Nam Khem Nights

Good day again. I’ve been getting complaints from people saying that I should update my site again… I didn’t even know you guys were reading this! (Besides my mom, and I guess Noi Na, and of course Jepsikwa)…
So anyways, here goes!!!
Uhm, where to start from. Ok, as you know I moved to the Village. I love it here.
Ok, the village is called Ban Pru Teaw and it before the Tsunami it was just a big section of jungle/forrest that was owned by the government. The gravel road I take to get here from the highway has a few houses along it, kinda old-skool Thai farm houses, one even has a fighting bull parked out front… Angry one, that. Anyways, these people had been renting land from the government and so their houses are legally situated, and there’s a number of coconut and rubber tree farms around. After the Tsunami, there was an immediate need to build temporary shelters for the thousands of families that had lost their houses to the wave. This area was one of those chosen. As I drive off the highway and onto the gravel road, the first thing I come across are the remainders of these temporary houses. Uhm, about half of them are empty and are almost falling apart, with huge holes in the particle board walls and supports collapsing at certain places. They’re thrown up in a hurry, and are definitely only a temporary measure. But what surprises me is that here, along with all the other sites of temporary houses I have seen, about half the houses still have people living in them. It’s amazing, and kinda sad too. They’ve been living in these little cardboard shacks for over a year!!! Uhm, I’ll take some pics of the shelters to show you all what I mean. Ok, so anyways, back to the village. Organizations such as ‘Rotary International’ or the ‘Angels Wings Foundation’ (I live in one of their houses), have come and cleared land behind the temporary shelters and have built permanent houses. Now, they’re not fancy by any means and they are all pretty small, but they do the job, and so far in this village over 300 units have been built and there are more still under construction. The Pastor I’m staying with says that by the time they’re done there will be over 500 houses in this village. The village is basically rows of houses, right close to each other. People here all know each other and seem to be all friends. This may come from three reasons, or a blending of them. One, many of them are from the same villages before; two, They share a common reason for living there, that being their houses were wiped out; and three, living in such close quarters, you get to know everyone pretty well. So yeah, I join a tightly knit community of people, as one of maybe 3-4 white people (Farong) out of possibly 1200 people. I love it here, as I already said. I love to sit out in the front in the morning with a fresh made coffee (Ajarn Wassan has coffee made and ready to go just when I wake up every morning – it’s uncanny), and just watch people drive by or more often walk by, or kids play before school, or people chilling just like me on their respective front decks. It’s great.
Uhm, but sleeping has been an issue. My first night here I was way too hot to even sleep cause in order to keep out the mosquitos, the door to our room (I have an American room-mate from Taiwan… MK… awesome guy, more on that later maybe), uhm oh yeah, the door to our room has primarily been kept closed. Meaning, that as hot as it gets in the mid afternoon, it kinda stays like that till about 3 in the morning. No sleep.
Secondly, keeping the door closed does nothing to stop mosquitos from living there, and I got eaten alive that first night. I seriously have a really bad foot right now. I got about 15-16 (hard to count) bites on the top of my foot, right near the ankle, and then to top it all off, today I got a spider bite there as well, meaning my foot is uber itchy, and uber swollen… especially after today’s work (but I’ll get to today’s work later as well… haha, MAN!!!!). No sleep.
So yeah, that was my first night. Wow, sorry for making that so complicated. Uhm, I’m a little bit tired, so maybe it’s just me, but when I re-read what I just wrote it doesn’t make any sense. So, I’ll recap. First night in the village: #1, hot like stink, and #2, mosquito’s, also like stink. No sleep.
Second night in the village… Hot like stink. The Ajarn (Thai for Pastor/Teacher) hooked me up with a mosquito net from one of our neighbors, so after sweating like mad in the stupid hot room, I managed to rig up a nice little cage for me to sleep in, with the net surrounding my cage, keeping me safe from Malaria, Denge, and who knows what else those blood suckers carry. So… less, or maybe no mosquitos, but still crazy hot in that stifling room. Tough to sleep on a bed that’s soaked with sweat. You kinda stick to it, and it’s all gross… (Dear Noi Na and Crystal, it was warmy gross). Still, more sleep that the night before.
Ok, so tonight, since we don’t need to have the door closed cause we both have mosquito nets, Josh and I are watching a movie right now (we’re taking a break cause he’s talking to his mom on the phone, and so I’m typing this now…) and we have the door and windows to our room open, and fans blowing in there, so I’m hoping that tonight will be the best night yet. No mosquito’s, and a more comfortable temperature. Here’s to hoping. I’ll likely have to finish this post tomorrow, so I’ll let you know how it went when I do. Uhm… What to talk of next…
Work has been pretty great lately. We’ve been starting to accomplish a lot, now that the rain has slowed. For the last week we’ve had very little work, because we were about ready to lay the foundations for the walls at the house we are currently working on (foundations here are a bit shady, mostly about 2 feet deep and a bit of cement thrown around some bricks, but I guess they do the job). However, we only got about half the foundations done before a gigantonormous rain storm occurred, and flooded the whole place. Then for the next week it rained consistently, (like… set your watch type-consistent) from 4:00-6:00pm every day, and we could not pour them properly cause there was just pools of water (Big pools, cause it rains like crazy out here and we’re trying to build just above layers of clay, meaning water sticks around until it evaporates). Uhm, So yeah, finally we had two days of no rain and got the rest of the foundations built. Uhm… Then today happened. But I’ll talk about today tomorrow, cause Josh is off the phone and we’re gonna finish the movie now.
I’m back, it’s morning, just finished my coffee and I’m good to go. I slept gooder last night, just so you know, I think I have the problem solved now. If only my foot wasn’t swollen and painful from yesterday’s work. Ok, so about my yesterday…
Woke up and drank coffee as usual, but decided that on this particular day I would go eat breakfast elsewhere. So I drove Mio to the city of Takuapa and looked around for a place I could get some Rice Soup. I found one almost immediately, cause this country has no shortage of places to eat. The owners were Muslim, and they were very happy to serve me, after asking me if I was Muslim. I mean, like they didn’t mind that I wasn’t, it’s was just kind of a truth test I guess. NO SOUP FOR YOU!!!! I passed. I was the first customer that day, and so I got to eat rice soup while visiting with their son who was waiting to go to school. He was learning English, so I responded to his English questions… “Hello!”, “I am fine thanks”, “My name is Kyle”, etc… The food was pretty good, but I definitely miss Khao Tom Kai back in Bang Niang. Those people loved me… (and I have the sneaking suspicion they were trying to set their daughters up with me, but that’s kinda normal in Thailand I have found. It’s like they assume I’m a white male and so I must be attracted to Thai females. Well, sorry Thailand, I’m not). Anyways, after that I drove to work and there found Josh by himself, waiting for people to arrive. Our foreman wasn’t there either, and that was a bit weird. But within 15 minutes we found out why. He was approaching in his little red car and was being followed by two enormous dumptrucks (they’re a lot bigger than the typical American dumptruck, they’re like semi-trucks). These trucks then commenced-a-dumpin’, and two giant piles of sand were left… one within the foundation of the house, and one maybe 1/3rd in. Su Thep (our foreman) then told us that it was our job to shovel it all into the foundation to make a floor up to the 3rd level of bricks. Oh my gosh. Insane. So, he gave us each a shovel, and we began. But wait, oh-no, it doesn’t look like we have enough sand! Oh, ok, it’s alright, here comes two more freaking dump-trucks… Oh, ok, we’re ok now. NOPE!!!!!!!! Three more are coming tomorrow morning!!! (that’s today), and so we shoveled all day out in the heat, and I swear it was hotter today than the days past, even before we started shoveling. So uhm, yeah, we started to get a bit done, us out there in bare feet and bare-backs and drinking water like nobody’s business. But after working all morning (and mighty hard too, my arms are dead), we had only a little bit accomplished. Lunch break was interesting. While sitting at the restaurant of the lady for whom we’re building the house, we were joined by a man from a commune of sorts. He’s a white missionary, and he says that he lives by Acts 2 and 4… something about how he and his family share common things and live together, and so on…So he had some interesting things to say, most of which contradicted itself, I wish I could remember the perfect example, but I can’t. Also, he went off about bashing Bush’s war and that Jesus was a man of peace… I think he was a US-style menno of some sort. I mean, good on him, but he was bashing other missionaries in the area, calling them hypocrites and so on, some of which I work with. Why are they hypocrites, cause they’re sinners? Cause they’re human? Sorry dude…
Our next guest was the opposite. A smoking swearing English teacher from SoCal… Huntington beach to be precise. We had a lot more fun conversing with him, and I think in a lot of ways (to me anyways), there was more Christ in his words than that of the other man. So anyways, that was lunch, then back to work.
We nearly completed about 2 of the 4 piles, when a group of Korean short term missionaries showed up. Now I don’t know how many Korean people you know, especially 20-27 year old girls, but God bless-em, they work so hard (for a good 10 minutes at a time). And even though they get hardly anything done, (like a handful of dirt on each shovel load, they do keep working (in 10 minute shifts), and because there were so many of them (Su Thep showed up with more shovels), a lot actually ended up getting done. If the soccer players could have worked that hard, the house would be built by now. But they had soccer to worry about, and that’s no problem, cause that’s half why they were here. Love you guys!!!! Uhm-k, so yeah, most of it got leveled out, my back got burnt, and I got some sort of sand-spider bite on my foot (mentioned above, for those who weren’t paying attention) meaning I can’t sleep as good My foot is all colorful and pained… and swollen. We went out to the market for food, Josh and I. I had a lot of fun conversing in Thai with the lady that made our food, until she tried to set me up with her friend cause her friend spoke like 5 more English words than she did (totaling about 7 words). Then things just got weird, and even though Josh couldn’t understand our conversation, he knew that it was kinda awkward for both me, and the 7-word lady. But whatever. We finished, and left, and came back home. As soon as we got here we saw a farong playing Soccer with a bunch of Thai guys in an empty lot, and we decided to play as well. I suddenly recognized him as this guy I had met previously, so I was actually a bit psyched about playing. That is, until I put on my shoes and remembered (thanks to a shooting pain in my foot) that I had a nasty spider bit on my foot, and could barely walk, let alone play soccer. Shoot… Can’t not now, already said I would… so I went out there and embarrassed myself. One cause I couldn’t run, but two, cause even if I could, those Thai guys would have schooled me. I got checked by a 10 year old. Serious. Okok, but once my foot gets better, it’s game on!!!!
Ok, now it’s off to work since it’s that time again, so I’m gonna go shovel another 3 monster piles of sand into that house now, with a bummed foot and arms that I can’t even lift above my shoulders cause of the work yesterday. So, I’ll finish this when I return.
Here I am. Alright… Uhm, so remember all that shoveling I did yesterday? Yeah? Uhm, I couldn’t even lift my arms today. Josh and I over our day of work completed about one pile and were like jellyfish out there. Walking like we were drunk, and having problems lifting a full shovel. We couldn’t do very much today. Where’s those spunky Koreans when you need them? Besides, they all had a crush on Josh, (calling him, Joshi, like that rhymes with Yoshi… amazing), so that made the day even more hilarious. But today, no have.
Uhm, so yeah, we quit about half an hour early, cause I think we couldn’t see straight (I still can’t), and now here I am typing.
Now, I will talk about Ban Nam Khem, the village in which I work. I love this place. More than Pru Teaw, even. We are building a house just outside of the main downtown area, and it’s pretty open and plain where we are, since the reconstruction process has been a lot slower than in the downtown core. The downtown has so much character. Uhm Dan Bryce, if you’re reading this, you’d love this place, I’m sure. Historically, Nam Khem used to thrive on its two major resources. Fish, and Tin. The entire downtown area was once a tin mine, and the land is riddled with gullies (now ponds), and dips. However, the tin extraction process was causing significant amounts of pollution, meaning that beaches all down-current from Nam Khem’s outlet into the ocean were very dirty. Because of this, the tin mining got closed down, leaving fish as the primary source of income for the people. This was great for the environment, but terrible for the people. No money. However, the town grew because of the intensification of the fishing practice, and also because of the new access to land in and around the tin mines. So, because of the extremely varied topography from the mining, the downtown roads are all twisty and crooked, and completely awesome. It’s kinda like the subdivisions in Abbotsford, but on a much smaller and much tighter scale, and more urban with more buildings built closer together, and no giant parking-lots or yards separating the buildings from the roads. It’s all nice and close. The next thing that I noticed is how beautiful they had made the place. Not only by planting flowers or trees, but I guess in a big way, because they have rebuilt almost every house, because next to nothing was left standing after the wave. So, there’s a whole bunch of neatly trimmed and freshly painted buildings without the crud from aging found in most other cities. So, this town is just fun to be in, and every street has its own unique feeling. Now, after how impressed I am, consider that it is only half rebuilt. I seriously would love to come back and see this place after it’s fully rebuilt. Now here’s the coolest part. I have become fairly familiar with the layout and feel of the streets there, but a few days ago Josh and I decided to go there after dark to go swimming. It was amazing how different the place looked at night. It was something completely different, and I basically didn’t know where I was, or where I was going. I can’t figure it out, but it’s different… by a lot. Still great… totally great, but totally different. A different sort of charm. Yeah, if I ever came to live in Thailand, I’d move to Nam Khem.
So, uhm, yeah, that’s about as much as I can say right now, since I’m tired of typing, and I should post this pretty quick. Uhm, I am having fun, taking lots of pictures, and working a lot as well. So, thanks for reading, and now I will disappear.
later.