Yesterday, I participated in my very first Songkran activity. I have to say that I've really been looking forward to the Songkran experience. Current volunteers and PC staff have been talking it up since my arrival in early January. And with this first ceremony under my belt, I can say that it's living up to it's expectations.
Part of the festival includes wearing flowered shirts and paying respect to elders, and yesterday my aw bah taw hosted a celebration for all of the residents of my Tambon aged 60 and older. My Tambon includes 12 villages, and there were over a hundred people at the event. And staying true to the Thai way, we were all dressed alike in flowered shirts.
Per the usual, I was asked to give a speech. Sadly, I had no idea this was happening today and was even more ill prepared than I normally am. I stumbled through the Thai part until they told me to stop. Then they asked me to give a speech in English. So I did. They cut this off even faster than the Thai version. As humiliating as this might seem, it's starting to become easier to laugh it off and I'm learning to enjoy each experience - whatever it is - because I'm lucky to be able to have this kind of view of another culture. I'm grateful for that no matter how uncomfortable it may be at times.
Here I am giving my speech. That's my Balat to the left, standing in the matching shirt. He's awesome. Thank God I have a sense of humor about myself. I look like an idiot.
Then they had me walk around and take photos with the elderly folks from the different villages. Here are some of those photos. Don't I look completely comfortable and gorgeous? haha!
I'm not 100% sure, but I think the white powder on my face is there to ward off evil. In actuality, I think people just have a great time smearing each other's faces with the pasty mixture. I think about 20 people got a hold of me and by the end of the day I had it down my neck, in my ears, my hair, and all over my clothes. It's fun to paint the white person white.
We spent the majority of the afternoon playing games and they even got me to play a game which involved a phallic shaped gourd being tied around my waist which I had to use to hit a ping pong ball across the ground. Sorry to report there are no photos of this... well, there are, but I'm not posting them :)
And then we danced the Rambon, a traditional Thai dance, which apparently causes me to make stupid faces.
Then we ate... and ate... and ate some more. And after lunch we played some more games. And some of the people put these flowers around my neck, which I believe is a Thai blessing of sorts. I'm still trying to learn about all of the different cultural elements, but any blessings, I will gladly welcome.
And then, near the end of the day, the actual ceremony began. What I've noticed about Thailand, and that I'm sure everyone that has visited or seen pictures has noticed, is that it's certainly beautiful on the exterior. But what lies beneath the surface is far more intoxicating and stunning than one could ever anticipate. Everyone knows the saying "Good things come to those who wait" and I believe Thailand encompasses this more than any place I've ever been. If you wait patiently in Thailand, it will reward you with something more beautiful than you ever expected.
And that's exactly what happened yesterday.
After being re-smeared with gobs of white paste, everyone filled buckets with water and flowers. Then we knelt on the ground with hands clasped in prayer across from a row of multi-colored and sized Buddha statues. Everyone started to pray. The rapid humming of Thai prayers from hundreds of mouths is something that can etch itself into your brain. It's entrancing and consuming in a way not many things in life are, and a sound that will always make me remember my time here.
We rose with our buckets of water and we gently poured a little bit onto each statue, a symbolic cleansing of the new year of all that is bad or evil. The elderly stayed seated and those of us under the age of sixty took our buckets of water and slowly snaked our way through the curved rows of chairs, gently pouring water into the hands and down the backs of those who had likely lived their entire lives in this community.
As they splashed the water back on to me, they grabbed my arms and wished me good luck with my life. And I really think they meant it. By the time I had worked my way through the crowd I was soaking wet from head to toe. Everyone was.
While it was hard to imagine pouring water on old people in the United States and getting away with it, I couldn't help but think about how Thailand made it beautiful. An exchange of good luck for the new year by literally washing away the bad. It made me glad I've stuck it out this long.
I haven't written about it publicly, but this experience has extremely difficult and one of the most challenging things I've ever done. I'm often so painfully homesick that even my teeth hurt. If you dangled a plane ticket in front of me right now, I might grab it and run the 500k to Bangkok just to see my family and my country. I miss them. And for one of the first times in my life, I miss the United States.
But instead, I will wait with the anticipation that Thailand gives me something beautiful. Cheers to the New Year! And with all these blessings, it's bound to be even better than the last! Happy Songkran everyone!
I find it really interesting to read about your Thailand experiences. I wish that I could have spent a bit longer there than the four days that I did. The homesickness is something that will be there the whole time that you're gone, but hopefully it gets better. I was really homesick when I first got to Japan, and the fact that I was on a military base meant that I was still around a distinctly American type of culture on a daily basis. I can only imagine how much worse it would be to be fully immersed in a culture so significantly different from your own. I've got a lot of respect for what you're doing, and look forward to hearing more about your time there.
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