I thought I wouldn't be back until Friday or Saturday to post a blog but here I am because I hadn't heard from anyone and thought you all might be worried, so I hopped a boat back to Ranong and spent the night in a hotel just to tell you all that everything's totally hunky dory for me but not for the Moken but then not much has changed in that way, has it?
I've finished three days of fieldwork and it's going ok. Because I'm focused really on just two topics this trip, the aforementioned lack of preparation hasn't been as stressful as I thought it would. I can really stretch out the sessions and go over the same data to be sure, which I need to do anyways. This probably doesn't mean much to you so I'll just saying it's going ok and I'm hopeful for the prospects.
The situation with the Moken hasn't changed, really. The pastor in Ranong, who's a bit of a lone ranger when it comes to aid (that is, he doesn't really communicate at all with other organizations trying to assist the Moken), raised some money and had some Campus Crusaders (including former childhood friend of Erica and hubster, I believe) go build a whole villiage on the next island out (30 houses and a church), which is called Koh Chang translated meaning Elephant Island though I don't think there are any there. This is because the island is reasonably far from shore, like an hour or 45 minutes or something, and I don't think elephants can swim that far. It also costs the Moken a lot more money to go from there to the town and back, and with the rising world-market prices of fossil fuels it's not totally clear that the situation out on Elephant Island is necessarily an improvement. There was some persuasion involved in moving the Moken to Elephant, island, as 30 families did, inin the form of a big bag of rice, so they're ok for a while I guess, but the place is much harder to find foods such as clams and stuff which are nice because you can just pick them up on the beach and all. This is because their old place was near a whole series of tidal estuaries and the ocean was much shallower and closer to shore, making it an ideal ecosystem for clam-type invertebrates. They're making money, I think, finishing building a church for the pastor out there, but it's not clear what will happen when they're done. This is a much longer story than I have time to tell right now, though.
What is worth saying, and I'll probably mention it again, is that a lot of the Moken living on Ko' Hlao have lost or have never had crab nets. Crab nets are an ideal way to feed yourself and make some extra money on a daily basis, and it's amazing to me that despite all the aid and attention that the Moken have gotten here, a lot of them are still netless. It seems that this is a relatively obvious way to help people make a decent living on their own, and it's a sustainable investment at that. There's between 5-10 families without nets. I've decided I'd like to do something about it myself, and it'd be great if you could help, actually. A net isn't cheap, about $200, but it's basically a way of giving a family food and also a very direct way of redistributing those resources which we Americans have in such abundance. I'm hoping to buy two or three myself, and if anyone would like to chip in and buy part of or all of another net, please send me an email and let me know how much you'd like to donate. This is purely a favor and an act of goodwill, and please feel absolutely no obligation to help out. We can figure out the money later, but I can just buy the nets myself for now. I'm going to talk to the Moken about this and see what they think, but I wanted to put the idea out there so you all could start thinking about it. All the money will go straight to the nets, no service charge or nothing.
Right now, I'm at this office of an organization of some Thai volunteers who I met who are having a big fiesta out on the Moken island (the old one, Koh Hlao). Anyways, there's a little girl here who walked up to me and stuck out her hand and I shook it and she walked away. She came back in and looked at my phone. She told me that my phone was like her mom's. She looked at my cheap $8 watch and asked me how much it cost. I told her B200. She told me it was expensive. She calls me Farang (which is what Thais call Westerners) and told me that she met someone named Farang once before.
Ok. I've got to go. I'll write more on the weekend. I put some pictures on the picasa site that you can get to by clicking the old pictures, I think.
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