Light bleeds from the evening sky, and I know that Somewhere the morning dawns. The wind rises, Rustling the skirts of the evening’s brittle drought, the dust Stirs.
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide;
Smoke grays the hills and smuts colors Of the sunset that stream on the parched forest; The heat off the day flees on silent feet, the dusk Blankets.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Birdcalls echo from deepening shadows, and rasps Of cricket’s melodies rise. Smoke from the evening fire Drifts, and rice cooks, bubbling from the blackened pot. Fire Crackles.
Help of the helpless, O abide with me
Night falls, the deepening watches calling forth the ache Of wonder and hope and longing. Stars in their glory Glisten and promise. This is the hope, the watch, the story I live.
My cookie cravings of January melted away to some extent when I came down for a week break in Mae Sariang. I was able to buy some baked goods at a local market one evening, only to discover that my stomach couldn’t handle a lot of dairy or flour products anymore! After a few days, my stomach started to adjust again, but by then I honestly lost a lot of the desire for those farang kind of things.
Once I got back to Saohin again, though, it seemed like a fun idea to try out some food ideas on my friends. One Sunday afternoon I tried making pancakes. They were edible, but not much more than that. I had ordered tortilla shells while on break so I tried making burritos, which were well received among my teacher friends.
Pancakes on Valentine’s DayKru Paeng biting into her burritoKru Mii, Kru Gate, and Kru Paeng trying out burritos.
Then one evening, I started thinking… surely someone somewhere in the world has made cookies without an oven. So, one night at midnight when the internet was working well, I did some research and the next evening I tried it out.
You use a normal recipe for whatever kind of cookies that you want to make. Build your fire, let the fire die down to be burning coals, find a flat tray to put the cookies on and then either use tinfoil or some kind of lid to cover your tray. I used a frying pan that had lost its handle and a lid from another pot to cover it. I didn’t have chocolate chips so I used the last of my precious store of emergency chocolate, dark sea salt chocolate I had brought with me, and chopped it up with a knife. I didn’t have any vanilla, but we had flour and baking soda from the school supplies.
For the fire, I used the charcoal brazier that we normally use for boiling water, making rice, and roasting items. Usually for normal cooking, we use only wood in the brazier, but for anything that needs a long slow heat, we add on charcoal.
Above are the two charcoal braziers we use in addition to the gas stove. Here I am making rice, and someone is making a soup on the other brazier. It must have been a Friday since I am wearing a Karen shirt over my dress, the normal Friday dress code for the school.
First, I mixed up the dough. I didn’t have any brown sugar for that first batch, so it looked deathly pale.
A blurry picture of dough.
Then I built up the fire and after the wood was burning, I added some charcoal, according to Gate’s instructions.
Once it had cooled down to a low heat, or what I thought was a low heat, I rolled the cookies into balls, and then pressed them flat onto the pan since I felt like having them flat would be easier to bake them fully.
The first round was an almost total flop. The coals were still way too hot and suddenly before I knew it my cookies were burnt to a crisp. 80% of them were inedible. And believe me, we tried to salvage as much as possible.
Smoked cookies. Seriously, it was bad.
The second round, I took out a lot of the coals and also dropped some from the top of the brazier to the bottom. This time around, I was scarred from my previous experience and turned the heat down way too low. It took an age to finish baking them. They were good, even though I flipped them like pancakes instead of cookies.
I wasn’t sure what the rest of the household’s reaction would be to the cookies, but they were gone by late evening. Paeng asked me in the morning where they were, and since we couldn’t find them anywhere, we concluded that the men teachers and Captain Joe must have finished up the few leftovers the evening before.
I made a second batch the next evening. This time I had a more definite idea of what I was doing, but I lacked chocolate. Instead I chopped up some cheap chocolate wafers from Baa Nu’s store. The cookies were ok, but harder than I liked, but most Thai people prefer crunchy cookies anyway. The wafers ended up sort of soaking up the dough and the chocolate melting away into nothingness, but they tasted good especially with coffee. Again, they disappeared rapidly. I hope to raid the house in Chiang Mai on my break and bring some chocolate chips back to make more.
Still too hot of a fire going on there
That first evening after I finished baking cookies, the sky behind the school was lit up from the fires set on the mountain to burn underbrush. I was too full of satisfaction from my cookie adventures to worry too much about what that was going to do to the air quality the next few days.
E is for episodes ( I couldn’t think of a better word….. episodes meaning occurrences, or happenings at the station. This picture was a hit and run accident, but the poor foreigner driving did not realize he hit the mirror. )
F is for friends
G is for green tea
H is for homework
I is for iced coffee (on the way back from a accident call for which I translated, we stopped for coffee. Usually I don’t do iced coffee, but it was a hot day.)
J is for Jimmy (Jimmy, incidentally, is not one of the guys in the photo, but the little truck that is sort of mine now. Our relationship is well…. complicated.)
K is for Karma. (Karma, simply stated, is the belief that what you do to others will eventually come around to you. While I do not believe in the Buddhist philosophy of Karma following you into reincarnation and you needing to pay in this life for sins in your previous life, I do believe that God rewards us when we do good, and that there are consequences for sin.)
L is for Louie (my classmate at Payap who has become one of my closest friends. Together we laugh idiotically, run through giant sprinklers, explore the border regions of Northern Chiang Dao, drink green tea, hold deep discussions, and make donuts.)
M is for mukata. (a meal made by placing a grill on the table and grilling your meat etc. as you eat. Soooo goood)
N is for noodles
O is for Obchei (one of the most intriguing characters I have ever met.)
P is for police (the previously mentioned accident when we stopped for coffee)
Q is for questions (those are all in my head, so no picture)
R is for rallies (You cannot be too careful currently what you say about the rallies in Bangkok right now, so I will refrain from even a picture)
S is for scorpions
T is for twilight
U is for uncles
V is for view
W is for We Club
X is for xenophobia (While I haven’t experienced much, there is some xenophobia in Thailand now because of Covid19. Foreigners are looked at with some fear because people are worried they might carry the virus. Borders between Myanmar and Thailand are being patrolled tightly to keep illegal immigrants from crossing over.)
Y is for Yussi (a friend’s daughter named this cat about 3 years ago. It’s a neighbor’s cat and hadn’t appeared for ages until one evening it meowed at my window. A cat was just what I needed at that moment.)
Z is for zoo (we took our kids club to a mini zoo last Saturday. In some ways it felt like we were the zoo. I have to laugh at Mint’s serious expression in this picture)
It started with quarantine over 6 weeks ago. For two weeks, this was my view. I was in Thailand, yet not in it, suspended in some third world, caught between a two realities.
After two weeks, I was released from quarantine. I took a taxi to the Hua Lompong train station. While waiting on my train, I heard this for the first time. The Thai national anthem is played in public places every day at 8:00 and 18:00. Everybody stands in place until the song is finished. I took the train to Chiang Mai, still feeling like I was suspended between two worlds, except this one was a world with seats full of other people, hurtling along tracks between acres and acres of green rice fields. Sometimes I would go into the bathroom to stick my nose out the open window and inhale the scent of the rice fields. I found it interesting that a sign in the train bathroom said in Thai, “Do not use the bathroom while the train is parked at the station.” Hmmmm…..Chiang Mai greeted me warmly via friends who met me at the station. There were snacks in the fridge and a group of them had cleaned up parts of the house before I got there. I was grateful and worn out. The next day I began working on setting the house to rights. It had been empty for about 3 months since all of us had gone home over the Covid lockdown. I felt strangely like a refugee in my own house, scrounging around to see what food was there and what was still good to eat. The rats and geckoes and ants had wreaked havoc. My friend came over one day and helped me clean. While cleaning, we found a rat and Diego the ever brave dog killed it.
My days consist mostly of teaching, studying, and volunteer translation work. Life has fallen into a somewhat normal pattern.
The first Saturday I was home, my friend and I went to the San Patong buffalo market. There is nothing like this market that makes me feel at home. 🙂Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I head to Payap for classes. I am only taking 4 courses, so I only have one or two classes a day. Another class I do online since the instructor is currently in Hawaii. Saturday mornings I teach at White Elephant Club, our team’s outreach ministry in San Kamphaeng. Two mornings a week, I drop in at Wisdom Tree Home and teach a Kindergarten 2 class and a Pre K class. On Wednesday afternoons, Saturday afternoons and whenever needed, I head to the Mueng Chiang Mai police station where I work as a volunteer translator between foreigners and the police. On Sundays sometimes I attend services in English and sometimes in Thai. Often on my way home from the station in the evening, I will stop at a local food market or drop in at the food court at Maya Mall and grab some Thai food. My favorite thing is to top off the spice with some ice cream from 7-11 or Dairy Queen. I like hanging out with this girl every now and then. W is the daughter of migrant worker parents, and attends church and WE Club on occasion. Sometimes after a long week, I need a “mountain village fix.” I get that by riding my motorbike up Doi Suthep mountain, which I always feel is the most beautiful in the rain. In the evenings, I let my dog in for company. I do not let this creature in, though. A few Wednesday evenings per month, I join in with cell group from our church. I went to court to translate, once. Every now and then, I visit one of my favorite coffee shops and work on homework, writing, or translation.Sometimes, I feel a spurt of joy as I drive along a very normal road on my bike. It’s just good to be home.
I love languages. One of the fascinating things I have found about languages is how after a period of time, some languages lapse into your subconsciousness until one day they randomly poke up without being asked to.
I’ve noticed this with both Pennsylvania Dutch and Thai. At first when I move into an English-speaking only environment, my brain is alert. I speak English clearly and choose my vocabulary carefully. After a few weeks, however, my mind becomes relaxed and suddenly a PA Dutch word or a Thai word will pop out in the middle of a sentence, leaving me apologizing to my listener, especially if they cannot speak the language.
I’ve noticed this phenomenon of knowledge diving into my subconsciousness in more than one way. A few weeks ago, I moved back from Thailand on short notice for about 4 and ½ months to wait out the Covid-19 crisis until my university can open again in August. At first driving on the right side of the road was no problem. As I grew more relaxed, however, I found myself struggling with remembering which side of the road to drive, and made several mistakes because of it. Also, the longer I am home, the more I find myself randomly wanting to “wai” people when I greet them or thank them. (The wai is a greeting in Thailand done by pressing your hands together like you are praying and lifting your hands to face level). It’s like you can stuff those languages and habits into your subconsciousness for a certain amount of time until suddenly they come popping out again.
This, I think, is the same way with stories. Coming home, my world changed drastically. Now that I am back in the states, living like a “normal” American, every now and then memories coming rushing at me unexpectedly. It’s as if my brain stores snapshots of life and then in my subconscious moments flashes them across my mind. The longer I am here in the states, the more they pop up. Sometimes I come to myself, realizing that I have been staring out of the window for the past few minutes, halfway across the world. Some of those memories are hard, hard memories. Others are ones I can laugh at. But all of them bring to me the scent of a country that I love.
How do I share those stories? Stories that seem somehow sacred?
Starting last July, I began working as a volunteer translator at the Mueng Chiang Mai Police station helping with communication between foreign tourists or expats and the Thai police. One day a week of volunteering became two days a week, sometimes three or even four. My time there changed my life more than I imagined it ever would and now many of those stories are submerged in my sub-consciousness. Between this, school, and the teaching ministry on the side, the stories are abundant. Eventually, many of them burrow into my mind, becoming a part of me.
I developed friendships with many new people, some of who I admire and respect wholeheartedly, and others who I love but cannot admire because of some of the things they are involved in.
I sat across from a fourteen-year-old girl, asking her to consider not getting married the next month to her fourteen-year-old boyfriend, and instead finish at least two more years of school, which would get her at least into the 4th grade.
I sat with a man who had found his young friend dead in his bedroom of a suspected drug overdose. I listened and translated for him as his voice cracked with grief as he described the details of walking into the room and finding him dead on his bed. I listened as he talked with his friend’s girlfriend on the phone, beside herself with grief.
I communicated with a British man whose brother committed suicide in Thailand, trying to figure out the complicated details of funeral arrangements. The police report gave details of the death, but it was all in Thai. That was the saddest piece of written translation that I ever did.
I went to court. The first time in my life. My job was to translate for a European man who had tried to pickpocket another foreigner in broad daylight, since he was running out of money. I stood on very shaky legs and translated for him as he received his six-month sentence to a Thai prison. I also got warned twice by court police for sitting with my legs crossed.
I translated for a case in which a girl walked into a supermarket and randomly stole a fruit knife, attempting to carry it out with her as she left. The evening was filled with moments of tension, hilarious laughter, and an odd feeling of camaraderie with both her and the officer, as well as the supermarket employees.
I sat across from a fellow American from a state not too far from my own, and listened to him as in obvious shock, he told me how he found his wife lying lifeless in the kitchen. His beautiful 5 year-old daughter watched him uncomprehendingly as he sobbed. Tears flooded my own eyes when one of the older officers at the station put his hand on the American’s shoulder and tried to comfort him in a language he couldn’t understand.
I sat in the waiting room office of the prosecuting attorney with a Canadian hippie and a Russian lady and listened as they quoted poetry and waited for papers that needed to be signed.
I went with an immigration official and a foreigner who was being deported for having possession of marijuana, a grave mistake in the Kingdom of Thailand.
There are so many, many more stories, many that impacted me deeply, and some that I am not at liberty to share. Tears push my eyelids as I think of them. So many small memories, like the coffee that one officer would offer me whenever he saw me. Or the time I accidentally erased the video games off one of my “uncle’s” computer while trying to help him free up space, much to his chagrin. Or the time I joined my friends in their small flat for a delicious meal and a rousing discussion of the latest police news, the same friends who accompanied me to the airport to see me off in March.
These are the stories that God has given me, and yet they are more than stories. I share them, not to boast about my experiences, but because they so much a part of me and who I have become. They are people, lives, friends, souls. Some people I see only once, for a few fleeting minutes or hours. I have failed many times in reaching out to them, but I pray that the presence of Jesus inside of me will give them an awareness of God as they leave.
The pain of loving and losing is intense, but I am richer for it.
Even after five years, sometimes I feel like I am lost in a tangle of language, culture, traditions, national borders.
Why was I born on this side of white and you were born on that side of brown?
The river of words that runs in my heart is not the same as the river of words that runs in your heart, though there are times the rivers mingle, when languages come together.
Why are you called Vietnamese and I am called American? Why are you called Thai and I am called “Farang?” Why are you called Karen and I am called Caucasian?
Why was I born where the world was bright and hope sprang unbidden in my heart and you felt only the crushing of loneliness and the thwarting of choices from the day you were born?
Why was I born with the weight of a culture on my shoulders I feel obliged to carry, a weight that is different from the weight you carry? And perhaps you feel no obligation to carry?
Why are you the other, and I am the one? Or I am the other and you are the one?
Why are our worlds dictated by the little books in our pockets that we call passports, that identify us?
Or do they?
Where are the lines where spirit surpasses language, where kindness goes beyond cultural borders, where hope speaks across lines enforced by countries?
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28 (ESV)
What exactly does this mean? Five years ago I had more answers than I do now.
There are a number of things in my mind that I keep on thinking would be fun to write about. However, they don’t really fit into one logical theme, so here are some random snapshots of life in the past month or so.
We killed a snake. It was in front of the house one afternoon after my sister and I got home. We were positive it was a poisonous snake since it was lifting its head above the ground and spitting. Melissa stood inside the kitchen window and entertained it while the rest of us tried to figure out what to do or hid in the house or climbed onto the small shelter outside the house. Sara (my sister) and I armed ourselves with hoes and sticks, but didn’t dare go close since we were afraid that it was a cobra and would go after us if we attempted to go after it. I called our landlord and he sent over two of his workers. The one man took a look at the snake, grabbed Sara’s pole from her hand and with one fell swoop, knocked the snake on the head. It was an immediate and sure death. He then, with great mirth, draped it around his neck and told us that it was a harmless water snake and he was going to go home and eat it. A few minutes later as we stood still shaking and chattering from the episode, I was distracted by something falling out of a tree beside me. It took a few seconds for it to soak in that it was another snake! I was still holding the hoe and took a swipe at it, managing to chop off the latter third of it before it escaped into the canal. This one ended up being mildly poisonous. It is unnerving for us to discover and kill a snake we believe is poisonous; it is horrifying for us to find two snakes in the space of 15 minutes; and it is entirely and unbelievably traumatic for one of those two snakes to fall from the sky.
I made donuts twice, once for the IGo students and once for Melissa’s farewell. Thumping dough and making good things to eat are both things that bring me into my happy place.
I went out to eat with a gentleman. The ladies in my immediate household jumped to wild conclusions when I told them my plans, and then were crestfallen when I told them that the said gentleman was about three times my senior. I was helping an elderly Korean missionary edit a book of his and then went to dinner with him to discuss the progress of the book. However, I was struggling with a variety of things on the evening I met him, and God really cared for me in a special way that night. As I walked into the restaurant, which is a restaurant that caters to the foreign population in Chiang Mai, I caught the notes of a familiar song being sung. I was blown away. It was a song of which the lyrics had been “my song” for the past few months, when the breaking inside seemed too much to handle. Normally a Christian song would not have been playing in a place like this. Here are the lyrics:
When the shadow won’t leave
When the battle won’t stop
And every breathe that you breathe
Takes all that you’ve got
When you wonder if you’re always
Gonna feel this way
Hear the Lord of heaven say…
Ch. I will hold you when you’re breaking
Like a father and a friend
And I will carry you through darkness
Till we see the sun again
So rest your head and cry your tears
Know that I am with you here
When you can’t lift that weight
Believe me when I say…
I will
I know you’re feeling overwhelmed
Before the day even begins
But I can see beyond the now
This is not how your story ends
And when you’re at your weakest
Oh I’ve never been more strong
So let me be the one you’re leaning on…
I was leaving for a supper appointment, and needed to take my laptop with me, but I couldn’t find it. I was getting that familiar feeling of some mysterious evil force being infinitely against me. (This feeling occurs usually when I am trying to find something or untangling something messy). Finally, I found it– in the freezer where I left it.
It rained. It really did.
I went to the heavenly corridor three times in a week. The heavenly corridor is a mountain ridge that looks out over a valley to the left and a valley to the right on Doi Pui mountain. It’s quiet, lonely, beautiful and cool after the heat of Chiang Mai city. I had the privilege of taking my mentoring group there one Tuesday, and the next Saturday at the last minute spurned my homework and drove up again. I sat, cried, journaled, prayed and listened to the silence. And as I did that, some of my anger and grief that had been bottled up somehow came out. The problem with going up the mountain is not wanting to come down. I left, promising myself to be back the next day. I went back the next day with friends.
I said goodbye. To a lot of people. I said goodbye to my mentoring group, I said goodbye to students I had been acquainted with for the past 4-8 months, I said goodbye to my housemate and dear friend, Melissa. I will say goodbye to longtime friends tomorrow, and another family in a month and another friend in July. I said the hardest goodbye to my sister. On the evening Sara left, I left our annual IGo retreat that was going on, and we bought our favorite Thai meal at the Big C market and went to Serene Lake. We watched the sunset and talked and were quiet and played harmonica and made hearts of our hands against the fading sky. And wished it wasn’t our last night together.
I had my last class of my second year of school! Now, only an exam and brushing up some final papers!
I climbed into the freezer. It was so hot outside (and inside) and I wanted to see if I could. I could.
In three hours, I get to go meet a longtime friend at the airport. She’ll spend a few weeks with me and we’ll go to Vietnam to see another friend. We’ll drive some mountains and lose ourselves several times and have long, late night talks with each other. And I will rest.
Just recently I have been reminded of the importance of community. I am by nature not someone who gravitates toward community, but I have learned and am learning how important it is to surround yourself with trustworthy people. These ladies, the Baanies, have taught me so much. Where I fail, they make up for it. My weaknesses are their strengths, my strengths are their weaknesses. Alone we could never do what we do now. They have taught me about friendship, about sharing, about beauty, about strength, about trust. Close to a year ago I blogged a poem about my “baanies.” Click here to read it. Now it’s close to a year later and with several of them leaving, I find myself a bit nostalgic. I don’t post these poems because I think they are masterpieces in the realm of poetry– they’re not. But even if the rhythm and rhyming is stilted and simple, it embodies some of what these ladies bring to life here in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Oh, we live in house that leaks when it rains
And spiders have tea in the cracks
But we are the Baanies so we don’t mind
Cause we’ve got each other’s backs
Judi on the left.
Judi went home, she said, “just because”
But we all really know why
There’s a guy named Mike she thinks she likes
Even though she’s back in Chiang Mai;
This Mike, we think, may be ok
But we’re keeping our eyes trained tight:
He’d better be good, and do as he should
Or we will all put him to flight.
Kim and a Thai friend making cookies
Kim is well and busy as ever
And next week she is saying goodbye
To the tropics of Thailand for the snows of the North
For the handshake instead of the wai;
We’ll miss her heaps and all of her songs
And her passion and kindness as well,
But she’ll shine her light wherever she is
That we can surely foretell.
Crystal on the left.
Crystal keeps life in this house refreshing
When naps in the bathroom she takes,
She likes to push others into the pool
And finds in her bike long skinny snakes;
She’s got a heart that is made of gold
(So her students would gladly say)
Coffee makes her happy (and of course us too)
She is just fun to be with all day.
When snakes are around
Ask Crystal if she enjoys chicken now…
Oh, we live in house that leaks when it rains
And spiders have tea in the cracks,
But we are the Baanies so we don’t mind
Cause we’ve got each other’s backs.
Melissa on the left
Melissa is as sweet and understanding as ever
And just in the weeks that passed
She bravely called a man to come kill our rats
(Even though her heart beat fast)
Her Thai is better than ever before
But she is going home in May
This makes us wonder who will clean the kitchen
And makes us sadder than we can say.
Nancy: second to right
Nancy has learned how to speak Thai
And she’s really good at latte art
We all like to listen when she laughs
And hers is a kind, sensitive heart
She drives a funny, yellow Fino
A lot like a bumblebee, I’d say
She zips around corners and weaves through traffic
While we hold on tight and— pray.
A Lawa friend’s wedding
Oh, we live in house that leaks when it rains
And spiders have tea in the cracks
But we are the Baanies so we don’t mind
Cause we’ve got each other’s backs.
Brit on the left
Brit will be an aunt before too long
We’re all happy for her sake
She doesn’t lose her phone as much anymore
And you should see the fires she makes
She’s smart and selfless and loves little kids
And really, she’s almost Thai,
And when we think of her leaving for home
The only thing we want to do — is cry.
Lori in her happy place
Lori’s still here and her hair is even grayer
And she’s slipped down her stairs a few times
She’s got itchy feet and she dreams of the mountains
