Sunday, November 25, 2012

Those Hardest To Love


Preparation for India had me concerned.  Everyone said that it would be extremely difficult and I would be pushed to my limits there both physically and emotionally.  I wondered if all of the preparation was necessary and I thought that excessive concern had the potential to make people more susceptible to emotional trauma.  I thought that everyone was blowing things out of proportion and setting up the team for an explosion of mental breakdowns.  While in many cases my predictions were right, I did find myself tried more than I anticipated.
Rather than the typical tugging on the heart strings that one might expect, I found myself often feeling in the way and frustrated with the fact that I did not have anything useful to do.  Surprisingly, large portion of this uselessness was placed on me by one of the staff at the home, a hired staff member that instills fear into the hearts of any who volunteer at Nirmal Hriday, Mother Teresa’s home for the destitute and dying at Kalighat.  A woman whose petite stature and slight features deceive many into thinking her harmless before she strikes with barrage of berating broken English.
My first interactions with this woman happened on the first day I volunteered.  I had no idea what I was doing and I was looking for ways to make myself useful.  As I was making my way over to the multistage dish washing station to see if I could be any help there, suddenly she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me over to another part of the building where she attempted to instruct me in some task that she apparently wanted me to do.  Unable to understand anything she was saying, I simply nodded and when she was gone, I found another place to make myself useful.  Little did I know this was just the start to a long struggle to please this woman who I dubbed Kim Jong Nun.
The next day I found myself actually doing dishes in the aforesaid dish line.  At Nirmal Hriday, dishes were done progressively in many stages.  A few people scraped excess food and bones into a colander that strains into a bucket and then passes the dishes on to the scrubbers.  When the dishes were scrubbed they went through two phases of rinsing in tile sinks that drain on to the polished concrete floors, plugged only with a rag stuffed in the drainage hole.  After the shiny steel dishes have gone through all these stages, they ended up with me and two German girls who were volunteering for the first time.  We were minding our own business, drying and stacking the newly washed dishes in the designated area, when Kim Jong Nun pounced.  “Just a moment! Just a moment!” she yelled frantically, running at us waving her hands in a gesture indicating we should stop immediately, lest we unintentionally throw off the entire balance of the home and send all of the patients into a frenzy.  At least that is what I imagined would have happened based on how hysteric she was.  When we attempt to continue with our given task, she exasperatedly says “I speaking English! You no understand?!”  Obviously we did not.  We never did find out why we had to wait to dry those dishes.
She did not only preside over dishes though.  Her reign extended over the vast kingdom of laundry as well.  Almost every article of clothing, sheet, and rag is washed every day at Kalighat.  This means that every day there is a strict regimen of tasks that are to be followed to get all of the laundry done which includes a four stage washing process before the sopping garments get hung to dry on the roof.  I decided to use my physicality to haul loads of freshly washed laundry up the many flights of stairs to be sorted and hung and then bring the dried clothes back down to be folded collectively by the patients and volunteers.  I was in a steady routine of making trips up and down the stairs with the baskets and feeling very productive until Kim Jong Nun intervened once again. 
Kristine and Zach were helping me bring some laundry back down to the patients so they could begin folding when we ran into Kim Jong Nun at the bottom of the stairs.  There she is yelling at another volunteer who has just come down with another bundle of clean clothes.  Kim Jong Nun quickly snatched the bundle out of the volunteer’s hands and brusquely came back up the stairs toward the three of us who were frozen in terror of this tyrant.  When she saw us, she scowled, shooed us back upstairs, and gruffly barked some command at us.  We did not even hear what she said since we were so far up the stairs already that the clomping of our running feet drowned out whatever she was trying to convey.  When we reached the roof, we dropped the clothes on the ground in a pile and hid in the jungle of emerald green sheets, cowering in fear of what the repercussions of our actions would be.  Luckily our actions did not anger her as much as the other volunteers and we escaped unscathed.
Kim Jong Nun had very strong views on the volunteers that came through Kalighat.  We were able to see this when a group of unwell volunteers were instructed to fold gauze for bandages, a seemingly simple task that turned out to be quite difficult, at least when supervised by Kim Jong Nun.  Many of the members who were feeling under the weather went to fold gauze in the break room because they were not feeling well enough for other work but they still wanted to be helpful.  Large pieces of gauze were folded over a piece of cardboard that was cut to make perfectly sized bandages.  And when I say perfectly sized, I mean perfectly sized.
  Kim Jong Nun came to check on the progress of the bandage folders and was appalled by the quality of the work.  She quickly pushed aside Christina, one of the German girls, and began dismembering her pile of completed bandages.  Christina and the rest of us looked on helplessly as Kim Jong Nun proceeded to move the fold in the bandage a millimeter over before replacing the bandage in the “good” pile.  Obviously, these bandages would all have to be redone because it would have been catastrophic if the gauze was a millimeter too long.  There was no way the insufficiently large pieces would have gotten the job done.  After the disappointment of failure in such a simple task, many of the volunteers moved on to other jobs at which they will be more likely to succeed.  When all the offenders had left, Kim Jong Nun apparently confided in Kristine that she only likes certain kinds of volunteers.  Chinese, Korean, and Japanese volunteers were the only good ones, though there were some Americans that were not so bad.  She must have added that caveat because she was speaking to an American.
It did not matter what nation a volunteer came from though, they still had trouble communicating with her.  Another regular task at Kalighat is helping distribute pills to the patients.  There is a detailed log book of each patient’s medical needs that Kim Jong Nun flipped through every day to remind herself what pills to pass out to each patient.  After retrieving the medications from the bank of nondescript white bottles with the drug names written on the side, she unloads the handful of pills and says the name of one of the patients who is supposed to receive that dose.  A large majority of the volunteers are only there for the short term so they are not able to build as strong of relationships with the patients.  I was one of those short term volunteers.  When Kim Jong Nun told me the name of the patient I was meant to deliver the dosage too, I obviously had no idea who she was talking about.  When I asked her who that was, she simply repeated the name multiple times until she called over one of the able bodied patients and with great frustration told him to direct me to the patient. 
Looking back, Kim Jong Nun greatly affected my time at Kalighat for better or worse. I now realize the motivation behind her strictness and intensity.  The tight adherence to the rules was for the benefit of the patients.  The patients needed stability in their ever chaotic lives and Kim Jong Nun provided just that.  At times she may have taken her strictness to an extreme level but it was all in love for the patients.  She wanted to make sure that they were cared for in the best way possible.   The volunteers are not the ones who need to be cared for, the patients are.

The Koh Tao Farewell Parade


As we drive on the left side of the one road that runs the length of Koh Tao, it feels as if we are in a going-away parade of sorts.  Piled atop all of our possessions in the back of the pickup-taxi floats, we wave goodbye to all of the friends we have made on this even further escape from our now “normal” lives of travelling the world.  We have just left our scenic, postcard of a beach called Freedom that has been our home for the last week.  We look longingly at the clear blue water that has been corralled by the pincers of palm covered peninsulas to enclose our bay, knowing that soon we will be snapped back into “reality” when we touch down in Kolkata, India.  Freedom Beach is not the only freedom we leave behind, we also leave the freedom from schedules, service, and supervision that we had for this short stint of self- sovereignty.

As we begin our ride to the docks, we drive past Jack, an Irishman who works for Buddha View Travel.  He sits waving at the desk outside his rental shop next to his wife’s restaurant Yin Yang where our group has spent countless sums of baht on Thai dinners, motor bike rentals, and motorbike repair fees.  Jack says he has never seen a group as unlucky as ours. Four out of seven rentals from our group result in crashes that incurred repair fees and medical bills.  He is not mad about dealing with the repairs, only sorry that we had so many injuries and that we were no longer allowed to rent bikes from him after all the crashes.
Just past Buddha View Rentals, we drive past our good friend Adnan, the Turkish scuba instructor who we spent so many mornings with over the course of the week.  He was the only one who could get us to do some semblance of homework during this week of relaxation.  We read our scuba manuals every night in preparation of his class the next morning.  While he was very much our teacher, introducing us to the risks and rewards of diving, he also became our great friend, inviting me to visit him wherever he is in the world in the future to finish my certification and take some free fun dives with him. 

As we pass New Heaven Dive School, we call out to him.  He walks out of the beachfront, open-air shop in his sea foam green fisherman pants that he wore every day, shirtless and barefoot as usual.  He waves to us as we speed off down the bumpy road to the dock.  We wave goodbye to him and the new underwater world he introduced us too.
Our trucks come to the fork in the road and I am happy to see that we will be taking the path to the left.  I know that another one of our friends lives in the leather shop just past the Golden Barbeque Buffet we ate at and I hope to say farewell to him as well.  We were first drawn into his shop by the plethora of leather products we saw hanging outside of his storefront window.
 Always a fan of leather, the Alexs and I went to check out the pricing on his handmade products.  When we took off our shoes and entered his shop, we felt like we had just entered a Rastafarian den of rawhide products.  Leather and denim jackets and pants adorned the wall across from the counter and bar stools where a man in a black tank top with a large turquoise pendant around his neck, a long black pony tail, and scraggly facial hair sat grinning behind the counter.  Little did we know that this man had so many fascinating stories that he made the Dos Equis man look as interesting as Ben Stein.
This man sat framed by the shrine built to the Thai king and Che Guevara poster on the slanted cave-like concrete wall on his left and a doorway shrouded by a green turtle-patterned sarong that led to the back room.  I began to discuss the possibility of a custom belt being made but quickly dismissed the idea when the only long enough piece he had left was dyed black and white in a pattern akin to the animal it once came from.  With that option gone, we began looking at the other offerings he had already made. 
As we looked we engaged in small talk with this spaced-out leather worker.  We discovered that his name is Teek and that he had been on the island for quite a few years.  He offered us some peanuts that he had on a dish on the counter and invited us to sit and talk a while.  Reaching into a hidden compartment, he pulled out a bag of marijuana and proceeded to roll a joint and offer it to us.  Politely declining, he explained that he does “only herbal man, no chemical $&*#.  If people bring chemical in here I tell them ‘Go away!’”  He invited us to have a beer with him so we walked down the street, grabbed a few bottles of Chang and headed back to talk some more.  We talked about our trip for a bit and his life on the island.  When it got late we prepared to head out and he invited us to come back and hang out another time.  We would definitely return.

As the week went on, we made it our routine to go to see Teek in the evenings after dinner.  We would have a beer and talk about all sorts of things.  Teek told us about how the people of Thailand love their king very much.  He told us about his son who lives in France with his mother, his family whom he has not seen in many years, the influence of the mafia on Koh Tao, and many outlandish tales of his past.  He told us that he would take us to his favorite restaurant on the island, which turned out to be one of the most memorable meals of the trip.
We agreed to meet at 7-11, a place he said sold “$%^&*# plastic food,” where he would shuttle us to the restaurant on his motorbike.  While we were waiting outside of the plastic food vendor, lightning flashing in the dark night sky, Teek drove up on his Che-emblazoned MTX and told Bagheera to hop on.  He proceeded to shuttle each of us individually up the steep bumpy hill to the restaurant.  While I was on it he nearly swerved into the ditch on the side of the road but we eventually all made it there.

Teek ordered us some of his favorite Thai dishes and a round of Changs.  He insisted that we eat all of the food, serving us from the platters and his own dish even though he later told us that he had only consumed four Changs and eight joints that day.  Thai hospitality at its finest. 
Even when the food supply began to run low, conversation topics did not.  We sat around the table on our tan, patterned pillows and talked for hours.  Teek told us about his history in Bangkok before he came to Koh Tao.  When he was younger he got into trouble with the law just because he was a nice guy he told us.  “I in jail for two year and no tell anyone,” he recalled.  This jail time was sentenced because he was in possession of a home-made hand gun and two kilograms of marijuana that he was holding for a friend.  Rather than rat his friend out though, he took the jail time for him.  He had not informed any of his family when he went to jail, even his twin brother named Tok (named after the grating sound of the clock their mother heard when giving birth to them: “teek-tok, teek-tok, teek-tok”).  It was during this period of incarceration Teek learned much about freedom.
Teek always talked about freedom and how that was the most important thing in life.  He did not worry about finances or plans for the future, only about being free and living life how he wanted too.  He summed up his philosophy in one short phrase: “You have lot of money but no freedom, #$%&! You have nothing!” 
In the future Teek plans on opening his own self-sustaining camp in the jungle where people can come live off of the land with him for however long they like.  When we asked if he had an email so we could get in contact with him to come visit again he laughed and replied, “#$%& internet!  You have spirit and want to see me, you will find me!”
As we drive past Teek’s shop on the way to the dock, we shout his name hoping that he might hear us.  In a matter of seconds, he comes sprinting out to the road and begins jumping up and down waving his hands in the air.  With this last goodbye, we drive on toward the dock.  Teek was the last friend we are able to see on our departure drive. 
We leave this island more regulated but also more mature, more united, and with more friends.  Autonomy is left behind in favor of organization, order, and over-bearing nuns as we head to Kolkata.  This change of pace will be taken in stride as simply another chapter in the life of a Rounder.  In the words of our friend Teek, “#$%& man, freedom!”


Thursday, November 1, 2012

A Day at the Golden Triangle: Expensive


Number of Thai baht in a US dollar:  ฿ 30

Projected all inclusive Golden Triangle excursion cost paid up front: ฿ 1800

Breakfast at 7-11 because we left too early for camp breakfast: ฿ 25

Snack break at 7-11 after a souvenier stop in Chiang Rai: ฿ 10

Boat ride into Donxao, Laos: ฿ 300

Bathroom use before the boat ride: ฿ 2

Entry into Donxao: ฿ 100

Souvenirs, lunch, and critter whiskey shot: ฿ 140

Sending a postcard so I can long a Geocache in Laos to add it to my map: ฿ 60

Fake stamp in the passport because entering Donxao does not warrant a real passport stamp: ฿ 30

Visa into Myanmar (even though discouraged and not planned by our guide): ฿ 500

Haircut and shave from a sarong-wearing Burmese barber with some form of leaf wrapped cinnamon chew: ฿ 40

Myanmar beer: ฿ 60

Gas to fill up our bus once again: ฿ 100

Fine we will incur after overstaying our now shortened 15 day visa by two days: ฿ 1000

Refund given back to each person after we overpaid them by 1200%:a bunch  ฿ 1650

A day of indulging in adventure and bowing to the tourist trap that is the Golden Triangle while trying to find traveler things to do while adding two more countries to the list: Priceless

There are some things money can’t buy.  For everything else, there is cash because not a single place in the Golden Triangle takes Mastercard.