Welcome to Wildflower

Well, here I am. I am laying on my bed with my computer before me, having completed my afternoon of introduction to Wildflower, my Immersion Week location. We had the morning off, during which I finished my packing for this week and stressed about the time I would be spending away. In a tender moment of goodbye to my ability to choose my own food, I ordered pad see ew for lunch and then headed off to the BABSEA house with the other apartment dwellers to await our dispersal to our various locations.

Wildflower Home is located on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, about a 20 minute drive from the BABSEA house, on a small patch of land, probably about 3 acres. The buildings are located in various areas on the property and consist of both temporary and permanent structures built of wood and adobe brick respectively. The buildings consist of a preschool/daycare center for the very young children (at five they start attending regular school), a kitchen structure, an office/crafts center, a teaching/meal time gazebo type structure, a bank of rooms for the women and children to stay in, a house for the founding family (who permanently reside here and consist of a family of five), another building for “guests” where I am staying, a bamboo cabin for the boys, and a permanent structure at the back for the caretaker, his wife, and their five children. At this time there are only eight women at Wildflower, but about 15 children, which makes it a noisy, fun place to be, if a little exhausting.

We arrived and were given the tour by Meredith, a current employee/volunteer with whom we are living (by we, I mean me and Vanessa). After our grand tour we were given some time to relax, but were quickly followed by some of the English speaking children, two of the founders’ children, Katrina and Mikayla, and one of the refugee children, Whin (this is not how you spell her name, but I have no idea how to spell it and am pretty sure I’m pronouncing it wrong too). They are an amazing group of kids and extremely welcoming (and they also all speak English and Thai, and Whin speaks a Hill Tribe language and Vietnamese as well). Incredible. After our “relaxing time,” which really became more of a get to know the girls session, we went back to the kitchen area where the women were starting to prepare the evening meal.

We came to Wildflower on a good day as today was the birthday celebration day. Here, because there are so many people coming and going and so many people in general, individual birthdays are not celebrated on the individual day, but rather on a single collective day and cover a two or three month span. On these special occasions, meat is ordered and today’s meal consisted of sticky rice, fried chicken, papaya salad, and fish balls, with birthday cake for dessert. It was a lot of fun and the food was delicious. The food is all served cafeteria style with people filling their own plates from a line of food, which will make my life much easier as I don’t have to worry about offending people by not eating what they put on my plate, as I will be the one filling it. Meredith told us tonight that it is much more common to get plain rice and a soup or some vegetable stir fry on normal days, which sounds delicious to me and calms some of my fears about potential food disasters (they also know all about my allergies, so that should be fine as well).

After dinner (and for a while before) we spent time with the kids and played some games. Even the non-English speaking children are starting to warm up to us a little and have begun to smile and wave, so I have hopes that in a few days they will be comfortable with us. After dinner (and a small “food fight” during which cake was smeared across everyone’s face whose birthday has not yet happened and who will not be around to celebrate when it is, which included most us), we left for our cabins and Vanessa, Meredith, and I spent a long time talking about Wildflower, traveling in general, and the specific political/human rights situation here in Thailand. The chat was extremely informative and gave me a lot of insight into some of the problems of Thailand about which outsiders (Westerners particularly) never hear.

It turns out that Thailand is one of the few countries that does not recognize refugees from other countries. To enter and stay in Thailand as a non-citizen you must have the requisite paperwork from your home government to be within the country. This is unfortunate, as many refugees are unable to get the correct papers when they are fleeing their countries and are now within the borders of Thailand illegally. These people are often arrested and extradited back to their home countries where they are once again thrown in jails to be tortured or simply disappear. It is a tragedy that this is occurring and many of the refugees here are from Vietnam and Burma and a few even from Laos. In addition, Thailand has a long history of poorly treating the people of the Hill Tribes. Many of the city dwelling Thai view the Hill Tribe people as being completely separate and not “truly” Thai, which is odd as they would be the first to say that the land of the Hill Tribe people belongs to Thailand (it’s funny how selective memory can be). In any event, this all leads me to the fact that many of the women (and some men) here are either refugees from one of these other countries or from the Hill Tribes (who speak an entirely different language from Thai as well and are often illiterate as the Thai government won’t pay for schools in their regions). It is all very sad and it makes you understand even more how incredible a place like Wildflower is to these people, the last safe-harbor available to the most downtrodden and forgotten of society.

But on to lighter thoughts…tomorrow we will be put to hard labor. The caretaker’s wife has decided to commandeer our services in the garden and the plowing of their main crop field, which is hard as a rock due to the slow start to the wet season (which is being termed a drought now). We will also teach language lessons to the men and women, help in making handicrafts (I might be using my sewing abilities here as their regular sewer is gone to visit her family and they don’t have anyone else who can operate the sewing machine well – fingers crossed for that project!), help with cooking, and all around getting to know the people and getting involved in this amazing community. These people really have formed a genuine community that works together and helps each other during the hardest times of their lives. Two of the women here are just 15 years old with one year old babies, but are able to go back to high school and study thanks to the other women and the directors here. I can’t wait to get started tomorrow and become a small part of this place. My fingers are crossed that it all goes well!