Bianca Palese, 134 TESS
Change, it happens all the time.
My tambon, or sub-district, is a small, sunny little spot on the map where the people all know each other and the food is spicy. Our name literally translates to “house on the small hill”. The roads don’t have names but the scrappy dogs who patrol them do. I always ride my bike to the drink stand near the edge of my tambon because it’s operated by my neighbors – who I choose to show allegiance to since the family members work at my school, have children who go there and are related to my counterpart (who is in some way a relative to everyone here, it would seem).
The hot breeze feels like flames licking my back while I enjoy the easy downhill cycle. And although I take this same path often, I notice that it’s not always the same. After a particularly embarrassing incident between me and one of those scrappy dogs a caution light was erected on that road the very next week. There’s a new pork stand outside the house on the corner and it seems to be doing well. A little bit further down the road from my drink stand of choice, the town just wrapped up construction on a water tower and pump. This is a really exciting development for a village where most houses do not have running water, including my own, until about a month ago. The city workers also came in and installed drain pipes on our roads that flood especially badly during the rainy season. And even further down that road in the blank field that separates us from our neighboring tambon, construction is nearing an end on our very first air conditioned cafe.
In such a little amount of time, things seem to be going so well. The school is also keeping up with development. Since I’ve been here they built a big concrete stage, got a new computer lab, and built a nice pavilion at the end of our soccer field. The previous volunteer at my site told me about how everything looked when she served four years ago, how my host family’s house only had two rooms instead of five and the mattiyom (secondary education) building at school was only one story, not two. It’s like my tambon was a completely different place not too long ago.
One of the special things about being a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) is that you get to grow with the people around you. When I first got to my site, I admittedly felt a little bit punished because I didn’t have all the comfortable commodities that other PCVs seemed to have. But I see now that I was given a special gift, the opportunity to witness development and experience it in a similar way to a host country national. I get to ask questions and understand the perspective of those impacted by such projects. One of the highlights of my service has been getting to meet with members of the aw bah dtaw (Subdistrict Administrative Office) and PESAO (Primary Education Service Area Office) and hearing their ideas. And then in turn, talk to my counterpart and other teachers about how they receive those ideas. I am not always, or even usually, a part of these projects that transform the landscape, but I’m grateful to be here. I wonder what my tambon will look like in another 5 years.
Read Bianca’s previous articles and contributions.
P.S. Bianca was recently interviewed for the Wandering the World blog written by former a Peace Corps Thailand and current PC Armenia volunteer, Jim Damico. Read her story and more from Peace Corps volunteers worldwide here.
Sticky Rice 