Nam Hoo was a delightful village to be in. It was quaint and nestled into the mountains. In every direction I looked, I could see mountain peaks. For this homestay I was with two other girls, opposed to the normal 2 people per house. Our host mother was middle-aged, speaks Thai and strikingly beautiful. She ate dinner with us and even let us help with the dishes. We were so tired after the hellish hike that we went to bed at 6:30 pm.
(To be polite, Karen people let their guests eat first and then eat separately afterwards. I didn’t really like it and I always trying to get my host family to eat with me. Sometimes a family would prepare more of a different kind of food for themselves, but other times they would just eat the left overs. This always left me in an awkward position because I never knew if they’d be eating my left overs until after I was done eating, at which point, what was left was usually meager helpings. Other times, the families would sit and chat with us, but still not eat until later.)
The next day in Nam Hoo was a “family day” which I interpreted as a rest day. I was incredibly sore. In the morning we were talking to our host mother and I asked her about her husband because we hadn’t seen anyone else in the house yet. Through our broken Thai and many hand motions we discovered that he was dead. She had pointed to the sky and figured that meant he’d gone to heaven. We all looked at our host mother with sorry, sympathetic eyes.
Our host mother decided that we were too tired to go to the rice fields, so we helped her saw a teak log into fire wood. The work wasn’t too tiresome, but chopping the firewood did take some skill. Our host mother always hit her mark, cutting the log in halves and then fourths. She let me try, and it was pathetic. I never hit the same point twice and never with enough force to do any good when I did succeed in hitting the log. Our host mother laughed and laughed (as did our awesome Karen field instructor, Pi Sawong. He’s not a permanent ISDSI employee, but should be. He is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met, more on him later).
We then filled baskets with the firewood to hike up the hill to our house. When the weakling that I am couldn’t quite lift up the basket, my host mother helped me by instructing me to put the strap around my forehead and carry the wood up with my head. Really? I tried it and as soon as she let go of the basket my head snapped back. That was definitely a no go. A friend helped me carry the basket up the hill. At the top we looked back and our host mother was trucking up the hill, carrying the heavy basket with the strap around her forehead.
Later in the day, we met our host mother’s daughter. She showed us family photos. We got to a photo of her father and we all made sad faces and said we were sorry. A few hours later, at dinner a man came into our house and started to talk with our host mother. He began to move things around and help cook dinner. We were all so confused. He looked strikingly similar to the man in the photo shown to us earlier. Finally our host mother introduced him as her husband. The other girls and I looked at each other and began to laugh. We thought he was dead, when really our host mother was trying to tell us that he’d gone to the upland rice field!! The misunderstanding gave us a good laugh.
Women's choir performing at church.
A young Karen girl in a traditional white dress that women wear to indicate that they are unmarried.
