Rough Day

June 24 (day of darisu and bee dinner, forgot to copy)

During the day I did more interviews of shop owners along Lipe’s walking street. I attempted my first interviews int eh Urak Lawoi village, but unlike the shop owners who seemed fascinated and eager to be interviewed, the four villagers I asked declined or drifted shyly away. The forth, was unemployed and in quite a rough time and talked to me for a while. It turns out she wasn’t originally Chow Lay and came from Phuket some years ago. Although I’m not sure I caught everything she was saying, it was a very interesting (and different) interview from so far. I read up on coral bleaching, as well.


June 25th

Uhhh. I just saw some men talking on the porch or Sanom café and I thought Pi Jaeng might be there so I wandered down, but it was Solep, Ewwehwim, and a bunch of their (I’m assuming) Burmese worker friends. I chatted for a second, but I wasn’t up to getting started at more today, and I went back to collapse in my Bungalow.

Today has been rough. The electic cut out last night, so I couldn’t finish my Participant Observation/recording/journaling for the night, and when I checked the time it was almost one anyway. When my alarm work me at 5:30 for my run, it was pouring. I slept till 8. I ran at 8:30-9. It was really difficult because of the heat, (even though it was still raining) and I felt I couldn’t get enough air. I went to town and had, a remarkably great breakfast of Tom Kra Kai. But as I was waiting for breakfast to arrive, I realized my stomach didn’t feel so great. Once I finished breakfast and journaling and uploading it was already 11:00. I went out to take photos – something I havn’t done much so far so I decided to take time for it. I encountered the lovely “smoothie shop couple” who we interviewed last year and who were excited to be interviewed this evening. Pi Pooh agreed to be interviewed in the afternoon. The people with the store with fruits and veg by the Urak Lawoi village were also welcoming and happy to be photographed. They also came to the island about a year ago. I ventured into the Urak lawoi village.

A bunch of women and girls were gathered around the first house. They were seated on a big wooden porch/area. The were pouring and packing fish sauce, “orange water”, red pepper, and sugar, (the toppings for noodles here) into little plastic bags, cutting soaked chicken feet with a meat cleaver, and boiling broth and water. I introduced myself. Only a few would look my way. No one acknowledged me, exactly. I explained, in two sentences, my research. I asked if I could take pictures of them making the soup. One woman said “yes”. I asked the girl nearest me, if I could take her picture and the woman who said yes said “ty lurry!” which means like …” Go ahead and take them!” maybe with the subscript (don’t keep asking us!). I took a bunch of pictures. A bunch of men were sitting playing cards and drinking whisky across the street. One man with half a bottle of Red Label came over and started talking to me. He was slurring; he wanted me to take his picture with one of the girls in the picture, too. She was clearly not amused and would get up and move away. He’d follow, sloshing behind her. I tired to engage the women and ignore the drunk man. They asked if I wanted a bowl of the soup. I didn’t really, but I said yes. It was noodle with “chicken insides”. Normally, I’ll all for food adventures and i've eaten intestines before, but the intestines looked like (please excused the description) fatty wrinkled butt holes. I ate the pieces of liver. The broth was really good. The man said, “if you don’t eat everything its not delicious.” I looked at the soup. I thought if I ate the butt holes I might hurl onto the woman next to me, and I decided that would be markedly more insulting that not finishing.

Yesterday, I tried the tactic of walking up and asking to interview right away/looking for somebody who wanted to be interviewed. That didn’t work so well. Today I tried the tactic to hang out with a group for a long time, chat, try to integrate, try to give a causual context, wait for an opportunity for someone to open up a little, or an opportunity to talk to someone. Giving it only one afternoon, this didn’t work either. (I heard that the researcher who originally came here (6 years ago?) stood around in the village not being accepted for like, a year, (maybe half?) before people started talking to her. Ahhhhhhh! After my expeience of today, I am…. In awe… I felt quite awkward. I’d ask the women questions every so often. If the questions were simple, once in a while they would answer. Slowly as the women finished whatever they were doing, then left.

Eventually, it was just me and the main noodle soup maker. She was chopping pieces of chicken into smaller pieces. When I write “pieces of chicken” I think of the sytrofoam platters of breasts they have in Meijer. This chicken came in a big yellow bowl, rimmed in flies. It was still covered in the pimply skin. It had little toe nail claws. This didn’t surprise me in anyway, but it struck me vividly. The man came back over. At two plus hours in, I was eager for anyone to talk to me. He flipped through my notebook, trying to read where I had words written in Thai to aid my correct pronunciation of the vowels. I started talking to him. (He seemed much more coherent now). He began giving the same set of answers I have been getting from each shop owner. It turns out he is also not Chow Lay. He arrived three months ago. He is working on the trash problem, from what I could gather as the collector and the person who sells the trash – so he’s the one who has taken over the position Pi Pooh used to have?

== long tangent about waste management, only read if you’re interested ===

Background: Pi Pooh got together a group of buiseness owners and created this system of dealing with the waste where every business pays in based on their size. Then the trash is collected, sorted, and boats come to carry it off the island. There were lots of cool side projects like ducks to eat the food waste (although most of them died, choked on little pieces of plastic), and the recycling would be sold as a bonus for the sorters who had to pick through it all, or used to offset the costs of hiring boats to take the trash away. It was called Rahk Lipe. Which was cleaver because it Rahk can be read as both “love” and “protect”. It had some harships, like many resorts were not paying their dues, but it was also working pretty dang well (especially compared to burying the trash!). As every person I’ve interviewed, then and now, has listed trash as the number one envionrmental problem on the island, there was clearly a public motion to support it. ‘Some people thought I was making a lot of money with the program,’ Pooh said, ‘but I was loosing money.’ It was also a stressful job, because people were always complaining, about dues, or rubbish.

When I arrived with ISDSI last year, my sub-group studied waste management on the island. As I seem to have a knack for doing, we arrived at a pivotal point for that issue too. While we were there, Pi Pooh was handing the whole operation over the district government. I believe I thought this was a success. I might have written something in my final paper like “this shows how and bottom up approach to solving environment problems, and bringing people together around a common cause, can be institutionalized into an established system”. I can’t remember, or it was unclear why, but the program was sort of shrinking in size the week we arrived. Where there had been about 15 employees, then there was 11. Today, (as far as I could understand) Mah Goh, the man I interviewed said he worked alone, and then said there were 3 others who helped separate the garbage. I haven’t seen the name Rahk Lipe, anywhere. Maybe because it is low season, and people aren’t bothering to clean, but the island is much much dirtier. Trash is all along the street and the beach. Why would the government say it wanted to take over the operation, and then drop it?

(I’ve since been told, this never happened, rahk lipe is still going, still doing the trash collection, and just ran out of money during the low season when everybody left / pi pooh resigned from being the person who goes around getting yelled at and trying to collect money so he could focus on his own business. And by a different source, a different story. (what I keep thinking should be a simple matter is turning out quite controversial… government, money, garbage, drama!)

== tangent ends==

When I thought i might pass out from the exhaustion of being ignored, I thanked Mah Goh, for his interview and left. I bought a smoothie and tired to recuperate. That’s when I realized my stomach had really gone sour. It felt like someone was twisting around in there with a stick. I thought of the twenty minute walk home and was … overwhelmed. I had an interview in a few hours, here. I walked home. I lay down on the beach in the shade. I went to my bungalow and slept through both the interviews I was suppose to have, and to 7, when I had said I’d meet John and the girls to watch soccer. I got up and ate a granola bar for dinner. When I went to go talk to Solep and his friends all stared at me, I decided that was enough of that and called it a night.


P.S. The sea is beautiful. I’m really glad I’m staying here a little more than a month. It might take a while to get interviews in the village!