Responsibility, Reliability and Accessibility

Day One

After taking a trip to Maesai in northern Thailand, the three words, responsibility, reliability and accessibility developed new meaning for me as I put these concepts into context as I saw them on my trip. I was invited by Richard Haugland to go on a trip to Maesai for two days where two people in the group needed to renew their visas, and the rest of the group planned to visit other Montessori schools in the area. Not knowing what to expect, and without even being aware of the whole itinerary other than what was on the sheet that was given to me, I was, as always, over packed and excited. We arrived at the resort where we were staying and I was given my own room overlooking a small pond that I thought looked like more of a place for mosquitoes to lay their eggs than anything else. We all dropped off our baggage and loaded back up into the van to go to our first location to visit.
Our first visit was to a small one-room day care center for the local hill tribe village children. The daycare center costs the parents 10 baht ($0.25) a day and was simple, yet served an important purpose. For many of the parents this daycare is a place where the children are looked after, fed and taught a little so the parents can work that day without having to worry about their children. The daycare center is partially funded by The Richard Haugland Foundation, which provides the teachers’ wages as well as some of the supplies for the school. Upon our arrival, we happened to wake the children up from their afternoon nap, but it didn’t seem that bothered them much because they were given Oreos, milk and a new small electronic piano that we brought with us. I personally thought that with the poor condition of the many of the children’s teeth, a snack with a little less sugar would have been better. One important note regarding the poor dental condition of many Thai people, especially in the more poverty-stricken areas, is that there seems to be a lack of basic dental education. I assume that for many families, buying toothpaste and a toothbrush may be out of the budget, but I hope that some day the government will make it possible for people to more easily get adequate dental care. The daycare center was very simple, but it is important to understand that it is not so much what the daycare has, but more important what its purpose is.
After leaving the daycare center, we drove to Maesai, a town in Thailand on the border of Burma, where two people crossed into Burma in order to renew their visas. In Maesai, I visited a drop in center that is also funded by Haugland. This drop in center serves as a place where children, mainly Burmese children because Burma is only a stone’s throw across a river, can come and get clean clothes, food, shelter, education (a strong focus is child abuse and what they can do to prevent it), but mostly it is a safe place with a very friendly staff. Since it was late January and going on February when the tourist season is high, the border patrol in Thailand and Burma were preventing the children from entering or exiting either country because most of children are used as beggars for their parents. The drop in center can serve approximately twenty to thirty children but the children were not able to get to the center because of the closed borders, so the staff was bringing food to the children by crossing the border themselves. Also at this center there was an older girl of about age 14 and five boys ages 5 to 6 who were all Burmese and had been living at the drop in center for various reasons. The girl had lived with her mother who had paid for her education until the mother found a new boyfriend who was into drugs and the mother became addicted to drugs as well, so the mother had no money to send the girl to school any longer. Since the girl did not feel safe at home, she felt that living at the drop in center was safer. The boys were at the drop in center because they did not want to go home for various similar reasons; drugs, abuse or the parents did not care where they were.
After leaving the drop in center I walked around Maesai and was able to get a bite to eat, bananas in coconut sauce, which settled my stomach. Everyone later met up and headed back to the resort for dinner at a nearby restaurant. Since the day was mostly spent driving, I had a lot of extra energy that I used to adjust the antenna on the television, and to my luck, I was able to get one channel to come into focus. After lying on my bed watching the television with a blanket over me I began to feel something crawling on my legs. Throwing the blanket off, I saw ants crawling on me with more coming towards me. Brushing them off, but figuring that they might come back, I decided that I would just sleep on top of the blankets, but having been awakened because it was too cold, I decided that the ants and I were just going to have to learn to sleep together.

Day Two

Waking up at 7 AM after a night filled with bed bugs, I knew it would be a long day. After eating breakfast, everyone in the group loaded up into the van to go to the Doi Tung Royal Project. I had no idea what the project was, other than it had a couple of Montessori schools that we were going to visit. Arriving at the school, I was able to look inside the classrooms and see the children actively engaged in the material. The younger children were playing with play-doh and blowing bubbles, while the older children were working on the Thai alphabet and understanding the concept of length from red rods cut into different lengths. The Montessori teaching method was easily observed and the children were well behaved. I asked the individual who invited us, Tony, about the school’s origin. Tony told me that the school was part of the Doi Tung Royal Project, and, as the name says, the Thai royal family provides support for the project. The Doi Tung Royal Project helps the hill tribes that live in this area to begin to have a sustainable economy and to get rid of the opium poppies that the hill tribe people were forced to grow by the Chinese, as well as because opium was their only source of income. The project has been in place for over 15 years now, and within these years the hill tribe village has had a large production of coffee beans, corn and other crops. The project also produces textiles such as ceramic pottery, tiles and clothing (I bought a bag and a tie for myself). The project is a place that many tourist groups visit because of the gardens, the coffee, the food and the shopping, all are ways to bring tourism to the hill tribes, and also to help the local economy. The coffee shop where I ordered an iced coffee has started to spread to Chiang mai in hopes that it might become the Starbucks of Thailand.
After visiting the school, the small day care and the main street where the coffee, food and shopping was located we loaded into the van to venture to another area of the project with more villages that can only be visited with proper identification cards. Along the road leading to these villages, I could see the different crops and places of production, but after about 30 minutes of driving we were stopped at a security gate and Tony, who was showing us the area, showed his ID card and we were all let through. The reason for the security is to prevent drug trafficking; deter the Burmese immigrants that want to come into Thailand, and also to prevent just anyone from traveling on the road to other parts of the project’s villages. The road that we were driving on separates Burma and Thailand. The road is on the top of a mountain ridge and to climb it would take a good part of the day and a lot of water. Approaching the school that we were going to visit next, we passed a few villages that had homes on either side of the street, one little market and a small central area where I saw people hanging out. The villages that we were passing through are where many of the children live that go to the school that we visited next. All the children walk to school and for some, a handful of Burmese children that live in a nearby village in Burma and are allowed to attend the school, the children have to walk two and half hours from their homes to the school and back again everyday.
We arrived at the school while the younger children were taking a nap and the older boys and girls were attending Scouts. All schools in Thailand require a uniform, to prevent the poorer children from looking different than the wealthier children. Once a week the children wear gym clothes, and once a week, the older children, in this case 13+ years old, wear their Scout uniform. Thailand requires that both boys and girls be involved in Scouts because of the skills that are taught. When I walked over to the Scout meeting, the boys and girls were working on geography (orienteering), exercises in their books, and 30 minutes later they were working with knots (though I’m an Eagle Scout, a few of these Scouts knew their knots better than I do, this gives me an area of improvement). The school has only four buildings, a playground, volleyball net, and hard dirt ground that is used by the children to etch drawings into with sticks and rocks. Besides being a very simple school, the view surrounding the school was breathtaking. The school sat on a mountainside overlooking both smaller and larger mountains surrounded by jungle. The fog had still not lifted since fog tends to settle onto valley floors and it was a cooler day so my pictures turned out to be a little cloudy, but I will not forget the view.
Leaving the project, we headed back to Starfish Country Home School where I was able to spend time thinking about how I could sum up this whole experience and the three words that I thought of were responsibility, reliability and accessibility. All three words are steps that need to be taken to build a strong community with sustainability, work and schools. Responsibility means that everyone within the community needs to be doing something useful, such as have a job or task (assuming that it is not growing and selling drugs). The parents go to work, the grandparents help raise the younger children and the older children go to school. Reliability means that everyone needs to have trust in one another. The government needs to be trusted by the people, and the people need to trust one another. The trust that is needed needs to be focused around everyone doing what is best for the community as a whole. Finally, accessibility is important so that after everyone is working and actively engaged and a feeling of trust is formed, the community needs the opportunity to grow by having food, clean water, and good health to become sustainable. Though for others the trip may have brought up different feelings and understandings, I have learned how to create a picture of how things can change for the better when there is responsibility, reliability and accessibility within a community.