Over the river and through the woods

Better late than never! Happy Mother's Day, Moms!

Over the river and through the woods for a mothers day call we go! Yes, this was the incredibly annoying song stuck in my head all the way through the three hour long adventure needed to make a simple Mother’s Day phone call from this remote village in which we are working. The morning got going early as I dipped my toe into swiftly-moving, seemingly frigid (at that time) waters of the Nam Ou River at 5:30 am and psyched myself up for the 50 meter swim to the other side. An early morning fisherman got a good laugh at what must have been a strange sight of me bent over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath after reaching it. Man, I am out of shape!

But my trek had just begun and this experience of breathlessness was by far not the worst I was going to feel today. The trail I started climbing was straight up! I had done this once before with Brooke, but that was before rainy season, and this time it was completely different. Slides of mud penetrated the bamboo forest and every two steps up sent me at least one step (sometimes five) back down the slope from which I a came. I spent as much time on my hands on this trail as I did on my feet, grasping at whatever rock, root, or tree I could find. Sometimes they held, sometimes they sadly did not. Man, I am out of shape!

Regardless, I continued determined not to stop (going backwards doesn’t count) and although my breathing was as heavy as I can remember, I took comfort in the thought that the loudness of it would scare off any snakes or foot long centipedes, like I had just seen the day before at the project site and still was fresh in my memory. When I finally reached the top I was greeted with my first view of the river valley and it left me breathless for another reason. The morning mist had dropped down to the river leaving the adjacent peaks floating on a white feather bed. Gorgeous! On our previous trip to make a phone call we trekked all this way to find our cell phone still did not have service here, so this time I borrowed our host mother’s phone, which of course is all in Lao. I first found this to be a problem as I searched for the camera feature to show the view my words could not do justice- an attempt in which I failed, and then more importantly when I tried to add credit to her phone, again with all the instructions in Lao. As if this was not hard enough, when I took out the lottery style scratch-off, top-up card, I realized I am on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere and I have no coins (there are no coins in the Lao monetary system), no bottle caps, no knife, and I just cut my nails yesterday. Rubbing way too hard to make up for my lack of a thumbnail, I ended up putting a hole through one of the numbers. Not good! But at least for now luck was on my side, and I guessed the number on the second try as I topped up the phone using the same procedure I did in Thailand. Whew!! Glad that worked! “Over the mountain and through the woods….”

6:45am my time is 7:45pm back in the States and my call to my parent’s house left me leaving a 30 second message and using up 2,000 out of my 10,000 credit I put on the phone. Confident that a call to my mother’s cell phone would surely reach her, I looked through our phones contact list where I found that not only were my parent’s cell numbers not there, but Brooke’s parents’ numbers were not listed either. The thought that, “Brooke is going to kill me!” was the first thing to knock the “Over the River” song out of my head! I had one hope and that was my sister (I think I remember her number). She could call my mom who I think has Brooke’s mom’s number. But when I tried, another answering machine! Damn it! Another 2000 kip of credit gone! Now at one point in my life, before calculators, computers, and cell phone contact lists, I was actually pretty good with numbers. Maybe, just maybe, I can remember Brooke’s mom’s number. I don’t know if it was the fresh mountain air and breathtaking view that was providing the clarity in my head, or it was the fear of what may happen if I broke my promise to Brooke to wish her mother a happy mother’s day, but I was pretty sure I had the right number. Confidently I typed it in, and wouldn’t you know it, I was completely wrong. An old man answered and no matter how much I tried to pretend, it was not Brooke’s mom. He was nice though, and seemed happy when I wished him a Happy Mother’s Day. Another 2,000 kip gone.

The thought that I should not return to the village and stay “over the mountain and through the woods” put the song back in my head. Maybe, just maybe should the 249 that I just dialed be a 247? Tim, Brooke’s father, picked up on the second ring! They called me back and moments later Brooke’s mom was listening to her Happy Mother’s Day song sent from her daughter in the small village in Northern Laos on the other side of the world, through her soon to be son-in-law. Although the voices were often cut off, the message was clear. We are happy with what we are doing, but we miss our moms.

Not only was I able to talk to Brooke’s mom on her special day, but she was able to call my mother and after a little waiting and wondering, the phone rang, and I was able to sing her a live version of Happy Mother’s Day as well. Finishing the call and again gazing at the spectacular view, I thought to myself as I often do, “Man, life is good!” And I even had 2,000 kip of credit left to call and wake up Jan from Bamboo School and let him know about the materials we needed.

That call also went well and before I knew it, I was taking my last look at the cloud covered valley and starting my next adventure: the hike “Down the crazy mountain and through the woods….” I say (or sing) “hike” down, but this method of travel in no way resembled any hiking I have ever done. What I was doing was more a mix between alpine skiing, slip-and-sliding, and circus trapezeing (add that word to your dictionary). If that is hard to imagine, let me explain. The hill was so steep and slippery it made walking completely impossible. So, I found it much “easier” to swing from tree to tree, hoping with each grab the tree or limb would hold, slow me down a little, and direct me to the next tree. When there were no trees or the terrain was particularly steep, I slid down trying to stay on my feet, but often ending on my butt. At one junction I was sliding way too fast to stop and had to jump over a gully in mid slide only to continue skiing down the other side without a moments break in the action. When I finally came to a stop 20 meters lower, I did one of those slow looks around, hoping someone else was there and clarify my next thought, “Did that really just happen?”

When I reached the bottom, (in one-third the time it took me to go up) I was either cut or bruised on almost every body part. It was awesome!! I can definitely see this turning into a popular X-sport called eXtreme mountain running (or something like that)! You know, it is good to have options if this whole non-profit thing doesn’t work out.

My swim back across the river was actually way more frightening than the trip down the mountain. Man, I am out of shape! But again it was nice to provide entertainment for those on the shore as I bent over gasping for oxygen. By the time I reached Brooke she had finished the meeting we were to have with the community and was hard at work pouring the cement for our new sink’s legs. I only laughed when she asked me, “What took you so long?”

Hope you had an incredible Mother's Day, Moms!

Good Days, Bad Days!

So the original thought was three to four weeks of hard but interesting project work in the beautiful, friendly setting of the Nam Ou river basin in Northern Laos. Seven weeks later we are finally emerging from our temporary and cut-off-from-the-world home in the small village of Hat Sa. A fairly straightforward project of a water tank and sink had many unforeseen components and setbacks than anticipated. Although we are leaving a little battered and bruised the final result was project success and many happy kids now have running water!

There is so much to be said for our time in Hat Sa- how wonderful the life is, how frustrating the work could be… it could fill a book. To make a feeble attempt to give a glimpse into our life the past 2 months, here are typical “good day” and “bad day” timelines:

On a good day:
~ Wake up just as Peng (our host mother) is returning from collecting wild greens that she turns into a scrumptious breakfast along with eggs and ubiquitous sticky rice (delicious and a part of every meal- you grab a handful and roll it into a ball, eating whatever other food along with it)
~ Get to the school/work site early when it is cool and the sun has not burned the clouds away yet.
~ We get two community helpers for the day and they arrived even earlier than expected- two of our favorite guys from the community and very hard workers. No troubles communicating and they jump into the work along with us, have their own ideas of how to complete the work at hand take ownership of the project .
~ Work is getting done even faster than expected, while someone runs to get a needed tool we introduce the Frisbee to our community helpers and it’s a blast. Let them know we’re not all work and no play!
~ Work’s gone well and we get a long lunch break that includes a nap! Lunch is leftovers from breakfast but it is so good we’re just thrilled to have more, plus one new addition of fried cicadas which upon trying for the first time we learn are quite delicious.
~ I go to teach English class and Donny heads back to the work site.
~ This class has some of my best students and we fly through the review- they are engaged and answering my questions. Even if they’re not getting the sound of the letter right they are at least trying at it and getting close!
~ Try out a new educational game I’ve worked on for the Teacher’s Manual I’m writing and find out it works very well, though learn a few ways to tweak it to make it even better and throw in possible variations.
~ Donny joins us and we finish up with a lively, if ill-pronounced, rendition of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and “The Hokey Pokey.” Think of how adorable and eager the wonderful kids are.
~ Get back into construction mode- go down to the bathroom to find all the kids already helping Donny to make cement and marvel again at how wonderful and helpful they are.
~ The kids were so helpful we got our work done early! Time for a 4 o’clock swim in the river. Introduce the kids to snorkels and get tired out throwing them in the water.
~ Back to the house for some relaxing before it is time to cook dinner.
~ Go with Peng to collect some more wild greens to cook then start preparing supper- learn her Lao cooking secrets.
~ Sit on the floor around the bamboo table and feast- it’s a wild mushroom dish, fried pumpkin flowers and delicious greens. Delicious and good conversation to go with it- our Lao language skills are continually improving with the family’s help.
~ Donny plays a game of Lao-style checkers with Te (our host father) as the rest of us sit around and read/talk/write in my journal.
~ Go to bed happy and sleep soundly through to a new great day.

On a bad day:
~ Go for breakfast and there are a few meager leftovers from the night before (some blood soup and a dish with only the pig fat left) in the cabinet to go along with the sticky rice- eat it quickly since we’ve got lots of work to do.
~ Arrive at the work site to find that the torrential downpour the night before (thank you rainy season for coming early) has washed away half of our previous day’s work
~ Also find that our new cement has been written in all over by the students that live in the boarding house, despite our best efforts to keep them away and all our time making it perfectly smooth
~ Work for a few hours in the relative cool trying to figure out how to arrange the rocks on the top of the foundation we have been building up for the sink, only to find most of the rocks break apart when even slight pressure is applied- can’t use them and must hunt for more.
~ Workers arrive about 2.5 hours into our work day- first we have the difficulty of actually identifying them as our workers for the day and not just the average person that walks by and stares at us for a half hour.
~ Finally get workers on a task but we need to constantly watch over them to make sure they do it right. Occasionally find the missing worker in the children’s dorm room asleep. We give each other a look, both fully knowing that this is not what GROW is all about- we’re not here to force people to work on something they don’t want to do, we’re here to assist people to accomplish what they have been trying to achieve.
~ Shake head and resign yourself to accepting project imperfections at the quality of work of our helpers.
~ Send workers home after 2 hours once it becomes obvious they’re done “helping” and you’re done dealing with them and being stared at.
~ Keep working in the blistering heat.
~ Go back starving for lunch and find that there is only cold fish soup and cold sticky rice- the small fish with lots of bones, mostly heads left.
~ Go back to the school, this time in English teaching mode for the 2 lesser capable of your 4 classes- find only half have shown up and no one brought their notebook.
~ Try to get them to answer questions only to get blank stares.
~ Review of material takes whole class, don’t get to anything new. Again.
~ Back to construction mode- still unbelievably hot.
~ Find that the kids are helping Donny cut wood for the frame of the sink, so helpful! Then realize they cut on the wrong lines and also took the saw to the railing.
~ You go to your work basket to find that the small pieces of rebar you had been saving for this part of the project are now missing and of course no student has seen anything.
~ After mixing the concrete finally, an unexpected rainstorm comes. Scramble to cover cement.
~ Work on laying the foundation rocks but find that the “gravel” in your concrete is too big to work with- need to find a different place to use the concrete so you move to another aspect of the project that you haven’t fully prepped yet.
~ Work until dark, breaking out the headlamps. Te comes to see when we’ll finally be home for dinner and our rumbling tummies ask him to help us finish up.
~ Go home to hot bony fish soup- an improvement over lunch but still the same old thing; this time with a side of fried pig fat.
~ Pass out exhausted and then work through the night in our dreams in between getting up for the bathroom because of diarrhea.

Now of course any given day was a combination of the good and the bad and a lot more happened than written in here. (if you want a really thorough description, Donny wrote a day-to-day account you can view on our new GROW blog- gives an idea of what development work is often all about)

Intersperse these roughly typical days with:
~ Went to a bocce ceremony where we were honored with being treated as part of the family holding it- means we were blessed by all in attendance as they tied strings of good luck around our wrists. Then we had a feast of delicious food, plus lao-lao to drink, of course!
~ Went with Te to catch fish/catch bugs/looking for bamboo shoots or mushrooms to eat.
~ Kids pay us a porch visit and we learn some more Lao from them while drawing and doing origami.
~ Work on the Teachers Manual and learn some new Lao words in the process.
Or:
~ Show up to the worksite and the only tree within a 30 meter radius has fallen on the rebar frame of your new water tank
~ Show up to the worksite to see a mango tree, the biggest tree within a 100 meter radius has fallen and completely destroyed the children’s bathroom, and the site for the sink we just about to start building.
~ Step away from our community helpers just briefly, but enough time that they put too much water into the concrete. Next day realize just how bad this was when the newly poured tank lid crumbles apart and you have to start over to make a new one.

Hat Sa, we are both happy and sad to be saying goodbye. The Lao culture is wonderful and so very different from our own- so we’ll take with us the good events and leave only this small blog as remnants of the bad, and also take away the 1,000+ photos we took as fond memories of our cultural immersion that seemed a bit like going back a few decades to a much simpler time.

Off to the boonies

GROW Initiative’s first major project in the region! We are notoriously bad about blogging, we admit, but now we’ll at least have a good excuse. We are heading off to a remote village called Hat-Sa up the Nam Ou river. It takes about three hours by long boat (think motorized canoe) up the rapids, and once there, no cell coverage, no internet and potentially no computer if their propeller in the rapids form of hydroelectric doesn’t produce enough voltage to charge.

The goal in this village is to start a sanitation and hygiene project that will educate 120 students and will be centered around the construction of a new water tank and sinks outside the bathroom at the school.

Wish us luck!

Thailand!

Somehow we have managed to spend a whole month in Thailand and have already left the country, all without ever getting a single blog up about this beautiful country. When most people think of Thailand they think of the beautiful beaches- and we do too, but haven’t seen them at all yet- saving that for when we return to the country in a few months. Instead, starting from Bangkok we headed north to the more culturally diverse regions, visiting farms, volunteering, seeing elephants, swimming in rivers and waterfalls.

Each day could have its own blog, but to settle for the highlights:

#1- Sitting in the open air kitchen learning Thai cooking and Thai language with Khao, our lovable friend who got his ab exercises in by laughing at our attempts at speaking in their tonal language. The view there of the valley below was fantastic and the fragrant air would occasionally be pierced with the trumpeting of elephants that sounded more like we were in Jurassic Park about to encounter a T-rex.

#2- Meeting our new adopted “dad” AJ at his farm and learning about natural farming from him. We felt inspired once again to have a farm in the tropics using his amazing and efficient techniques.

#3- Trekking along a river where more often not the trail had disappeared than otherwise, just to reach some of the most beautiful waterfalls we’ve seen, thanks to the small caves behind them with amazing formations.

And of course the photos can tell 1,000 words better than we can, and so for your viewing pleasure…

Bodhgaya India – Our Mystic Path Continues

Bodhgaya is a small (usually) tranquil city in between Varanasi and Kolkata in the northeast of India. At the center of the city is the Mahabodi Temple and the bodhi tree under which Siddhartha became the Buddha, sparking a religion that helps make nirvana attainable to every person indistinguishable of class. The Buddha gained enlightenment here and now thousands more come every year to meditate, pray, gain merits and hope to break free from the cycle of rebirth themselves. As usual with our travels, we arrived at the city with only the slight knowledge that it was the “birthplace” of The Buddha (something we had learned two weeks prior) only to find that we had come to a very special place at a very special time when thousands of Buddhist monks make their pilgrimage to the temple, mostly from Tibet or Northern India where Tibetans are living in exile.

Our mystic path continued to lead us past the endless guesthouses (which were actually full of Tibetan monks) to a Tibetan Monastery on the edge of town which wasn’t in our guide book but strangely had a room. Here we meditated and basked in the tranquility while taking our meals with the 250 orphan children who also call the monastery home. We also took this time to learn more about Buddhism, Bodhgaya, and the importance of the temple in which we had wondered into. As it turns out the Karmapa Temple is home to Yongey Mingur Rinpoche, one of the most highly esteemed Buddhist masters in the Tibetan tradition and the author of a book on tape we had literally just started listening to The Joy of Living. Sadly he had left the week before but we did get to meet interesting characters like the woman from New York who is currently co-authoring a new book with Rinpoche, meeting over coffee as she hashed out the fine details of her manuscript. The Temple, which is part of the Tergar Monastery is the also the Bodhgaya home of His Holiness The 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, the spiritual head of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

Though the Karmapa Temple was wonderful and had enough history to keep us studying for years, we could not resist the charms of one Dwarko Sundrani, a man we had met on one of our days wandering around Bodhgaya, and the inspiration for us to switch locations. Dwarko runs the Samanvay Ashram, aka the Gandhi Ashram, and along with him our move would have us staying amongst the 25 or so children who live and learn there, plus a plethora of more Tibetan monks staying at the ashram while on pilgrimage. And so we packed up yet again and took off over the wheat and rice fields (not a bad walk into town!) to arrive at yet a new "home."

We knew Dwarko was special- he is 89 and losing his hearing and sometimes he would repeat the same stories (but good stories and you’d get just as much from listening to the way he told them as from their content). We would start each morning by meditating with him, the teachers and the students, then have a private sitdown with the great man as he would impart knowledge and challenge us to think about the ways of the world and how to develop the collective super-consciousness that is needed to make this world a better place.

We learned much from him while we were there, but only learned about him after we left and were trying to google his name for a correct spelling. Surprisingly, as it turns out he is the last active disciple of Gandhi, a personal friend of the Dali Lama, Martin Luther King Jr came to meet him while in India, and he has dedicated nearly all of his life to serving others. A part of us wishes we had known all this before- to be able to ask him what it was like crusading for Indian independence alongside Gandhi, or how the Dali Lama is in person. And the other part thinks it was really great to be sitting with him unknowing of his past but overwhelmed with his presence.

If you want to learn more about this great man, visit a wonderful blog we read about him:

http://www.ijourney.org/story.php?sid=5

New Friends in Old Cities and Horn Desensitization

1/30/2011 Varanasi, India

Sad to leave, but happy to arrive. In the little more than a week that we have been here we have grown to call our supposedly “temporary” hostel home. While the 150 rupee ($3 US) room never got any bigger, and the shared bathroom never became less occupied, we somehow managed to become very comfortable in our living situation. Maybe it was the great people who worked there or the interesting travelers that wondered in and out, or maybe the wonderful rooftop where we spent our mornings meditating and doing yoga or watching the monkeys and kites fly from rooftop to rooftop. Or possibly it was its location in the heart of the labyrinth which housed the hundreds of venders and shopkeepers who kept our stomachs both very happy and very unhappy. Regardless, our home away from home had grown very dear to us.

On the other hand, the place where we were moving was an opportunity we could not pass up.

Our new friends whom we had grown quite close to over a week of trials and tribulations of building a treehouse for the school where we were working, had invited us to stay for free at a beautiful compound where they were residing. No mattress, no hot water, and no restaurant, but 5 minutes from the school, instead of an hour, a kitchen, and really good people in the end won out.

Also today, we finished the treehouse! Yeahhhhh! An accomplishment we celebrated with pizza (yes pizza!), apply pie, and a fresh green salad! All firsts for Brooke and I since we departed the States. Wonderful!

1/31/2011 Varanasi

Walking along the crazy streets full of traffic today (no other kind of street here in India) a thought occurred to me. When I go back to countries without such crazy drivers and without the constant use of a horn, I will be much more likely to be hit by a car. Why? I have become immune to car horns. Well, immune might not be the best term as I do still hear them and get annoyed by them, but outwardly you would not even know. You might see me walking along a street with hundreds honking right behind and in front of me and it would seem as if I were deaf. I’m desensitized I guess you would say- there are just so many honking horns at all time and for all reasons, that I no longer even react. I figure they will go around me or, more likely, I am no in the way at all but they just want to exert their presence on the world. In other more sane driving countries the horn would be used more likely to warn you of something like the imminent danger of them hitting you- and I would not react, not even blink. When the time comes to return to the US, it will take some adjusting to!

Also of interest today- the tree house was christened today at the school by scores of very happy children!

Kites, Treehouses and Culture

1/28/2011 Varanasi, India

With my spirit not yet ruined by all the hustlers in India, I decided to take a chance and accept a guy’s offer to help him fly his kite. As it turned out, it ended without the usual request for money and I had one of my better cultural exchanges here in India. Indians and especially those from Varanasi are fanatical about kite flying! From the top of our guest house we can sometimes count over 100 of them bouncing around in the sky while their strings weave a brilliant spider web from the clouds to the different rooftops across the city. On this day we were along the Ganges and started talking to a group of guys flying their kites high above the opposite bank a couple hundred meters away. About 20 meters down river from us there was another group of guys also flying around the same area. After a few lost in translation moments it was finally explained to me that the two groups were in the middle of a heated kite fight. One at a time a kite from our group would go up against one from the opposing.

Whoever was able to cut their opponents glass covered string would move on to be pitted against the next in line while the loser sadly watched his kite slowly flutter to the ground where the children raced to collect their gratuitous prize. I was never actually allowed to fight, but in between rounds I became the good luck charm as after each time I flew the kite the owner won his battle. This happened an unprecedented 13 times in a row often with my kite winning so quickly, I would never even get the chance to see the attack. The entire hour we were flying there was great conversations and cultural exchanges as we shared in the jubilation of each win and the camaraderie of knowing that no matter how many scornful looks we received from our opponents, they would never figure out our secret weapon (Me). When our magic finally ran out on fight number fourteen, Brooke and I shook everyone’s hand and broke away from our new Indian friends to become tourist again, cherishing our small glimpse into this great culture.

1/29/2011 Varanasi, India

Environmental Presentation… Great to be working! Today we gave our first of two environmental presentations to the children of Asha Deep Vidyashram. This deserves way more than just a simple sentence, but we’ve already written a lot for the website which will be updated this week so better to check that out instead- www.GROWInitiative.org. (Including from the second of our presentations, teacher trainings, treehouse building, etc.)