last day in Chiang Mai

Today is Sunday, and although usually a day of rest and relaxation, it was probably my busiest day here so far! Lots of loose ends to tie up, and people to meet and discuss the future plans of the project. First I headed over to the Sop Moei Arts showroom to meet with Kent and pick up all the hand-woven Karen fabrics I had chosen on  my last visit to applique onto our clothing line. I found some amazing stuff, and went through some bins of really fabulous swatches and scraps that we can also use for smaller purposes. I came across an incredible pink and seed embroidered Karen blouse that can be turned into an evening bag. I am so excited to be able to work with such exquisite fabrics.It has been a dream for me for a long time to find and work with high quality hill tribe materials, and I feel somehow that a real milestone was made in meeting with Sop Moei, since most hill tribe fabrics these days are just not that great in quality and so only the vintage swatches can be used, which are hard to come by. I am also excited to see where they loom all this great stuff, and Aom and I will take a visit on my next trip to these very special villages.

Next I had a meeting with two people from Garden of Hope, and there is a lot of change of hands due to some personal situations going on internally, so we had to discuss how we go about our project together in “the country just west of Thailand”, and how we may be able to continue to help them there. it (our project in “the country just west of Thailand”) seems to be in pretty healthy conditions, and I am very happy about this in spite of all the recent changes in management. I asked the CEO today to get Nang Fah some real numbers so I can post to our website so we are all aware of how much everything costs, down to basic needs etc. for the girls there and then I can list for any donations made in their honor for specific items. I hope when I return in June I can have more trips to “the country just west of Thailand” so I can teach them a bit more and be more involved with their training. I look forward too to picking up some of the creative things I have set them up to do. I am so proud of the staff in “the country just west of Thailand” that I can’t even put it into words. They work very hard to make sure all the needs are met for each girl and that they are safe and healing and growing…

I arrived home late in the afternoon to Faa and Ning, to beautiful and big-hearted Akha tribe girls whom I simply adore. I have known them for some time, and both have worked with Garden of Hope for several years. they take care of the children at the drop in center in the main part of town in Chiang Mai, which is used primarily to get the kids selling flowers in the market off the street and is preventative to prostitution (a lot of the flower children end up getting sold as soon as they turn 8 or 9). Ning, however, has trained in Bangkok in design and is a great seamstress-lucky me!- so I have set her up to start helping to sew the samples here for the nang fah project clothing line. Tete ( another one of our partners here in Chiang Mai, and who has run a Karen Orphanage in the north for over twenty years) has also found a Karen friend who is a great weaver and silkscreener to help Ning get the patterns together for us. They are excited I think, and I will meet them via skype in a couple of weeks to check in on the progress. I showed them the Sop Moei fabrics, and they seemed pretty inspired. I cant wait to see the first mock-ups! i asked Ning to please come up with some Akha embellishments to add as well. I am so excited to have my first two sewing staff to be hill tribe!

I head back to Europe tomorrow and I must say I am looking forward to 18 degrees! I will then put my energy into the event in New York on May 27th, which will take a lot of effort since I am quite far away. Also, due to financial restrictions, we don’t have any real hired staff, just our volunteers and our other two board members, Nicoletta and Christian. Christian has found us a wine sponsor and I am so relieved…Tete also suggested on Saturday an expert on tribal people based out of California to speak at the event, and today i learned a member of the Garden of Hope is interested to come out to talk about the girls in prostitution here in Chiang Mai. This alongside Tian playing the piano, and we may just have quite a fantastic event…good bye for now Chiang Mai!

The country just west of Thailand

Sunday was a meeting with the founder of Sop Moei Arts, Kent. He has an amazing operation based out of a mountain Karen village southwest of Chiang Mai. They make the most high quality textiles and baskets I have seen yet. He has agreed to sell us some this fabric, as he “only wants to help his village have more work”. I showed him some of the stuff we wanted to make, but it was his selflessness that lent his generosity for our line, and I am really excited to say the least. I feel really lucky to have come across him and his project, as it is not only amazing what he has accomplished and how he has led this Karen tribe in the middle of the Thai jungle to be successful and prosperous, but the work and craftmanship that goes into their products are superb. he says its simply because they are paid properly and care about each piece as a sense of pride and camaraderie, which is a huge goal for me in working with my own project, and it is really beautiful to see it set into motion and be such a success. He is probably one of the first real social entrepreneurs, his idea developing from a failed path to help them medically into realizing all they really needed to keep themselves and their children healthy was to put food on the table; so being a problem solver, he started selling their crafts. It is really remarkable. I will go on Friday down to his offices and pick out a small amount to start with to add to the tips and bits of our clothing samples for the line. I just am so happy to have some thinner, elegant, and softer material to sew onto the cottons we have to work with, as most of the hill tribe fabric I have at this point is rough and heavy-which is good for bags, but not so great for clothes.

For the start of this week, I wanted to visit our partnered project in the country just west of Thailand (I wont name it to protect our friends their) where we have set up a safety house for girls in desperate situations. This project is what originally sprouted my idea for Nang Fah, and still means a lot to me although I feel like I do not do enough, nor can I ever. Monday afternoon, to avoid the midday blast of heat, Aom and I drove three hours north to Chiang Rai, a small Lanna hippie town, and a pit stop before we reached “the country just west of Thailand” on Tuesday. We woke up very early and headed over the border, again to avoid real heat after noon. It is always really amusing to go over the border there as they take your passport and exchange it for a theirs and the clocks change by thirty minutes, as the government is highly suspicious and in tune with numerology (and eh-hem-control…). There are large framed and tattered photos of the prime minister in the passport offices, looming demon-like as you get photographed for your passport, and it all feels very surreal. Walking into the “Golden Triangle” blue archways, past the six year old glue sniffers and begging tribal ladies of all shapes and sizes, babies strapped behind their backs, it makes one feel so incredibly frustrated with the world for letting this go on and letting these people suffer so much due to will of a few really bad people…it is simply devastating and heartbreaking. The helplessness one feels of crossing back over into Thailand as you glance over your shoulder to say goodbye is a feeling that simply brings tears to the surface without even expecting it. I am always quite overwhelmed with sadness on my way home to Chiang Mai, I can not really even talk for a while. I guess I feel ashamed at our society somehow that we allow this goes on, and what little I do there seems like such a tiny grain of sand.

It took us all day helping the girls out, even though we had our early morning plan. So even though I thought I would die of a heat stroke, and the barrels of sweat poring down my back made me feel pretty humbled for ever complaining about heat in all my life, I am just glad we had enough time to do everything we wanted. First I set about unloading a mountain of art supplies for the eleven girls we have there (partnered with Garden of Hope in Chiang Mai). I laid out collage materials, sketchbooks, watercolors, two easels, acrylics, pens, pencils, paintbrushes, gesso, and journals. Aom and I snuck it in over the border in Mai Sei, which luckily they didn’t even give me a look or a questionable stare. Go figure, since humans and babies are smuggled over, so I guess a few art supplies smuggled in by a farang surely is not to distressing. I then demonstrated to the girls on how to use everything on a very basic level to sort of see what took to them for when I come back in the summer. I promised to go into more detail then, as it was a bit overwhelming probably all these new concepts and I just wanted to get their feet wet anyhow. The books I sent last time this year from FIT in NYC were collecting dust sadly, but I just think they needed real instruction on how to use them, which is my own fault, so I pulled some out and used the diagrams and color charts to illustrate my points. Some of them seemed genuinely interested, and for the others not so artistically inclined, I set out to have some written journal writings on a daily level so when I come back, if they feel like doing an offering of a previous or personal written experience, I will get it translated and post it. I think it will not only be healing for them, but also good for all of us to know what really goes on, what really has happened and how we can go about prevention and help for the future. I am excited to see the collages when I come back for sure, as that is also open for anyone and can solve real inner puzzles without realizing it. I just feel that boredom creates depression, and adds only to the pain and suffering of not having an outlet to release anger and sadness. Art of any form is a free and creative way to get this out, and even just writing something down or drawing a small sketch that no one will ever even see can ease some of that pain and hopefully even seed a budding interest or real talent. I took a few pictures of some of the paintings they are making, and although I feel they are a bit empty and not showing any real part of their inner selves in the bright happy paintings of burmese village houses with bubbling streams and the 10 pointed yellow suns in the sky, but it is at least a start and hopefully the more they dive into the art and understand the new materials, they can really start tapping into something. I think it will be amazing to see the process and progress. I left a variety of outlets so lets see what happens..I even showed them how to set up an inspiration board with fabric swatches to design clothes. Next on the list is to get those sewing machines fixed…I was very sad to find the sewing machines Garden of Hope got them in disrepair, and I hope I can manage to come up with the funds to fix them all in the next month. A few girls are quite eager to keep up their practice sewing. Aom and I carried over some fabrics and I was really sad to see them stuck in a pile in the hot and dusty sewing room. It made me feel so sad as I remember the last time I was here in august, they were grinning from ear to ear and showing off the uniforms and dance costumes they had all made. Aom and I discussed briefly about getting a few of the more talented sewers over to the property in Chiang Mai to do some real training, as Aom is willing to do this. But they must be eighteen, and well, I need to ask my bangkok lawyers about the process. It is a serious hope and dream.

Aom and I then took them all over to the local Shin tribe restaurant, which sadly they did not have my favorite dish- live baby jumping shrimp!- but we had a small feast of grilled fish and soup and we chatted about what kinds of things they needed necessity wise so I could take one of them over the border after lunch and grab a bunch of supplies. I also told them to list what costs were so I could post at the event in New York in May and on the website for donation purposes. I actually bought some handmade keychains from them back at the house to hand out at the event each time someone donated, and it gave them a trickling of pocket money and hopefully a sense of pride. After lunch, I managed to get each girl undergarments, a new tank, chapsticks, shampoos, creams, deodorant, girly needs and the like…the wonderful woman that came over with me to help with the sizes was so grateful she seemed teary eyed, and I was overwhelmed with pleasure to give so little which meant so much. I just wish I could have done more. I just think of her arriving back at the little house with lots of gifts and how much it maybe made their day. That is worth more than anything in the world- that thought.

It was a long drive home and had thoughts of them swirling in my head as I went to sleep. Today I awoke to a huge bill for the school and back up rent, and I feel deeply sad and worried our event will work out so we can pay these bills and make this dream happen for these women. I am overwhelmed with how to really raise this money and to keep going seems so futile at these darker moments. i think about “the country just west of Thailand” and the energy and time already sunk into Nang Fah and it seems so real and that there is no way we can not make this work…but numbers are numbers…and we need them to survive.

It was 41-43 degrees all day today and the water dumping for the festival was still going on, so no camera action yet. in fact, most places are closed, so by the time you reach your destination you have been dumped with several buckets already only to find them closed. you can have lunch at a restaurant with the fellow soaked, so no one looks at you strangely when you sit down completely dripping which is all very amusing. i think its best to sit in air conditioning and facebook (one can’t think in such heat) and plan for afterwards! anyway, tomorrow is a new day and i will draw the collection for Nang Fah Project (IN A.C.  THANK YOU!) to be launched in July in our store front here in Chiang Mai at the front of our school. Aom (who designs “Earth Tone” clothing in Chiang Mai) has agreed to put some of her clothes in with ours and sell some of her very cool homemade jewelry along with hill tribe fabrics and jewelry in the store. When I come back in late June, we will collect the hill tribe jewelry from the various areas they are in. She says we can custom make stuff too, so this could also be a neat and original contribution.

Much discussion took place today about a cafe to go along with our store. We talked about having a very simple healthy food and snack/drink thing offered and to have a som tam stall (spicy traditional thai green papaya salad) set up next to our shop perhaps with more exotic additions from other parts of the world  to give it a spin; a sort of thai salad bar idea based on som tam (add ons could variety off nuts and seeds, pickled thai veggies, different herbs and dressings etc), lanna style snacks (this comes from royal thai northern cuisine), italian coffees (imported along with the machine), cool ice or hot teas (lemongrass, dried fruits, ginger, etc), and an italian wine and cocktail selection (like spritz, negroni, nebbiolo, chianti, etc) for aperitivi (from 3-8 so people can shop during this time with snack and drink), and then we will close. We also think cool smoothies would be a good idea-like green food from my health food guru hawaiian friend, Alyssa Davis (www.fit 4 maui.com) added to fresh homemade soy milk (available here) to frozen papaya,bananas, mango, etc.. This is not here in Chiang Mai yet on any real level, so could be a great financial contribution to make money for the school, as all profits will go to the project of course. I think with these additions and the fundraiser coming up on May 27 in nyc, we have a few options financially in the late fall, and also this allows us not to be so dependent on the events and donor funding for real funds for our future students. Also, it is a good way to let the students and girls make money healthily, happily, and with a neat product to teach them business skills. in combination with the small collection I am developing with “Earth Tone”, I can see some real financial potential.

In the meantime, I am going to try to get the business and charity established here in Thailand officially, as I found out from some local friends today a business established in Thailand can have a quota for asking Burmese into Thailand for work. I can then hopefully start getting some girls in from “the country just west of Thailand” to start the design training by the end of the end of the year. Anyway, all these ideas are appearing today, so I am just starting to think about the framework involved, and letting everyone know in case you have some thoughts…

Any ideas are welcome! More tomorrow with some pics of many sorts now that the Chiang Mai bucket throwing is at an end…

april14 2010 chiang mai thailand

Today is the second day of Songkran Water Festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This means that anyone in all of this country can throw a water bucket, (as dirty and filthy and cold as it may be), water pistol, or water in any form on top of your head! It is really to cool you down, and according to the locals, was started a long time ago (no real reason other than to cool people off since its 41/106 degrees with air like syrup)…anyway, very hard to get through your day, especially if you are a farang, without a splash or a dunk. note to self-cold spring europe better plan than being dunked and come after april 15!

Today I started working with my landlord, local fashion designer of “Earth Tone” clothing, Aom, on the line for Nang Fah Project. I originally drew everything from Italy based on a t-shirt and jersey medium and the euro current trends, only to find out we have to work with cotton and stiffer construction methods due to our machines and market here, so I will go back to the drawing board tomorrow. we have a big factory behind the school property where we can make everything, but our sewing machines are limited to this type of fabric. i have leather machines in the school, but no one at this point to work them. In time!

Monday I will head to “the country just west of Thailand” to check on our girls there. we have a partner project with Garden of Hope in Chiang Mai who pays for the housing and rescue of the women there. They are in need of some essential things, like shampoo, clothes, girl stuff..etc so I hope to satisfy this until Garden of Hope can return. I will go with Aom, my landlord, bringing fabric for them to practice on and teach a painting and fashion drawing class. my new idea, too, is to give them all notebooks to write daily journals in of their experiences in “the country just west of Thailand”, past and present, and I will share it on this blog. It will be a big job, as it’s in various languages, but when I come back in june, I will ask them each to pick a piece to share and will translate after each entry one journal writing I am sure it will be fascinating and a good creative outlet for these young women growing up in such an intense and difficult environment. My new goal is to have the best sewing and drawing girls over to Thailand with some visas to work and train here at the school where we can house them and teach them properly. but this takes setting up nang fah here in Thailand, but this goal is particularly difficult because of governmental reasons. But for now, I will continue to separately go and help when I can. I hope to get them inspired by the painting class and I will bring the supplies I bought for our anticipated students here at the school in Chiang Mai to them so they can do some things in “the country just west of Thailand”. Most of these women at this young age are not in school and not working, so it is best to set their minds onto a path of some sort and help them be creative and focus on their dreams and maybe what they can do for their futures. Dreams are very important stuff to teenagers I think…it is the least we can do thinking about women at this age in her life with these circumstances. In america, most teenage girls go to the mall, complain about taking out the trash or piano practice, and writing love notes and going on movie dates with their boyfriends. These girls have left brothels, are not able to go to school without paying a huge fee (which no parent can afford since most parents are unemployed), and hope only that they can get to the next day with food, clean water, and a safe place to sleep. it is an incredible plight and one that is admirable to me as they smile more than any girls I have ever met at their age considering these circumstances; I can see the pain in their eyes, but I see the hope and potential as well and I see the way they pray and trust that they will survive and that there may be a better place for their future. It is why  I want to help them so desperately, and why I am so humbled in my own life when I see this.

One day left for Chiang Mai with the water fest-farangs and dry Thais beware! I am happy to be in my home here and feels good to be starting on the project again…and to start this blog on its first entry; )

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