Each Expedition Field Course has a mid-course seminar — a chance to reflect on what is being learned, summarize, and prepare for the next phase of the expedition.  Ajaan Abram, teaching the rivers course, met the students in Nong Khai and traveled with them to the seminar site.

Students working on their posters in the guesthouse overlooking the Mekong river.

For the Rivers course, the seminar took place in the riverside town of Chiang Khan, in Loei province.  Chiang Khan used to be a sleepy town of wooden buildings built along the banks of the Mekong river, across from Laos.  Now, the old wooden buildings are being converted into guest houses, Internet cafes, and funky restaurants — as it is only a day’s drive from Bangkok. It is a great place for mid-course on Rivers, as it is half way between Issan (the Northeast of Thailand) and the Northern Thai province of Phrae, where the students paddle the Yom River (go to our maps page to see the course locations).

A street in Chiang Khan.

During the seminar the students ha a chance to talk through what they had learned from the communities of fisherfolk along the Mun river, the impact of the Pak Mun dam, as well as what they had observed on the transect of the Mekong river up from Ubonratchathani province.

Filling in the details before presenting.

Two of the key questions that were discussed were about connections and interactions taking place in and around rivers in SE Asia.

Taylor and Karen talking about the “Bangkok Monster” and its impact on the river, villagers, ecosystems and other players in resource management.

Students were asked to draw the spatial, environmental, economic and sociological connections of major players in and around the Mun River before and after the construction of the Pak Mun dam. They were also asked to reflect on transboundary interactions of players on the Mekong including the spatial, environmental, economic and sociological connections.

Jill, Emily and Kadilyn (with the Mekong river behind them).

Here are some photos of the day, along with their posters and explanatory text, to give you a feel for the course.

Exploring the connections between environmental, social and economic impacts of the Pak Mun dam.

Women in Chiang Khan selling “popia tot” (fried spring rolls).

Karen and Taylor discuss the Mekong as a chocolate river (more below).

Transboundary issues -- as water flows down the river, each user takes out some, leaving less for the downstream countries.

Vested interests of different actors in managing the Mekong river.

Motorcycle with rattan basket in front of the guesthouse.

The Mekong represented as a giant catfish — with each group trying to take a share (eat the fish).

The Mekong river as the chocolate river in the Willy Wonka factory, with each user (country) drinking from the river, the ompa-loompas as the Mekong River Commission trying to get everyone to cooperate, and consumerism floating down the river.

The village and their livelihood before the dam and “development” — with villagers self-sufficient in fish, and earning money from a very rich fishery. After, they loose their self-sufficiency and are forced to migrate to the city to work.

Sunset over the Mekong river -- Thailand on the left, Laos on the right.

Rapids on the Mekong river in dry season.

The great Mekong river is not doing well.

This year is especially dry in Southeast Asia, due in part to this year’s El Niño, which tends to bring drier conditions to SE Asia. The Ping river, which flows through Chiang Mai, for example, is very low below the weirs that hold in the water for the section through the city center.

On the Mekong river, it is dry for other reasons as well.  From The Bangkok Post,

Ever since the completion of a few dams across the Mekong river in China, the once mighty river, which flows through all the riparian countries except China, has diminished to a trickle every dry season. The situation this year is worse than the previous years and the worst is yet to come with more dams being built.

If they were alive today, our forefathers would be in shock. The  mighty Mekong -   the traditional lifeline of Chinese, Burmese, Thais, Lao, Cambodians and Vietnamese - has dried up so badly this year that it no longer qualifies  to be called a river.

Boat travel from Chiang Rai’s Chiang Khong district to the old Lao capital of Luang Prabang,  a popular tourist route  has been halted because the water too shallow  for boats  with the capacity to accommodate more than four people.  Cargo boats from China have been stranded in Chiang Saen district of Chiang Rai.

Chirasak Inthayos, coordinator of the Network for the Conservation of Mekong River Natural Resources and Cultures, said that the river’s condition is the worst for more than a decade.  He could only imagine how much worse it will be by April, when the dry season normally peaks.

For the next three weeks our students are in the field doing the Rivers course, studying the impact of dams on the Pak Mun river, a major tributary of the Mekong, doing a transect of Northeastern Thailand (Issan), and then paddling the Yom river.  On Saturday some of the instructors are going to run the Yom to see how dry it is.  We often end up having to pull the canoes in a few shallow sections in a normal year, so we’re interested to see what this year is like.

Wooden fishing boat floating next to the closed gate of the Pak Mun Dam.

Crystal clear

Clean and Blue

The envy of Isaan

Mae Nam Mun

Stagnant and brown

One quarter of the fish

The pity of Isaan

Mae Nam Mun

Voiceless

Thoughts and ideas

Yet no one will listen

The people of Mae Nam Mun

Powerful and money-hungry

With no heart for the ruined lives

of the people left in their wake

The raht-ah-baan (state)

They sit on blue plastic

appealing to us, students

Because they are out of options

The people of Mae Nam Mun

by Kathryn VanderWindt (ISDSI, Spring 2009)

To give you an idea of what a recon is like, here is a summary of our 5 day trip to Isaan to work on the Rivers course. (We’ve run this course for 4 years, and are now refining and adding to it, bringing in the Mekong river more.)

Monday Pui, Toto and I (Mark) drove with Pi Yin (who drives for us and helps figure a lot more than just where to go!) to Loei, a trip of about 8 hours, had a late dinner and a long meeting planning out the next few days—finalizing who we needed to talk to after meeting over the last few weeks about the course.

Meeting with Khun Suwit at the wooden noodle shop.

Tuesday we drove to the next province (about 1 1/2 hours) to Udon Thai for a meeting with Khun Suwit, a local activist/NGO contact.  We only knew the name of the town and were supposed to meet in a wooden noodle shop across from a school. So, as usual, we got pretty close to where we were going, and started asking people along the road for more specific directions. (We refer to this as “Thai Air Traffic Control”—since once you get close to your destination someone has to talk you into an arrival…) Eventually we got there, and had a great meeting learning about what is happening with rivers in this part of Isaan, how communities are getting organized, and working out some good options for the course. Suwit had a lot of great ideas, and will be helping with making contacts in the villages along the Mekong.

After our meeting, we drove back to Loei province, and then further up to the Mekong river town of Chiang Khan and Pak Chom (the site of a proposed dam across the Mekong). After a short stop in Chiang Khan we followed the road along the Mekong down to Nong Khai, stopping in villages and walking out the the river wherever we could, talking with local people about the river and working out options for teaching sessions.  We eventually got into Nong Khai really late, and had dinner (maybe 9 or 10 PM) on the “beach” of the Mekong, where the water has dropped during dry season.  (It gets a lot dryer now than in the past, due in part to the Chinese dams upstream.)

Wednesday we continued driving along the border and the Mekong river, stopping to see where we could get down to the river, talking with local people about the  how they use the river, what communities are still fishing, etc. We got into Ubon Ratchathani late, met over dinner (at 9 PM) out in a night market set up in a city square to plan the meetings for Thursday.  We had a few names, but only one phone number of a village headman in a community where the students had stayed the year before.

Paw in Sabang village showing us his boats and the Mun river.

So Thursday we drove further east about 1 1/2 hours to Nong Bo village, out in the countryside and down a dirt road along the Mun river. We found the headman’s house and met outside under a tree around an old table. The headman was brilliant, with lots of ideas about how to teach the students about the river, village life in Isaan, and why the Mun river is worth fighting for. Then, based on his directons, we headed off to the village of Sabang, further downstream on the Mun and found (again by asking once we got closer) the house of one of the village leaders and activists. She wasn’t home, but her husband was able to take us down to the river, talk about what he would like to teach the students, and discussed other folks in the community who could get involved in teaching. Then, based on his directions, off to the final village we would visit, Hua Heow, to meet Mae (Mother) Charuen.

Talking with Mae Charuen.

Another long drive through dry and dusty country to a hardscrabble village, where we found Mae sitting outside a neighbor’s house. Mae Charuen is a key activist and community educator, and in spite of her years, a very animated and excited (and excitable) person!  Once she started chewing betel nut and stuffing huge wads of chaw into her mouth, our ability to understand her Isaan (Lao) dialect dropped dramatically! She has black teeth from years of chewing, and didn’t even need to look as she cut betel and prepped her chaw, all while talking a hundred miles an hour about the river, the importance of it in the community, lots of ideas she had for teaching the Americans why they should love the Mun river too, etc.

We then left the village and drove to the Pak Mun Dam itself, and then headed for a drive to Khon Kaen several hours away. We got there about 8 or 9 PM, and drove around to find a guesthouse, checked in, and looked around for a restaurant for (another) late dinner.  We found a great place with a really good band playing Isaan music and “songs for life” (Thai activist / socially engaged songs).

Friday was a long drive back to Chiang Mai, after finding a master instrument builder in Khon Kaen who makes “kaen” and other instruments.

Next, the instructor team sits down to figure out what to do with all our notes, review what we’ve done over the last 4 years, and then we finalize the details over the phone with the folks we’ve been talking with.

In two weeks we go back with the students.

One of the most important things we do at ISDSI is to meet and talk with local communities and activists while setting up and preparing a course.  We refer to our courses as “community based” since they are both physically based in a community, as well as intellectually based in a community—we want the community to be the ones helping decide what to teach, what is important, and how it all fits together.  Once we get into the community with the students our role as instructors changes to be facilitators—letting the villagers step up and teach the students, sharing their lives, their wisdom, and their vision for creating a more sustainable world.

Looking across the Mekong river to Laos. (Note how low the water is, and the riverside gardens!)

To do this takes a lot of prep work, going out to villages, talking with folks about their passions, concerns and problems, and working together to find a way to teach American students about it. It isn’t easy, but it is really important. We’ve got to sort out logistics (how many hours to get to that village?), housing (how many people per house?), curriculum and lesson flow (what do we do first? last?), and find dynamic and interesting speakers and topics that are engaging and meaningful for both the local communities and the American students.

We also are constantly evaluating and assessing courses. Are they engaging? Are students learning from them?  Is this the best way to teach this? Are there better or more important places to go? What other topics need to be in the course? What can we drop, and still retain the core lessons?

This spring we’ve decided to work on the Rivers course.  The core of the course is about how local communities are impacted by decisions by the State, and often how the local livelihoods are sacrificed for (often dubious) benefits for urban people far from the rivers. To do this we study two well known rivers in Thailand—the Yom, which is not yet dammed, and the Mun, which has been dammed to the great destruction of local communities and the ecology, with few benefits to show from it.

We’ve always included discussions of the Mekong river in the course—the Mun is an important tributary, and damming the Mun impacts the ecology of the Mekong.  The Mekong also represents a good example of the problems of rivers crossing boundaries, upstream/downstream resource control, etc.  With China already damming the Mekong, and Thailand and Laos talking about damming it themselves, we’ve decided we need to incorporate the Mekong more directly into the course, and refine the links from the communities on the Mun river to what is happening on the Mekong.

So we had to talk with the folks involved in both the Mun and the Mekong, which meant doing a recon to Issan, hours away from Chiang Mai by van, to the Northeast region of Thailand.