What did you do this weekend? Peace Corps Week parade

Last week was Peace Corps week - a week in which PC was concentrating on it's "Third Goal," which is where we PCVs, and Returned PCVs are supposed to be sharing other cultures with Americans. And obviously, that's what we try to do here, every time we write. But, sometimes it's hard to know what to write here, because, for the most part, the stories we tell can be summed up like this:

And we rode our bikes to the school, and everyone was late, and the materials weren't available, so then we went to the health center and they made us eat a lot of fruit even though we said we weren't hungry, and then just as we were going home, someone yelled at us and we ended up going over to someone's house and refusing several offers of whiskey. Then we went home, where we watered our plants and tried unsuccessfully to convince the neighbors that they don't need to sweep our porch. After that, we went inside and poured buckets of cold water on our heads since the water stopped running, and then we sat in front of the fan and complained about the heat. And then we went to bed.

There's no story line. There's no arc. There's no transformational moments. There's just a whole lot of stuff that seems to happen, one thing right after the other. And it usually involves food.

And, see, this is pretty normal to us now. It's so normal that sometimes I kid myself into thinking that all you delightful readers back home probably  have similar days and that this kind of bouncing from here to there without much control doesn't sound stressful or even particularly strange.

But then sometimes, we have weekends like this one, in which our Amphur (county, roughly), is in the midst of celebrating it's "Kong Dii" or "Good things" and people from all of the Tambons (subdistricts within the county, small farming communities, roughly) come together to share their OTOP products and compete in various contests. (OTOP stands for one tambon one product, which is English, and I don't know why it's English, but it is. To be actual OTOPs, products have to meet certain standards and they somehow get certified. Anyway, a lot of Tambons have groups that create crafts, food products, clothing, or other wares, and then sell them to the larger community. We don't have an OTOP product here, but we soon might if the school that Josh helped briefly with a dental project is able to turn their natural-herbal based mouthwash into an actual OTOP venture.)

For over a week, we'd been hearing about this weekend, and people had been asking us if we were going to walk in the parade. We said, at first, "probably" and then increasingly, as we didn't hear anything explicit from anyone who actual has the power to coerce us into walking in a parade, "we don't know." And then finally, "no one tells us anything."

Sometime on Friday morning, approximately 8 hours before the event was going to start, Josh got a call from the Balat (government official appointed by the central government to work in our Tambon) instructing him (and me, by proxy) to arrive at the SAO to dteeng dtua (get dressed up) by 3 p.m. Unfortunately, 3 p.m. is right in the middle of the 2:30-3:30 p.m. time slot in which Josh and I were to be teaching about handwashing and soapmaking to my sixth grade students. So of course, I got mad at Josh for agreeing to a time-conflicting issue, and then we met for lunch. As would happen in Thailand, the two teachers with whom we are working on the soap/handwashing project also came to eat lunch at the restaurant we'd picked. So we had lunch with them, explained that we had to walk in a parade, and they agreed (or rather, suggested and then insisted), that we change the timing of our project to 12:30 so we had time to go back to the SAO to get dressed.

So then, we did this.

Students present what they remember about germs and handwashing from first lesson.

Students present.

Choosing the best poster.

Starting the soapmaking process with ash and water.

Washing hands, the right way!

And then we hurried on our way to the SAO, where when we arrived, I had a momentary freakout because the place was packed with people and it was clear that something terrible was about to happen to my face. That is, I was about to be dressed for a parade. So, they gave Josh this:

And they promptly took away the rice, the rice harvesting tool, the hat, and the woman.

And then they delivered me into the capable hands of a gatuey (man dressed as a woman with varying levels of body-modification to complete the sometimes disconcerting transformation) in order to transform my face into something nice enough to sit atop a "chuut Thai" - Thai wedding dress, like the ones I'd worn in the last two parades.

Getting made up at the SAO. All make up artists were gatueys, far more comfortable with blush, eyeliner and power than I am!

Then a lot of the SAO workers, all young, pretty women like you see above, made a lot of phone calls attempting to track down such a "chuut."
Unfortunately, they failed, because the one chuut they produced was about 12 sizes too small. Which is how I ended up wearing this:

Just like your average Thai farmer. 

 By 8:30 pm, we were wiped out, and caught a ride home.

But then, on Saturday, we rode our bikes to the second day of the celebration of Good Things (back for more!) and spent close to 5 hours watching a singing contest. I'll let you judge for yourself, but I don't think there's a county fair in America that could outdo this production quality. The sequins! The lights! The seriously smokey smoke machines. (Oh... they're supposed to be fog machines, you say?)

 

And, just in case you were wondering what other PC volunteers are up to, you can read Acting Director  of Peace Corps, Carrie Hessler-Radelet's piece on the Huffington Post about Peace Corps week.