Back in Bangkok after six days away. Set off last Friday with the team in the RECOFTC minibus - P Kai (leader), Bee (my assistant/translator), driver and three guys who are making a documentary about community forestry. After about 4 hours drive we stopped at Phutoei National Park which borders Huai Hin Dam village, for a meeting with Park staff and to drop off some educational material for park staff to use when giving talks to children. Park superintendant has only been in post a couple of years, and takes pragmatic enlightened attitude. He is interested in negotiating local agreement with villagers about collecting NTFPs (bamboo shoots, herbs, mushrooms, and other forest edibles) although this is strictly against the national conservation policy which forbids anything being removed from a National Park.
We sat outside in the late afternoon - a beautiful spot but very hot. Superintendant evidently doesn't get much opportunity to talk to outsiders in such a remote spot. Got Bee to translate some direct questions, but mainly sat and listened and watched. After an hour or so documentary men slipped away to take random shots of scenery. Bee took ticks out of the dog. Superindendant talked on and on.
Then onto Huai Hin Dam as evening fell. Very poor Karen village right on the border of the park. Dirt track roads. Wooden houses with thatch and corrugated iron roofs. Downstairs is open, beaten earth floor, where cooking, living, rice milling etc go on. Upstairs is for sleeping. Water from stream or rain water. Subsistence farming in rotational fields - rice and vegetables planted together in the traditional Karen manner. Some cash crops - mainly maize, to pay for the neccessities of modern life: electricity, education and transport. Most houses have electricity (mainly used to power the TV or a DVD player, but not used for lighting). Most people don't have a fridge. The headman has the largest satellite dish I have seen outside military use.
Khun Piya, who runs the local children's group, looked after us and cooked for us. Bee, P Kai and I slept in her elder sister's house next door, three of us in a row under a mosquito net, on a thin padded mattress which the cat had sprayed on. Next day did interviews with Khun Piya, her sister and a rather creepy professional do-gooder who has married a village woman. Much talk about desire to preserve the old ways, also thirst for education, even though they kept saying that what they teach in school is 'urban knowledge'.
KP showed us around - a very hot walk to see her training plot where she teaches the children about traditional Karen agricultural techniques, some ritual trees and up to the latest irrigation project where we were given two pumpkins, which subsequently figured largely on the menu. I kept seeing a very bright looking woman going past on her motorcycle, and would have liked to interview her, but every time I went to her house she was not in - presumably off on her bike somewhere.
P Kai and KP obviously great friends. They talked late into the night lying on the earth floor with the baby asleep between them. Noi (KP's jolly teenage daughter who is studying for her accountancy certificate) invited me to watch Spiderman with her. So we finished the evening sitting companionably in the dark watching a blurred pirate copy badly dubbed into Thai.
We sat outside in the late afternoon - a beautiful spot but very hot. Superintendant evidently doesn't get much opportunity to talk to outsiders in such a remote spot. Got Bee to translate some direct questions, but mainly sat and listened and watched. After an hour or so documentary men slipped away to take random shots of scenery. Bee took ticks out of the dog. Superindendant talked on and on.
Then onto Huai Hin Dam as evening fell. Very poor Karen village right on the border of the park. Dirt track roads. Wooden houses with thatch and corrugated iron roofs. Downstairs is open, beaten earth floor, where cooking, living, rice milling etc go on. Upstairs is for sleeping. Water from stream or rain water. Subsistence farming in rotational fields - rice and vegetables planted together in the traditional Karen manner. Some cash crops - mainly maize, to pay for the neccessities of modern life: electricity, education and transport. Most houses have electricity (mainly used to power the TV or a DVD player, but not used for lighting). Most people don't have a fridge. The headman has the largest satellite dish I have seen outside military use.
Khun Piya, who runs the local children's group, looked after us and cooked for us. Bee, P Kai and I slept in her elder sister's house next door, three of us in a row under a mosquito net, on a thin padded mattress which the cat had sprayed on. Next day did interviews with Khun Piya, her sister and a rather creepy professional do-gooder who has married a village woman. Much talk about desire to preserve the old ways, also thirst for education, even though they kept saying that what they teach in school is 'urban knowledge'.
KP showed us around - a very hot walk to see her training plot where she teaches the children about traditional Karen agricultural techniques, some ritual trees and up to the latest irrigation project where we were given two pumpkins, which subsequently figured largely on the menu. I kept seeing a very bright looking woman going past on her motorcycle, and would have liked to interview her, but every time I went to her house she was not in - presumably off on her bike somewhere.
P Kai and KP obviously great friends. They talked late into the night lying on the earth floor with the baby asleep between them. Noi (KP's jolly teenage daughter who is studying for her accountancy certificate) invited me to watch Spiderman with her. So we finished the evening sitting companionably in the dark watching a blurred pirate copy badly dubbed into Thai.
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