This week wasn't too different, I was just trying to get your attention. And now that you're here, why not read the rest of my blog post and maybe tell some of your friends? But please, don't (do) feel obligated (you are).
On Tuesday, the school visited an NGO called ECHO farm. They are focused on teaching sustainable agriculture practices and sharing technology to small farms while also operating a seed bank. This means they grow certain foods, specifically underutilized crops, take the seeds when they are ripe and store them until they are able to deliver them to small farmers.
ECHO promotes food sovereignty and security in Asia, Latin America, North America, and South, East, and West Africa. Their center in Chiang Mai, the one we visited, is a smaller farm, but nonetheless, very nice.
The farm grows a number of fruits and vegetables with no chemical pesticides or herbicides. They also have recently added chickens and pigs for more than aesthetic purposes, I believe. The work they do is based in Christian beliefs, though they emphasized they do not push those beliefs on the farmers or others they work with. ECHO wants to help smallholder farmers get out of the debt cycle many find themselves in, and into once again having secure food availability and livelihoods.
While they do not explicitly say policy based advocacy is one of their tasks, the director, Dr. Ed Sabio, said it is something they come in contact with frequently. As ECHO is a large networking organization, they often end up working with other organizations where policy change is a focus. Additionally, because agriculture makes up such a large part of the world's economy and there are policies in place that emphasize the kind of agriculture ECHO is not trying to promote (imagine industrialized agriculture with chemicals on the ground and in the air. Also imagine mono-crops and the anxiety mono-crop farmers experience when rain doesn't come or one type of pest decides to settle on their farm.), ECHO has come to realize policy change is an inevitable part of their advocacy.
Although policy work is not their focus, ECHO's work at collecting data and verifying seed saving and sustainable agriculture techniques, provides invaluable evidence for positive policy change to take place.
"Advocacy without evidence is just like shouting on the street."
--Dr. Sapio, ECHO director
Throughout the rest of the week, the students and I listened to a new teacher talk about how to conduct research and the beginning of their research proposals. By August eighth, the students will need to have completed a research proposal, so they can head back to their home countries to conduct 6-weeks of research, then come back to ERI and present their findings.
As these proposals will be in English and many of the students have not written a research essay before, each student was assigned a mentor. I have some nervous energy about being someone's mentor, especially as I have not graduated college and my professors, looking at you Professor Jahiel, can tell you I still need help on my own writing skills.
But, nevertheless I will persist. I am helping a woman named Lahpai. She is from Kachin State in Myanmar and will be researching how land confiscation in a specific conflict affected area impacts gender and LGBTQ+ inequalities. It is an incredibly interesting topic that I have extremely low knowledge regarding. I know about gender inequality in the US, but put me outside of the Western context and I can only tell you very general and basic (and thus flawed) things about gender inequality in other cultures. So, realizing my own weakness and Lahpai's strength (her previous work was with a NGO dealing with gender inequality in Kachin State), I plan on researching and being open about what I do not know and need her help to understand. Ok, writing this all is making me slightly overwhelmed, but it's a process and everything will be FINE.
Even with the new duties on my mind, the weekend ended up being very relaxing. Friday night, some students, staff, and Angela and I hung out and talked into the night. Then Saturday, Angela and I headed into the city for a night at a nice hotel (curtesy of Angela's mom--again thank you!!). We first made the ever important stop at a McDonalds to taste home in a different dimension.
1.The chicken was spicier.
2. The nuggets tasted healthier.
3.The salt on the fries was less overtaking.
4.They had a lasagna pie thing that tasted like a larger pizza roll.
It was an experience. My final decision is US's McDonalds is tastier due to the present taste of chemicals rather than them being overpowered by spices. What can I say, I like my chemical tastes.
With our tummy's full we headed to our hotel on one of the infamous tuk tuks. For those of you *uncultured swines*, a tuk tuk is a three wheeled motorcycle with caged front and back seats. It was the truly touristy thing to do and I can tell you wholeheartedly, it was worth it. It felt like sweet sweet freedom (what I would imagine a motorbike would also feel like, mom). Wind in my hair, still able to smell the city's pollution and hear the dogs barking at anyone walk by, was truly wonderful.
The hotel was very very nice and it was wonderful to have some AC. We swam in the rain and got goosebumps for the first time in two months. Then, we got ready and walked around for some dinner at a nearby market. There were so many foreigners! I heard a number of accents and languages I had never heard before.
After we ate we headed to the event of the weekend, a drag show. We had heard great things about it, and as Angela and I are huge fans of Illinois Wesleyan's annual drag show, we knew we had to experience one in Thailand.
The show was a short walk from our hotel and we arrived early enough to get perfect seats. The area was smaller than I expected, but decked out in awesome embellishments. The show lasted around two hours and all the performers were extremely talented. A dazzling little pocket of liberated self expression.
On Sunday we were able to eat some more American food at the hotel's breakfast. We then packed it all in and headed back to school.
That night Angela and I went for the second time to the Sunday Walking Market in Chiang Mai. It is a looooooooooonnnngggg strip of little shops on a road that also break off into other loooooonnnnnggg strips of more little shops. This is the place to go to buy things. You have fried bugs on your right, a man with a guitar playing dog strapped to his chest on your left, and aisles of handcrafted elephants ahead of you.
It's a metaphor for my future and that looks pretty rad.
Be well,
Annika