The Chili Bomb Diaries: Arriving

Dear Friends and Loves,

Greetings from the land of Thai! I arrived here on August 5th and have been on a crazy ride ever since. Apologies to those I was unable to spend time with while stateside, I wound up spending a lot of my time up north with the family and taking a trip to Montana to kidnap my sister so time in the great city of Seattle was actually quite limited. Until I return email email email is the way forward!

This new series of emails will be called The Chili Bomb Diaries in celebration of this most dangerous feature of Thai cuisine. As there are no llamas in Thailand, it would be inappropriate to continue with the Llama Chronicles, though it saddens me to have put them to rest. A few other things were taken under consideration for the title of these emails, but the chili bomb has won. Chili bombs are what Thais call the pieces of tiny chili peppers that hide in most foods. Some people love them, most people fish them out. If you miss one and wind up eating it, this is called a chili bomb because of the shock and awe that takes place in your mouth. Hilarity all around. As always, if anyone would like to be removed from the mailing list just let me know. I will most definitely understand.

As some of you know, I’m working with the American Refugee Committee International (www.arc.org) in Thailand for 6 months. This is an incredible humanitarian relief organization that works with refugees and displaced persons all over the world. It is an honor for me to have this opportunity. I arrived here very much in the dark about my living and working situation, I knew I was hired to work on microenterprise development programs and to work in refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border and that my organization would house and transport me but other than that, I essentially planned on arriving in Bangkok and hoped someone would come and get me! Everything from pick-up to meetings in Bangkok went very well and I have sincerely enjoyed the experience.

I’m starting out in Sangklaburi province in the south, a 5 hour drive from Bangkok, where we work in one camp. Here I’ll be until next week until moving up to my permanent home in Umphang in Tak province, 2 days drive from Bangkok, where we operate in two camps. We work with people who have left Myanmar because of human rights abuses, the majority are of the Karen ethnic group. There are several camps along the border, ARC works with 3.
I’ve only been out to one of the camps a few times. The road to get there is CRAZY bumpy and windy and I have bruises all over my arms from getting tossed around the truck cab. The camp itself is very green and closely built, which is what you would expect from 4,000 people living close in together. Winding paths run all over camp and bamboo bridges cross the rivers. To get to our Livelihoods center we cross four of varying stability. People are very nice and very interesting and interested and the camp itself is a fascinating community of people. Some have been there for a decade, some for just a few months. Camp economy is also fascinating, but I won’t bore you all.

My coworkers are hilarious, actually, factually hilarious so my living and working will at least be fun. I don’t know how much work we’ll get done but oh well. That’s life sometimes. They’ve been very good to me, feeding me, looking after me, and nicknaming me! Normally (no offense intended to anyone, I love my name!) my name is really difficult in other languages because there isn’t an easy equivalent. People just think it’s weird. Germans hated my name and it was so awkward in Bolivia, but HERE! Mollie has become Mali, which is very cute and also means jasmine, which makes me very happy.

It’s very warm and very humid and we’re getting into the peak of rainy season. It just pours most of the day and is just…wet. Something I love here is that you don’t wear shoes in the house or office (which is the incidentally the same thing for ARC) it makes everything feel very relaxed and cozy to me. Everyone I work with has been very kind and welcoming so far and my initial projects are both interesting and not too frightening so there’s hope!

What else…food is SPICY (chili-bomb!). I like spice, I really do, but this stuff HURTS. Yesterday I had some frog on rice in the market (we’re doing a frog-raising project so I figured I should know what we were trying to feed everyone) and it was good, chewy, the bones crunched a little sickeningly, but above all it was so hot! It was the kind of spicy that sneaks up on you, so you eat a whole bunch and then all of a sudden you just hurt. Upside is that I’m sure that by the time I come home in 6 months I will have taste buds of steel.

Anyway, I have wasted way too much of everyone’s time with a lot of silly, random blather. The long and short of it is that I’m enjoying this new adventure very much.

I’m still working out email access (may have to rely on rigging up the office internet afterhours) but once I’ve got it all figured out there will be no stopping me! Hope everyone is well and much love to all!

LOVE!

Mollie