One Final Night, One Final Rooster Wake-up Call

Tonight is my last night here at Wildflower. It’s hard to believe Immersion Week is now at an end, although it often felt endless. I suppose this is another of those occasions, such as our hike to Doi Suthep, where being done with a project eclipses some of the agony that occurred at the time. I’m sure, however, that I will remember most of my pain associated with Wildflower, if not the emotional pain, then the cuts, bruises, and bug bites that I will take with me back to Chiang Mai and on to Laos. Those will certainly be hard to forget!

The roosters slept in this morning until 4:37 am, allowing me to do so too. I will be happy to once again be in the city if only for the lack of annoying morning fowl insisting on greeting the sun before it has even risen. I officially arose at 5:30 to assist with the watering of the garden, have breakfast, sit in on the morning meeting, and then go to work in the greenhouse. As I mentioned yesterday, Bobby and I decided to continue our work with our current project and offered to take manual labor duty if the others continued to watch the babies. This turned out to be a good deal for us greenhousers, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself…

During breakfast, Elizabeth, the co-founder of Wildflower (with her husband, both missionaries from the US), gave us some French toast as a treat for our last official workday. Unfortunately, I could not partake and was stuck with the usual rice-soup concoction that I simply cannot stomach anymore. This turned out to be for the best though, as I believe karma was going to quickly make up for my loss. I chose to work in the greenhouse again, rather than take my shift watching the babies (which was viewed as the easier task by Vanessa and Ross – big mistake), for many reasons, including: 1) I hate to leave a project unfinished, 2) I hate to leave a project I feel possessory interest over in the hands of anyone else, 3) I don’t think I could manage watching six babies for over eight hours straight. So, Bobby and I set off for the greenhouse, under a cloudy sky.

We worked for about two hours, finishing the clearing process of the plants inside, raking the aisle, uncovering paving stones to walk on, etc. During the last hour, we began the process of planting some of the more advanced plants (in some cases four foot tall trees) in the ground. Some of the plants we uncovered were amazing. One was a fruit tree (I later learned a durian tree, the most disgusting smelling fruit on the planet), planted in a hanging planter, which had grown out through the roofing slats to stand about a foot above the roof line of the entire greenhouse. Another, had split into two large branches at the base with one branch growing toward the central aisle for light and the other out the bottom of the greenhouse towards the light outside. It is too bad these trees were not planted earlier as they would probably be further along toward the age of bearing fruit had they been planted in the ground. In fact, it is amazing they are alive at all. Some of the trees managed to grow to three feet in length when their pot size was a four inch square of soil and they rarely received water. We hope that this hardiness of spirit will continue as the land here is not very rich in nutrients and full of clay (making it VERY hard to dig holes as Bobby’s blisters and my open sores will tell you). As we moved out of the greenhouse to plant the trees in the earth the sun came out (giving me a lovely burn on my arms despite my sunscreen), making the work unbearably hot, but we persevered until the job was done. During this time our poor compatriots at the day care center had to deal with crazy children, crying, pooping, peeing, and other bodily fluids an adult without children never wants to see, let alone clean up. *Maniacal laugh* Revenge for the French toast was swift and sure.

We finished work at 11:15 and while there is still a lot to do to finish the project completely (razing and burning the structure should not be discarded as a strategy – the bamboo wood used in its construction is rotting and full of termites), it is well on its way to once again being an organized and productive greenhouse. Tomorrow we plan to sit down with someone in charge and let them know about some changes that need to be made regarding the care and maintenance of that structure.

After lunch, Vanessa and Bobby took the kids back to the daycare and Ross and I took over the English lessons, first for the men and then Panong. The men’s lesson went well again and I think we have managed to teach them a few things they will remember and will come in useful in the future. Our lesson with Panong was amazing! First, I must back up a little though. Yesterday, Panong told us she wanted to throw us a good-bye party on Saturday at dinner time and requested that we stay the extra time in order to do so. The request was made to Bruce and Wendy, was quickly granted and the plan made for us to stay until 7 pm for the party at Wildflower. Our feelings on this subject were mixed. On the one hand we were happy that Panong wanted to throw us a party and liked us enough to make that effort. On the other hand, we wanted to leave and get some good food. Today, the option was taken out of our hands. As we sat down to our lesson with Panong, she became very emotional (a rare occurrence in public from a Thai woman and one that truly shows her attachment to us) and began to tear up as she haltingly told us we could not have our party tomorrow as there was a party on Sunday for Ruang’s (another woman here at Wildflower) engagement and we would have to celebrate an abbreviated version tonight. This news once again elicited mixed reactions: joy at the thought of being free and able to get that long dreamed of steak, and sadness that Panong was so upset at the prospect of us going without our party and our impending good-bye. It was so touching to have this normally extraordinarily cheerful and happy woman so sad. Ross and I sat there, trying to explain that it was ok, telling her that as long as she was ok with it so were we. Panong had to leave for a few minutes to retrieve her notebook and calm down.

I don’t think I’ve said enough about Panong yet in my previous blog posts. Panong is our boss here at Wildflower. She has lived and worked at Wildflower for two years now and does most of the hard physical labor around the place. During our stay, she toiled alongside us in the gardens tirelessly, and was always ready with a smile, encouraging word, and some directions. In addition, this woman, who I would guess is around 40 and has a young son she raises alone, learns English everyday from us, Meredith, or anyone else who will teach her. She is incredibly modest, warm, and a wonderfully caring woman whom anyone would be delighted to work with.

Panong is also an incredible student. She studies tirelessly to learn English, constantly repeating words until they are perfect. She is also quick at picking up new concepts and ideas. Each day we prepare materials for her lessons and have learned that when you are teaching Panong, you must prepare what you think you would need for four lessons because she will blaze through it all. To give an example, today we decided to have a session on giving the date, which included a discussion of months, days and years. We quickly ran through the 12 months with her, carefully giving the correct pronunciation, and then gave her the format for reading a strictly numerical date (day/month/year here in Thailand – and everywhere in the world except the US it seems). She immediately grasped how to read and write the date. We only explained the concept of adding “th” to the end of the day when reading it aloud (for example, fourth), except for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and reading the year as two bunches of numbers (for example nineteen eighty-six rather than one thousand nine hundred eighty six), once and she was able to read any date we wrote in numerical format. She often claims her English is not good and she is slow, but I have never seen a quicker or more eager student. This is a woman who will be speaking perfect English before we know it.

We went back to our babysitting duties, but got an early reprieve in the form of our party, which consisted of all the women and children coming together, some short speeches of thanks from Meredith, Elizabeth, Katrina, and Panong (so sweet and heartfelt it made even the staunchest face tear up a bit), and a beautiful array of fruit (watermelon, rambutan, and Thai oranges), which was an amazing luxury. As we were eating, Panong and Napay gave us some jewelry they had made for us, bracelets for the girls and necklaces for the boys. It was such a lovely gesture and a piece of jewelry that will always have special meaning. When the party was over, after we ate our fill from the amazing smorgasbord of food, we headed back to the day care to finish our shift, which was made considerably easier by the mothers taking away the youngest of the children so that there would not be any more chee or kee accidents (pee and poop for those unfamiliar with the Thai language).

Dinner was a similar affair to all of the others; I could only manage to stuff down about six bites of rice before giving up completely and accepting that I would not be able to eat the food anymore. Tomorrow I will eat my amazing steak dinner…*sigh*…that cannot come soon enough. After dinner we all congregated at the women’s lodge and sat talking for a few hours, which was highly enjoyable. As I end my last night here at Wildflower it is hard to believe that at this time tomorrow I will be back in Chiang Mai, at the apartments, without any need to wake at 5:30 am to water the garden (or my 4 am serenade). If the point of this week was to embed us in the culture so fully we can’t remember anything else, Immersion Week has mostly succeeded with me (only mostly because of the odd dream here or there of steak and law school finals). I cannot quite imagine not being at Wildflower, following the routine that has been laid out for me. My adjustment to the “real world” will be a strange one and the process makes me wonder how my transition from Thai/Laos culture back to Western culture will go in August. For that, only time will tell.