Notes From Where the Paved Road Ends....

Some of the best experiences in my life have happened in places that are beyond the worlds of finely planned highways, beyond the glow of city lights, sidewalks or manicured lawns. No parking lots here; indeed often no pavement of any kind. Only the simple honesty of cool packed earth.

The people I meet in these places are most likely numbered among the poorest of the poor, but if they are below the age of 10 they are completely unaware of this. Their smiles flash as wider and brighter, with more joy and genuiness than world famous celebrities. Their laughter, spontaneous and free, is music that crosses language and cultural barriers. My heart hums to hear it. I fall in love.

In these places the only way to live is in community. Privacy is not known, and even the most human of body functions are done within the sight of others; others who do not look, because that is the only privacy that one can offer. Community life, old and young, working rice fields in back breaking posture, women in colorful saris swinging and slapping wet laundry on heavy rocks near the stream, the sound almost rythymic, a backbeat of the work being done under hot, sunny skies. The thunk-thunk-thunk of heavy wooden pestles falling onto whole grain in the base of large mortors, separating the hull from the rice. No food processors here, indeed, often, no electrical current. All and every task is done by hand, with simple tools developed by ancestors long ago, the skills passed down through endless generations. The sight of bright rooftops covered in red chilies drying in the sun, the only processing that will ever happen to them. The smell of dung, from time to time, from animals who roam freely in the midst of the humans who care for them. For the poorest communities, this offering from their livestock will be collected and mixed with straw to either become fuel for their cooking fires, or materials to fix a hole in their walls after a heavy storm.

Community life is at once all embracing and overwhelming to a girl from a western world, where privacy is revered as a God given right, both of person and of thoughts. No such thing here. A long glance of one's person, up and down is very often followed by the question: 'How much do you weigh??" This very often from a tiny, wizened crone who has lost her teeth years ago to the practice of chewing betel nut, a villagers equivalent of having a beer or two at the end of a long work day. I often laugh, and answer, 'More than you...' They also laugh, bowing their heads and chuckling.

Community life is also community meals, most often eaten without utensils, very often from a plate of a shiny green banana leaf. Sometimes, if the village is within a few days walk of a town, the households with have hard wearing stainless steel deep edged plates and water cups. Still no cutlery, but one can use the edge of the dish to assemble rice and curry into a tight ball to pop in one's mouth without losing it. In vegetarian villages, the dishes will consist of home grown everything, from lentils and rice, to green beans and cauliflower. In many or the poorest places the food will be heavily laced with blistering hot chili. I have heard it said that the burn of the chili lasts long on the lips, adding to the satisfaction of the eater, and allowing the taste of a very small amount of curry to flavor a great pile of rice. This is the villagers' equivalent to our mothers having said to us: 'Eat bread with that...'

Village community is easily welcoming. The hospitality of the poor never ceases to take my breath away. On so many occasions when we have walked up a long mountainside to a small stand of wooden thatch roofed huts, high up on stilts, the owners would look at us, first with wonder and curiosity, then quickly changes to huge smiles and them pulling up a stone or small chunk of teak wood for us to sit on. The village equivalent of 'pull up a chair.'

We will be offered water, sometimes from a clay pot that has been painstakingly collected from a mountain stream some ways away from where we sit. Then comes fruit, most often bananas, but sometimes rambutan, spikey on the outside with that sweet, grape-like center, very cooling in the relentless heat.

For this is a world that has never known air conditioning. Ever. Not ever. In many cases there has not even been so much as an electric fan. Heat is borne through resting in the high part of the day, in a shady place where glassless windows allow air to pass. Sometimes on communal open sided porches, salas the Thais call them, I do not know what they are called in other places. The village equivalent of a gazebo, perhaps? Straw mats are laid across the entire wooden floor, and people rest, waiting out the life sapping sunshine, the only sound, gentle snores with the light sound of buzzing flies, or the soft clucking of chickens as they walk past. Oblivious to the heat and made of sterner stuff, their endless quest for food makes their scratching in the dust for bugs a backdrop sound of any village day any where in these remote places on the earth. The very definition of free range poultry.

In the evening, after dark, a small fire will be built, to give light through the evening meal and conversation. No matter how poor, we will be served along with their family whatever food is there. We are not given less and on many occassions have had our plates piled up in embarrassing manner. Their joy and pride of hosting us is so touching. This will be something they will share with their children and their children's children. The day the great, big white foreigners came to their home. Smelly, sweaty, and such big feet! But they were very nice and hardly ate anything even though they were so big.

For it is desperately difficult to wolf down food in such a situation, no matter how delicious, nor how hungry one is. One is aware that there were four chickens on the side of the house, and now there are only two. One is also aware that chicken is not on their daily menu, but that this is the village version of Thanksgiving, a holiday celebration meal; for family they did not know they had came to visit them. Family from another place on the earth came to sit with them, laugh with their children, eat their food, and at the end of the day, sleep with them in their small stilted homes. For indeed, that is the end of this lovely meet up. They open up their family dwelling, lay down an extra straw mat on the shiny teak floor, polished to soft sheen by half a coconut, the fruits oil so permeating the wood, that when one lies down on the straw mat, the sweet tropical scent of coconut comes out of the wood, bypassing the grassy scent of the mat. In the dark, and in their midst, for they are, one and all, lying in that tiny hut around me, I have dreams of Coppertone and sunburns got at the sandy beaches of my childhood.