Wednesday, May 30, 2007

In which I offer a short news flash...

The military government here in Thailand is about to rule this afternoon on whether the top political parties, including the one dethroned in last year's coup, will be permitted to run in the elections promised for December 2007. Anticipating a disbarment (which rather defeats the label democracy, doesn't it?) and ensuing civil unrest from those party's supporters, the whole country is rather on edge today.

The police forces are boasting loudly about how "effectively" they'll clamp down on any disorder, and the military has mobilized 13,000 soldiers and MPs to prevent the mass migration of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin's rural supporters into the cities for the next few days. Many schools have closed in case of street violence, we volunteers been warned away from politically sensitive areas of Bangkok (not a difficulty for me, being 800 km away in Chiang Mai), and we've been given explicit instructions to stay the hell away from any protests.

I don't really know what to make of it. There are signs that the potential for violence has been blown out of proportion by a jittery military, but only time will tell. I'll follow with more news as it happens.

Friday, May 25, 2007

In which I catch my breath...

Well, I'm finally back in Chiang Mai after nearly a month of constant motion. Getting up at 5 AM every day to move on to the next town is not my kind of vacation, but it was enlightening and gave me some new side projects to work on. (Anybody know a good place to find funding for an AIDS orphanage? I need about $40,000.) I saw bits of pretty landscape in my wanderings, but mainly I enjoyed talking to various folks in some startlingly difficult situations. I was variously mistaken (unintentionally) for a doctor, a missionary, a soldier, and an Australian. I ate things I would prefer never to eat again (Betel leaves are most unpleasant). I got very sick (by my rather fragile standards, not theirs) on three occasions, and even talked politics with far more people than I expected to. I caught wind of an unfortunate amount of raw sewage but also walked through beautifully terraced rice paddies and saw some manmade landmarks on par with the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower.

I'll post more details when time permits, but in the meantime here's a photo of three Karen children, lifelong residents of the Mae La Oon refugee camp, a cheerful but unthinkably crowded patch of otherwise unusable land in east central Thailand. This is the first photo of processed from about 1100 that I've taken in the last three weeks.

Refugee kids