Jungle training

Here are some photos from my trip earlier this month, to do a training in a remote area north of Mae Sot. We stayed (trained/slept/ate/lived) in a bamboo hut in the middle of the jungle, no electricity or running water, not anything, really. The fields around were full of wild and previously cultivate but now wild foods that we gathered to eat, to supplement the stores we brought with us (rice, noodles, eggs, cauliflower, fish sauce, and pork). There were chilies, eggplants, peas, beans, morning glory, other unnamed greens, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, some other green squash, basil, roselle, corriander, lime caffir. A little stream ran past (to join a larger one just down the hill from the hut, where we went to bathe) from which we collected water to boil for drinking, and washing. I expected to be swarmed by mosquitoes in the evenings, but surprisingly, there were none. To get there, we took a road which is only called a road generously, often traveling in the river bed, until the car could go no farther, and then walked, up a mountain, and down the other side (the Karen do not believe in swithcbacks). The trail to the nearby village was also quite steep, and the level parts were often in a streambed, which was navigable now in the dry season, but I can't imagine it in the rainy season.

The place where we conducted the training is actually a training facility for a project to teach local people about environmental preservation and herbal medicine. Its a pretty interesting project. They feel that traditional sustainable practices are being lost, and so this is an effort to reestablish a balance. They teach things like only taking 4 or 5 trunks from each bamboo cluster, and planting some crops amongst the trees rather than slashing and burning all. The herbal medicines are not taught to the exclusion of western medicine, but rather to complement it, and provide remedy when western medicine is not available (or not affordable).

The road - one of many river crossings

Home sweet home

View from the hut

The kitchen. We cooked over an open fire inside an entirely wooden structure.
The floor of most of the hut was flattened bamboo, which actually makes a very lovely and comfortable floor. The floor of the lower kitchen (and the porch) was hole bamboo, which was decidedly more difficult to walk on. The trunks were round, and rolled and shifted a bit, causing an unsteady gait for unpracticed visitors... I found myself drawing on skills honed while walking across a rolling ship deck...

Gathering dinner -

The trail - not sure if it would be passable during rainy season -

A very cool bamboo aquaduct running from clear water upstream to a hut a bit farther from the water. Small, but achieved a steady flow of clear water. Must have taken ages to hew out all of the bamboo cross sections.

Our classroom. Also our living room, dining room, and bedroom. We slept on those very mats at night. The bamboo floor had a bit of give, and was actually decently comfortable. It got dark by about 6:30, and though we had candles, most folks were in bed by about 8pm. Of course, this meant people got up at 5:30/6... They work hard, but I'm realizing they are also very well rested...

Practicing medication doseages, and packaging. First line TB therapy consists of 4 drugs, plus B vitamin supplement - the drugs each require several pills (depending on weight), so pateinets have to take 10-20 pills per dose... The medics calculate doseage, and pre-prepare packets for each patient. Treatment lasts for 6 months, and each dose (3x per week) is supposed to be directly observed by a medical worker.

The class! The camara tipped a little when it was jarred as I ran across the bouncy bamboo floor after triggering the timer... I have become the default photographer for all auto-timer photos (and I'm rather good at it, if I do say so...) and I can't help laughing as I think over all of the times my father has jury-rigged tenous tripods, and dived over and through varied obstacles to get in a photo before the timer runs out. I guess the auto-timer photo bug is inherited. :)

In the nearby village. All of the homes are constructed from bamboo, with rooves made of giant teak leaves.