On Trying to be Thai(ing)
I am writing this in a small computer room in a tiny town in Thailand. We
have spent the last 3 weeks here (arriving with a collective sigh of relief that we would be based in one place for longer and a week!), and have devoted that time to serving an incredibly gracious pastor, helping him in a few of his projects and making friends in the community. We arrived in time for the homeward stretch of a new pre-school they had built, and assisted with a few of the last construction jobs. Carrying sand was a big part of that. Lots of sand. About 7 truckloads worth which we shoveled and carried and spread and flattened until we had raised the level of the ground by over a metre ...and then we started with the stones! A few other odd jobs later and we are now on the final countdown of the homeward stretch: mini-me sized furniture has been carried in, various racks and rails have been put up at what feels like knee-height, and the two talented artists in our group are in the process of kiddiefying the bookcases with murals.
We have also spent many days locked in a serious battle of both will and might: attempting to prove to grass and weeds that we are the superior race. The garden outside the Academy and Community Centre was last weeded by last year's GC group and I am convinced some o f the roots we pulled out went all the way through to China (if you are already in Asia and dig deep enough, do you still hit China?? Hmmm... Moreover,
what will happen if we dig a very deep hole when we're in China in the next few weeks?). We may be winning the Great Weed Battle, but if so, only just.
In an awesome display of everything being possible for God (Matthew 19:26), our team managed to bag two slots to perform our dance and "God Story" drama at a local festival. A local Buddhist festival. The rain tried to keep us off stage, but the elements do, of course, also bow to the will of our God. We drew quite a large crowd for our second performance, and after both there were testimonies of people that had been moved to tears by the tragic but victorious truth they saw performed. We will continue to pray that the seeds that were sown in people's hearts will be watered and bear fruit!
[The video of our performance can be found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdrMU7lLx3I&feature=channel) and is embedded at the end of this blog. You'll want to make sure you watch it...]
In other news, I have, err... *cough* taken up Thai aerobics. And it's actually a lot of fun! In the evenings one or two other GC ladies and I battle to keep up with the foot stamping and arm waving... all to the beat of Thai remixes of [TV infomercial voice] "some of your favourite club tracks". I must admit that I have been completely intimidated by those Thai ladies - kids, teenagers, adults and grannies alike - they would kill at those arcade dancing mat games.
But somewhere between the sand and stones, the paint, weeds and yes, even the bopping Thai tunes, my heart has really been at peace in Thailand. I love it here:
It is sticky with heat and we sweat buckets just walking down the
road. And then, all of a sudden, the clouds get together for a chuckle and we've had our shower for the day - o' naturale.
We eat rice for lunch and rice for supper... and I have savoured every spicy hot mouthful! We eat some form of savoury rice as our main meal, liberally sauced with curries, soups and warm salads. We occasionally get treated (or treat ourselves!) to sweet sticky rice with mango as desert. We have even bought rice from a scooter side-cart: sticky rice in a hot dog bun with ice-cream, nuts and a drizzle of condensed milk.
We've sampled bugs on a stick, bean flavoured ice-cream, bread spread with bright green custard, milk tea with ice, and little speckled
eggs from who knows what bird. And we've discovered the happiness that is 3-in-1 Milo, freshly made smoothies, sticky rice and mango (which, believe me, is worth mentioning twice in one blog!), condensed milk filled rotis and chilli-paste flavoured Lays.
We hitch-hike everywhere: in bakkies or on scooters, with or without side-carts, and with or without a whole family already riding along.
We take off our shoes when entering houses and shops and we make sure we don't show the souls of our feet (thought of as the dirtiest place of the body) or touch people's heads (which is believed to be where the soul lives).
We interact with people through a language barrier that we have imposed by our non-existent Thai vocabulary, yet they love and seek
out our company. We play with the kids by hand gestures and monkey-see-now-monkey-do... with both sides taking turns at being the "monkey".
We get chowed by mosquitoes (I counted 39 bites just below my knees one evening), and if we don't close our windows, we share our room with a menagerie of bugs that night. We fight in a losing battle against microscopic ants that will pounce on anything even remotely food-seeming that that you leave within their reach. We have heard geckos bark.
But somewhere between the heat and the rain, the rice, the mosquitoes and the bug farms, my heart has found such peace in Thailand. I really love it here, and there will probably be a little bit of me that will be staying when we leave...
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdrMU7lLx3I&feature=channel 400x400]