finishing up...!

So, let me finish quickly the tale of the trek, so I don't have to be Thailand blogging back in the states...

I think I left off at the European breakfast, which was immediately followed by more casual rice whiskey shooting. Then, we participated with Tee and Yao (the Shaman) and another man whom we were told to call Papa Monkey (a name Tee also used for Jacob and Sergev at times), in a Animist prayer ritual. Which is technically the reason they make the rice whiskey. But you only use one bottle for the ceremony, and each batch produces five or six, so there are extras for sipping and sharing! Kyle said he could really get behind a religion that's prayer consists of sitting in a circle taking shots.


(Damnit another obscure Taiwan airport interruption, but I just have to report that the women workers here are wearing little bowties and miniature bowler hats, and that a man just delivered me a shopping cart to sit in while I use the computer.)

Back to the ceremony: The Karin people are originally Animist, but now some have converted to Christianity, though a lot still participate funnily enough in Animist prayer. The first and last sip of the bottle are poured out for the Anscestral Spirit, and there's a careful code for who passes to whom, who pours each shot, how much is poured each time, whether you finish the whole thing or sip and pass. It's pretty elaborate. Or maybe Tee was just bullshitting us so he could drink some more. Anyway, it was fun.

After that we had to venture back out of the dark, cool, coal-lit hut and into the dazzling heat and sun to tour the village and then trek back. Sergev, who as I said was tall and a little fat, went to the edge of the "terrace" as he called it, to hang a bit of clothing to dry, and fell through the floor board! Oh! It's the funniest thing, though, you cannot apologize or make any sort of big deal about it. Tee insisted we move instantly away and not look at the hole, and the whole family were in an uproar asking Sergev if he was okay, okay, okay? He was fine, the precious tiny hut was not.

Later, when we visited Grandma and Grandpa across the way again, to see the chew stuff made and say hello, Jacob and Sergev both broke a board on the little porch landing at the bottom of their step ladder! Oh! The delicate village, and we the devastating foreign pillagers. A classic scenario.

Everyone had their rice dumped out on mats drying in the sun, because it had rained and if the stores sprouted they'd all be ruined for food use. Such labor! We saw the primitive de-husking log pounder. We learned how they make fires on the inside of bamboo huts without burning down the village. And then, we hiked. And hiked and hiked and hiked and it was ghastly hot and unendingly upward, but finally eventually it was over and we had lunch of noodles wrapped in leaves with on-the-spot made bamboo chopsticks and then a pleasant shaded stroll to a different village's little school elementary school.

There was a kindergarden for kids 3 through 6, and then up through the 6th grade. The Thai government sponsors these schools in all the Karin villages, provides buildings, materials, teachers (modest provisions but still), and allows only the Thai language to be taught. Children aren't supposed to use Karin there at all. I don't know how I feel about that. None of them ever learn to read or write Karin unless their parents decide to teach them, and I can't imagine that's immensely common. But still, in the city there is no free education and parents have to pay to send their kids even to elementary school, so it's something. The kids were all running about mad, and I wasn't sure if that was standard procedure or they were on recess. It looked fun anyway! Tee said the government's stance was that the Karin people didn't necessarily have to be totally literate, but they should at least know how to read and write their names. How generous of them!

Last time the teacher had asked Tee to bring a soccer ball, and he had, and the uproar was delicious. Sixty kids fizzing with excitement about a flat dirty football pulled out of a purse-sack. Good fun!

Then it was just a matter of trucking back to Chiang Mai and interrogating Sergev in the back about being an Italian director. I'm hoping he'll take on the project I'm working on, the film about this experience, where I'm played by Oprah. Sergev thought I was a dancer because of my posture, and who better to play a dancer than Mdme. Whinfrey her-graceful-self? The Queen of Thailand is retired from theater or I'd have asked her to understudy.