The Karen Village, Behind the Scenes

So we are back in Chaing Mai again, and it feels great to sleep in a bed, take a hot shower and hang out in civilization. The two weeks in the Karen Village were.....well.....it was what it was I guess. It was two weeks of roller coaster emotions and lots of confusion. We stayed with a family of four that hosts tours like the one we went on a month and a half ago almost every night. So every night there was a new group of tourists that stayed at the house. The children sang every night and we also heard the same jokes every night. The house was simple but spacious. All made out of wood and concrete, with a metal roof. We slept on a concrete floor with a few blankets under us and a few on top. The family was so wonderful to us. The wife, who we called Pi, spoke very limited english but we had a few nights of playing games and bonding and sharing language through books. She was amazing in that she never stopped moving all day. She got up at 6am every morning, cooked breakfast, then went to the school to teach, then came home and did stuff around the house, then cooked again, and then studied by candle light all night. She had headaches all the time from reading in bad light. The husband Saikam spoke pretty good english and was very friendly but was not around that often and when he was he was with a tour. They had two kids a daughter that is about 11 and a son that is 8. They were amazing children. They often had no supervision, especially on weekends. When the parents were gone they would use huge knives to cut fire wood, to make a fire, so they could make themselves and us lunch. Then they would shower on their own and do laundry. They were so good at taking care of themselves but still played like kids at the same time.

We were a little disappointed with the school. There is about 60 students and three class rooms. There are about 6 teachers and most of them speak a little english but it was very hard to communicate with them. When we first arrived we were told that the children were going camping for a boy scout thing and that we could go along but Sky would not be able to teach until the following week. So his teaching time when from a limiting 2 weeks one week which is almost nothing. We went camping and it was fun to learn about all the medicinal plants in the forest and to watch the kids make their own shelters out of branches and tarps. We made an obstacle course for them in the jungle and and basically just sat around and watched for three days not really knowing what was going on because we could not understand what they were saying.

That weekend we wanted to hike somewhere but our host family did not seem very comfortable with that and one day took us to a waterfall but the other day we were just stuck at the house but locked out and all our stuff was inside. They were so strange about things sometimes. We were always locked out when they were gone, they didn't like us walking around and never told us where they were or when they were coming back.

So teaching time finally came around and Monday was a let the kids rest because they just got off a holiday day. Sky got to teach for only a short time. Then Tuesday was Monk Day. I guess it was a half moon that night or something, so we went to the temple to pray that morning for about 20 minutes. The rest of monk day is apparently set the forest on fire day. The kids just ran around raking up leaves and fallen branches and burned whatever they pleased. We didn't really see the point but they had fun. So that day the kids only got a couple hours of class time. Wednesday was sports day. So they run around just playing basically, no organized games, until lunch. Then they eat a big meal, sit in front of a TV for about an hour and then they try to learn. They were all so tired and unmotivated by the time Sky got to teach, and it was really frustrating. Thursday was the most productive day and Sky got some good hours in. Friday just happened to be the one day out of the year that the kids don't write. That's right, no writing at all, but drawing is okay. So all in all it seemed like going to teach in the village was a big waste of time. The other teachers don't make their students stay in the classroom. Many of them tell the students to just study and then start drawing out plans for their new house or whatever they feel like. I really wonder where all the money that is donated to the school goes. It seems to me that they are just lazy. There are kids that are way too young to be in school that hang out in the classrooms as well as kids that have already graduated and just have nothing else to do. There was one student that was deaf and no one made any effort to teach him how to read lips. He could write but he could not talk and when ever anyone talked to him they spoke gibberish or just made sounds like he did. He acted out a lot in class, surprise surprise. Sky even offered to teach extra on the weekend and they couldn't organize it so it never happened. One glimmer of hope though, was one little girl came by on Saturday by herself wanting to learn more. Sky almost shed a tear.

During the week I was sometimes in the classroom helping Sky and the rest of the time I was walking around all three villages mapping with my GPS. The teachers said that they wanted a map of the area and they wanted to know the distances between. This could be used for education or even for something for the tourists to look at when they came to look at the school. So I made them a nice map with the distances between, the perimeters of the villages, the areas, the male to female ratios, # of houses , average # of people per household etc. The teachers loved it, but when I brought it home to show Pi and Saikam they did not like it at all and got mad when Sky showed it to some of the tourists. Why? Those are questions that tourists always ask. Why does it have to be a secret? So strange.

Besides that we did have a good time hanging out with everyone in the village. The older men were the most welcoming and laid back. They shared their home made rice wine with us and one old man even taught us an ancient fighting dance. There was a lady that lived next door that often came by and gave me bananas. The kids where fun to play with. We ate many interesting foods like tadpoles, beetles, fresh water shrimp, pig intestines, and frogs. The frogs where the best. They would put a whole fish that had been fried on your plate so you had to look it in the eye before you took a big bite out of it's face. The head really was the best part. Sometimes I had no idea what I was eating but we always had rice. Rice, rice, rice with every meal. Rice veggies and mystery meat but very little fruit. I was horribly stopped up for the first week and a half.

So, the Karen live really nice lives. They live in a beautiful place and their life is simple yet comfortable. They are not what they seem when you come through as a tourist. They have solar power, TV, motor bikes, cell phones and more money than they want you to believe. They get funding from Canada and I'm sure they make a good amount off of the tourists. They could do a lot more for themselves if they wanted to but they would rather rely on handouts is the conclusion I have come to. They even tried to charge Sky and I 500 baht for the ride up to the village in the back of a pickup truck while they were running errands around town anyway. It seems to be how Thailand goes. Everyone just wants your money. I don't regret staying there at all and I will stay in contact with the friends that we made there. Sky is even thinking about going back for a longer amount of time next year. Maybe to another village though. It was overall a wonderful experience and it saved us a lot of money too.

So now we only have a few days left in Thailand and we are spending them in Chaing Mai and traveling back down to Bangkok. Then it will be on to India which we are thinking might be the real adventure of our trip.