A Workday in the Life…

Thursday, I was to go with Sua to a meeting with the director of a community (I still need to figure out his exact position and responsibilities) in which HAT is launching a project to train elderly volunteers to be peer educators in the area of basic hygiene and health care in old age. As we left HAT at 10:30, I asked Sua if we would be back in time for me to be at the house at 5:00 to catch my bus to the beach and he assured me we would; mentioning that the meeting was at 1:00 and the trip would only take “one or two hours.” Knowing that he had just been to the office at our destination just last week, I couldn’t figure out how he didn’t know whether it would take one hour or two, but after about five minutes, I remembered that we were in Bangkok, where an hour trip can easily take two hours if you are on the wrong side of the traffic rush.

During the ride, Sua explains to me that he is going to briefly present the project to the director and then he would like me to talk about my experience with elderly people. Wondering what he had been told, or presumed about my experience with elderly people, I explained that, at the time, my experience was limited to serving tsimis and borsche to the elderly Jewish residents of an assisted living facility. It took a while to convey this and by his response, it seemed that he had assumed my experience to be more in the area of care and education. Where he got this idea, I have no clue, but the conversation put an end to his requests that I speak with the director about my “experience.”

Two hours later, we arrive in the community where we were to meet with the director, we stopped for lunch and then headed to a large, white official looking building in a neighborhood surrounded by large, obviously expensive, homes. Since my Thai conversational skills about houses are limited to pointing and saying “Baan jai! (Big House!)” to Sua’s affirmative nod, I never got around to asking why this building was in the midst of all of these houses when the population we are serving is elderly people living in poverty.

We made our way into the building and Sua led me up to an office where a woman, apparently the director’s assistant, bade us sit and brought us glasses of ice water (something I’ve almost come to expect when visiting anywhere in Thailand). After a lengthy conversation between Sua and the woman in Thai (of which I understood one word, “farang” (the catch-all Thai word for white foreigner) in reference to me) it became clear that the director was not there and the meeting would not be taking place. Apparently the woman had lost the letter with the date and time of the meeting and the director was away at a conference. Sua and I were led upstairs, where we waited for another gentleman to reschedule the meeting. All the time Sua, displaying nothing but patience and understanding, saying to me, “I love coming here because I get to talk to all of these wonderful people.”

Back on the road at 1:30, Sua asked me if I would like to meet his father-in-law and mother-in-law who live near CCS, before he took me home. I said that I would love to and we made our way back through two more hours of traffic to Thonburi.

During the journey, Sua plied me with questions. “What is the difference between a ‘mansion,’ a ‘condo,’ and an ‘apartment’?” “What is the difference between ‘died’ and ‘dead’?” “What is the difference between ‘hotel,’ ‘motel,’ and ‘inn’?” I responded in kind, learning the words for store - “ran-kah,” restaurant - “ran-ahan” (or fancy restaurant - “patra-khan), big - “jai,” and small - “lek.” I have really come to enjoy these conversations, because it not only shows how interested Sua is in learning English and gives me chance to teach him, but it also allows me to think more about our language and to find ways to explain so many things, the knowledge of which I just take for granted.

Sua 44 (Tiger) is married to Meow 30 (Cat) and his father-in-law is 48, just 4 years older than him, something he relayed to me with great amusement. Meow’s parents live in a low-income area just one street over and a few blocks down from CCS, where they run a food stand outside of their home.

Thai’s with money live in neighborhoods like the one where CCS is housed, but another group of entrepreneurial working-class Thais, live in spaces that we would most likely associate with two-car garage, their business either held in the front portion of the living space or right outside. The living space often housing a couch, television, bookshelves and various other possessions is downstairs, while the bedrooms and cooking area are upstairs (or so I presume because I have never been upstairs in this type of home). The downstairs opens up into the street just as a storefront would, with a large metal roll up door behind a pull over metal gate. When this door is open, their living quarters are made available to the public eye from the front street. There is no other front door (at least from the street) and when the roll door is shut, I have no idea how they get out (without, obviously, reopening this door).

Meow’s parents live in just such a home and run a food stand across the narrow alleyway across from the front of their home. To get to their home, we walked from the street, across a piece of plywood over a canal, through a mass of food stalls in the grass adjacent to their front “door.” Sua’s father-in-law was napping in a canvas cot when we arrived; his mother-in-law was chatting with a friend on the couch in front of the television. As our visit had not been announced in advance, I felt a little uncomfortable barging in on their lives, but Sua didn’t act like anything was out of the ordinary and his mother-in-law woke his father-in-law and we were all introduced. His mother-in-law’s friend spoke a little English and asked me where I was from and how long I would be in Thailand (the two most commonly asked questions in Thailand along with “do you speak Thai?”). I asked his mother how she was in Thai and she responded and smiled, asking “Do you speak Thai?” To which I responded, “Poot Thai di nit noi. (“I speak a little Thai” although though I do not yet know how to follow that up with, “But I don’t understand word of it!”). Sua brought me a coke and asked if I wanted to have a snack (which I really didn’t having been stuffed since lunch, but not wanting to appear impolite). Sua’s father-in-law whipped us up a spicy Thai salad and we shared it over a coke.

After our snack, we said our good-byes and made our way back over the canal to the truck, where I promptly walked over to the driver’s side and tried to get in. Sua, still opening my door on the passenger side, looked at me strangely until I relied what I had done. I walked over to him and explained that I had forgotten I was in Thailand for moment and was getting in to what would be the passenger side back in the States. We had a good laugh over that one and it was a nice way to end an enjoyable afternoon.