Water ushers dirt. They swirl in a whirlpool against the blue-tiled floor until the drain swallows them. The layers of just scrubbed dust begin to clump with hair in the drain's metal grid. I nudge the mass with my toe to clear the drain and I can almost hear a gurgled thank you from the water as it passes my foot. All of my dirt, grounded and washed away. Ten days of clay, sand, and rice husk mortar had absorbed into my skin. The earthen building was part of me for that time. The heavy earthen bricks, the dust of brick shavings, the wet and gloppy mortar now washed from my body. I shampoo twice. I dry off with a towel from a suburban Chiang Mai linen closet instead of the camp towel from the dark recesses of my backpack. It's the little things.
I spent the last 10 days at Ryan Libre's place, 55km north of Chiang Mai. It wasn't a farm, more of a homestead. He has maybe one acre of land where he lives with his Thai girlfriend Non. He has owned the land for eight years and has an adobe hut and has recently finished a beautiful adobe kitchen. Other works in progress when we arrived were a tool shed, a composting toilet, and a mushroom hut where he can grow mushrooms. It may seem like a pretty sparse compound for living there for eight years and it is. The few buildings are spaced far enough apart that you could get lost going between them along the teak tree lined paths. But Ryan spends most of his time elsewhere. He is a photographer and confesses to spend two months per year on his land. The rest of the time he spends in Japan or Burma on various photography projects. His current project is a documentary about the Kachin minority group of northern Burma.
A short historical anecdote: in 1947 the Burmese Independence Army secured Burmese freedom from the British and established the Union of Burma. To do this General Aung San appeased the minority groups by creating the Panglong Agreements which guaranteed the minority groups certain rights. When General Aung San was assassinated less than a year after independence, and the elected prime minister had failed to heed minority demands, the Communist Party of Burma began an insurrection against the government. A cycle of military and political coups would follow, and minority rights ignored. The Kachin people have become increasingly militarized in order to demand rights.
Ryan Libre (Libre is self-named for his interest in freedom and for the word's multiple uses in the Spanish language) kind of chanced into the project by meeting a Kachin officer in Thailand and being invited to stay at the camp. Since then he has documented their lives, their causes for their own freedom, and the means in which they aim to take it. He recently won a major Nikon award for his Kachin exhibition. http://www.ryanlibre.com/contact.html. So he isn't generally home a lot. Nevertheless, it is the place he calls home. The project we undertook with him was to build an office. He wants space for a desk where he can edit photos and documentaries and shelves to store his prints. The office also has a loft for a bed and a veranda. But this earthen building experience was more than helping someone build an office. It was earthen building, building with the earth. It was a lesson of needs, and of fulfilling those needs with the world around you. How incredible it is to see a home, or an office for that matter, rise up literally from the ground.
Lizzie and I left just before finishing the project. We have our sights on exploring more of the area. You can only see so much of a country from a single hilside, so ten days in one spot felt like enough for us. The foundation was dug and cemented. The walls reached almost three meters, a towering collage of tan and red earth. We cut holes from the bricks to fit metal rods for shelves. The next step was to apply a thin layer of plaster to smooth the walls, color them with rust paint, and put up the roof, a matter of a few days. But adventure called us. We left behind a cooling lake, a goofy French engineer, and an amazing Thai cook (Non). Now we are at Vichai's (a family friend of Lizzie) house, making plans to explore Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, maybe Laos a bit, and trying to figure out how to travel to the Phillipines during the last two weeks of our trip. Who knows? That is the beauty of travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment