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Studying
Thai in the Land of Cheese
July
20, 2004
Madison, Wisconsin
They
say "cold, barren North," emphasis always on the
cold. My introduction to Madison was anything but. Although
the Greyhound Station is only about six blocks from my dorm,
the half mile trip was a ragged adventure through authentic
summer heat and unknown streets, dragging my heavy luggage
after the casters broke off on the bumpy sidewalk.
I reveal
this little anecdote just to point out that yes, there is
summertime up here. There’s also a gorgeous lake and
a huge, near-1000 acre campus with monumental architecture.
Interestingly, they have a giant concrete monstrosity similar
to the Millsaps AC, but with a central, sky lit sitting area
instead of a dreary parking lot.
Needless
to say the University of Wisconsin is a tad bit overwhelming
for me, even though it’s well below normal capacity during
the summer months. But the coffee shops are still bustling
– all 10 million of them, it seems like, and I can now
tell you which one to choose depending on what drink you’re
looking for. And the line for UW-made ice cream still winds
all the way through the front of the Memorial Union. I wonder
how much profit the university makes on their dairy products.
Oh, that’s the other little culture shock. At the grocery
stores, even the tiny little half-grocery store near downtown,
there are cheese aisles. We’re talking close to a hundred
different kinds and brands of cheese, everything from Wisconsin
sharp sharp cheddar to those odd flavors with names that appear
to be German-French syncretisms. They’re also big fans
of cheese curds, which are salty and have a bit of a snappy,
satisfying texture but are altogether rather bland. They eat
these things like popcorn or potato chips, and even serve
them at the theaters (along with beer, nachos, and the classic
peppers stuffed with – you guessed it, cheese).
There’s
a gigantic farmer’s market every Saturday morning in
the square surrounding the state capitol building. This has
probably been my favorite thing about Madison. There are several
Hmong families who sell fresh produce – purple or white
onions for $1 a bunch, or bags of lettuce if you’re into
that sort of thing. A local pasta company sells packs of fresh
pasta in little plastic containers similar to the famous brand
you’ll find at the grocery store, but in over a dozen
tasty flavors and incredibly affordable at 3 for $5. Their
“Cajun spaghetti” is by no means Cajun, but it is
flavorful and robust.
I bought
a couple of basil plants from one of the local farmers and
stuck them in a mug in my window. They’re growing quite
well and even flowered a couple of weeks ago. The only problem
is I can’t bring myself to actually eat the plant. It’s
become my little vegetable pet. Since I can’t bring it
back with me on the plane to bestow upon my roommate for safe
keeping, I figure I’ll probably make a keeng phet (spicy
red curry) just before I leave, and commit the cannibalistic
act then.
I suppose
now that I’ve rambled on for several paragraphs, I should
provide some sort of summary of what I’m doing in Wisconsin
in the first place. As part of the program to study in Thailand
during the Fall semester, I had to attend an 8 week summer
language course here at UW. The summer program is called SEASSI
– SouthEast Asian Studies Summer Institute. They offer
all the major languages of SE Asia. It’s interesting
that a lot of the students in these classes are ethnic Hmong,
Vietnamese, Thai, etc. Many of them can understand and speak
the languages already, having grown up with it in their homes,
but they come here to learn the writing system and formal
grammar. Without getting too abstract and wandering away into
linguisticsville, it makes me wonder about the process of
language diffusion and how, over time, writing systems get
co-opted and replaced by new ones. The spoken sounds are much
older, though. Thai borrows a lot of vocabulary from Pali
and Sanskrit, so every once in a while I stumble across a
word that looks awfully familiar but obviously predates modern
adoptions (like bia, for example).
Anyway,
I’m here in Madison, the state capital of Wisconsin,
beginning the sixth week of my 8-week language course, and
I figured it was about time to post something to introduce
folks to my research plans. Five days a week, I wake up 3-4
hours earlier than my body wants me to and I head off to study
Thai with native teachers from 8 am till noon. Two days a
week I have additional meetings in the afternoon just to go
over the details of studying abroad next year. We discuss
things like how to react if a waitress wais you (I’ll
explain the wai in a later post) or if you ask for directions
and the stranger takes you by the hand and begins to lead
you to your destination (in a nutshell, for men this is fairly
common; for women, it’s an outrageous sexual advance
and you should slap with abandon).
I’ll
be here for a couple more weeks, and then home for a brief
break before I depart for Thailand. I’ll try to send
some more updates in the meantime, so anyone who is interested
in my ramblings will know what I’ve been planning for
the upcoming semester. To tide you over with visual stimulation,
I’ve attached some photos of various SEASSI-related things.
Enjoy.
Sawatdii
khráp,
Doc
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Cabbages
& Condoms
17
October 2004
Chiang Mai, Thailand
I'm
sure you're wondering if I've lost my mind, but it's all explained
below. I've had a busy weekend, and I still have most of today
(Sunday) to do business. Actually, today I have 2 language
assignments to complete and I need to put together a draft
of my family planning user/staff/administrator "questionnaire"
to show Ajaan Liwa tomorrow afternoon. It's not really a questionnaire;
more of an outline to help me while interviewing folks. I
may or may not ask them to write responses to certain questions;
more likely I'll tape record them and attempt to transcribe
the conversation afterwards with the help of my Thai dictionary
software and any Thai students who stumble into the CYIT office.
So my weekly adventures in family planning fieldwork pick
up at the local branch of the Planned Parenthood Association
of Thailand, which was the earliest family planning program
in the kingdom and also the only one to receive the patronage
of a royal person -- Her Royal Highness the Princess Mother
(now ascended to the next plane of existance or rebirth).
Nowadays, contraception use and low fertility are the norm
rather than the exception, so PPAT spends most of its resources
combating HIV/AIDS and administrating various rural development
projects. The director of the Northern Project of PPAT gave
Ajaan Liwa and me a detailed presentation about her organization's
history and current projects. One thing I found interesting
about the PPAT offices was this bulletin board, located outside
the staff work area. Although the National Family Planning
Program no longer sets numerical targets for new contraception
users, PPAT still keeps track of new cases in this public
medium. Something for me to think about in my research paper...
Now that I have your attention -- I can only recall explaining
Cabbages & Condoms to a handful of folks, so most of you
are probably wondering WHAT ON EARTH am I doing in "The
Rubber Triangle". The Population (& Community) Development
Association of Thailand is one of the most widely-recognized
NGOs involved in family planning -- and nowadays, AIDS prevention.
The director of the PDA, Mechai Viravaidya, employs the philosophy
that no publicity is bad publicity. In an effort to introduce
contraception -- especially condoms, as they also combat STDs
-- into Thai mainstream society, Mechai and the PDA have set
up all sorts of highly visible public events over the past
three decades. Among these have been condom-blowing contests
by village headmen, free vasectomies in honor of the King's
birthday, and the distribution of condoms by everyone from
police officers to taxi drivers, even by monks!
Generally speaking, the PDA's efforts have been successful.
While it's extremely difficult to quantify the impact of PDA
on Thailand's family planning success, the wide-spread familiarity
of Mechai and the PDA speak volumes. In fact, the slang term
for condoms in Thai is "Mechai," as the first brands
marketed by the PDA were named after their imaginative director.
In terms of the number of users recruited, PDA has made only
a modest contribution; but their innovative advertising and
publicity stunts have helped boost awareness and acceptance
of the government-sponsored National Family Planning Program.
So where do cabbages fit in?, you ask. Well, one of the programs
that PDA uses to raise money and generate publicity has been
the creation and management of three restaurants called "Cabbages
& Condoms." One branch, naturally, is located in
Bangkok -- it's by far the best-known and hosts who-knows-how-many
farang tourists each day. The other two are both located in
Chiang Rai province; one in the city district adjacent to
the PDA's local clinic, and the other -- the one photographed
here -- at the Wiang Pa Pao Community-Based Integrated Rural
Development center (CBIRD for short). At high noon, this branch
was packed -- we had to wait a few minutes for a table --
but I get the feeling it's not one of the most frequented
branches.
The director of the PDA CBIRD center conversed with us --
or rather, with Ajaan Liwa and my voice recorder -- for 45
minutes about PDA's role in the area. Afterwards a couple
of PDA staff accompanied us to visit a local pill distributor
in a tiny little village about 15 minutes away, followed by
a visit to a giant Bird house and a nearby Hmong village.
Somewhere among all these events we squeezed in a very tasty
lunch at Cabbages & Condoms. The food really is tasty
(don't worry, there aren't any suspicious latex or rubber
qualities to the food) and moderately low priced. Hopefully,
I will be able to talk Phii Tom into stopping for lunch on
our way to Chiang Rai this weekend.
Like the PPAT, PDA now spends most of its time promoting awareness
of HIV/AIDS and working to raise women's and children's status.
Both groups also work heavily among the hilltribe groups such
as the Hmong and Karen. It's possible I will be able to accompany
the PPAT's mobile van unit on a visit to a distant rural distribution
site where most of the users are hilltribes and migrants;
either way I plan to talk to some of these minorities to find
out their perspective of the family planning programs.
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