Life in Phana

Study Centre Opening Day

 

The day finally came for the opening of the study centre last week. It was what all the work on renovating Pensri's parents' old house had been about: The Rin-Homhual Mahanil Study Centre and the Don Chao Poo Research Centre. As is often the case in Isan, most of the ceremony took place very early in the morning -- before breakfast. Monks were invited to the house instead of walking on the alms round, so they brought their bowls with them and food was placed in each bowl as it would have been on the alms round, although more food was offered after they had chanted.

(CLICK on the images to enlarge them.)

Many of the preparations were literally last-minute, but we had got the study centre ready for the ceremony AND in good shape to show off the various activities we are hoping to promote.

The number of people out and about and prepared to attend our ceremony at 6.30 in the morning was quite impressive. There were eight farangs in town and sitting on the floor too, which must be almost a record, I think, for this small town.

The moment when the holy water is sprinkled on the lay people as a blessing is enjoyed by everyone, especially the monk. Here, the abbot of Wat Don Khual was doing the honours.

 

While the monks were having their meal, the rest of us began the baci suk kwan. These were the youngest dancers I have seen performing the introductory dance, and very good they were too.

The dancers had an attentive and appreciative audience (we all applauded when they finished) and then they were suitably rewarded by Pensri.

Our four researchers from the UK were the recipients of the baci and hopefully the ceremony will have brought them the good luck and success that people wished them as they tied the sacred threads on their wrists.

The opening speeches were made by the District Officer (nai amphur), in the pink shirt below, and by my brother-in-law, Somnuk Choovichian.

After his opening speech, Khun Somnuk was invited to strike the gong (three times) …

… and then to draw back the curtains to reveal the name of the study centre and research centre, proudly displayed in Thai and English. And then most people went home or to work, while those of us who remained posed for the group photo.

In the photo below, Pensri and I are with Pensri’s elder sister Arunee and her husband Somnuk. They and their three children have been the driving force behind the renovation of the house and the setting up of the centre and they have been the major donors both in terms of cash and books and other items. But all the families of the descendants of Ta Rin and Yai Homhual Mahanil have contributed very generously, and so have several people here in Phana, most notably Ajarn Kulyani Singnak who has offered much valuable wood, furniture, and her enthusiasm, too. She will continue to play an important part in running the centre.

The Isan House that Moved

There is a house in Exeter, where I live half my time, known as 'the house that moved'. It was originally built in the late 16th or early 17th century and had to move to make way for a new road. Now there is a house that moved here in Phana; not quite so old, but old enough that lots of people are surprised we didn't demolish it and build a new concrete one. I have posted about this house at several stages of its reincarnation, Moving House in Isan Part 1 ,  and Moving House in Isan Part 2, and Keeping the ancestors informed . The work is finished now, and the upper storey is occupied, while we are still preparing the ground floor for a 'grand opening' on March 8th.

The renovation/restoration/refurbishment, call it what you will, has been carried out through donations from a large number of family members of descendants of Ta Rin and Yai Homhual Mahanil, as well as other relatives and neighbours in Phana. The generosity of all these people has been amazing, and those of us who have been closest to the work are most grateful to everyone who has donated.

These two pictures show the house as it now looks from the road:

Here we can see the ground floor after we moved some of the furniture into it, although when the picture was taken we hadn't finalised the arrangement.

The old doors at the back lead into an enclosed area that is part of the 'upstairs' accommodation. This largely open area on the ground floor is going to be a community study centre, containing a library, seating and meeting areas, a screen for showing DVDs, and temporary exhibitions. The opening exhibition will centre around the loom, with pictures and information about weaving and the process of indigo dying as it is practised in Phana.

Behind the closed doors at the back are these stairs and a shower room. The stairs lead to the accommodation we are providing for the Don Chao Poo Research Centre which will serve as the base for people conducting research into all aspects of the nearby forest known as Don Chao Poo, and especially in all probability into all aspects of the long-tailed macaques which live there.

At the top of the stairs is a 'kitchen area'. There is an electric hot-water jug, a 4-slice toaster and a double electric hot-plate.

 

The dining area is shown looking towards the front of the house. In the top right corner is the door to one of the three bedrooms. The doors and the bedrooms they lead to are the original ones, as are all the floorboards and the ouiter wooden walls and shuttered windows.

You can see our lab bench in the picture above, but here is a better view of it. The two microscopes were donated by Exeter University, and our other equipment at present consists of binoculars, a DVD video camera, a hand-held GPS, two stop-watches, and various glassware of a scientific nature.

And here, looking towards the back of the house. The kitchen area is to the right of the bathroom.

This is the sitting area. The chairs have been donated by a generous neighbour, Acharn Kalyani, who also gave us the old dooors downstairs, the stumps that form the front fence, the shuttered windows on the ground floor, and several other valuable pieces of wood that were used in the renovation. She has also provided the meeting table and chairs, three old wooden chairs and a small table, and lots of very interesting books -- all of which are in use on the ground floor. 

Next to the sitting area, towards the bedrooms and the front of the house, is this small library of reference books on academic subjects as well as local history, travel and so on. There are three bedrooms here, but we currently have four researchers in residence, so one has to sleep out in the main room as you can see. They have formed a rota so that this 'privilige' is shared among them.

As I mentioned previously, the bedrooms and their doors are original. Here is the middle bedroom door:

This is the bedroom that Pensri and I always stayed in back in the 1980s and 1990s. When I came to stay in the 1970s I wasn't senior enough to be given a bedroom, so like our fourth researcher I used to sleep on the floor.

Back downstairs, we are still in the process of arranging the study centre. We are presently awaiting a truck-load (!!!) of books being donated by family members in Bangkok. Also to come is a series of DVDs to help secondary school students to revise for exams in all their subjects. These have been offered by Pink, the daughter of a neice, who has just finished her secondary education and has been awarded a scholarship by a university in Japan, which she will take up later this year.

This view looks out towards a rice and noodle restaurant which our researchers have named 'The Shack'. They eat there a lot, especially at mid-day.

The blue house across the road is home to Panda, a white dog with black markings over his eyes. Panda was quite hostile to the researchers whenh they were staying at our house, but when they moved in here he had a change of heart.  In fact, he moved in as well, sleeping beneath the house for the first few nights. Now he has returned to the blue house, but he has become friendly and protective of the research centre and the researchers. Both have become part of his territory, no doubt.

 

I will post some more about the community study centre when we have got it ready for the opening on March 8th.

 

Keeping the ancestors informed

It was important to keep the ancestors informed before we ‘interfered’ with their house, and we duly did that in a small ceremony in the enclosed ground-floor area of the old house built by Ta Rin and Yai Hom. We told them that work was going to be done in the house, that this would improve its condition and that we were doing this out of respect for them and in their memory.

When the major work had been done, we held another ceremony. This was attended by a few more people and this time I had my camera with me. I remember well going through the same ceremony when our house was nearing completion back in the mid-nineties. One of the most memorable features was that an old man prevented us from entering until lots of questions had been asked and entered, and he had decided that we meant well, had sufficient respect for the ancestors who were the true owners of the property, and that we intended to use it wisely and maintain it properly. The old man guarding the property on this occasion was Khun Ta Peng, the husband of Pensri’s father’s half-sister; answering on my behalf (although it was me who was wearing the traditional ‘regalia’ of a hat and carrying a bag containing a hammer and a nail – with which I was going to ‘maintain’ the house) was Khun Ta Gert, father of the mayor of tetsaban Phana.

This was the condition of the house at the time:

Here we are, gathered outside the house:

It was a good opportunity for old friends and relations to get together:

Khun Ta Peng didn’t want to let us in!

But eventually he was persuaded and he helped Khun Ta Gert and me to attach flowers, incense and candles to the foot of the stairs.

Khun Ta Gert prepares to demonstrate MY willingness to maintain the house by hammering in a nail above the photo of Ta Rin and Yai Homhual, Pensri’s parents.

Then Pensri’s adopted brother, Tuan, did the honours at this little temporary shrine in what used to be Ta Rin and Yai Homhual’s bedroom.

And I did, too.

Afterwards, we sat around for a while in the big, sitting area outside the bedrooms. We chatted, but also there was an important presentation. Pensri is going to use the ground floor as a community library or study centre, and a neighbour, Khun Yai Somwang had offered to donate an old ‘accordion’ book which had belonged to her grandfather, the village herbal doctor born about 100 years ago. Here she is in the blue jacket, presenting the book to Pensri.

And here is a close-up of two pages of the book.

Some of the book was written in gold on black, some of it black on white.

Everybody had a good look at the book, which was in quite a fragile state in parts.

But the interest was obvious:

Now we have to decide on the best way to display the book, keeping it safe and intact, but allowing people to indulge their interest in what is certainly an item of historic importance. Pensri has already decided that Khun Yai Somwang’s donation will feature in the logo of the study centre.

Portraits at Phana House

Moving House in Isan Part 2

Moving house here in Phana, Isan, has finished. What happens next is that the newly-located building is going to be renovated and adapted to new purposes. As I explained in Part 1, the house has been empty for some years and it has looked increasingly sorry for itself and uncared for. But in fact many people care a lot for it and want the house to be used, to be useful, and to reflect the life and memory of Ta Rin and Yai Hom who lived in it for so long and who brought up so many young people (not just their own children) in this house.

As I also explained in Part 1, we were not in Phana on the day that the house was moved back away from the road. But we were here and I did take some photos on the day that the house was raised to its new height. I hope that the pictures will give an idea of how this was done because I think my explanation would be tedious and would probably not offer any clarification at all.  All I will say is that the raising of the house was done with great care and patience, little by little, co-ordinated, and with lots of measuring and fine adjustments before the craftsmen were satisfied that the job was done.

Once the poles had been raised, they needed to have supports added to each of their bases. My father-in-law had a traditional rice store in the lane behind the house but this, too, had not been used for years, and the lane wound round it in a way that made little sense now that traffic (motor bikes) use the lane. So the rice store was dismantled, the ancient hard wood still in excellent condition. Just how hard it was was discovered by these men who had to saw it up, albeit with an electric saw.

The new bases were fitted to the poles and they were all bedded down:

As a reminder of how far the house has been moved back, here is a photo taken before that happened:

And here is the house in its new position, awaiting the renovation and new work:

So the house has moved! Over the next few weeks I will try to record the renovation and adaptation work as it happens. We are expecting that everything will be done by about mid-January. The workmen here don't hang about once they get started.

 

Moving House in Isan Part 1

Pensri's father built this house in about 1937. It has stood here ever since but now it is moving. It moved, or was moved, about ten days ago and will move again before too long, I hope. The men who are doing the moving have taken a break for harvesting, but they are expected back any day now. 

The house didn't look like this when it was built because like the more recent houses on either side, and like all the houses in Phana at that time, it was built on stilts. Even when I first came to stay in the house in 1970, it didn't look like this. 

Several changes have been made. The currugated iron rooof had been added not long before 1970 and was seen as a big improvement on the old wooden roof. Since 1970, the ground floor has been enclosed with brick, the old wooden, folding doors replaced by the sliding security gate, the windows and window frames replaced more than once. And most disastrously for the house and the people who have lived in it, the road out front, originally just a sandy track, has gradually been raised higher and higher. For several years this caused the downstairs room to be flooded in the rainy season but eventually (and again, in at least two stages) drains have been put in along the road. But getting into the house became a matter of going down several steps, and then later a ramp when my sister-in-law bought a motor-bike.

This closer-up picture might make the situation clearer.

But the house has stood empty for the last ten years, since Pensri's sister died. Her three children are scattered, two in Bangkok and one in Lamphun, and they each have families born and growing up there, though they come up to Phana to pay respects to ancestors most years. The house belongs to the eldest son, as does the family farm, but the three of them effectively have joint ownership by mutual consent. The fields are farmed by a second cousin who lives in the soi alongside the house and most people in the family get a bit of the rice each year.

For several years now the older members of the family have talked about renovating the house but it hasn't been quite clear what the purpose of that would be, other than out of respect for their parents and in memory of all the people who lived in the house in their childhood years. But finally minds have been made up, agreements made, money collected, plans made. I will write about these in a later post.

For now, this is what was done first. The walls enclosing the downstairs area have been knocked down. The bricks and mortar will serve as the base for the new ground floor, which must be raised to the level of the road, or above it, preferably.

  

 And here is the house after the ground has been brought up to road level by filling with sand.

In this picture you can see how the house has been moved back from the road, on some sort of trolleys apparently.

Unfortunately, this was done while we were in Ubon. We had expected that it would be done the following day and we would have watched, but the men worked hard and late so that they could go harvesting the next day, and so we missed it.

And that is how the house stands at the moment. The next stage will be to lift it higher, but that will have to wait about a week because the men who will do the lifting are the ones who have gone off to do some harvesting. Harvesting is better paid, and can't wait, so that's fair enough. We will just have to be patient.

Changing Isan Village

I am always fascinated to get insights into the way that villages in Isan work; what makes them tick and how they tick. Last year I posted HERE about the headman of Ban Noen That, and his part in helping to provide a house for someone in need of one. Following that post I discovered that a few houses had been provided or repaired in much the same way in Phana itself with the help of the tetsaban. One commenter on my post expressed the hope that no sign had been erected naming people who had made  donations. No such signs were erected either in Ban Noen That or in Phana. Everything was done very discreetly and without fuss. Just as it should be.

Earlier this year, a donation of land was made in Ban Noen That for the benefit of the community as a whole. In the picture on the left you can see the that  that gives the village its name. Inside are interred some of the ashes of Phana's most famous monk, Yakru (Phrakru in Thai) Boonma. Born in Phana in 1808, he ordained at 20 and went to study in Bangkok, the first person from Phana to do so. He studied at Wat Borwonives with the future Rama IV, King Mongkut. When Mongkut became King, he sent Boonma back to Isan to spread the practice of the new sect, Thammayut. Yakru Boonma died in 1871, aged 63.

 The that  you see above is a fairly recent building. Inside it is the original, which you can see below.

 

 

In this picture you can see the small sala where people of the village gather on certain ceremonial, festive or ritual occasions. Until recently, there was a house and its grounds on the space in the foreground.  The woman who owned this land has donated it to the village, the house has been dismantled, the ground cleared, filled and levelled.

A closer look at the sign makes clearer how this particular donation will work, although it doesn't explain everything. (CLICK on the image to get a bigger picture.) I will give you an approximate translation.

The top line invites people to join a public or communal pa ba, a donation ceremony.

The second line says that you join the pa ba by buying the land that has been offered to Luang Boo Tuat (Respected Great-Grandfather -- Yakru Boonma).

The third line suggests that you can be part of this merit-making donation by helping offering towards the purchase of the 555sq m land at 199 Baht per sq m.

Finally we are told where (in the sala) and when (12 April) the donation ceremony was to take place.

Now it may sound as if the woman who owned the land has not actually donated it; but she has, as far as the people of Ban Noen That are concerned. She has given up her house, that's for sure. The money raised by the donations (110,445 Baht if all are taken up) is to be spent on providing the woman with a new house on her farm some way outside the village, making use as far as possible of the material from her original house. 

So the village is changing. A new public space has appeared, and will no doubt be used for lots of dancing and the like. But the village is changing in another way, too, and this might sooner or later alter the nature of the community too. More and more people are moving out of the village and building houses on their farm land. Of course this is something we are familiar with in the west, but in Isan it has been the practice to cluster together in small villages and to walk  out to the farm when necessary. It is easier to get to the farms nowadays, by bicycle, motorbike, tak-tak, or pick-up. But it is also easier to get electricity and water supply to the farm, there is no danger from large wild animals, there is generally little likelihood of attack by bandits. And so on.  But it does mean fewer close neighbours (and more distant karaoke) and that must eventually lead to a diminished sense of community and an increased sense of individuality.

Political News from Phana

Thai politics and the election campaign came to Phana today in the form of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajiva. We learned this because we have one of Pensri's relatives staying with us in England at the moment. Her name is Prem, but not THAT Prem, of course. Prem telephoned her mother in Phana this morning. Her mother is rather deaf so she actually spoke to her brother and he said that their mother had not only met the Prime Minister at Wat Phra Lao this morning, but she had kissed him! This seems a very unusual step to take, perhaps especially for a 79-year-old woman, but politics is a strange game and anyone can play.

It seems that Khun Abhisit went to pay his respects at Wat Pra Lao and stayed to join others in offering lunch to the monks and eating with people of Phana in the sala garn parien. About a thousand people turned up to meet him apparently, although his visit was only announced by word of mouth more or less at the last minute for security reasons. But there was not a red shirt in sight, we were told.

Our friend Add offered Khun Abhisit a copy of Pensri's 'History of Phana', but he said he had already read it. Add should have known this because he was present when Pensri gave a copy for him to our local MP Suthat Ngernmuen last year, as you can read about HERE. But Add said that the PM had clearly "done his homework" as far as Phana and its history were concerned.

A Possibly Revealing Anecdote

Life in Phana sometimes seems like an empty bucket; but interesting, all the same. I mentioned in my previous post that Pensri’s friend and childhood carer, Yai Air, was waiting for her step-son to come home with a bucketful of … cashew nuts. He didn’t.

When asked why not, he replied that when he got to the field he saw a neighbour harvesting some of the cashew nuts. (That’s STEALING, by the way.)

Yai Air asked whether he confronted her, or chased her away.

No, he didn’t. He didn’t want to embarrass her.

I think this tells us a lot about village attitudes to property, but even more about the importance of maintaining friendly, neighbourly relations.

(Having said that, our stay in Phana this time has also revealed some fairly unfriendly neighbourly behaviour. But given the importance I mentioned above, I will say no more about that, for the time being, anyway. But it seems only fair to acknowledge that not everything in the garden is lovely.)

(It has also occurred to me that he did not want to call out, "Get your hands off my step-mother's ... cashew nuts!" -- see my previous post, if you have not yet read it. NB there is no distinction between singular and plural noun forms in Thai or Lao.)

COLLOQUIAL and other C-words

Look away now if you are of a sensitive disposition. Look away now if you have a tendency towards nut allergies. And if the idea of Combining linguistic insensitivity with nuts appals you, SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER.

One of the people Pensri and I always visit and look forward to seeing in Phana is Yai Air. She is in her late seventies, but when she was a girl fresh out of primary school she used to take Care of Pensri and her sisters while their mother was teaching reception Class. Yai Air lives near Wat Burapha, about 150 metres from Pensri’s Childhood home, as she did even then. She Came to our wedding in Bangkok, so I have known her a long time, too.

Pensri went to visit her recently. Yai Air asked her to wait a while because her step-son had gone to her field nearby to harvest some of her Cashew nuts and she wanted to give some of them to us. She said that last year she made 3,400 Baht (she was very precise, but I doubt she fills in a tax form) by selling them in the market. That surprised Pensri, because Cashew nuts are quite Cheap, so it represents a whole lot of nuts. Yai Air said her step-son would return with a bucketful.

Now what really surprised Pensri was the reminder of what people in the village Call Cashew nuts. Pensri knew, but away from the village for so long she had had no need to discuss Cashew nuts with anyone from Phana.  In Phana, Cashew nuts are referred to by the same word as Clitoris.

Something to do with shape, size, the way they grow enfolded in … well, no need to go into too much detail, perhaps.

So when Pensri heard that the venerable Yai’s step-son would be Coming home with a bucketful of Clitorises, she was momentarily taken aback.

He didn’t, in fact, but that is a (short) story for another day.

If you have read this far, think of Life in Phana next time you order Chicken with Cashew nuts. Or maybe you never will.

For those of you struggling to enlarge your Thai vocabulary, I won’t help you. The word is probably a Lao one, anyway. Colloquial, Certainly and local, possibly.

In language learning, as in just about everything else, you learn best by finding out for yourself, not from being told. But this is not a quiz. No need to post the word. I know it already, though I didn’t before Pensri got home from visiting Yai Air.