The Urban Trends Unit is officially over. First we lived in a landfill community called Kambon Noi. My family there was really great, and I went scavenging through the landfill with my meh for recyclables. I definitely have a new definition of jobs worth complaining about: they have to include at least some combonation of extreme heat, extreme smell and extreme numbers of maggots. It was really gross. But really, it wasn't THAT bad. I had a great feeling at the end that if I could do that, I can do anything. And I'm sure that the line between not that bad and awful is somewhere along with the difference between doing it everyday with no end in sight and knowing that 8:30 the next morning I was leaving. The problem in the landfill community is that scavenging is in the informal working sector, so it isn't really recognized by the government. They don't get fair access to water, electricity, education, healthcare. There is a mobile medical unit that comes every two months to help them but they just treat symptoms instead of providing real diagnosis. And with the cost of transportation, plus their lost wages from missing a day of work, going to the hospital is too expensive. Plus it is really unclear under what jurisdiction the landfill is under- the mayor of Khon Kaen or the TAO, which is like the head of a district- so they are fighting to get funding for a few community-organized programs and its all fruitless because no one takes responsibility for them. About ten of us have formed a landfill interest group and are taking on a few different projects. Mine involves getting in touch with the TAO for an exchange and probably with the mayor of Khon Kaen again (who we already met with and ended up a little frustrated, to say the least. He had some good ideas but also some vast misconceptions about the landfill community and about the role of students and youth activism) and find out just WHO exactly is the representation for the landfill community. Tomorrow, I'm going back to the landfill to really understand their perceptions and also just to hang out and be a friend instead of this intrusive and presumptuous American student. Hopefully, by the end of all this, we could organize a meeting between either the mayor or TAO and Paw Cam, the head of Kambon Noi. Other people are trying to get in touch with the KKU medical school to maybe arrange a volunteer program to help improve the medical care.
After the landfill, I lived in a slum called the Land Development community. All of the slums are on state land, next to the railroad. The government agency that owns the land is called the State Railroad of Thailand and it doesn't actually have to work through parliment so its this weird separate entity. Anyway, the problem in the slums is that without ownership of the land, they don't actually get fair access to water and electricity and always run the risk of being evicted. So the communities are working on getting leases from the SRT but in order to do so, they are not allowed to build on the 20 meters closest to the railroad, for "saftey reasons" but really so that SRT can rent it to high paying corporations at a more opportune moment, and while that is ok for some communities, some just don't have the space to rebuild the houses that are on that front 20 meters.
Our next unit is a little different. First, because I'm going to be a Unit Facilitator. Basically, each unit is actually run by a group of students who run the exchanges we have and organize the group before and after the homestays, etc etc. Unit 3 is also different because we are writing these Human Rights Reports. The HR Reports were started last semester and have actually become kind of a big deal. They get sent out to interested local, national and international NGOs, including ones like Amnesty International, as well as to the communities who use them to phrase their struggles in a more legal and politics-friendly way. My facilitator role will also include a lot of editing and formatting and deadlines. The reports basically frame the plights of a community in terms of the violations to the International Covenent on Economic, Social and Culture Rights, signed by many countries not including the United States. We are split in two groups, one going to a gold mining village in the mountains and my group is going back to the village in the national forest where we had our first little one day homestay. I'm a little nervous but it should be good.
Before that gets started, we have our first actual weekend since arriving in Thailand. Today we are all going to the fancy 5 star hotel in downtown to go swimming and eat some good western food, and some people are going to stay the night there and use the spa, etc. Then tomorrow, as I said, I'm going back to the landfill. Should be some pretty crazy juxtaposition there.
From what I hear, the unit 3 facilitators basically have no life but the reports until they are done so this might be the last entry for a little while.