Parami- (Pali) the perfection of virtues

Nations

During English class for the teachers Monday afternoon, I had the teachers write three questions, then we sat in a circle and talked.

Saw Day Day's question to Eh Wah was, "What is your nationality? Do you love your nation?"

To which she replied, "My nation is Karen, and yes, I love my nation."

When the question bounced to me, I told them that I am an American of the United States (yes, I love the USA), but my ethnicity is Chinese. I told them the distinction came from the fact that my passport comes from the USA, but my ancestors came from China.

One may point out that I should have corrected Eh Wah and told her that her nationality was "Burmese", but let me assure you that the situation is much more complicated than that.


I have been slowly learning more about the situation in Burma, and here is a short crash course for your information.

Like India, Burma is something of a false country, a conglomeration of many different nations that all got lumped together as the result of English colonization, which took foot in 1886.

The Burmese, the majority ethnic group of the region, finally achieved independence after World War II. This was January 1948.

Before the British relinquished governance, many of the smaller ethnic nations asked for their own states and right to govern; this was not put into the new Burmese constitution, and to this day is one of the main factors leading to the slough of human rights violations and persecutions led by Burma's SPDC military junta.

The Karen people are from the mountainous Karen state, and have been struggling for self-governance for the last 31 years (one year after the British handover to Burma), as compared to other nations in their quest for independence. The Karen National Union (KNU) and its military, the Karen National Liberation Army, tried to live peacefully alongside the Burmese government, but the SPDC's aggression (rape, pillage, forced portering, bombing of villages and placement of landmines)following the rise of the Burmese official Ne Win in 1949 made this impossible.

According to wiki (of course, where else would I find this info..) 400,000 of the 7,400,000 Karen people live in Thailand today.

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Ethnicities

As previously stated, I am Chinese-American. I am of the ABC variety, and unlike the "old Chinese" in America, who immigrated between 1848 and 1880ish (first for the California Gold Rush, then to build the transcontinental railway), my family history is speckled with war-induced fleeing to foreign countries which just so happened to be Vietnam, then America.

My grandparents on my father’s side moved to Vietnam after getting married, as they heard there was “a lot of rice” there, and pickings were slim in Quingyuan, Guangdong. My grandfather was a teacher at the time; after moving to Vietnam, he worked as an herbalist and did well enough to support the family. My dad is the eighth out of nine. Grandfather died when dad was around 14 years old.

Grandma never received a formal education, as she was a girl in an unfortunately sexist era, and did not want to marry Grandfather on account of him being a bit chubby. There was a “rich, handsome other guy” who was interested in Grandma at the time of her engagement, and she had no interest in settling for a poor schoolteacher who could stand to lose the round edges. But Grandfather was a nice guy, and even though she was reluctant (perhaps indignant) at the time of their wedding, Grandma finally reciprocated his love with time and a nasty bout of some illness that caused

Grandfather to tend to Grandma for an extended period with a great deal of affection. Anyway, she is one of the main reasons I vaguely cling onto schooling in the midst of exam period.

Mom’s parents are a bit younger than Dad’s, and I never really got her mom’s story; Grandmother died when Mom was 12. Grandpa ran to Vietnam after serving the Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War (which was a lead-in to WWII on the Asian front); he was 19 at the time of the war. He and Grandmother must have met and wed in Vietnam, and they had 7 kids; Mom is number 5.

Life was tough in Vietnam for Mom’s family, owing to Grandpa’s gambling addiction and Grandma’s early passing, caused by long hours at the textile factory to make up the difference. I don’t know what Grandpa did with his time other than gamble more than he should have, and I don’t think I care to know. I am not a believer in the whole “ignorance is bliss” theory, and I assure you that this hole in my knowledge of the family history is rather disconcerting to my logical scientific side, but the Confucian “filial piety” and “respect your elders” precept must override any desires for further explanation. You see, when I think about my family members, my brain automatically starts using Chinese logic, and there is not very much that can be done after that.

Anyway, both parents ended up only attending school until Grade 6, and then started to work. Mom worked at a textile factory, and Dad somehow managed to open a rather successful Chinese medicine shop with a partner by the time he was 19. In between, the Vietnam War broke out; luckily, Dad was too young to get enlisted for Vietnam, though one of his brothers never returned. His other two older brothers avoided enlistment, with “fees” and some tactful evasion. Dad and Mom got married when he was 23, and she was just shy of 20 (“Close enough! We count one more year in Vietnam,” she told me, when I was old enough to do the subtraction between her birthday and their anniversary).

Dad’s oldest brother and Mom’s oldest brother both stowed away to America. Mom’s brother flew to New York, through Grandmother’s careful planning and the help of an aunt and uncle after her passing. Dad’s brother got to San Francisco by boat, with his wife and their daughter. His boat was granted amnesty at Angel Island, as America had to accept refugees for the war in which they had partaken.

My parents were sponsored over to the states by Dad’s brother. They had a relatively small, hurried wedding + banquet no more than two days before heading off to the temporary refugee camp in the Philippines. They were in America 6 months later.

“My ethnicity is Chinese, but I love the United States,” I told my students. “Even though it is where my ancestors are from, I do not want to live in China.”
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Mice

My friend Alan Chiu is a director of the Chinatown ESL program through the Philips Brooks House Association at Harvard. I direct for the Chinatown Citizenship program. The two have traditionally been run separately, but we’ve been working to bridge the gaps and be more effective for our target community during the past semester (my first term as director).

He is from Hong Kong, so his Cantonese makes my Cantonese feel like crawling into a corner and cowering like a small mouse. Mice, coincidentally, happen to be exactly what he is working on this summer, in addition to directing the summer ESL/Citizenship joint summer term.

I don’t want to ruin his experiment or hand out his project idea without his prior consent, but he is working on something related mouse motivational methods.
I figured loss of motivation was probably due to the fact that the mouse was lonely. S/He wasn’t where s/he belonged. Maybe a friend to cheer its spirits?
“Can’t do that,” Alan gchats back, “The model I’m comparing it to only involved one mouse per case.”

Which brings me back to the idea of home (which, in my mind, is tied back to nationality, ethnicity, friends, lonely mice, motivation, etc.) and my foreign presence. The students and the teachers are (just about) all directly from Burma, thus they feel the gaping emptiness that is the displacement from their villages and hometowns. I was born in America, therefore I felt quite the transient visitor in China (granted, I was in Beijing, not Canton) because I am used to the affluence and comfort of Western surroundings.

Here in Thailand, unable to speak more than three simple statements in Thai, I feel comfortable and welcomed by my Burmese hosts, and I fret not about the Diasporas that led me halfway around the world and back again. I am not home, but perhaps, because I know and love where mine is, and because it is accessible to me given the need to return, I feel as if I can be at home at any place I like. Spoiled by my nationality, my heart breaks that I lack the capacity to understand what it is like to miss a home fraught with war and violence, to feel displaced in a boarding house in a country in which I have no right of residency.

“We are homeless because we have no country.” was one of the sentences written by Alice/Aye Chan Aung for her homework, which I proofread for her. She was right. I died a little inside as I nodded the sentence correct to her.

The idea of home is, as you know, so much more than where you sleep at night or store your things. It is not merely where your ancestors were from, and not necessarily the same as where you were born.

So how can the little mouse feel motivated if s/he is not where s/he belongs? Does s/he sleep in a bed of sawdust, with a sterile floor of metal bars, a water lick poking through one wall of iron stripes and a bowl of assorted seeds/grains somewhere near it? Where is the expansive field, the grass and the wild, the danger and discomfort of battling other beasts of nature, the smell and taste and other little mice of country? Where is his/her cruiseliner, his/her plane ticket, his/her ready and waiting taxi cab to drive him back?

The mouse is homeless.

This is my non-resident pre-med adviser from Harvard College: his name is Chris Lee, and is currently working on policy development in response to HIV in the migrant population in Thailand. He is working in Bangkok for the International Organization for Migration this summer, and came to Mae Sot on Monday with his colleague Michael, who is working on a swine flu preparedness project. They came the Mae La refugee camps to gather field data, and I caught dinner with them at a local (and delicious!) seafood restaurant when they were still in town.

We talked about medical school (he is my pre-med advisor, after all), the merits versus drawbacks of summer research, neurobiology and nerve regeneration (my field of study), taking time off before medical school, MCATs, taking patient histories, advisers, summer funding, Korean crab preserved in chili and deliciousness, why Michael hates Beijing accents, the Master's in Public Health Program at Johns Hopkins, health policy research, practicing medicine, and everything else worth talking about when you meet you pre-med adviser half way around the world in the middle of the rainy season near the Thai-Burma border.

It's interesting how limited my memory span seems to be; for the last month, I've felt like I would be perfectly content to spend a good three or four years here, just teaching and living with the students, seeing them through high school and hopefully into college. When I am at school, I hardly have time to think of existing elsewhere on the planet, and at home, the recollection of school is but a faint dream...

I've been seriously considering staying here through the semester, but I was suddenly reminded of the cost of living here but a few days ago.


As I am a highly intelligent human being, I decided to not check up on visa requirements and related information until three days before my departure from the states. It turned out that the visa process had a turnaround rate of approximately 4 business days. I am therefore here on a one-month tourist visa, extendable by 15 days with each border crossing.


The Myanmar border is only about 20 minutes away by car, so on Wednesday I hopped onto the school truck headed over to the border. I walked across the bridge, was tailed by a very nice English-speaking interpreter name Kyaw Htun who offered me the services of a bike-taxi after I got through the Burmese customs, strolled around the street immediately leading into the bridge for a couple of minutes, then walked back to Thailand. It cost 500 Baht.

This is less than a visa, and the experience was interesting; I'll have to make another border run come July 29th, and was considering taking a day trip to Singapore until I realized there were no flights departing from the Mae Sot airport... Oh well. I'll just head over to Burma again.

So today is the first day of "Buddhist Lent", which means a number of things, including:

1. No school on Tuesday and Wednesday, so Monday's class was quite the mess. All of the 8th graders decided not to bring their books to class, as they assumed there would be no classwork. There was a random visitor sleeping in my class and distracting the students, and no one was really paying attention. After my class, the kids watched two hours of Charlie Chaplain, then lunch, then campus cleanup and nearby-monastery cleanup.

Some lady at the monastery got to talking to the Thai teacher, and she asked if I could teach her kids English on the weekends for a month- not for salary, but a gift at the end. II think this is owing to the fact that I am a volunteer, but it was still awkward to hear) They went to Thai school, so would not be able to attend our regular English classes at Parami, and she did not make a reference to attending the teachers' classes Tuesday Thursday and Friday. Reluctant to give up my weekends with the kids, I refused...

Then we all headed back to campus and played two hours of football. I slipped in the mud in the first two minutes (mud is very difficult to run in) and spent the rest of the game trying harder not to fall rather than doing a decent job playing.

Pushed another truck out of the mud, showered, and spent three hours washing the mud (and a random strip of white gum) off my white shirt and black skirt.


2. Last night was the full moon, so I went to temple with the kids again. This time I purchased enough incense to go around, but forewent the orchid flowers. For some reason, the lady at the shop only took 3 Baht from me instead of 23 Baht for the packets of incense and candles, and insisted that I was "finished paying" as I tried to hand her the 20. It wasn't even a language barrier thing (Kyaw Eh, another teacher, and her husband were there too, explaining, and I think the lady just didn't want to take my money. Kyaw Eh had told her I was the English teacher a little earlier, I heard).

Anyway, there were 12 of us, and a lot more other people at the temple as well. I ran out of incense to distribute after the first little temple "deen" (or "dian4"- Chinese for the littler deity houses within the greater temple compound) and a monk comes up to me and starts talking... I ask a student to help interpret for me, and the monk figures out that I speak English, and he asks, "do you need more of this?" while pointing to a handful of packets of incense.

Actually, I did, and he gives me the incense, then comes back again with more than enough to distribute twice around to the children.

I also remembered to look up my day of birth- January 22, 1989 was a Sunday. Thank you, New York Times date citing methods! The Sunday Buddha gets his own special deen right next to the collective other-days-of-the-week Buddhas, and is standing surrounded by disciples. Good times.

I thanked Guan Yin, and on the way out, handed the rest of the incense left over. Theme of the evening: free incense for teachers! Thanks, karma!

3. Bamboo Shoot Gathering in the forest today! I was at first reluctant to go (Florence in forest = mosquitoes will feast! or so I thought), but upon hearing that everyone else would be there, I figured, well why the hell not? I would get bitten at school, in the house, on the road, etc. etc. anyway, so who cares if I collect a couple more in the forest? Shoot.

Luckily enough, the mosquitoes did NOT flock, thanks mostly to a fire built by the stream where we set up the bamboo stripping station. I tended to the fire at first because I had nothing to do (the guys with their boots and uncanny ability to walk in mud did the bamboo hunting, along with Ma Mon and Le Le Win), then after Htwee Nge explained that the smoke wards off the bugs, I fed the flames like my life depended on it. Of course, this leads to the fire burning out rather quickly. The teacher with the lighter was of course in the forest.

I hung out on a rock outcropping/mini waterfall/ledge in the stream thing with Htwee Nge and another female teacher from the high school, stripping bamboo shoots. The guys eventually came back full-force and helped us finish the mountains of shoots off, and then they went for a swim. Due to the phase of the moon, I did not partake in the swimming, which is a bummer. Oh well.

We hiked out back to the road to wait for the truck home, but Min Lwin and Kyaw Myint did not end up returning for us until an hour and a half later. In the meantime, I learned how to slingshot properly (almost), saw what a durian and beetlenut tree look like, found a Bodhi tree (yay Buddha!) and tried/failed to catch a couple of purplish gray butterflies.

We made a pitstop at the reservoir on the way back (was it for me to see? who knows), and then rolled on home. More laundry time.

4. Traditionally, this is the time when traveling monks are supposed to find some sort of sheltered place to stay for the next three months. As it is near the middle of the rainy season (in South and Southeast Asia), the monks stop traveling in order to avoid tramping on the farmers' budding crops, which they may be unable to see through the mud and rain.

Monks who already have a permanent-ish post are expected to continue to stay put and preach to lay followers. Lay followers are to practice the 8 Noble Truths, to refrain from excessive and inappropriate behaviors, and to meditate in temples.


So: Celebrate (in moderation)!

As it is the rainy season, it rains just about every day, and most days it will rain two or three times. Today, I woke up rather late (8 am; and I think my brain was unhappy from the 10 hours of snooze time…) spent the morning drawing in the pagoda with the boys, Thin Thin Nyunt and Au Gu Le. The girls left after a while, and I practiced my Burmese letters, then tried to draw the house.

I went with Ko Myo and Kyaw Eh to the restaurant right next to the house for a bowl of Cambodian noodle soup. Sneaky as they are, Ko Myo paid for the noodles as I was still eating, and Kyaw Eh bought us a bowl of papaya salad (shredded green papaya, beans, tomatoes, kale, and a LOT of chili + fish sauce poured on top). We were all sweating from the spiciness within a couple of bites, and I was very glad I had brought my water bottle.

Later, I found that I did not screw the cap back onto my Sigg properly, thus my phone had drowned. Great. (One day later, to my surprise, it started charging when I plugged it in- and then fried itself to death as more leftover moisture fogged the screen. Good going, Flo. Smart you are.)

Also, the internet doesn’t work well when it is raining. At least it isn’t hot, though. Maybe I should cheap out and pull a Skylar and simply not purchase a cell phone while here in Thailand, though I will probably need it for Hong Kong. Oh money. I guess that's what it's for, right? :(

Ko Myo also took an interest in typing, so I've been giving him mini typing lessons. Kyaw Eh is much more thorough when he practices typing though, and will type every line three or four times to make sure he has it down. I will have them hashing out 50 wpm before I'm gone, hopefully!

On Friday night, the power shut off around the house for about an hour. The blackout started some time after dinner, so around 7:40ish, then resumed at around 9. Summertime in California translates to roughly 9pm sunsets, but over here, the sunrises rather consistently at 6:00am and sets by 6:40 or 7pm. The luxuries of living at the equatorial line abound.

Anyway, Kyaw Eh and Ko Myo (two of my 3 eighth graders) usually do their homework out in the pagoda. By usually, of course, I mean that Kyaw Eh has been out here doing homework at night pretty much every weeknight since I’ve arrived, and since Ko Myo moved over to board at the old campus Tuesday, he has been joining Kyaw Eh outside. Which means it is no longer too awkward for me to come hang out in the pagoda too, since I don’t have to worry about intruding on Kyaw Eh’s “alone time”. Intruding on both of them is much easier.

Back to Friday- the boys were copying some Burmese text out of a book for homework, and I was too lazy to do any more lesson planning and not patient enough to wait for the internet to start working, either. I therefore took out the guitar I’ve been practicing with (restrung two days ago, with the help of KE, 90 Baht, and my bicycle) and was sitting rather lamely on one end of the bench while the kids hovered over the book closer to the other end. Just as I was lighting some incense to keep the mosquitoes away—lo and behold— the electricity shut out.
Someone came and asked me for the lighter, some candles went up, and the girls (who usually study inside the house) came out and joined us on the pagoda. Kyaw Eh, with all his determined work ethic, tried to continue copying his text by candlelight, but as I fidgeted awkwardly with the three chords I could hardly play, the cheery-faced kids asked me to sing something…

I botched up the words to some Chinese songs, did worse with the chords, and handed the guitar over. We ended up singing the rest of the night away by candlelight, and when the lights went back on, it was more fun to flip them off again to continue singing. Good times.