monetary hope for them.

Of course, it's the postmodern age, and some of these same villagers are also on Facebook. That means, they also see Facebook campaigns from their foreign Facebook "friends" to raise funds for this or that, sometimes individuals persons. Sometimes accompanied by photos.

And my heart broke when my husband said this to me.

Yes, in most of these cases, monetary support is not the best way to help. Really, it's not. And, yes, a major education campaign needs to occur everywhere to stop viewing foreigners as ATMs, but what hope does such a campaign have when Facebook tells them otherwise?

So what about the camera? Here are my requests of those who may visit me (and probably for anyone who visits similar situations), in no particular order:

1. Only take close-up pictures of people you know the names of and think you might loosely call "friends."

2. Do not take pictures immediately following someone telling you of their struggle, previous persecution, pain, or poverty, unless you actually intend to do something to help them. If not, wrong message. Take pictures of JOY.

3. Take pictures of mountains, lakes, clouds, and rice paddies.

4. Take far away silhouette photos of non-recognizable people doing work, which is beautiful and culturally specific, like rice planting or monks gathering alms in the morning.

5. Be upfront about the reasons for your visit (ie. not to raise funds, unless that is the reason, and even then, state what the funds will be used for).

6. Do not post fundraising campaigns for local-to-here situations on Facebook publicly. Use your privacy settings to determine your audience on Facebook.

7. Do not act like an ATM.

8. Tell people if you intend to use their photos and for what.

Most of all, let's keep working on showing deeper respect for the communities in which we find ourselves, understanding that what we may perceive as beauty (such as clothes on a clothesline) might not be understood that way by someone overwhelmed by the painful reality of their situation. Let's be slow to pick up that camera and quick to listen, love, and laugh together.

Creating a Village

I am already back in Chiang Mai, a strange occurrence considering that just over a week ago I was here. However, this time I am here to pick up my parents from the airport in a couple hours, an unmistakably exciting reason to be here.

However, my relationship to Chiang Mai is also changing. I used to feel in every visit like an outsider, a confused visitor, a fraud who knew just enough Thai to survive but whose mind was ever switching to Shan. But yesterday and today has reminded me that it does not take spending huge swaths of time in a place to turn a city into a village. The villa I always stay at greeted me happily with lots of questions when I arrived. The man that fixed my friend's computer smiled cheerfully in recognition when I came to him with a computer that would not connect to the internet. The Shan housekeeper at the villa and her younger siblings went to dinner with me after work (as soon as they heard I was going to dinner at 8pm, though they had already eaten, they declared I was not allowed to go alone, grabbed my hand, and took me out the door). This morning the breakfast restaurant owner asked me if I knew anyone looking for work that I could send her way (she knows I know many Shan people who might be looking), and the Shan cook that works with her held my hand as she asked about my parents coming. Finally, I find myself in the same coffee shop that always plays Norah Jones and Eva Cassidy music. As I walked in, the lady that owns the shop asked me in Thai, "You want a latte as usual, right?"

I've gotten in the habit of explaining to people that there's something special about village life that I cannot imagine giving up right now, and that certainly remains true. But I am also coming to an awareness that a person can choose to live as if in a village anywhere really. There may be many, many choices for food in Chiang Mai, but by becoming a regular, I am creating the same sense of closeness and space in Chiang Mai as I have in my village. I am connecting on a human level. I am learning names. I am smiling and following up to the tidbits of story I've learned the last time. While here in Chiang Mai, I do always still miss the real village (I say this while the background noise of construction machinery threatens to blast my eardrums), but perhaps, more importantly, a more transferable mindset has developed in recent months. My home may change several more times in my lifetime. Politics may force that eventually. But I am committed to the human connections that living in a Shan village has taught me.