refuge

Hi Loves.  How's it going out there?  I am good.  The craziness and goodness continues.  West of Bangkok, Sara and I visited Chonchonaburi and the area around it which was occupied by the Japanese during WWII and is known for it's Death Railway, a railroad that 60,000 POWs died building.  I never really considered how impacted Asia was by WWII, we focus so much on Europe, but a lot of Thai and Burmese were affected in this area.  I still have so much to learn about the history here and learning about Thailand inevitably include Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.  Then I start getting into the Vietnam War erra and I feel pretty angry at the US govn't for unloading so many bombs on innocent civillians.  There are so many people here that are missing limbs or were poisoned by chemicals, so many people have been destabilized, poverty is rampant, and I think it is the long lasting affects of war, though of course the US had only a part to play.  Sara and I found a beautiful organization called Whispering Seed (whisperingseed.org)  in Sangklaburi, which is in the west of Thailand, and a beautiful group of people within.  Sara, two kids from the east coast, Maya and Julien, and I went to a nearby children's home/ orphanage/   school to volunteer.  We taught yoga and played games.   I taught them the ABC's and some short words that I know also in Thai and I taught them addition and subtraction.  There were some kids that were so sweet and loving and at first they stayed awy but after just a little while they were climbing on me and I was tickling them and I just hugged them and loved them because they don't get much of that.  Some of them had lice and most had runny noses.  I put some salve on a little girl's rash.  It makes me realize that all I really want to do with my life is help people and these little children need so much.  It was hard to think  I might only be there a few more times and I really couldn't help too much.  I wanted to take some of the kids away from there, give them anything and everything I can, but even though adoption is such a beautiful thing, I don't know if it is right to take a child away from their roots.  Thai culture is so beautiful and loving, would they feel as much love and community in a western home?    

   The next day a man (who speaks Thai, English, and Karen) led Jim and Now (the founders of Whispering Seed), Sara, Maya, myself, seven Thai elementary school aged kids, and their teacher on an intense trek through the jungle to a Karen village that is barely accesable by road (sometimes and only recently).  We  were hosted by the village elder, a really old man with a topknot of gray hair.  He chewed some kind of tobacco and spit red juice through the cracks of his floor every few minutes, wore really hip sunglasses, and had the warmest toothless smile.  We feasted on jungle greens and Karen foods at the elder's house and then realized we had to eat a second dinner at the village leader's home and it is rude to refuse food.  Now told me a story about how she made a trip to a village where 12 homes invited her to dinner and she was eating food (as little as possible) until midnight.  When we got back to the elder's home, most of the village had gathered inside and the old man spoke to the group of us with his wisdom of how God had brought us there for a reason and we had much to learn from each other.  His people were of the same mother and father but we were all from the same source.  He spoke of how all they had to give us was music and the entire village went on to sing to us for hours.  The men played banjo type guitars and led the singing with the women  often echoing them and great undulations of sound, strong and soft, high and low.  It was enchanting and I was so grateful.  The next day, the kids with us gave puppet shows and told stories to the Karen kids at their school, while Now and our guide documented the villages who were too poor to register themselves.  Now took pictures of each person and our guide wrote their names.  They asked me to document their work and I am really inspired to help with an advocacy project.   The Thai government won't let the kids go to school, the people go to hospitals or even leave the region because they are tribal, but at least being registered allows them to be in the country without deportation.  I later learned that many of the undocumented  people may have come from Karen villages nearby on the Burmese side, which is being terrorized by a military coup.  It was amazing to be in the middle of the jungle, welcomed and helping a tribal community that is so quickly being absorbed by globalization but still retains so much of it's cultural identity just in being there, so isolated.  We hiked 3 hours to another village to assess what kind of help they wanted and the next day we hiked seven more hours again to another village for the same reason and another hour to the road.  The middle village was a six or seven hour hike from any road, it's so good that people can still live this way.  And the group of kids we took with us were so much fun to play with and be a big sister to.  They cuddled up between Sara and I when while we slept the last night in the village.  Hiking through the jungle was as amazing as the people within it.  Huge bamboo as round as my legs and two stories high.  Giant trees with giant vines creeping up them and giant ferns growing below them, Gibbon monkeys calling in the distance, crazy huge birds and springs forming clean streams.  Jim and Now are doing this every weekend and I am staying in Thailand longer to help them and to do a documentary.  India can wait but ahh, so many things to be busy doing.  I am distracted from missing home but still miss everyone so much and I just realize how much love I have and how much beauty  there is everywhere.