Heat Resistant Wildflowers

As I predicted last night, I went to bed at 8 pm, but awoke at 1 am to a shutter banging away against the side of the house. In a new and strange place sounds at night are often magnified and blown out of proportion due to the fact that they are unusual and we are not accustomed to them. The simple fact that the noise was uncommon during my sleeping period meant that there was no way I could sleep through it. After fifteen minutes or so, I finally got up, used my book-light as a source of illumination and managed to fix the shutter so that the terrible noise would stop. It took some time to fall back asleep and soon I was awakened to the second performance of The Roosters at Wildflower, greeting the still sleeping sun at 4 am. Silly birds. It is getting to the point, and keep in mind that I’ve only been here for two nights/mornings, so you can see they are very obnoxious, that all I hear in their crowing is, “Eat me, Lauren. Come and make us up for dinner. Chicken tastes good.” They had better watch their little fluffy backs! Muahahaha! Duhn, duhn, DUHN!

I managed to sleep once again and then woke up for good to my alarm at 5:30. After blearily stumbling around the cabin to the bathroom and back out and back in (this was repeated 3 times to get various objects I kept forgetting like toilet paper, a towel, my clothes, etc.), I managed to get out the door and down to the kitchen where Panong met us and quickly put us to work watering the garden and all the various plants growing in pots and the around the main buildings. It took five of us a half an hour to water everything, which amps my respect for these women up a ton as they do the entire chore twice a day with only two women on average working (I’m sure they are much better at it than us and can work much faster, which only makes them more incredible).

Our breakfast was a simple meal today and not to my taste (little fish bodies with more bones than meat, if there was any meat at all). I think this week will end with my eating a great deal of plain white rice and almost nothing else from the communal meals. Luckily I packed some peanut butter granola bars in my bag and am sharing those with Vanessa to supplement our diets. Today it was a godsend as most of the food was not appetizing. After breakfast we once again attended the women’s circle, which has boiled down to us sitting on the outskirts of the gazebo, smiling and nodding, while the women speak Thai and decide our fates. A disconcerting process when they say something incomprehensible, look over at us as a group, wait a moment, and then start laughing; I’m sure nothing complementary is being said.

I am happy to report that we were not relegated to tilling the field today. Instead we worked on weeding a small central circle around which the driveway forms a boundary. We were informed by Panong that the area had not been weeded for about two months as the women who had previously helped her with the gardening jobs had left and she was trying to do almost everything alone. The area consists of a small patch of bush-like plants covered in yellow flowers, one other unidentified bush with bean-like pods covering it (I’m not sure if those a source of food yet), and a small ground covering vine-ish plant that has small pink flowers just starting to bloom.

Now, the problem is that the weed growing in with the general area with the small flowering ground covering plant I shall now call “Pink Fir” (because the flowers are pink and the leaves look like fir tree needles) is a much tougher plant that is particularly difficult to remove. It grows much taller than the Pink Fir and is a particularly difficult weed to remove because it sends out shoots below the ground much like mushrooms. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how mushrooms and many types of grass spread, they do so by sending out small one inch sections of root below the ground, about 6 inches out and then sprout up a new shoot at that point. This means, when you pull on one shoot of the weed some roots directly below are pulled up, a long string of sections are pulled up too, leading to another sprout of the weed, which often results in the ripping out of some Pink Fir that is caught in the cross-fire as you go (Pink Fir is a much more delicate plant that rips out of the ground at the slightest provocation). To truly rid yourself of these detestable scourges you must carefully follow the plant back to its origin point, the first plant in the line. Now comes the tricky part. At this point you must act VERY carefully and dig around the base of the weed to loosen the soil, and then reach down as deep as you can and yank. Hopefully you will get the whole root system, which looks like a long white tap root (a root that shoots straight down) with large white bulbous spikes off the sides (that are actually quite sharp) that act as earth grippers and are designed to stop anyone from yanking the entire root system out of the ground. All-in-all, after three hours of pulling at these weeds, I feel as if this particular plant was designed just to torment me. If you want to know my pain, simply reread this paragraph description about 300 times, that will be about half of what I feel.

This entire endeavor was undertaken in the brutal Thailand sunshine (no clouds for us today) and I was told later it got up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit with a high humidity as well. Even Panong was feeling the heat today and gave us two breaks instead of our usual one, for which I am eternally grateful. Once again, this entire mission was accomplished without the aid of gloves or gardening tools (although after thirty minutes or so we were given mini scythes to aid in digging out the roots), which could explain why the project is unfinished. We managed to weed about half the area with five of us working (not really surprising as it all must be done by hand and very carefully so that not too many Pink Firs are destroyed, although there have been casualties). My hands are now very sore and sport a lot of small cuts from the hard work they have been forced to endure when they have not done anything more strenuous than type in the last few years. Tomorrow we will continue to weed and hopefully finish that area by the end of our manual labor time in the morning.

After our freedom was earned, we went to our cabins to shower (I was covered in about two pounds of dirt at this point) and prepare for our afternoon. We ate lunch and then got ready for our lessons. Today the lessons to both the men and Panong were a great deal more successful. With the men, we reverted to the basics, teaching names of objects; today was clothing. We varied the lesson for Panong, doing a quick review of past material and then talking about tricky words (such as soup and soap, black and back, roof and root, food and foot), some higher numbers (thousands and million), more advanced colors (the concepts of light and dark colors), etc. It was a lot of fun and more enjoyable for them as well as for us, since we were now actually teaching them something new with a legitimate structure they could follow. We have planned out our next few days of lessons as well and are very much looking forward to working with both groups.

At 2 pm we were sent to the day care again, where we were greeted by the current sitter with a quick, “Thank God” and a fast dash away. We took charge of the little ones (the same group from yesterday) and were quickly wiped out. It is nice to have the children slowly warm up to us and begin to accept us as part of the group, but there is a distinct downside as well. The children now feel comfortable being crazy and rambunctious with us. All the toys from the toy room come out to be played with and we are expected to participate. Crying is now considered acceptable (in Asian cultures you don’t cry in public or in front of non-family members) and boo-boos must be kissed better and taken care of quickly. Babysitting has never felt like more work than with six kids to watch. By the end of our three hours the four of us were stretched out on the floor praying for deliverance from the crazy beasts. We were granted a reprieve at dinner time and after scarffing down our meals in record time we ran away from the compound to our cabin (we congregated at our cabin since it is nicer than the boys’) to discuss tomorrow and review the day. Soon, Katrina, Mikayla, and Whin showed up and we spent an hour or so with them before kicking everyone out so we could shower and soon slip into coma-like states until (hopefully until) the alarm goes off again in the morning.

I must admit that despite the hard work and the constant barrage of baby smells (I come away from our three hour baby adventure with a distinct odor of baby, which is not the amazing smell some insane mothers claim), I am enjoying my time at Wildflower. As the women open up with us and work with us side-by-side they become more comfortable speaking to us in sometimes broken English and laughing at shared jokes and sights. We are truly being adopted into the community and while it often has the feel of a commune (something I have never been interested in trying out) I am happy to be here and honored that we are so accepted. Some of the stories these women and children have are heartbreaking and it is tragic to think of the difficulties some have faced and still have yet to face.

I await tomorrow with trepidation and excitement; the former for the work they will put us through and the latter for the relationships we will continue to build with the women and children. Three days left and counting until the end of our say at Wildflower. Let us hope that we, the new Wildflowers, are heat resistant, because Thailand is HOT.