Happy Thai New Year!

For those of you counting, I just celebrated my 3rd New Year's celebration since 2007 - the first being the traditional "watch the ball drop in Time Square" New Year, the second being Chinese New Year, when the city was painted red and we enjoyed an evening of Chinese food and streets closed to traffic. But, I must admit this 3rd celebration was my favorite - Thai New Year, known as Song Kran. This holiday centers around the tradition of blessing your elders by pouring a little water over their hands, and giving them flowers. Traditionally Thais believe that this act causes evil spirits to go away, and also pours out blessings on others. Well, this tradition has evolved into an all out water fight....where the city spends 3 days "blessing" each other with water guns and buckets full of water. In Udon, most of the vehicles are motorcycles, and most of the other vehicles are pick up trucks...so people load large garbage pails full of water into the back of their pick ups, pile on 8-10 friends and family members, and drive around....throwing water on the many other people piled into pick up trucks...and the many motorcylces manuevering thru the streets.

There no way I can really describe this event in a way that does it justice. But, I spent 2 days, about 4 hours each day, joining in the fun. We had 10 in a pick up truck, 3 huge containers of water, a few small buckets and tupperware containers to scoop the water out with, and some water guns. We drove around and threw water on everyone we could....as traffic stopped, we engaged in longer fights with those trucks or people nearest our car. If things got really slow, we even got out of the truck and ran around splashing water on people. It was fun to get wet, but the craze this year is to drop big blocks of ice into your garbage can, causing the water to be VERY cold. The end result is a loud squeal or a deep "OH!!!" from those that are hit with this freezing cold water, apparently adding to the fun. Those without pick up trucks had buckets of water outside of their homes, sported large water guns, or simply used their hoses. Those without access to water walked around with large bottles of scented, menthol baby powder, which they (usually) gently patted onto your cheeks, wishing you a Happy New Year.

After about 30 minutes...our water filled garbage cans were empty, and we were forced to sit as helpless victims as others continued to get us wet. We headed to one of the lakes in the city, which used huge hoses about 5 inches wide to pump large quantities of dirty lake water into our garbage cans at a rapid pace. So, with our arsenal once again full....we were off to play again. As we drove throught the streets, I noticed that while about 95% of the people were involved in the water fight....there seemed to be those that were untouched. I tried to notice what the "unwritten rules" were that protected these few from getting drenched. It seems that those selling food, those who were very old and looked grumpy and not dressed to get wet, as well as some on motorbikes who really looked like they were going to work, were not bothered by the water. Thai people are really very nice!

Here are some pictures of the fun:







Although those with more energy than I continued to water fight on the 3rd day...I took a break and collapsed on my sofa for the afternoon. It's amazing how the hot sun, cold (dirty) water, menthol powder, and sitting on the edge of a pick up truck can wear you out. Happy New Year!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Here is a video of kids leading a song at the Easter Service in the village of Nong Mek.... Easter Morning: I woke early and went to a sunrise service at the only Christian cemetery in the area. This is an annual event organized by 5 area churches, and after singing and celebrating everyone wanders through the cemetery to put flowers on the graves of relatives and pastors. It's nice actually, people chat, and stop by to give encouragement and blessings to those who are visiting graves of family members. People pass out eggs (hard boiled...) with Easter messages taped to them, or written in marker. They just give them to anyone. Here is the grave of one of the founding pastors in the city. It's quite large, they don't make them as large anymore.... Following this service (and large quantities of coffee) I went to Nong Mek village to attend a service in a small church made up largely of extended family members. These youth are great worship leaders, and there was a time for people to stand up and share testimonies and sing songs. My coworker Norm was called upon to preach without any warning (after 30 years in Thailand, he’s quite used to this!). After the service, I gathered with my coworkers for an Easter egg hunt for the kids and a very American Easter meal of ham, mashed potatoes, corn and apple pie.

Raising Catfish...

This is a vdo that goes with the "frogs and iguanas" blog below....these are the containers that are used to raise catfish, you will also see some larger containers and hear Thai. Can you understand?? By the way, adding vdo's is new for me, please let me know if you can see these, or if there are any problems (along with suggestions of how to fix them, of course!)

Frogs and Iguanas...a tasty treat

Last month I visited a community development project just outside the city of Udon Thani. A member of a church in Udon oversees this project. It is a training sight for sustainable livelihood projects and brings in groups from all over the northeast to learn how to use their land and a small amount of resources to grow food and raise animals to meet their own living needs and also to sell in their local communities.

There were many things going on at this farm, located in a rural community. They were raising catfish in small round concrete containers with a radius of less than 1 meter, about 100 per container. They also had larger concrete vats and small beds that were dug in the ground to show different ways to raise catfish, depending on the area available and the amount that is going to be raised.

They also raised pigs, to both create natural fertilizer that can be sold in the market, as well as to sell when the pigs grow large. A small pig can be purchased for about 1000 baht ($30) and then sold by the kg when he is older. The fertilizer is sold as it is made. There were two different pens for these pigs, one was basically mud, and the pigs laid on top of the mud and that could eventually be used for fertilizer. Another, far cleaner pen, was raised off the ground and contained straw and other, less muddy substances, this kind of pen is more useful when the dirt is too hard for the pigs to really burrow into. So, both of these ways of raising pigs was modeled.

There were Iguanas being raised, which I was a bit surprised to find are quite a tasty delicacy here in the Northeast, so they are sold in the market for food. They were raised in one large cage, about 40 of them (although I only saw 3-4) with a few large bushes in the cage for them to play and hide in. As we explored the various projects, we found a few stray iguanas who had apparently left their pens to find new friends.

They also raised frogs, huge frogs who can deliver 4000 baby frogs, we’re talking about amazing female frogs! These baby frogs can be sold for 1 baht each in the market, so in a female frog’s reproductive life, she can produce about 4000 baht worth of little frogs, or over $125.

It was great to be exposed to these various, simple projects, which the Thais I was with assured me could be easily done by individual families. We left encouraged that my coworker’s father in another province could raise catfish, and maybe a couple of pigs. A local pastor was also with us and began to talk about raising catfish behind the small church property, which is also his home, in order to raise money for himself and also teach these skills to his church members.