Limits | Limitless
The limitations to the community involvement that we can practice during this field school are clear – multiple language barriers, limited time, and the monsoon season in South East Asia. When appended to the already complicated world of community work – making trust, making contacts, developing relationships, all of these elements make for a pretty interesting mixture.
The twelve-hour work day in the past week have been intense. Unbelievably challenging, tiring and at times, frustrating. We have had to do in seven days what feels like fifteen days’ worth of work. Community mapping, site visits, documentary filming, lectures, with, as Nikhil told us on the first day, “one hour of eating and four hours of sleep only!” added for a total of a twenty-four hour in a day. Communication challenges come not just in binary form, with multiple languages being translated at any moment and wishing, in times of confusion, that subtitles would just magically appear in the middle of the scene. For more than half of the participants (including myself), we have had to take part in producing a documentary in a language we do not understand, about topics we were only introduced to hours prior, and within a social context that we would need at least a good twenty years to catch up with our Thai counterparts. Do not forget the torrential downpour that comes at 5 pm almost daily, forcing us to be trapped in shacks (or in cafés, if you are lucky).
Understandably, the most difficult of these limitations are the communication barriers. Rain can be dealt with umbrellas. Time limits can be solved by managing expectations. Communication barriers on the other hand need a whole lot of patience and understanding. The past two days have found us all in a tight situation, both literally and figuratively, with only a few days for the measuring of the houses and at one point over thirty of us simultaneously surveying and recording within a small’ish space. After an awkward period of documentary filming with us literally pointing and shooting people whom we have just met, we now had to enter people’s homes and disturb their daily activities armed with cameras and measuring tapes.
Calling the situation uncomfortable would be an understatement, and for me, the most challenging part of this field school. I would not want thirty strangers in my garage measuring my house early in the morning. But if I happened to find myself in such a situation, what would I want the strangers to do?
Smiles, non-verbal communication, and having years of practice with charades works wonders, I tell you.
Figure 1
Caption: The author playing with kids along the streets of Ban Panthom
Figure 2
Caption: With the community leader. She hugged me before I left and asked for a picture!
Figure 3
Caption: Lunch in one of the rooms I photographed yesterday. Smelled so good and tasted even better. Was so glad the family let me try their meal!