Today at ISDSI we were privileged to have a showing of the film “Mystic Ball” and a question and answer session with the filmmaker, Greg Hamilton.

From the film’s website:

Passion suffuses every moment of Mystic Ball, an uplifting documentary about one man’s physical and spiritual quest. The film resists easy categorization – it’s simultaneously a thrilling sports movie, an insightful journey to a new world, and a lyrical personal story.

Mystic Ball follows Greg Hamilton, the filmmaker, deep into the ancient and little-known culture of Myanmar and its traditional sport, chinlone. Like the film, chinlone is hard to define. It’s a team sport without an opposing team, part dance, part meditation. There is no competition, no winners and no losers. The game is back-breakingly difficult, yet is played by almost all Burmese, from young children to octogenarians.

There is a lot to say about the movie, and I recommend it highly.  You can get copies through the website, and it would be a great film to show on campus.  Lots of lessons about culture, and while specific to Burma, I think it resonates with our students who are on a similar sojourn on study abroad — crossing cultures, learning new things, and going outside of themselves to become part of a new community in Thailand.

Here is a clip.  Jump to the website for more: www.mysticball-themovie.com

New things are happening at ISDSI.

Good things!

Check it out here.

Our approach to language learning for study abroad at ISDSI is based on functional competency — we want the students to be active learners and able to use Thai to function in everyday interactions as well as while learning in the villages where our Expedition Field Courses take place.

And it is active!

Here are a few photos from the first morning, with students learning some basic words (mostly “come here!”).

(click on the thumbnail to enlarge and scroll through the photos)

For each semester, the students arrive throughout the day on Friday.  To make it easier on our Thai host families, we have the families pick the students up the next day on Saturday.

Ajaan Wilasinee teaching the "wai" greeting to the students (with Pi Ben and Pi Pu helping)

We spend about an hour with the students talking about dress, behavior in the host family, and answering questions.  We stress the idea of “cultural competence” — knowing the culture makes you safer, and helps you to learn more and better enjoy your time in Thailand.

Students learning the Thai way of greeting...

After the orientation, the students are picked up by their families and we don’t see them until Monday — when the full orientation week starts with intensive Thai and other topics (health/safety/program policies, etc.)!

A weekend with a Thai host family does a lot to increase motivation for learning the language!

The Nokero bulb at night. One GREAT feature is that it turns itself off in bright light -- so you could leave it on and hanging up, and it would go on at night when it gets dark.

We just got in three Nokero solar light bulbs today, and they are amazing.  I heard about this a few weeks ago, and contacted the company and ordered three to check out.

It is a very simple design — four small solar cells collecting energy, with a NiMH battery to store the power in, and a 5 LED “bulb”.  It looks (and feels) very rugged, and super durable.  I hung it outside today, and then turned it on this evening and it is decently bright — certainly enough to read by if you need to, or carry out other jobs at night.

This would be great on our expedition field courses — just clip it to a pack or canopy of a longtail boat during the day, and hang it up at night for light. As a study abroad program working in remote areas, these look to be a great addition to our bag of tricks.

We’re going to be stress testing it over the course of the next few months, but we can already see some great applications beyond just our own expedition field courses:

• Imagine airlifting thousands of these into places hit by a natural disaster (like Haiti) where the grid is down…
• Handing them out to IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) in Burma or other war zones…
• Giving them as gifts to village host families who are away from the grid…

I’ve camped in the jungle at night, and it is REALLY dark.  Just think about how much better than trying to keep a fire burning for light one of these would be if you’re an IDP fleeing to the border?  No fire to worry about, no worries about running out of fuel, no need to buy batteries.  Getting them out there isn’t going to be easy — but it IS possible.

So we’re going to see about doing that, and maybe set up a way for folks to sponsor solar light bulbs for IDPs in Burma through ISDSI…

For more information (or to order one yourself) go to www.nokero.com.

Students learning about fish on the Yom river.

Once again, the plan to destroy one of the last wild rivers in Thailand has come back to life — plans are in high gear to build a dam at the Kang Sua Ten rapids on the Yom river in Phrae.

We’ve run a course on the Yom for several years, Human Rights and The Environment: Rivers, Dams and Local Struggles.  A big part of the course is comparing the Mun river (already dammed and destroyed by the Thai state) and the Yom (impacted by a weir down river, but still vibrant and alive).  We paddle the river with local elders, learn about the fish and ecology of the river, and learn about their struggle to keep the river from being dammed.

The excuse for years has been that it will control flooding, or in more recent years, to prevent drought. As the villagers know, however, that is a lie. Flooding in the provinces downstream has been shown to be the result of local rainfall and poor drainage — not due to water carried down from the upper Yom. But that isn’t why they want to build the dam.

The real reason? The Yom river basin is also home to the last stand of golden teak left in Thailand — worth millions of dollars.  So whoever gets to dam the Yom not only gets to embezzle the money from the construction project (which we know from the research of Ajaan Pasuk is likely to be between 40% to 60% of the budget), but they also get the real prize — millions of dollars in rare golden teak.

The budget alone is about 11 billion Baht.

Thai pu yai (influential “big” people) seem to care only for money. They are also not stupid — they are clearly taking advantage of the political turmoil in Thailand to push through this project, hoping that people will not notice, will be too busy rebuilding their lives after the violence of May, and too busy to care and do something about it.

Some people have noticed, and now the Royal Irrigation Department is arguing for two “small” dams on the river — trying to back off, and make it sounds like it won’t destroy the river.  But it will — it will kill it, and destroy the ecology and the community.

And once the river is gone, it is gone forever.  Along with the livelihoods of the local community, the famers, young activists and others.  We know, and the community knows — just look at the Mun river after it was dammed.

The things that is most galling, of course, is that the dam is both unnecessary and won’t solve the problems it is said to solve. But the lack of scientific and empirical support has never stopped the building of a dam in Thailand before — as we see every spring as we live with and learn from the villagers impacted by the building of the Pak Mun Dam — thousands of lives and communities destroyed, fish stocks devastated along with the people who fished, all for nothing but a inefficient dam that doesn’t even pay for itself with the little electricity it does produce.

So they are doing everything they can to put another dam on the Yom.

This will destroy the lives of the community of teachers, mentors and leaders who have shared their lives, knowledge and wisdom with our instructors and students.

Our friends.

We will be doing everything we can to raise awareness about this, and hope to play a role in stopping the dam.

We’ll keep you posted.

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Three articles to read:

Yom River Dam Will Devastate the Area

Sanan renews push for building of dam

Dept mulls two small dams for Yom River

Just a quick post about what we’re doing over the summer.  Aside from the relative peace and quiet of not having a semester going, a lot gets done over the summer! One of the reasons we’ve put off doing a summer session (although there is demand for one) is that we need the time to rest and recover, as well as get ready for the coming year.

Field Instructors Am, Pui, Tik and Toto pulling gear and getting ready to spend some long hot days cleaning and repairing gear.

Gear: Our Expedition Field Courses take a lot of gear to run smoothly — backpacks, skin diving gear (fins, masks and snorkels), tents, sleeping bags, etc.  All the gear has to be gone over, pulled for repair if necessary, cleaned, inventoried, and organized.  As anyone with even a small amount of gear knows, chaos is always lurking with a closet or box of gear — so you can imagine the chaos that develops over a couple of semesters outfitting 60 + people!

NGOs: The summer is a great time to visit new organizations we don’t yet know, go back and talk with ones we’ve worked with for years, and find out what opportunities there might be for student internships.  It is getting more difficult to place students with NGOs — lots of people in Chiang Mai want to volunteer, and some NGOs have had bad experiences with folks that don’t speak Thai or are not culturally sensitive.  We’re fortunate that we can place students with NGOs that won’t accept short term volunteers or interns, and we work hard to make sure that we’re not a burden on the organizations our students work with.

Villages: Going out to many of the villages we work with is important — both to see how our friends are doing throughout the year, but also to evaluate the program, see what they feel they would like to change for the upcoming year, and learn if there are any ways we can support them through our courses and students.

Families: Host families are, of course, a big part of learning Thai and becoming culturally competent.  So visiting old families and new ones is a big job.  We’ve got over 30 students for the fall semester, and each family needs to be visited and interviewed.  We also set up and prep our host family orientation, which is run in part by former host families. We’ve also got more families who want to host that students, so being sensitive to sort out who gets to do it this semester is an important part of the job.

Course support:  Course support involves everything from working on the library (sorting through almost 800 books), to pulling old readers out of the files and recycling them.  We also start visiting field sites, working on budgets and logistics, and getting the first block course (Foundations) sorted out and organized.

So while it is sort of quiet — it can be hectic as the summer draws to a close!  We are looking forward to the start of the fall semester, and the usual chaos that brings!

Students hiking in Mae Hong Son province.

Risk management is an important part of any good program, especially those that are running in an international/developing country setting, and those who are working in wilderness/experiential education.  At ISDSI we have been students of risk management since the beginning, and feel that it is an important component to both our overall program, and part of what we teach our students.

One of the best places to learn about risk management is at the annual Wilderness Risk Management Conference, but on by NOLS, Outward Bound and SCA.  Their focus is “Practical Solutions for Challenging Issues.”  We’ve  attended the WRMC a couple of times, and have published a paper in the WRMC 2004 proceedings, “The Objective Hazards of Culture: Risk Management in an International Setting.”

ISDSI (Ajaan Mark and Pi Ben) will presenting a workshop at the 2010 WRMC at Colorado Springs: “Crossing the Border Matters: Practical Risk Management in Developing Countries.”  Here is the description:

International wilderness trips are growing in popularity, especially to “non-traditional” settings in developing countries. However, even experienced wilderness leaders and risk managers may be caught unprepared by differences in legal systems, cultural expectations, and a sometimes radically changed risk management terrain. This practical hands-on session will examine in detail key issues and concerns for working in developing countries, appropriate for trip leaders, risk managers and expedition members.

We’ve put together a web page for folks attending the workshop, and will use the page to collect ISDSI specific information on risk management.  This won’t be a comprehensive list of papers on risk management (that’s even hard if you’re doing a google search), but rather supporting documentation and specific information related to the WRMC workshop and how we approach risk management at ISDSI.

Jump over to the new Risk Management page to see what we’re starting…

Great news out of Bangkok.  On very short notice, the governor of Bangkok pulled together a “Together We Can” day on Sunday, and thousands of people — Thai and foreign both — came out to sweep, scrub, pick up trash, and clean up the city.  It was an amazingly diverse crowd, and a sign of hope in the midst of the recent crisis.

Whoops. Thinking too much in the surf zone, Trang, Thailand.

When you are in a quickly changing situation like the political unrest in Thailand over the last few days and weeks, it pays to be flexible and responsive. We know from sea kayaking, paddle surfing and whitewater canoeing during our Expedition Field Courses at ISDSI that you need to be flexible, relaxed and aware to respond the best. When you get stiff, or freeze as you try and remember your checklist and details, is when you fail — flipping your boat, falling off, or failing to run the rapids.

Study abroad is no different.

When beginners learn a skill, they are focused on the lists — trying to remember the sequences, items, and events. With practice comes unconscious skill — you’re thinking about the movement and responding to the environment. In risk management and assessment, you need both — a list of principles that guide what you do, and the skill to apply them to fluid environments.

We’ve seen that a lot in the last few days and weeks in Thailand.

At ISDSI’s study abroad semesters in Thailand, we focus on training our American students to be culturally competent — not memorizing lists of do’s and don’ts, but rather learning Thai culture and language well enough to understand the “why” behind actions. Lists are only good for the situations you know about, but don’t necessarily guide you in what to do in new and unique situations.

At ISDSI our instructors work through lists, plans and contingencies — keeping daily course logs, training as Wilderness First Responders, working through scenarios and discussing what to do “if” — “if” being a very big, and ultimately unbounded category. However, rather than inflexible checklists or formulas, our focus is on learning how to appropriately combine three things: principles + resources + judgment.

Working on the flow chart and decision tree -- it doesn't work without good judgment.

Joe Brockington, associate provost for international programs at Kalamazoo College, one of our key partners, says in “Effective Crisis Management” that a crisis is an emergency without a plan. We would add that without good judgment, skill, and experience, a plan alone is worthless — and will quickly turn into a crisis.

Faced with a situation like the protests and later riots in Bangkok, the principles of how to ensure student well-being is paramount.  What resources do we have?  How can we combine them in the most appropriate way?  For example, the final capstone course (Coastal Ecology and Culture) had planned on having the students transit through Bangkok by train, and spend a day at the huge Chatujak Market doing a survey of coastal resources available at the market (from tropical fish to seashells). With the escalating tensions in Bangkok, we felt it would be better to avoid the city, and travel direct to the field site by bus — a decision that was easy to make, since we had the resources and experience to contact a reliable bus company, charter our own bus, and ensure that the students would arrive safely.  Likewise, during the tsunami that hit Thailand, we were able to contact our students since we have lists of their mobile phone numbers, and knew where they were.

We’re hoping that things continue to calm down in Bangkok, and it looks like that is what is happening. But we don’t expect that it will be the last emergency we’ll face at ISDSI.  In the meantime, we’ll continue to practice so we can be flexible and respond to the normal turbulence of living and working in Southeast Asia.

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For more information, see:

Effective Crisis Management by Joe Brockington.

Health, Safety, & Crisis Response by NAFSA.

The Objective Hazards of Culture outlining more of the ISDSI approach to risk management, including a list of questions for people involved in leading and managing study abroad programs.