On Tuesdays, we wear pink to jail

There are all kind of things that go on here in Thailand that if no one ever told you, and since you didn't think to ask (because why would you), you would just never know. The song is of the benign variety. I was running in Lumpini park tonight and the national anthem started playing on loudspeakers, so I stood stopped immediately and stood still.  Everyone in the park freezes, mid-stride, mid-aerobics, mid-whatever, to pay respects, as everyone does in all public places across the country every day, twice a day at 8 am and 6 pm. You just don't move and everything stops twice a day in public. That's all. Once you know, you just accept it and move on. But how bizarre for the un-initiated. I saw one tourist continue to walk around a few seconds, until she realized that the hundreds of people around her were totally still. You could see her slow down, trying to figure out what was going on (apocalypse? viral contagion? freeze tag?) until she just gave up and stood still with the rest of us. There are just things here you accept and don't ask questions. Things like matching. 

In Thailand, days of the week are associated with auspicious astrological colors. Monday is yellow, and the king was born on a Monday, so you see a lot of yellow. Thais honor him on Mondays by wearing yellow. Someone somewhere in Thailand is super rich from selling yellow polo shirts all these years. More so last time I lived here, I noticed people wearing colors in accordance with the days of the week. On Tuesdays, we wear pink. We also visit the immigration detention center on Tuesdays. 

If you overstay your visa in Thailand, no matter what your nationality, you risk being caught and thrown in immigration jail (a video of what I believe to be the inside- with prison language, natch). I've heard that there are around 250 adults and children inside, but I don't know the official number. I don't even know if there is an official number. All I know is what I've seen -- brown and white and black faces. Children from Pakistan clinging to their mother's hands. A muscular black guy from Guinea being visited by his Thai girlfriend (okay, so I imagine lots of scenarios). One older British guy shuffling through papers, asking his friend to round up some cash (his friend, I think, is not happy about this and I wonder why the hell a British guy is in here and why his friend won't help him). There are women who I'm certain have been trafficked from countries like Uzbekistan and Congo. There are women in hijab (Syria, maybe? Definitely Middle Eastern). There are Muslims and Christians. Most of the men are shirtless, whether due to the humidity or the humiliation, I don't know. 

I can create such vivid stories in part because I can hear everything everyone is saying. We the visitors are all on one side of a metal fence and, 3 feet away, behind another metal fence, are the detainees. This isn't a one-on-one situation. It's an outdoor courtyard, but roofed by plastic, so the whole thing is an auditory free for all. Any visitor has to conduct business, express love, relay bad news, in the company of everyone else VERY LOUDLY. One couple separated by the fences talk about the other person's body and what they want to do to it (gross). Prayers are offered or sung by church groups on the visiting side of the fence. Details are being emphasized and money is being counted by those most emphatic about getting out and getting out soon. I've heard that bail is 50,000 baht, but I don't know anything for sure about the Immigration Detention Center. 

I get information on detainees through various NGOs and churches in Bangkok. I've visited an Afghan guy who makes bracelets out of twisted plastic bags and sells them. I've visited a Pakistani guy several times whom I met once when he was on the outside. Sometimes a few of us visitors sign up en masse to visit a family so that they can visit with each other on the detainee side. There is one particular Pakistani family locked up together (5 or 6 kids, I can't recall), separated by gendered dorms. The boys and girls only get to see each other when people come to visit and they are all herded into this open courtyard. There are an estimated 4000 Pakistani people, a lot of them Christians, in Bangkok. The Christians specifically have fled religious persecution and came to the nearest and easiest place they could get a visa. Once their visa expires, they just begin a life in limbo. Not legal in Thailand, not able to return home for fear of bodily harm, they begin the process of seeking asylum, which can take eight years. Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, so you have no protected status until you have an official assignment and are on your way to the U.S. or Europe. A practically stateless person, you formally don't exist while in Thailand. You're invisible. This invisibility means it's easy to be held in this jail for months, even years with no criminal charges and no recourse. There are thousands and thousands of refugees without protected status who live in Bangkok in fear of the IDC. If no one ever told you, you would just never know. 

I try to go every week, to bring food and offer encouragement. Sometimes I just introduce myself and start talking about the weather. People seem mostly grateful and unfailingly wish my husband and family the best of health and luck. It feels simultaneously super unhelpful and like the most important, humane thing I could possibly be doing. There is deep injustice in the world, and you feel the weight of it leaving the IDC. At the same time, the Coke I buy at the 711 on my way out is the best I've ever tasted. The motorcycle ride home is the freest I feel all week. I don't even know why, but I go back. There are just things here you can never accept and all you can do is ask questions. 

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are. -Madeleine L'Engle

War Isn't Over When It's Over

I don't think I should write this. But, I'm far away, so who cares. 

Um, America? Since when do you care about refugees? This whole uproar of "I can't believe my governor won't accept you! I stand for love!" seems so incredibly disingenuous given the lack of care and support the refugees in my home community of Austin are generally afforded. There are Iraqi refugees, Burmese refugees, Eritrean asylum seekers, undocumented Central Americans who, because of a technicality, will never be classified as refugees but have lived the same lives and THERE ARE ALREADY SYRIANS IN AUSTIN. Go love them. ACT your protest, don't Tweet about it. Everyone is (evidently) reacting with horror at the completely predictable right-wing knee-jerk response of security first. I'm not surprised in the least. If you are surprised that the U.S., that Europe, would treat refugees poorly, then you simply haven't been paying attention. If you are outraged, you better damn well be doing something about it.

Do you know how many times I have had to explain to potential employers and to Medicaid hotline operators what a refugee even IS? How they are legally defined, have green cards and what protections they are offered? And that they are not "illegal" (side note: no human being is illegal. Think about that any time you break a law - does that strip you of personhood or make you an "illegal" person for smoking pot, insider trading or talking on your cell phone in a school zone? I think I'm talking to specific people in my head as I write this.)

Do you know the times my refugee friends have lamented to me about being ignored or treated as a charity case by their friends and fellow church members? Or being used for their stories by well-meaning people who use their stories for their own gain or Instagram posts? People know the difference between true compassion and friendship and being paraded around as a token. My dear friend, an Iraqi woman, cracks me up when she starts comparing America to Afghanistan. Too often, she has seen people in her community mistreated, given inadequate preventative healthcare, made to feel inferior. I just laugh when she says "What is this, America? This is Afghanistan!" with indignation at some slight, no matter how minor. "I'm serious, habibti, this is Afghanistan!" It's a cruel irony that she has been invited to America, given a literal invitation and a loan to get a flight here, and then ignored by bureaucracy and shamed by HEB pharmacists for her accent and ignorance of the healthcare system. What is this, America? The refugees we have already accepted in the United States by an act of Congress are still waiting to be accepted by acts of love from Americans. Continual, steady, difficult, messy, unrewarding acts of love. Here's the thing though: they will look different from you. They will speak languages you don't understand. Their food will smell (this has actually been brought up to me as an excuse why a volunteer couldn't stick around and help in someone's home. I can't even). They might - gasp! - be Muslims with deep, rewarding faiths that challenge your notions of yourself if you don't believe the same thing. They will live in neighborhoods that you haven't been to because you always assumed you would get mugged. It will take up your time and you will sit in traffic for hours. You will feel like you are getting nowhere for years. You still want the US to invite Syrians into America, into Texas? Are you going to do something about it? 

The easiest thing would be to encourage people to donate or volunteer with your local refugee agency or nonprofit (like Caritas, RST, Multicultural Refugee Coalition, Center for Survivors of Torture). There are women and children to be visited in detention centers mere miles from Austin. Or, you could do a few things for me. My friends need help finding jobs, writing resumes, figuring out how to apply for community colleges. They need rides to therapy appointments. They call me to see if I can help them get rid of bedbugs and roaches because their apartment managers prey on their ignorance of the system and don't provide adequate services. Their birthdays deserve to be celebrated, their children need to be read with and can someone please drive one of my students to Planned Parenthood so that she isn't pregnant at 17? I'm serious. Email me at congraced@gmail.com and let's talk. There is shit to be done and I do not have time for you or your lame ass Facebook posts. 

The girls I joked about teaching sex ed to on a previous blog just got picked up and they are in detention, so class is cancelled tonight. Maybe that's why I'm in a bad mood. Human rights abuses, violence, and ignorance continues to pile up in many communities worldwide. If you are lost in your outrage or not knowing what to do, no one is going to come in after you. You need to find your way out by yourself. 

Hard Knock Life

Living in Bangkok, I walk by about a hundred (conservative estimate) moral dilemmas a day. Disabled people begging. Children of migrants that have been drugged with sleeping medicine so that they can appear docile while their parents beg all night. Street food is so cheap it cannot possibly be fair to anyone who grew or prepared it (and deliciously MSG-laden). I walk by two red light districts, with women out front putting on makeup getting ready for their nights, on my way to yoga. Police ask for bribes - to pay or not to pay? The shopping malls use more energy than entire provinces, but it's so marvelously cold in there, I find myself riding escalators by Chanel and Lamborghini stores (yes, in a mall) all weekend just to escape the heat. Thailand doesn't recognize refugees, and it is therefore illegal to help educate or employ them, so you have to break laws to do so. By the time I get home, it's all I can do to crawl into bed, watch Empire while eating gummi bears and fall asleep. 

At the foundation I'm consulting with, the children who are part of the education project used to work at night selling flowers. Like so many other kids around the world, they represent an economic value to their family. For them to be able to quit their jobs and go to school, the foundation had to offer to compensate the families for their loss, so to speak. It's what the foundation considers necessary and reclaims the future of the children, but it is still reinforcing the idea that children have to support the family. Nothing is ever easy or straightforward. 

I went to a bar the other night and drank vodka and listened to live rap (a rare treat in a city obsessed with Ed Sheeran covers) while women in fur coats sat on swings and others played cards above the bar. It was performance art with just a touch of objectification. I've been to these kinds of parties in L.A. and Austin. But is it similar to the women who work in the red light districts? How can you tell the difference? Agency? How much they're being paid? The amount of clothes they are wearing? I mean, it was fancy, so I'm sure we're good. 

Last week I walked through a market in Chiang Rai, near the Thai/Burma border where the ground is rich with exploitation of animals, land and people. Akha people populate this area and make their living off the land and re-selling goods. The generation before them cultivated poppies for opium until the Thai government and U.S. DEA shut that shit down. There was a lovely young woman I chatted with for a little bit. Probably living near the poverty line. She was openly selling what she purported to be elephant tusks, bear livers, tiger teeth. Ay ay ay. On the same spectrum, I went to a bougie fox cafe in the burbs here where you can drink coffee and play with fennec foxes. Yes, I know, these foxes aren't living their best life, as Oprah would say. And their #squadgoals probably weren't taking a selfie with me, but I couldn't help it, okay? They were so freaking adorable and zoos never let you do anything fun. Hello my name is Constance and I participate in the trafficking of animals. 

These dilemmas are not unique to Bangkok, but megacities like this one put on such fine display the inequalities, the thousand little choices a day that make up not only who we are and what we consume, but how other people meet those needs. And what they sacrifice to meet the demand. The interconnectedness of it all. As I write this, I can look out my window and see a dozen Burmese construction workers building apartments. Citizenship may never be offered to them, but their cheap labor is in high demand. And it keeps building costs down. Bangkok deserves its sordid reputation, and enough people have made enough money on blatant, debauched exploitation, that if you wanted to have sex with an endangered tiger here, you could probably Favor it. Just in these last few paragraphs, I have been a witness to or participated in trafficking of animals and people. That is what every day is like here. 

I heard of an expat who buys owls from one of the many animal vendors at Jatujak market. There are many animals trafficked illegally through that market, but some are just not, again, living their best life. (Here is a video to give you an idea). Anyway, this foreigner buys owls from the market, houses them in her apartment for a bit, and then sets them free. On the one hand, setting an owl free in Bangkok is a one-way ticket to getting smashed into a high-rise window. What a waste. On the other hand, this is how this individual has chosen to deal with what I presume is an innate desire for justice while living here. Setting one owl free at a time. For an organization to do this would clearly be a waste of resources, but for this one lone owl hero, I don't begrudge them doing something that makes the world better. 

I'm still looking for my owls. I don't yet know how to consistently participate in a meaningful or measurable way in this wonderful/horrible city that I love/hate. I am, however, already de facto contributing to the inequalities, exacerbated by my privilege as a foreigner with money. And the sheer volume of daily choices makes me dizzy. But I will continue to look and hope for owls -- small ways to connect with and serve others. Even knowing full well they might smash into windows. I need to hold no expectations for them or myself. Also, truth be told, I want to be absolved of a little of the guilt that is in many ways useless and even itself reeks of privilege, but exists in me nonetheless. I'm going on an owl hunt. Not that kind! Jeez. God help me.  

Trap Queen

Picture me sitting outside a McDonald's, using vulgar hand motions to mimic putting on a condom, and you have a pretty good idea of what my life is like these days.  Life is absurd; sometimes there's no way around it. Most of my time is spent working on website content or trying to hear tones in Thai class. Some of my time is spent trying to answer questions about sex from teenagers who hustle in the city's various red-light districts. The youth are at various stages of adulthood, more mature in many ways since they have worked all night long since they were little. I really just sat in on an existing English class and the kids had questions that I couldn't sufficiently answer with my Thai. Thankfully there was a qualified, Thai speaking adult leading the conversation. I came to Bangkok to volunteer with friends who are doing work I believe in. Slowly, incrementally, painfully at times, building relationships with people who live at the margins of society. They have been faithfully meeting with mainly women and kids where they are, showing them love and support for the last seven years. I can come alongside them and show up for English class, or sex-ed, as it was, because of the groundwork they have laid, the trust they have built. 

The banal, boring part of building an organization -- spreadsheets! meetings! -- is unfortunately what I'm good for. That and teaching English. I have never been somewhere in the world and haven't been asked to teach English. Gah. My secret fantasy is that I'm the one they call when something dramatic was happening - Oh no! Call Constance, there's a disease outbreak! or Beyonce is coming for a concert for human rights and her backup dancer is sick! Where's Constance?! - but it's more like, do you know how to apply for grants in the private foundation sector? Why YES, as a matter of fact, I do. I also came here for brunch, evidently. Thailand is one of the most-Instagrammed countries in the world. It's factual. So it might appear from Facebook photos that all I do is brunch, and that's not wrong. But it's mainly a reflection that people here Instagram every. single. meal.

We've been in Thailand a month now. Moving here was so much harder than I thought it was gonna be because you people made it so damn hard. Everyone was just so nice and supportive. "We love you!" you said. "Here are some cat leggings!" you said. "Wish we could keep hanging out forever!" It's really hard to leave on a cresting wave of love and crash on the shores of a big, anonymous city, unpack your two sad bags in fifteen minutes and not feel a twinge of regret. I've made a huge mistake, I thought, more than once, in the Arrested Development intonation in my head. When I moved away at 25, it was "Oh man, we're missing ACL. I miss tacos. Blah, blah, blah." I missed things. Moving away at 32, I miss my dog, my community and watching tiny house shows with my grandmother. Is missing people progress? Maturity? Does this just mean I'm losing my edge? 

But I trust in the process. There is transformation in the leaving, in the tearing down and building back up. And there is so much learning to be done - about urban migration, about Thailand, about people, about myself. I might be here for administrative work and not emergency humanitarian backup dancing, but there is adventure to be had. I mean, I already found a cafe where you can play with meerkats and fennec foxes while you drink coffee. That would totally be illegal in America! Adventure! In the meantime, you should sign up for my after-hours McDonald's sex-ed class. Pretty riveting stuff. 

Brave New World

I'm moving to Thailand! Again. My husband Phillip and I lived there 2008-2010. People ask me why we're going back, and I don't really have a single answer. People ask me what I'll be doing and I ramble even more unintelligibly. Basically, I want to and I'll be working there.  

Why: because it's awesome, we can save money on cost of living, we can get $5 massages, we have friends there, we are pretending it's not 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity year round, we can travel Asia cheaply, we have the support of family and friends that means the world, we can eat krapow every night for $2, we can study languages, we can meet people from all over and host friends and family from back home, we can make fools of ourself karaoke-ing, we can go to beaches on weekends, we think Loy Krathong is the best holiday, we can be useful, we can be uncomfortable, we can have sobbing breakdowns while re-washing laundry for the third day in a row during rainy season. Not that that last one ever happened to me. Performing even basic tasks has the ability to exhilarate or destroy you when you're navigating an unfamiliar environment. It's what I love about traveling -- every day could be the best, or the worst, of your life. 

What I will be doing: I am capitalizing on the generosity of my employer and the Internet economy to work remotely for JP's Peace, Love & Happiness Foundation. In addition, I will be consulting with Raven + Lily and visiting their Asia artisan groups for them as needed. These paying jobs will allow me to live with and volunteer for my friends who started the Creative Life Foundation (CLF) in Bangkok. Unconventional, sure, but possible. I have loved being a small part of the refugee community in Austin these last five years, and I am hoping to learn even more about migrants and refugees while being a part of the CLF community. CLF runs a small school for kids who were previously working all night long to earn money for their families. They help a small-batch food business sell goods at farmers' markets around town, which has helped an entire family support itself. They provide counseling and support services for women, they equip local people to serve their communities. Basically, it's a community of Americans, Nepalis, Cambodians and Thais coming together to serve each other and the city. 

Our time in Thailand was complex the last go-round.  We got married a month before we moved overseas (DO NOT recommend). A month into living there, I was injured by a bomb while wandering around at a political protest (Also DO NOT recommend. 0 stars on Trip Advisor for Thai protests). I went to educate about sex trafficking and ended up getting quite the education myself on what that loaded term actually means and looks like. I walked away scarred, literally and otherwise, and just ever so slightly disenchanted with the male gender based on all the abuse and violence I'd witnessed. It was disorienting to be immersed in so many different cultures and languages at once, and I never had any clue what was going on. For a control freak, it was a strangely uncomfortable-in-a-good-way feeling. But I made friends with women who had suffered and they taught me much. I ate things that were still alive. I stood on the Great Wall of China and felt small and on Bangkok trains and felt giant. I lit a building on fire with my lantern that was supposed to bring better luck. I bought Phillip a moto for his birthday and we drove around back roads and felt free. I lived.  

Right before we moved back last time, we were driving home in the pitch black in our janky truck I loved, and we pulled over on the side of the road, surrounded by silent rice fields. We laid down in the road and looked up at the stars. I was raw and crying and exhausted, and I made Phillip promise me that we would move back someday.  These last five years in Austin have been a joy, but it's time to go. I hope every day there is the best and worst day of my life.