And now for something completely different

Last year's bout of curiosity took me to Prague, ostensibly to a veterinary conference, but actually to nose around a state recovering from communism and to explore a landscape historically and currently far more densely populated than my own. This fellow connoisseur of jazz stopped to listen as the trumpeter took the lead.

A meal shared

The village was deserted when we arrived back after our second day exploring the neighbourhood. While we washed and drank a cold beer Jot searched for his parents. He found them on the other side of the village slaughtering and preparing a wild pig that had wandered onto the rice fields that morning. A few bottles of whisky were already open and a feast was planned for the lucky labourers.

Jot had been detailed to cook dinner that night anyway so I joined him in the kitchen to watch and perchance to help. While we chatted he sat on a low stool beside the hearth in the pic above, chopping on one side and turning to cook over the flame on the other. Within minutes he reduced a kilo of pork that we had brought from Mae Suai to mince by chopping finely with a very sharp knife. He pounded and sliced chillis that Dang had harvested that morning. As he told me about his sister's wedding feast he stoked the fire up and threw in the mince. While he stirred the meat he added unpeeled and squashed cloves of garlic, shredded greens and lemongrass. With a curve of the arm he threw in dollops of fish and soy sauce. Then he pulled out a flaming log and let the fire die down while he scraped the wok contents onto a dish and stored it in the cupboard.

I marvelled as he sliced the chicken finely for the next dish and asked who was usually responsible for the meals. Jot thought for a moment and I wondered if he'd understood my question but then he reassured me that everyone at home at the time would pitch in and help. He seemed just as at home in this kitchen as he had in the tiled, gas-fuelled kitchen in Chiang Mai where he had prepared a welcome feast for me the week before. I was impressed with his ability to translate from an age-old kitchen and culture to twenty first century concepts and technology with such ease.

Later as we reclined around the bamboo table and spooned and used chopsticks to consume the multi-layered meal I asked if he would ever return to the village permanently. He roared with laughter and claimed that his legs and arms had gone to fat and that he could never climb the mountains and dig the paddies again because he had become far too weak. Besides he could never afford the mobile phones and racing bikes he craved so much without a city wage. So he spends his life in Chiang Mai longing to be back in his heartland in the mountains and his time in the village knowing that he must return to the city to make a living. I guess this is a world-wide dilemma. My children recall their country town beginnings with nostalgia and always want to know how everyone there is going, but they would never contemplate a full-time life in the bush.

Wherever we went on the mountains Jot would screech to halt when friends hailed him or wave wildly at passing truckloads of people. We stopped at many houses and cafes and he always recognised someone as we passed through a village. He told me sadlythat he knew many, many people in the mountains but only nignoy (a few) in the city.

A Thai journey

Morning

The silence of night in the mountains in Northern Thailand was broken only by the bullock’s bell as he shifted in his pen beside our friend, Jot's, hut. As morning approached the thatch crackled and settled . The cocks had crowed in impressive unison many hours earlier but only managed a bedraggled welcome to the true dawn.

A whisper of smoke and the soft chop of Jot's mother, Aasah's, cleaver crept through the slats. The chickens scratched under the hut. The pigs fattening for the Christmas feast squealed for their breakfast. The bullock's bell pealed as he was led out to the fields for the day's labour. Someone switched a radio on and Akah music filled the village lanes. A truck laboured past the village on the main road through the hills.

As I swatted the mosquito net aside the motorbikes started to arrive. Their riders called for their passengers and I watched the coffee and tea plantation workers wrapped up in their coats, scarves and beanies leave, three and four to a bike. The children left for school on the school bus, a beat up old ute fitted with seats along the sides and well airconditioned. The roof was roughly welded on and there was no shelter from the ice cold wind rushing past.

Aasah has strung the washing under the main hut and is feeding the pigs from bags of grain nearby. A cocky dog and a flight of hens scavenge under the kitchen platform for scraps. I am pleased to be out of the grit and smog of Chiang Mai but this morning the sky is thick with smoke and I can hardly make out the angular mountains towering around us.

Jot brings a pot of hot tea to sip on the platform near the hut. The spout is stuffed with a leaf and we wait for it to steep before pouring it into petite Chinese cups. While we warm ourselves with the tea, Aasah stirs the chillis drying in the sun on large flat bamboo bowls. She moves slowly, her back and neck erect from carrying her work basket by a strap around her forehead.

The old woman opposite sweeps the street, one hand behind her back. She wears the traditional Akah coined and embroidered headpiece and embroidered leggings. Aasah wears a head covering in a similar style as she leaves with her gossips to finish the rice harvest and burn the stubble.

Today we will explore the hills around the village, high up in the mountains from Mae Suai.

Trapped in language

word distorts
thought:
a prism that
bends and breaks
my beam of intent

The new house

Not all the houses are improvised from bamboo and corn stooks. As I wandered around the village with Jot I saw houses with solid walls and iron roofs. His uncle's house was very European looking. The uncle works in Hong Kong and only returns for Christmas and family occasions.

At the bottom of the hill Aasah's sister and her husband sat on some chairs cut from large round tree trunks. They owned the shop through a door beside the chairs and a few rough tables. All kinds of necessities are crowded in the little room. Beside the soap and toothpaste sat bottles of beer and sachets of tobacco. Shirts and fireworks festooned the ceiling and a tattered calendar featured a couple of perfectly groomed Thai soapie stars.

The sister only speaks Akah so even my lame Thai could not pierce the language barrier. Dang, Jot's father, spent our visit teaching us as much Akah as we could absorb. Akah sounds more like English than Thai does and we picked up more Akah in a few days than we did Thai in a month. I delighted in the almost onamatopoeic sapee for chilli and could not help but learn la bo for tea and adooh for corn. Respect for elders is reinforced by language. Jot called his elder brother pi chai, meaning elder brother. He never called him by name and I only found out his name was Sarit much later.

After Jot had finished greeting his aunt and uncle and I had smiled until I felt stupid we passed on up a lane to the main road. Over the main road was Jot's Hong Kong uncle's house. Next to it was a block that had been partly levelled. Two concrete water tanks sat to the back of the levelled area and the front fell away to the road. Jot explained to me that he had funded one of the tanks and that World Vision had helped pay for the other one. His parents were hoping to build and move into a new house on the block early in the new year. I wondered how they could afford it as they seemed to live just above subsistence level. Jot said that Sarit, Jot and Jot's elder sisters would contribute to the new home and that the present house would become the children's house whenever they were in the village.

Aahsah had already been busy preparing the land above and below the cleared area. She had terraced some of it and planted what appeared to be legumes. Perhaps they were to sweeten the soil or perhaps they were peanuts as her favourite garnish for rice was freshly roasted peanuts. Although her children were keen to install gas and an inside kitchen Aasah has insisted on fire for her wok and a kitchen separate from the main house.

Although the view from the block stopped my Australian plains' breath with its mountains heaped high on top of each other, the house would have no windows or even a verandah to muse upon. Instead an area for a fire and traditional outside feasting would occupy a proportion of the block. They will look out over the small Thai or Buddhist section of the village and be on the same level as the Muslim section further along the road.

waterfall tanka

web billows
above crashing waters;
a moment of stillness
above the turmoil