I have perhaps realized the true value of willful ignorance as a coping mechanism

I have returned from the Karen village. It was a time of a lot of reflection.

We went incredibly deep into the jungle outside of Maesat to do a microhydro electric dam installation to provide a Karen village with electricity. We were working with an NGO called BGET (Border green energy team) and Engineering students from Burma who live in a refugee camps outside Maesat called Maela.

Events are all blending together, but I believe it was the second night there I got really sick. I likely had a fever of 102 or so and laid in the house not being able to move, completely miserable. The fever broke in a day, and after that it became more along the lines of a cold. It was an intense experience to have a body malfunction away from civilization.

The entire village must have known I was sick, too. I didn't realize that at the time. As I laid there sweltering hot and delirious I felt very isolated, a feeling I often feel when sick, but the next day when I was feeling a bit better and moving about, the level of acknowledgment I got from the villagers was astonishing. People were pointing amd smiling, and I could just tell by the looks in their eyes that they had known I was sick, and were glad I was better.

The whole village experience was very , confusing and amazing. Only a few spoke Thai, the rest only spoke Karen, so any language interaction had to be translated from english to Thai to Karen. I was able to do an interview with a man who spoke Thai, who I later found out was the head man of the whole village, and a very important person to the Karen as a whole (which there are 7 million of). He was incredibly down to earth and funny and very willing to talk about anything.

I didn't get the chance to do a whole lot of work on the dam due to sickness. I had to take it easy. I really enjoyed the work I did do, however. It was really rewarding. There are a lot of ethical issues around supplying the tribe with power, however. The power is technically for the school, the temple and the church, however it will produce far more than that. The village had a previous microhydro dam installed 8 years ago that failed. I heard (and what i heard might be skewed through translation and other people's various biases) that with the input of power 8 years ago people started getting televisions. The televisions and access to the western world started creating desires beyond basic needs that could be fulfilled by the village, and people began going out to the cities and buying more, they sought out solar panels from the government (which 40 of the houses now have) set up a small very basic village store, and improved their roads so there is now better access to the cities (better is a relative term, however). This microhydro installation will give more opportunities for television watching.

While this village is still pretty isolated and fairly in tact culturally, it is sad to see them go the way of just about everyone else towards towards globalization, but I don't have a completely one sided view of this issue.


I'm still having a lot of trouble with this group of people I'm with. I'm experiencing a pretty frequent struggle between really trying to think of ways to improve my situation, not dwell on negative feelings, be more accepting of where people are at, or frankly just try to flat out ignore what I'm feeling because I don't want frustration and negative feelings to get in the way of having a good time on this trip. On the other side of it, I am feeling this way! I am feeling a great deal of negativity around both the group, and how I'm being treated and how I really am having a lot of troubel being myself, resourcing how I'd like and doing what I love. If I am feeling this way, can;t I just be allowed to feel what I'm feeling? Can't I just be frustrated, angry and sad without it consuming me? Getting to the title of this entry, I am really seeing how willful ignorance of feelings and the messages of the body is a very effective coping mechanism. I almost wish I actually could ignore what I'm feeling, but every time I suppress an emotional experience, push it down and don't somehow aknowledge and utilize the action potential behind the emotion I tie new knots. I create new armoring in my body that is going to lessen my ability to be authentic and express myself and actually be in my experience in the future. I can actually feel these knots in the body, and I wish I wasn't making new knots. I haven't really figured out a way to really nurture my whole self on this trip.

Its a struggle, basically the main struggle of the trip. Basically being a part of this group and all the challenges that go along with that has been much harder than anything Thailand has thrown at me. I'm open to change. Things are always changing. It isn't a bad thing that I'm having this difficulty. My higher self acknowledges that it is even an opportunity. (damn higher self).


I don't want to stop traveling. I hate to inform my parents of this, but my very conservative estimate of there being a 7% chance I won't come back has now increased to a 10% chance. However, things change. I wonder what is more difficult for me, traveling with a group of people I don't really resonate with or traveling alone. Traveling alone has been a pretty big challenge in the past. We'll see.