The Wall and Village Life

Our wall is coming on, I have no idea why I took no pictures. These pictures are the ones from before, I thought that post was too full of pictures. Everyday people were working on our wall. I often bought them lunch, and melons, oranges or whatever. In the evening I buy them 1 bottle of Thai whiskey (55p) and 3 big bottles of Beer Chang (£1.75). The village is the same as ever, quiet and generally sleepy. When we arrived a lot of people were at an old man’s house, he is dying and everyone was round to get him better. There were about 12 women round him, Paa’s mum was administering remedies to him and lightly massaging him, other women were fanning him. The noise was extraordinary by our standards when someone is ill, because the Khmer women are louder than Thais generally, there were also half a dozen children around and half a dozen men further away that I sat and drank with. When I left I was told that the poor man had not eaten for 4 days and was not expected to make it for much longer. The villagers can seem very hard, they take death as a normal part of life. They often seem not to care about one another by there mannerisms and shouting, but that is not the case. They take care of each other in an amazing way. Everytime they get something off me like oranges or beer, it will be immediately shared with everybody including myself, even people driving past will be offered drink or food. They seem to pass on food to the older ones so that no one will starve. I regularly give the old ladies a few baht (25p) they may get two meals for that, or three whiskies.
We saw Paa’s grandma a few times and passed food on to her, she lives in a little shack of a house with no electricity or running water and no road, just a walk across the rice friends. She is a tiny lady, slightly stooped but a strong as an ox I would say. I watched her fishing one day in a shallow fishing pool, she walked about in the mud, with bamboo type fishing thing that I can only describe as an upside down funnel. She shoved it into the shallow water and with her arm down the wide spout end checked for fish. She caught 3 in 30 minutes, enough for her and her husband for a meal. She also has an allotment garden, with everything from bananas to tobacco. I must get a picture of her.