Our Homestay Night

[By Kaizen]

We really are lucky. We spent a night at a homestay place a few days ago, (okay, fine, a lot of days ago) and I was shocked at how poor the living conditions were. Okay, to back up, the homestay I’m talking about was part of a program that allows local people to board tourists in their homes for some period of time, making money in the process, and giving the tourists a sense of the local conditions. 15% of the money made goes to the community, while the rest goes to the family. This particular village was completely wiped out by the 2004 tsunami, destroying all but a single concrete blockhouse and killing almost a fifth of the population, along with the previously prosperous fishing industry. The Lions Club decided to rebuild the village away from the waterfront in a strange Western style that doesn’t fit in the wild jungle of Koh Phra Thong.

They built a school, a community center, and close to 150 identical barrack looking houses.

In the wake of the tsunami, however, the fishermen had no boats, nets, or any of the necessary equipment to continue their trade, so they were forced to move inland and find the best jobs they could, which, due to their training as fishermen, were never very good.

When we arrived, we were greeted…well, silently greeted, anyway, by our host, who took us to the village. It was …. It was …. Our temporary home was a concrete block of a house with four barren rooms and a toilet that was nothing but a hole in the ground with a bucket of water as the flush mechanism. When we arrived, our host was very exited to explain to us that the house had lights, which would turn on and off, which she mimicked so we would better understand this . The battery to the solar panel, possibly the most advanced thing in the residence, was mysteriously missing. The baby had a hacking cough that                                          seemed to indicate bad things, which may have stemmed from his unusual and apparently sole toy: a large dead cockroach.

At the head of our bed, which consisted only of an extremely thin mattress on a hard table, we discovered a large spider as big as my hand. When we took it, encased in a glass, to our hosts, they emphatically nodded when asked if it was poisonous. We squished it with a sandal.

The village was practically empty, due to the fishermen, who had comprised most of the population, having left. Even more people had left the previous year. The village had only 6 students, not enough to comprise a “class” in the government’s eyes, so they had no teacher for the school, which the Lions had built to hold at least 100 students. The previous year, the teacher from a nearby city had picked the students up every day and driven them to a larger school, but she could no longer afford to, the transportation system broke down. This had caused the families to decide to just move closer to the school, removing yet another 6 families from the town.

Moving directly from there to the Golden Buddha Beach Resort, where one night’s lodging fee is more than a month’s salary in the village, just kinda made me think; Wow.

Reflect on that.