Yesterday was a good example of a typical day in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. Well, a good day in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Thailand.
I woke up about 8:00am, boiled some water and made a cup of instant coffee while listening to an American news program from the day before on my computer. I had a small bite to eat, some local banana chips, and guided my bike out the front door of my house.
I say hi to the neighbor who’s selling the meat hanging in the screen window of his shop, and start down the road. Half a kilometer later I stop at my old host-family’s house and chat a bit. I ask to borrow some water as I’ve run out of drinking water, and we agree to have dinner this afternoon and play around with this new form of Chinese art Pong, my host-dad, has been taking lessons in. After some parting words and I’m off down the long road that leads to the villages on the outskirts of my town, in the hills, away from my official office.
Six kilometers later I’m biking through a Hmong village. The Hmong are a ‘hill tribe’ in Thailand, and originally come from Tibet and the southwest of China, but over the last two hundred years they have been living a nomadic life in the hills of Thailand and Laos until recently when they’ve been forced to settle down. They don’t speak Thai as their first language, but everyone under 50 years old has studied in Thai schools and can understand me.
I have two goals: Ask a local sewing group if they’ve ever crocheted and if they’d be interested in an opportunity to learn and have orders for the product, and to visit the local daycare center. The group, which usually sits outside the village headman’s house, isn’t there and I don’t know where to find them, so I abandon my first goal and head up the staggering hill and right into the daycare center.
There are pictures elsewhere, but the place is about the size of a classroom in America, and has 30 children who are two and a half to five years old playing inside. When I show up Kru Emon, the teacher at the daycare center, gathers the kids in front of her and starts to read to them. About a month ago Kru Emon, two other teachers, and I went to a week-long training which emphasized reading to kids at an early age to stoke an early interest in reading, sharpen their critical thinking skills, and lengthen their attention span. She was showing off a little bit, but the kids sat quietly for 30 minutes straight, guessed at the next words in the story, and acted the stories out along with Kru Emon. I was excited to see things go so well from such a quick training.
Next I went off, checked to see if the sewing group was available, they still weren’t, so I went further away from civilization and into the village that sits directly on the Mekong River. I am trying to gauge the three daycare centers I work with against the others in my village, so when I arrived I visited a daycare center I’d never been too. Mayhem ensued! The kids, being a bit older than at other daycare centers, saw a white guy wander in every one had the same idea … tackle him! They played leap frog, one kid started crying out of fear of this giant white guy being affectionately attacked by 29 other four year olds, and I just looked apologetically at the teacher. I excused myself quickly after having a look around at the book selection and general status of the classroom.
Back on the bike I rode the 5.5 kilometers back and repeated this same jarring experience with the daycare center nearest me. There was less mauling, fewer books, a larger T.V. with the Thai equivalent of Power Rangers on, and two kids crying at the sight of me.
Then it was back home where I bought two eggs, cut up some local vegetables the locals pull from the forest, and stir-fried a very respectable lunch. I finished the news story I had started before going back to work.
Getting into my office about 12:00pm, I started up my computer, checked my email, and started in on the work. I had a training manual to make, and it took me the better part of the afternoon to complete it. At 4:00pm I was interrupted by 10 sixth grade girls wanting to learn English, so I spent an hour playing games and teaching them about the names of buildings, which they decided was what they wanted to learn about.
It’s summer vacation here, and we were at the school for lack of a better place to teach, and the boys were out in full force too. They didn’t want to study, but they didn’t want to go away either. Before I knew it I had 20 boys on bikes staring at the 10 girls who wanted to learn English. This was not going to work. I asked them to join, they refused, and then I asked them to go away. This was fine until they pulled out the fireworks and started setting them off. It was a little frustrating, and disappointing, but we did get a good lesson in and we all had some fun.
At this point I’d taught for an hour, rode 13 kilometers up hills on my bike, and written half a training manual, and I was tired. So I went home, spent 45 minutes hand-washing my laundry and setting it out to dry, and took a 10 minute break. I had dinner to eat, and art to make.
I rode my bike the half-kilometer to Pong’s house where he, his wife, and I ate an amazing meal. Sticky rice, Bamboo stew, minced chicken with chilies and spices, and barbecued pork! Having eaten to my heart’s content, Pong and I sat down where he taught me the finer points of making paintings of Bamboo using traditional Chinese techniques. I was surprised by how fun it was, and how rewarding too! By the end I had a big painting, plans to come back next week and learn again, and a full belly. All in all a good evening!
Getting home at 8:00pm I watched two episodes of Band of Brothers on my laptop and went to bed exhausted.
