These final, hell-like days.

So, The IPP is over, we're back in Phuket awaiting flights, and 20 days later the jury decision still stands:
Patong beach really is the most vile place on earth.

I'm home in three days y'all.
Alhamdulillah.

Threnody for a frustration

Apologies are due for last post's melodramatic explosion of moaning and hypothetical self-injury. Things were really quite messed up there, for a while, for a whole variety of reasons ranging far beyond the purposelessness of teaching to a class which already had a teacher.

You caught me at a flashpoint of my distress, and I'm sorry if the resulting discharge happened to get any of your clothes dirty.
I am, however, extremely happy to announce a turn around in the camp feeling, the direction of our energy, the focus of our projects, and my general mood towards being here, in this place, with these people.

A few nights ago various frustrations were spilled in a relatively tense 'evaluation' time when we found out that the staff didn't see why the scheduled evaluation (the project's first) was necessary as "the programme is all worked out now anyway, and we're having one at the end, so why should we do it twice, etc". It was when we carefully explained that our evaluations may involve topics beyond the actual things we have been doing (like how people are considering cultural difference and the emotions of others, how we address the very concept of development, how we are working as a group, whether we are listening to or consulting each other etc), and that we might like to do an evaluation that could actually be useful to us as delegates here and now, rather than to the chapter, International Office, etc, the staff nodding along, before seemingly revealing that they hadn't heard a single word we'd said and were absolutely unable to take constructive criticism, so much so that one of them put on a 'funny' voice to read Kate's evaluation about the staffs lack of concensus among the participant group - that was when we kind of went crazy in a red faced, heavy-heart beat type way, and talked about a whole lot of things, and shook it all up a little, and probably didn't get through at all to the staffs, but at least vented a bit, and discussed how we really felt for the first time, and just lifted the kettle for a while, really, I guess.

And then, immediately afterwards I just felt so full of energy and excitement and so did others, and we ran down to the moonless beachfront and cartwheeled and yelled our tension away and discovered phospherescent flecks of plankton on the tide line, little granules glowing radiation-green in the black night, and scuffed our hands and feet through the sand to see it flash like tiny sparks of fire as it was uncovered, like the precious stones of faeries. At this moment, I, for one, felt more alive than I have in weeks and weeks. To overflow with tightly packed frustration is a superbly wonderful thing.

Other things which I have since experienced and greatly enjoyed:

• Straight after the glow-in-the-dark plankton I went back and had a lovely and long translated conversation with Yuka, Soto and Yasu from Japan, who are my favourite delegation, until 2.30am. This was very special to me because Soto and Yasu are significantly less good at English than the rest of the participants, and are pretty much always just overlooked when it comes to our greatly discussion-based program, and left to sit in the corners with their pocket dictionary computers trying to pick out as many words as possible as we all shoot back and forth with statements pretty much drenched in rhetoric and repetition. I don't think anyone so far has really taken the time to ask what the Japanese guys are really thinking or feeling, and it was great to just chat a little, and gossip, and talk about our respective cultural differences in relation to conflict, etc, and to know that they were appreciating it as much as I was.
• The following day was the 30th and we began a two day minicamp with about 25 children from the Morgan village of Tub Tawan, many of whom lost parents or relatives on Wave Day and now board at a local school funded by the King of Thailand. Ranging from about 9 to 16 years old, these were some of the most gorgeous, creative, energetic, loving and respectful kids I have ever met, and just being with them for the last two days has been a heart-warming honour. The camp was held in a National Park and sea turtle sanctuary on the beachfront, a beautiful location. The best moments include:
• Flying kites on the vast white beach as the last sun of 2005 became a thick red ball on the western horizon, sprinting along the squeaky white sand, the kites tugging and snaking above the white foam of the ocean, the kids grinning and leaping and digging holes and just embodying happiness (an occasion made particularly wonderful by the kids teachers telling us that this is the first time in a year the kids have been so relaxed near the sea). I really like kites.
• The talent show/country presentations - the Japanese guys silently folding a huge paper crane, from paper the size of a picnic blanket; the older Morgan boys cuttin' rug with some dance moves that were particularly street and entirely awesome; unaccompanied solo-singing from Pla, one of the smallest and most visably psychogically affected girls, who lost both her parents to the tsunami, and who sang about the rain, and the sun coming out afterwards to always bring a better day, and countless multi-lingual songs and dances that all the kids completely got into.
• Then, the changing of the year, all of us on the beach again, day-glo bracelets on our wrists, launching 50 (or so) hot-air lanterns, great balls of fire, glowing as they breeze upwards and outwards across the ocean, bright and yellow gashes in the black fabric of the sky, spitting firey wax into the dark waters, our very own constellation illuminating our faces before becoming fading in the empty distance. Hugs and wais and kisses for the new year.
• Seeing exactly how much the kids had been affected by the weekend as they pile into the vans to leave and the tears begin to flow on Art, the 'coolest' 16 year old boy, sort of the leader of the gang, the one with the flyest hip hop moves and the studded belt, as he burys his red eyes in his hands and urges us all to visit the village - to know that of all the kids these older guys have loved us this much is an entirely touching thing.

Also:

• Catching a greasy pig in front of a huge, cheering Thai crowd at a Christmas street party, the pig more vicious than imagined and incredibly loud with the squealing. Our team donated the pig back to the festival so it could continue the pig-catching fun times. (I refrained from joining the nearby 'Catch the Eel' game).
• The way coastal light splits and falls through thickets of slender she-oaks around our little bunch of tents.
• Finishing the third Rabbit book by John Updike, and sinking into the warm comfort of Zadie Smith's On Beauty, sneaking peaks between its covers at the beach, between activities, and at night, by torchlight, under the wide and clear sky.
• The opportunity to spend much much time with two of my buddies-for-life, the Kate and the Tess.
• The sing-song bubbling sound of 25 Morgan kids chanting a vow of gratitude at the dinner table.

So, yeah, sorry: life actually is beautiful, after all.