A really, really, really good time

The two days since my last post have been filled with one wonderful surprise after another.

The third week

If the first week was culture shock and the second was settling in, this week has been the week of being in the routine. While the first two weeks flew by, this week has been so long that I had to remind myself it was only week three. Feels like I’ve been here forever again.

Things I'm loving lately

The idea for this is stolen from a blog I follow.. I think its a fun way to give an update (and they inherently have to be positive things!) So here's my list:

The Lady

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1802197/

Everyone should watch this movie. I post things about Aun San Suu Kyi fairly often, but only because I think she's honestly one of the most inspirational people alive. She jokes in the movie about it, and from what I know of her, she probably wouldn't want the comparison... but she really is a female Gandhi and Nelson Mandela put together. Check it out if you have the chance! (It didn't really come to theaters in the US, but I just downloaded it.)

Sometimes all you need is a little perspective

Well, I’ve been back in Chiang Mai a week… but it feels like I have a month’s worth of stories to tell. It’s amazing how many adventures and misadventures you can have when readjusting to someplace new. While overall things have been going really well, the first week was definitely up and down. Every time I thought I was just starting to settle into normalcy, something would happen to unsettle me, sending me to an emotional high or low.

On the road again (part II)

(See part I of this post to fast forward through the rest of my study abroad experience. Want to read someone summarize six months in six paragraphs? Part I is my attempt to do so, explaining how and why I'm returning to Thailand). 

So what am I doing this summer? Well, I leave tomorrow for 10 weeks of field research at IMPECT, which will be used for my senior thesis (SIP) at Kalamazoo. I’ll be based out of Chiang Mai and going on extended field visits to Karen villages in northern Thailand. My research will be analyzing IMPECT’s process of working with communities, which differs from traditional state or NGO-run development projects because it is community based. IMPECT only works in communities who reach out and ask, and bases programs on the village’s vision for their development; ideas are generated collaboratively with villagers and implementation is focused on building villagers’ capacities. IMPECT and her funder call this People Led Development.

My research will be sociological, exploring the process of People Led Development and specifically asking 1) to what extent villagers are actually leading development and 2) in what ways People Led Development allows these indigenous communities to assert their rights to self-determination. Overall, then, I will be assessing the power dynamics of the project process (not the outcomes). I’ll also be addressing questions such as what defines a project as People Led? How do these projects differ from other types of development projects? What are the benefits and challenges of PLD?

When I try to explain this to most people, I either get raised eyebrows and a head nod followed by silence, a confused “What does that mean?,” or a skeptical “How are you going to do that?” All of these reactions are understandable, because to be honest, even I only have a partial idea of how this is all going to work. This is partially because at IMPECT, change and ambiguity is the norm, so I know I’ll need to be flexible and adjust as I go.

But it’s also because of the way I’m going about the research. Because of some of my personal views and particularly because of the history of the issue I’m studying, I don’t want to be the educated Western researcher in the position of power. Instead, I hope to work through action research methods. Rather than “interviewing” I’ll be "facilitating" conversations between project staff and communities so they can come to understandings together about these topics and create shared knowledge that can inform the projects. Instead of coming up with research methods on my own, I’ll be continuing to develop them with fellow IMPECT staffers. And so on..

To be honest, this terrifies me. There is great potential for beneficial outcomes, which is why I ended up deciding that this project was something worth pursuing. These conversations can act as a form of consciousness-raising for communities around important issues like their rights and the village’s vision. For IMPECT, it will provide the space to step back and reflect, something that is difficult to do with a small, stretched staff. They’ll have a chance to hear more about villages’ thoughts on development and hopes for the future, while also examining other issues like internal power dynamics in communities (gender, class, etc) or barriers to villagers’ participation.

But these are high, idealistic hopes. I’ve been trying to prepare myself for the inevitable fact that I won’t achieve all of this. What I hope to do will not go as planned, and the outcomes will not be what I expect. While I’m okay with that, I also don’t want to screw up. I may be well intentioned and well versed in theory, but I’m doing real research with real people, and I could very easily become just another example of a Westerner coming in and negatively affecting a community.

In the end, I guess I’ve decided the risk is worth it. I also don’t have a choice at this point! After getting grant funding from Kalamazoo, I’ve got to do the damn thing. My goal is to follow the advice of a few friends: Allow yourself to not do everything (Thanks Alex). If all else fails, eat some good Thai food and enjoy the chance to hang out with the people I care about in Thailand (You too Emily). And always tham sabaii (Love you Margaux).

I’ve also been dealing with something I’ve never really felt before and did not expect: the desire to just slow down for a while. To stay put somewhere and give myself time to put down roots. Throughout college all I’ve done is move from one place to another, often doing so on my own. I've come to love the adventure and gotten pretty good at it too. But leaving Kalamazoo at the end of the quarter was one of the most difficult and emotional things I’ve done recently, because most of me was feeling like I would rather just stay. Since then, life has been even more of a whirlwind. I was only home for four days, during which time family visited, I caught up with best friends from high school, and finished the final to-do's that inevitably accumulate. Then we headed out on a road trip to the east coast to visit Kyle during summer sessions at the military academies. During the last four days, I’ve traveled 1200+ miles, seen 5 or 6 major cities, visited my older siblings, caught up with another high school friend, ran around my neighborhood in Philly, and seen my brother at West Point and Navy. And tomorrow I fly out for Chiang Mai!

While my heart is full, swelling with more emotions than I’ve felt in a long time, I think it’s also prepared me to leave. In the last week, I’ve literally criss-crossed the country to see almost every person in America I love dearly. While that’s brought with it a lot of nostalgia, memories, and unanswered questions, it’s also reminded me of how amazing the people in my life are. I’m finally feeling inspired and certain that I’m going where I’m supposed to go and doing what I should be doing— for myself, for the person I want to become, for those around me, and for those I love on both sides of the world.

On the road again

Despite my best intentions, I didn’t do a very good job of keeping up with my blog during my first trip to Thailand! Once our field programs started, blogging seemed like too big of a task with our limited time in the city and the sea of thoughts I was sifting through. But sometimes it’s during those times that putting thoughts on the page is most valuable. So, here I go again! I definitely didn’t neglect reflection before, but I think that keeping my blog during this summer research experience will provide a valuable journal for my thoughts.

Trying to recap all that happened in the months since I last posted is, well, impossible. Let it suffice to say that I ended up meeting a lot of wonderful people, having some unforgettable adventures, and learning even more than I expected about myself and the world along the way. While our field courses (my classes through our program ISDSI) were fantastic experiential learning courses, what ended up being most significant for me was my internship at IMPECT. IMPECT is an indigenous peoples organization: indigenous people from 10 ethnic minority tribes in northern Thailand working with their own communities to preserve culture, claim their rights to land and self-determination, and utilize traditional knowledge for environmental conservation and sustainable livelihoods. These tribes are minority populations in Thailand and other surrounding countries like Burma, Laos, and China. Over the past decades, they’ve been both expelled to the margin of society because of their differences from mainstream culture and pressured or forced to adapt to ‘modern’ ‘civilized’ ‘productive’ culture. 

                 

These were issues I found compelling and important, with interesting implications for sustainability and development. While access isn’t easy, I was able to arrange through one of our professors to intern at IMPECT, providing I was willing to stay in Thailand and intern for an extra month. It was a no brainer… this is why I’d come. I was in.

Even though I was just a random white university student from America with broken Thai, everyone at IMPECT welcomed me in openly. Not only did I have the opportunity to basically follow my co-workers around during all the field visits and meetings, but they guided me along the way, always open to answer my never-ending questions. The villagers I met were no different, welcoming me into their homes and lives and communities. The women taught me how to cook, let me help in the fields, slept next to me, talked to me about their families—giving me a window into their lives and extending the hand of friendship. 

These chances to see and hear from indigenous communities helped to revolutionize and reshape the way I view poverty, development, and other such ‘problems.’ As many of you who talked to me during that time or since can attest, they’ve been lasting impacts. My time in Thailand—both the people I met and the culture in general—helped change me in some significant and (so far) lasting ways.

            

            

Despite all this, I actually didn’t expect to go back to Thailand anytime soon. When I was preparing to leave, all my friends and host family asked when I’d be coming back, to which I honestly answered, “I don’t know. I’d love to come back some day, but I have no idea when that will be.” Maybe it’s because everyone frames study abroad as that ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. But there were deeper reasons too. I actually tried to convince myself that I shouldn’t go back for a while. Instead, I felt like I needed to do some work in my own country, on issues facing my own people. After seeing first hand just how much I wasn’t needed—seeing how much good work indigenous people were doing to empower their communities to claim rights and enable visions of alternative development— I wanted to find somewhere I was needed. And I felt like that was at home.

But after trying to figure out how to make working on an organic farm or hanging out around Occupy Wall Street somehow work as a sociology or economics thesis project… I realized I was just trying to hold the door closed on an opportunity that was, in fact, close to perfect.