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

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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.)

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...