Kanchanaburi

As the water continues to rise in Phatum Thani, my morale struggles to stay afloat.  The floods hit Thammasat University hard. Two meters of water flushed through the normally crowded streets and has yet to drain. While I was basking in true love and kiwi sunshine with Tim in New Zealand, many of my classmates were being evacuated by boat and delivered to emergency shelters where they were forced to sleep on the floor of the gymnasium, with no electricity, surrounded by thousands of Thai flood victims. I returned to Thailand five days ago to the withered figures and exhausted faces of my classmates. They had suffered so much while I was gone. Due to the waters on campus we have moved the program to a training center 4 hours from Bangkok. The training center (EGAT) has donated a large house to our program free of cost. 14 students and two teachers now fill every corner of the space. I share a bedroom with two female classmates and two twin beds pushed together to make a space big enough for the three of us to sleep. With Nissrine from Germany on my left and A Mar from Myanmar on my right, we tuck in like sardines with high hopes of getting a good night’s sleep to prepare for the rigorous course work that resumes in the morning….in the kitchen of the house. In the past week everyone has had his or her “moment” of losing it. Some of the boys from Africa slowly describe to me the hell of living in the emergency shelters, of losing their belongings and not knowing when or how they would get out. The girls from Nepal well up with tears while describing being violently woken up in the middle of the night to chest deep water flooding the ground floor the apartment they had been housed in after their own apartment had flooded. Naomi from Nigeria gazes at me with her strong, kind eyes and humbly admits that it is challenging to go through this with two children. As she speaks to me, two sets of big brown eyes peer out from behind her.

I had my moment this morning. I woke up feeling like an elephant had taken up slumber on my sternum. I rolled out of bed very early and walked like a zombie down to the main building. I cried the whole way, hoping my big sunglasses would hide my momentary agony. I ran into my program director and continued to gently sob as I tried to explain my struggles with the uncertainty and challenge of it all.  I felt only mildly comforted as I returned to the group house to attend Epidemiology class. I took deep breaths and shifted often in my seat as I struggled to focus on the course content. At the  break I went outside to get some fresh air. After a few minutes I returned and walked towards the kitchen to make a dreaded but necessary cup of instant coffee. Upon entering the house, the boys motioned for me to come their way. They were siting on and all around the couch. They held out their hands and offered me silent and powerful support. “You are struggling today, I can feel it” one of them said. These boys are my brothers, and girls are my sisters, and together as this truly global family we have to figure out how to survive in this wild situation. I daydream of flying home to Seattle at least 200 times a day, but I am not ready to abandon ship at this point, even though the thought of it seems to lift so much anxiety from my spirit.  The trainig center is located in a beautiful national park right on the shores of a mountain lake.   I feel fortunate to have such amazing nature surrounding me in the midst of this confusion and struggle. 

With each day that passes I am forever changed.  I stay afloat knowing I have the love and support of my friends and family back home, and the incredible partnership of Tim.   It remains to be known if I will abandon the program and fly back to Seattle to the comforts of love and home, or if I will stick it out here in Kanchanaburi and complete the program I so enthusiastically set out to complete.....