Within the next few days I hope to post more in depth entries about my experience, but I must admit that the more I explore Chiang Mai and make Thai friends, there are so many fun things to do that distract me from my blog.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Returning to Chiang Mai
I've returned to Chiang Mai after 3 weeks in Mae Hong Son (a north-west region of Thailand that borders Burma). Our forests course was amazing and I had an incredible time hiking and learning about forest management and swidden-fallow agriculture from Karen hill tribe families.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
21 in Thailand
My 21st birthday was sunny, beautiful and sober. After a visit to corporate orange orchard and then another visit to an organic orange and papaya orchard we called it a day and headed back to UHDP for the annual soccer game. It was great fun with Kyle carrying our team, and Martha having a screaming match with Pi Apat. ISDSI won by a miraculous own-goal. It was the first time UHDP had lost in years.
At dinner the UHDP staff presented me with a bouquet of flowers that they picked from the forest. It was so beautiful!!! I could even identify some of the ferns and palms used.
Then I was presented with a gellatin cake (wich tasted pretty funky but looked really cool) and ice cream! We borrowed our field instructors lap top and had a dance party.
The night ended out by a small hut on the hill side of an agroforest overlooking the mountains that separate Thailand and Burma. The stars we amazing and we could see the lights of small villages scattered across the mountains. Several shooting stars and many stories later we called it a night.
Wat in Chiang Dao
Photo of the Wat where I got to participate in an unspecified ceremony/tradition mentioned in an earlier post
Foraging for Food
The day after the pig harvest our task was to create a meal out of entirely foraged foods. Having spent several days learning about all of the different plants and their uses we felt fairly well prepared. Some people harvested rattan, bamboo, peppers, and herbs. I was in the protein group, so we went fishing.
After many unsuccessful throws of the net, we decided to "cheat" and went to the stock pond to collect catfish. We also collected a handful of frogs.
Taking them back to the kitchen we poured salt into the bag of fish to kill them. A Thai helper grabbed a frog by the legs and wacked it on concrete several times. It was terrible. The frog bloated and started to bleed from the mouth. We asked the Thai kitchen staff if we could pour salt into the bag of frogs to kill them too. They said we could try. It seemed to work and the Thai women were happy to employ this alternative method.
Next we scrapped the scales off of the fish, slit their throats and pulled out their organs. As we snapped their jaw (which was apparently an essential step in the process) the fish would spasm. The first time I was taken off guard and shrieked.
The frogs were even worse to deal with. Pi Apat’s wife showed us how to disembowel a frog. It was gross. One brave member of our group reached to try and copy Pi Apat’s wife only to find that the frog was still alive.
Apparently the frogs had only been temporarily knocked unconscious by the salt—not killed. The frogs came too and started to jump out of the bowl and across the yard. We shrieked and chased after the frogs. Pi Apat’s wife continued to remove the organs from the frogs even though they were still alive. We kept screaming. I’m not quite sure how it is possible, but one frog, having had all of its internal organs taken out, started to crawl up and out of the “dead” frog bowel. It was terrifying.
I’m convinced people could hear our group yelling for miles. The meal was pretty tasty, but I’d had enough of killing stuff for a while…
UDHP: Pig Harvest
The second half of our program was held at the NGO UHDP (Upland Holistic Development Project). The NGO tries teaches marginalized hill tribes how make the transition from monocropping to installing more sustainable agroforests. At UHDP we learned about many native plants (including about 6 different species of the nasty rattan) and how they’re used (legumes to fix nitrogen, pineapples to prevent erosion, etc).
The highlight of our stay at UHDP was the pig harvest. In combination with reading the book, “Omnivore’s Dilemma” the activity’s purpose was to make us critically examine what it means to eat meat—where it comes from, how it is raised and killed and how humans deal with the ethics of eating meat.
The event itself was awful. The pig was carried in a cage down to the slaughter area. It was released from its cage and began to eat grass. It seemed so trusting and unsuspecting. Then 6 students and 4 Thai people pounced on the pig and held it down. It began to squeal. The noise was one of the worst things I have ever heard. The volume escalated as Pi Apat hog tied the pig. In one swift, coordinated effort the group lifted the pig up onto a small platform. Meanwhile, the pig continued to wail.
I was standing to the side watching. My heart sunk to my stomach as I listened to the pig. Some of the other students around me were crying. One boy’s face looked stunned, he looked down and saw the small Thai girl that lived in the complex and lifted her up. She seemed completely un-phased, but it appeared that the boy needed to reach out and show compassion for another being while watching the slaughter.
The Thai people, on the other hand, didn’t seem nearly as disturbed. They had seen many pig slaughters before. Pigs have a big significance in Thai culture---especially among the hill tribes. Pigs are sacrificed and eaten for important cultural holidays and when people get married. A woman may even look at how a man raises his pigs when considering whether or not to marry him.
The actual moment of the death came and went pretty quickly. After the knife was plunged into the pig’s heart the noise stopped and it stopped moving and breathing shortly after that. A funny switch happened in my mind during this moment. I was on the brink of tears while the pig was being killed, but as soon as it was dead, I was able to look at it as an object. It was no longer a living thing—it was a piece of meat that needed to be prepared.
Next Pi Apat took a clump of grass and stuck it in the hole where the knife had been to stop up the bleeding. Then dried palms we set on fire and we used these palms to hit the pig and burn off its hair. We scrapped of its top layer of skin and burned the skin again. The tail and ears were cut off and thrown into the fire to be eaten as a snack.
Then the head and legs were chopped off. I wielded the machete for one of the legs. It was difficult to cut through the bone and took me about 10 wacks (in comparison to the two that it took the Thai man who demonstrated).
Next the body was sliced open down the middle. First the blood was collected. One of the Thai men drank the blood. Then all of the organs were harvested. I couldn’t believe how much of the pig was made up of intestines and fat.
I helped clean out the intestines. It was possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever done. We ran water through the pig’s filled intestines to flush them out….that’s right. I pooped a pig. Our pig had parasites—big round worms that we saw die within minutes of exiting the intestines. After cleaning out the intestines I felt a bit nauseous, but it was really fun getting to see the interworking of a pig and the form of its waste at every different stage.
The following meal was delicious. Every part of the pig was used and excess meant was packaged in banana leaves and sent home with villagers or UHDP staff. The meat was possibly the best I’ve ever had. After the event, awful as it was, I’ve decided that I’d kill an animal again in order to eat meat...but I wouldn’t want to do it too often.
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