Saturday, December 31, 2011

a 'brief' tale from last night...

This picture has nothing to do with the text... (it's at a waterfall which was very fun to swim under ... we visited a border village here which dee had never been to before and heard distressing stories of brutality from burmese soldiers)

I'm sitting in suvarnabhumi airport feeling a wee bit seedy... we spent time celebrating christmas with a village south of mae sot last night - very fun, about 500 people, really cool community feel - I was inspired to do some amazing christmas dancing... we headed back to mae sot after dark, cos wa wa and I both had to catch flights today... the car was fogging up, and boon shu and dee were both nervous because it's an area you apparently don't want to drive slowly through. We paused quickly outside the fence of a refugee camp ( it's beautiful - awesome backdrop of sheer limestone mountains draped in jungle, the abrupt hills in the foreground are densely covered in tiers of leaf thatched houses and banana, lime, mango, papaya, teak and jack fruit trees. Everything is made out of bamboo or bush materials, and it feels like it should be the set for miracle on the river kwai, only more beautiful than I imagined), and a child was passed through the fence and deposited on one of the girl's laps...
Hmmm haven't got to our breakdown, or the hilarious drunk saviour who towed us with some pathetic rope in a flamboyant, erratic and for most of my friends highly alarming fashion (he was so drunk he could barely stand, amd when he initially went to get water with mu ker paw and paw kwa lee he accelerated so rapidly towards our car I thought he hit it, and in his second attempt at towing us he completely forgot his wife, who was trotting along the shoulder in the dark. While towing us he drove off the road a number of times, which from my vantage point on top of his ute was extra funny in a slightly alarming way, as we careened over small boulders and bounced and jerked on the rope which had failed first attempt, with the whites of boon shu and dee's eyes shining up at me through the windscreen of our ute) or filling up the radiator with copious scoops of toilet reservoir water at the frequent police checkpoints, or arriving at wa wa' s house at 3 am after a freezing ride in the back of a ute, sitting in water, wrapped in santa claus costume - but my flight is about to leave

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

gwo lehr hghee from mae sot

this is a random array of images - i'll try to capture some recent moments here...




this is playing statues in a thai community within bangkok where we had a bbq and played games with the kids... pretty amazing opportunity to connect with some thai families who are really reaching out...



this is a footbridge into burma. it used to be a vehicle bridge years ago, and when dee was 13 she ferried women and children from their village, which was under attack from burmese soldiers, to a safe place in thailand. she spent the entire day doing trips, driving a 4wd that the men were too scared to drive because nobody had licences... they asked if i could cross but the soldiers at the border said it was too dangerous. one of dee's uncles was kidnapped by burmese soldiers somewhere near here...

the thatched rooves you can see used to be dee's (and khugay, khusay and wa wa's) home... the first time the soldiers came the burnt it all down... (dee's relatives saw their house burning on the news)... dee's family rebuilt, and then the soldiers returned, maybe two years later, and that's when dee's extended family fled to thailand...

this is the view (above) from a church on a hill which dee spoke at at an early morning service, after which we were fed a hearty breakfast (typical karen style, lots of rice, chilli, chicken and pork soups and curries - tasty... we then returned to khugay's house, where we were fed another meal... this day i ate 6 substantial meals. thailand is always a little like this for me - the karen are highly hospitable, but mae sot is particularly social, and every house we visit feds us a huge meal - to the point where i am visibly growing, and my body is in a state of distress... i'm eating like i'm in serious training for world sumo championships... i caught sight of myself in a window today and was startled, astonished (in a kind of fascinated 'woh' kind of way) and a little dismayed to see how much i've 'grown'... (boh oo - very fat in karen)...

after being told i couldn't cross the bridge as it was too dangerous, we walked down to the creek for a 'shower'. i spent a lot of time playing in the current... the river is the border, so everytime i got out on the far bank i was in burma

[we have to go and eat again - meal number 4 for today, so i'm just going to post this with no more explanations, and hopefully get back to fix it up...]


this is noon, prior to having a wash in the river...


this is the view from the back of khugay and khusay's house, taken during the killing of the pig...

this is the pig...

this is the merry dance prior to killing the pig, in the end 4 other guys hopped in the pen and held the pig down. she didn't entirely appreciate that and squealed a lot...

here the hole in her side, which was recently spurting blood, is being staunched with some kind of raffia reedy grass stuff...





Sunday, December 25, 2011

kler kler


just back from playing games in a thai community in bangkok, which was recently inundated with floodwater (last time we visited it was still knee deep, but the water mark was head high on the walls)... very fun and funny, had to remind my self every so often that it's christmas day, bit surreal here... leaving in the morning for mae sot, will be there all week... have been to 5 different villages this past week, and celebrated christmas in varied and entertaining ways. would like to write more but have really limited net access...

hopefully it managed to upload the shot of the production of morning coffee, such a noble activity...



and this is coco, one of the possibly 80 kids dee now cares for... they all have 'proper' names, but some of their 'use' names include chocolate, coffee, icecream, mocha, latte, carnation (a milk brand), dupro (another milk brand), coco(a), milo, pancake, obama...

Sunday, December 18, 2011

suitably epic jungle adventures...

there are so many things i want to write about from thailand, however it's been so hectic, and that pattern looks like continuing... so i'm going to upload as many photos as i can tonight, and then hopefully add some more when we return from the villages. mocha, one of the toddlers living in this place, stole my charger and (only) battery (i inadvertantly left my spare in san jose) today, and if i don't find the battery that will be the end of my photo taking...

anyway..we returned last night from an epic jungle adventure... it was very very fun...


this is boon shu and takwa (dee's brother, real name tomahawk, but called takwa by most people), in takwa's most magnificent beast... what it lacked in brakes, starter motor and windows, it made up for with rpg launcher switches, flashy motorcycle exhaust, radiator cap cutout in the bonnet, amazing paint job (every part of the engine, including hoses, spark plugs - seriously everything was painted blue and red, to match the racing car seats), and all sorts of other unexpected additional features...





not long out of sangkhla buri we turned off the tar onto a dirt road. we had two 4wds, both single cab utes, and there were 15 of us. takwa's beast took the lead. it required roll starting to get it going every time, and one of the guys had to leap off the back to chock the wheels when we stopped; compensating for the absence of brakes. at times the vehicle's momentum would drive it over the chock repeatedly, with the chock boy running along side attempting to halt it...

the road grew increasingly rugged, and takwa's door, which was wired shut with bungy cord which had lost some of it's elasticity, casually flapped open something like a fish gill - quite mesmerising to watch... the cars were constantly swaying, jouncing, rattling, bashing form side to side, so i ended up standing... for three days i stood, at the back of a ute with no tail gate, going up and down some amazingly steep hills and through some crazy river crossings... rossco and i did most of this trip back in 2006, but that was sitting on top of a loaded ute and was far more padded...








there's so many more photos, and much much more to write, but technology is failing, and it's 12:30am and we've been pushing a crazy schedule,(and the girls in the room are trying to sleep), so i might have to leave it here for the time being, and write about getting bogged with no gear and having to sleep in the jungle, and crossing into burma and having porcupine for dinner, and playing games with the kids and swimming in the river, and watching fireflies flit through the bush next week when we get back... and write about thanksgiving in seattle too...


Wednesday, November 30, 2011

back in the wonderful world of LAX



well, after spending the most stupendously fantastic week with the savos of seattle (premiere thanksgiving destination of north america, and therefore the world), i have returned to the shamozzle of LAX. (i will try to write about seattle from thailand.) the flight followed part of the pct, and it felt pretty nostalgic, viewing it from above, coated in snow like some tasty dessert with lots of egg white. the windows were filthy, and i took this on my phone, but you get the idea.
a fierce cross wind as we were coming in to land set the tiny jet swinging wildly. the same gusty wind buffeted me as I walked across the airport (LAX has a crazy layout), so i was dodging sheets of plastic and the surprisingly large bases of palm leaves, and staggering around like a drunk. i'm guessing it's the same wind which has knocked out the power to the airport (as i was ascending the stationary escalator), so that i'm sitting in the dark, typing this. on the horizon there is an enormous tongue of flame, and i'm hoping it's supposed to be there, and not a plane which lost sight of the landing lights with the power outage.



in fairly typical fashion i've managed to leave my external hard drive at the savos, after wiping my sd card, so it'll be a while before I can do those retro- posts. this is a shot of desi I had on my phone...

(the airport lights just came back on, to widespread applause and cheering. sometimes humans are bizarre creatures.) also, the photos don't match the words - but it's far too much work to rearrange on my phone ...

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

chillin at LAX


I'm sitting in a starbucks in LAX, one of the messier, more unwieldy airports I've been to. It's 1am, 3am Haiti time, and I left Kellyanne's house 20 hours ago. I've been in planes or airports ever since and have 10 hours before I'll be in Seattle and I feel delightfully seedy.
I'm heading to the fabulous Savos of Seattle for thanksgiving and a week of wintry Washington weather before returning to the warmth of the tropics in Thailand. Ah, Starbucks is closing, so I'm off to wander, or find a little cranny for a bit of a kip.

(I've been curled up dozing on the only bench thing I could find, and it's seriously chilly in here. I've been using my pack cover to keep warm - same cover ma sewed for me when I was a teenager ... earlier on I was struggling to get the knots undone because of all the transfer tags around the cord, and I asked a builder to cut them for me. Years and years ago, when the bag was much newer, I told my sister Ains if she could get the knots undone I'd give her a cow. I still haven't given her that cow.)

Sunday, November 20, 2011

the titanic, digicel and a few random images...

tomorrow is my last day in haiti. my time here has passed far too quickly. i could quite happily move in for a year or too. the people have been fabulous; so many good people to connect with and learn from.

i've seen so many amazing and beautiful, and ugly and heart wrenching things, but it's been hard taking photos to capture many of the moments. i always think i'll remember the great images that i was unable to get photos of, however they fade from memory all too quickly. one i do recall was a bloke on the back of a moto in jacmel, a fistful of lobsters dangling from one hand, and a splendid looking fish from the other...

another was while driving in a tap tap (a ute with two rows of bench seats in the tray, with a cover) coming down route de delmas in the dying light of day. a group of dudes on roller blades came flying through the traffic grabbing hold of the tap taps and dancing around them, somehow negotiating potholes and motos and pedestrians. they were wearing green shirts (probably advertising voila, a phone company), and they were screaming through; really travelling. it looked like so much fun.

sometimes it feels like haiti is sponsored by digicel, another phone company. the red of digicel is everywhere - the street signs are digicel red, wall space everywhere carries painted digicel banners, there are digicel umbrellas everywhere, people wear digicel shirts...

and if digicel is the sponsor, the titanic theme music is haiti's soundtrack... the water trucks which supply the city play an ice-cream man style titanic, and so it's often background noise to my day. in bainet it would often float gently in on the breeze, and it sort of felt like it was somehow just the essence of haiti, coming in off the surf and through the rustle of the palms...

this is some girls walking home from church... they really get dressed up here...


this is a zaboka - avocado... the one on the left is normal size, on the right is how big the ones we've been eating lately are...



these are some fabulous girls i've been spending time with: kerry, who i stayed with in jacmel; sarah, who works for the same organisation as kerry; jill, kellyanne's flatmate; rachel - also works with kerry and sarah and who is their flatmate; and kellyanne... this is the destination of kellyanne's first attempt at driving on haitian roads - a hilarious adventure: the roads are a mess of yawning potholes and uncovered manholes, piles of rubble and refuse, pedestrians who have been crowded off the footpaths by street merchants and parked cars, dogs, pigs and goats, drivers who casually disregard any notion of road rules, while indignantly employing their horn for any perceived violation by others, and tap taps which stop and start erratically, ... added into this exciting mix is the fact that kellyanne has never driven on the right side of the road before, nor driven a 4wd. i spent a lot of time laughing while the 5 of us yelled to 'stay right, stay right... not that far right!'



and this is my dessert from the restaurant we ate at... coconut icecream - very tasty...


last weekend we visited fort jacques... (actually this one's called fort alexandre - but the area's called fort jacques) this was built around the time of independence (1804), and has a commanding view of port au prince... i don't think the cannons were ever fired, however you get the distinct impression the cannon balls would have struggled to clear port au prince or to hit any enemy threat...

possibly during the earthquake the cannon mounts were damaged, i'm not entirely sure. there was just a mass of them lying about...


you can see port au prince bay in the distance... it was quite cool up there, we were at a decent elevation...


below are wilkins, kellyanne, dan, jill - and valentin is taking the photo...


there are a great number of roosters about the place, in fact in both jacmel and bainet they crowed around the clock. it's a sound i particularly like... they're often quite attractive birds - like this fella...


there are a lot of good-looking hibiscus about...



this is jean graham, a teacher from quisqueya - kellyanne's school. we stayed with her and her husband out in croix-des-bouquets. it was so relaxing and delightful staying with them, and jean was the most marvellous baker - she'd just casually whip up soft pretzels, or great pizza dough, or cookies...



jean and her husband live next door to the csi orphanage - which is where her husband works. these are some of the girls there in one of the rooms - showing off their dancing skills to kellyanne... they had pretty amazing rooms with different colour schemes...

Sunday, November 13, 2011

an extended account of my journey to bainet



my journey to bainet began by catching a local bus from a few blocks away from kel's place across town to port au prince bus station... i was lugging an enormous bag with 5 soccer balls and 20 cones, my runners, clothes, books, bedding and other necessary junk in it. the 'bus' was a beaten up tarago, with 10 passengers and a very passionate driver. the rear view mirrors still had most their glass, and were wired on in a solid utilitarian fashion. my seat wasn't actually attached to the vehicle, which made for a far more entertaining voyage. the sliding door remains open for all bus journeys around port au prince, so that passengers can jump in at will, adding a certain gritty freshness as the rain began. it took about an hour and cost 20 gouds (50c) to get across town.

port au prince bus station looks like a market with a bus parking lot behind it, filled with fabulously colouful painted buses, and the more ordinary minivans, which i am assured a far safer to travel in. there's no schedule as such. individuals milling about attempt to corral you onto their bus, and once on you sit there and wait till the bus is full (19 people - more impressive than you think for a minibus). it's a hot and sweaty wait, with dozens of hawkers selling their wares through the open windows, a few obligatory beggars, and possibly a random dude who seemed to chant some kind of long and melodious blessing, or perhaps a curse, over the bus. any luggage must fit into your seat space with you, so my enormous troll bag had to sit awkwardly up under my chin, slowly cutting off the circulation in my arms. the moment the bus is full drivers take off, running the gauntlet out of the 'station'.

the drive out of port au prince is beautiful, and saddening. we hurtled past markets and tent cities, rivers of rubbish, ravines stacked with make-shift houses, fields of cane and corn lined with banana and mango trees, mules, wheelbarrows, piles of rubble and teetering, decaying structures, with the sparkling blue of port au prince bay winking at me between cinder block buildings. the bus takes me through leogane - the epicentre of the earthquake, then up into the mountains, past men and women carrying enormous baskets of bananas, packed with protective palm leaves and reedy grasses, past goats and rather splendid looking roosters, and always small boys playing on the roads edge.

i didn't actually time the leg to jacmel, long enough to lose feeling in my arms and one leg - maybe three and a half hours. at the station (another parking lot - market affair, although slightly more convincing as a bus station), i haggled with moto drivers, then got a moto ride to l'eglise wesleyenne - the wesleyan church, where i met pastor robert.

there is a curious phenomenon centred around the wesleyan church in jacmel. it's a strange kind of time vortex, in which everything slows down and any sense of urgency is sucked out of plans or minds. i sat on a rock under an elephant ear plant, and read a little while non-urgent tasks were completed around me at a mesmerisingly non-urgent pace. (and i'm pretty solidly known for my lack of task orientation, and my inability to complete things quickly, so the wesleyan church is somewhat mind bending for me, makes me feel a little like neo at the very end of the matrix, like i'm moving so amazingly fast through this world that other things could appear slow to me).

eventually, after a meal of fish, fried plantain, pikliz, and maybe rice, and a ceremonial deflating of the soccer balls, we wandered out towards the street to discover the moto driver hadn't turned up. we walked up the road until we were able (i think) to hail his friend, and then finally our driver arrived, and strapped my behemoth of a bag to his bike rack, leaving just enough space for the three of us: driver, pastor robert and i, to snuggly squeeze onto the bike.

the ride was hilariously fantastic. it's a dirt road, often closely resembling a creek bed, winding its way up through the mountain range which runs along the south coast. often the road would be covered in rocks, sometimes it would be slabs of solid rock, sometimes cut with deep fissures, sometimes just like a washed out dirt road, which our driver tackled with a maniacal ferocity. i was launched respectable distances into the air many times over, with the good pastor grabbing my knees at times to anchor me.

we stopped somewhere near the top of the mountain range (possibly to stretch our legs, i'm not entirely sure), and it was beautifully cool. the road continued in a tunnel of cool green. tall trees with lianas, plants with huge leaves; the light spilling down gently through the green. it was damp and misty and felt a little like a montane cloud forest for a while. and then, abruptly, we shrugged off the shade cover, and came careening out into the bright sunshine, with utter disregard for goats and small boys, or anything daring to get in our path. before us the fabulous blue of the caribbean sea opened out, the mountains fall away so steeply in wrinkly folds - straight down to the ocean - that we felt suspended above it all. the road was a white slash along the tops of the spurs and ridges, winding sinuously down between precipitous drops. the ridge was at times knife edge, sheer either side. (when i commented on the amazing view pastor robert yelled back at me in a wind whipped bellow: 'good place to see, bad place to visit', reinforcing the obvious: going over the edge wasn't an ideal outcome)

we coasted down violent grades, bouncing exuberantly over the stone strewn surface; skidding around tight blind corners as the tortured road bent back on itself. i was grinning like a maniac, filled with that exultant feeling of absolute freedom, and the joy of the splendid notion of being alive.




we dropped down toward a bay nestled in between white bluffs and fringed with coconut palms. the town of bainet feels like a fishing village, clinging to the hillside, by the water. a river borders either side of the town, and the mountains rise up steeply behind; roads quickly giving way to goat tracks.

there was lazy afternoon light warming the crumbling facades as we pulled into town, and it seemed the most beautiful place i'd been since arriving in haiti. we walked through the school yard of the wesleyenne college, and up a steep hill to our quarters. from the balcony outside my room i could see the ocean through the palms.

i went to bed that night (after fried fish, fried plantain and pikliz), with all the warning signs of a migraine. during the night it became full blown, and by early morning i was vomitting pretty heartily. the power in bainet is on roughly from 4pm till midnight, so it became an obstacle course in the dark: trying to make it to the split level bathroom without running water, through all the water drums, basins and buckets, and to the toilet in time. it only lasted 36 hours, which was a relief, but trying to explain to a haitian that food was not in fact the solution, proved surprisingly tricky.

at a meeting with the soccer girls, i suggested a 6:30am start time. there was a huge amount of intense discussion about this in kreyol, the outcome being that 6 was good. when i clarified this i understood that in fact we'd decided to meet at 5:50am each morning, to walk to the field together. i quite like early mornings, however considering school starts at 1pm, this felt a little excessive to me. still, i nodded as if it was the best idea i'd heard nonetheless. i tentatively requested the girls wear shoes they could run around in, not knowing what they would own.




the field, when we arrived, was occupied by 4 donkeys, grazing on the little grass there was, wholly unconcerned with our plans. there was a liberal distribution of rubbish, rocks, various large hunks of concrete, and makeshift stakes to tether the donkeys. one whole corner of the field was the road, and another a creek washout with a sort of delta of rocks and sand, making corner kicks a perilous business.



my footwear request had been rewarded with a great assortment of flip flops (thongs), court shoes with socks, bare feet, and runners - carried carefully to the field in a plastic bag, worn for the rough pell mell of play over stones and rubble, and then equally carefully returned to the bag for the journey home. most the court shoes lasted part way through the first drill, and then only socks prevailed. one girl determinedly kept hers on for the entire session, except that they would fly off whenever she kicked the ball. this always seemed like a cunning (and slightly alarming) diversionary tactic.

despite the early hour, half the town turned up to watch, mostly boys and men and apparently to laugh and yell whenever the girls did anything... they were tough, feisty girls. the terrain did nothing to diminish the ferocity of the play, and the spectators had no obvious effect.





on the last day i was there, we had an afternoon session at school as well. this was conducted in the yard, which was entirely composed of a jumble of rocks of varying sizes. for some reason, this was deemed a good idea, and my girls trained while the rest of the school looked on.

you can see in the photo above the goalie has abandoned her shoes, choosing instead the sock option, and the boy on the roof is retrieving one of the practising striker's shoes, which flew off when she took her shot (she's also on the roof offering moral support...)



i met a small boy on the beach one afternoon (actually, i met a lot of people on the beach most afternoons - being the only 'blan' in the village really drew the crowds)... we had a chat about football (in kreyol - it was a pretty limited conversation - i can explain the reason i'm visiting is to teach soccer, that i like bainet, that i don't want to buy a fish, and no, he can't have my flip flops, or my watch, or my pen, or my drink (actually to be fair that was the man draped awkwardly at my feet - and no, i didn't want to be his boyfriend either) - kreyol is seriously the easiest language i've ever encountered...). anyway, after this boy enthusiastically chatted to me on the beach, not seeming to grasp the limitations of my kreyol, i met him again in the street a few days later. he grabbed my arm and implored me to play football (he was yelling 'foutbòl, foutbòl' at me)... i was running late getting back to school, but his attire and the ball were worth a quick photo... he was wearing long socks pulled up to mid thigh, jocks, and a singlet, and the ball was something very lightweight, almost like a balloon, wrapped in plastic bags... it looked like so much fun...



in the afternoons i was able to explore, and spent a lot of time wandering along the beach, up the river, and finding goat tracks which ambled their way up the mountain... these were very steep and rocky, and after climbing for a while i was occasionally surprised to discover little old ladies, climbing in their crocs... everywhere i went there were donkeys and mules (and chickens and goats, and often pigs). all through town there are twisty little back routes, running between peoples' houses and tents (everywhere in haiti, there are still people living in tents). initially i felt like an intruder, or some kind peepingtom - because i'm essentially walking through their back yards. but these are the routes they all use, and if i walk nonchalantly, i see a whole different perspective - and get invited over to have fresh coconut, or a drink, and chat in a clumsy fashion...








in the afternoons the fishing boats come back in, and a swarm of people descend on the boats to buy the fish (it doesn't look like a swarm in this photo, but trust me, within seconds that number had quadrupled). i attempted some reflection time down there most afternoons, perched on a driftwood log, amid a tumble of white rocks, seaweed and refuse. i would drink a la benedicta - a cider from the dominican republic, and try to jot down some thoughts. mysteriously a crowd would appear almost as soon as i started writing, and happily stand around, very close. some of them would show me the fish they had just purchased, and many of them wanted to chew the fat, despite not speaking english, and unperturbed by my lack of kreyol.



this lady cooked for the quarters where i was staying. i'm not entirely sure who slept there - some teachers and some students i think. i never heard her speak to anyone, she just smiled. she was tiny, and some days wore this fantastic colourful summer frock, that you'd expect to see on an 5 year old. under her head kerchief, which she never removed but once momentarily, i glimpsed grey dreads. the kitchen where she cooled was a free standing lean-to, with three partial walls of mismatched corrugated iron. the cookfire was straight in the dirt, and chickens roamed through that structure more boldy than seemed wise.



this is that stencil i wrote about, condemning this structure...







pastor robert informed me we were leaving bainet at 5am on saturday morning. i was ready a little early, so i sat on the balcony and read... by about 5:45 we wandered out towards the street, where once again our driver failed to show. after a number of phone calls, and a good bit of standing around he arrived, and promptly began to oil his chain with what looked like sump oil. it was fabulous riding out through the town at that hour, the smell of morning cookfires hung in the air, and the world looked particularly beautiful. i was just contemplating this as the chain came off... the driver repaired it, and we made it a solid 400m up the mountain before it came off again. i sat on a pile of rocks and watched some very young goat kids gamboling about, making, i'm sure, the silliest noises they could... the driver's moto had a sticker on it which said something like 'pursue the knowledge, enjoy the life', except it was somehow clumsier... it was good to sit there in the early morning sun, enjoying the life.


(sunrise the morning we left bainet)