The Great Thai Flood of 2011: New Perspectives in Hard Times

There was a really profound editorial in the Bangkok post this weekend, about how hardships can make us stronger. I truly believe that. It’s not a new idea, and many world religions subscribe to this thought as well. But I have seen proof of it in the beautiful Thai people as they have faced enormous challenges over the last two months of the country’s worst floods in 50 years. Without fail, the flood victims I talk to respond with “There are many more people who are suffering greater losses and facing far more difficulties than myself.”

Wow.

And sniff.

And shame on me for ever complaining.

With strong affection and great respect I dedicate this blog post to my พี่น้องชาวไทย, my Thai family, and to กรุงเทพมหานคร, the city of Bangkok, that has welcomed our family for the last 20 years and helped us raise global-minded children.

This is a collection of photos that I received in an email. I have translated their captions. I pray I will do justice in representing.

“New Perspectives In Hard Times”

We see… housing projects that promote the cozy atmosphere of a lakeside villa

We see… the beauty of our ancient heritage sights from a brand new perspective

We see… people helping each other where ‘we deliver’ is quite a promise!

We see…how to wrap things: apply generous amounts of tape

We see…a new kind of flood spectator (who packs a gun too)

We see…love without favortism

We see…those who will not be deterred

We see…advertising that really means what they say (‘washing stock’ is a Thai expression for ‘all stock must go’)

We see…those who are ready to make necessary sacrifices and move under the raft so the dog will be safe

We see…that we don’t have to go to the beach to get a tan

We see…stubborn perseverance, and good karma (no one got electrocuted)

We see…new guests taking a peek “Honey, I’m home!”

We see…national animals that do the job better than machines

We see…fashionistas posing in sand “Someone has to keep an eye on things”

We see…sea monsters in the middle of the city. No need to make a trip to the Mekhong.

We see…control-freak home-owners “No water allowed on premises…without permission”

We see… only in Thailand

We see…everyone ready to lend a hand.

We see…how we are undaunted even in the scary conditions

We see…our duty as Buddhists

We see…business as usual

We see…brand new customs

We see…how these (not-so)little piggies get to market

We see…how ‘going to the gym’ takes on a whole different purpose

We see…how frugal we can be. Who needs to waste money driving down to the beach?

We see…what it means to ”be prepared” and how best to analyse the situation

We see…the irony of helmets in a boat even though we don’t wear one when we ride a motorcycle

We see…a sea-side mini mart

We see…that even the smallest space will do

We see…even the tourists can just go with the flow

We see…where we have to take the boat to get the bus, take the bus to get the boat

We see…how much love and concern we have for our King, as we work to keep water away from the Sirirat Hospital (where HM resides)

And finally we see…how much love and concern our King has for us that instead of getting someone else to purchase it and put his name on it, he purchased it on his own, and look at what generous amounts he gives too!

Related articles

• Media News: Matichon, Bangkok Post & TNN “Clash Heads” on Yingluck’s Thai flood management (thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com)
• Bangkok flooding causes more evacuations (abclocal.go.com)
• More Bangkok residents advised to flee flood threat (ctv.ca)
• Thailand:Bangkok remains on alert for flooding (laaska.wordpress.com)
• Thailand Floods 2011: Ancient Capital Damaged (huffingtonpost.com)
• More Bangkok residents advised to flee floodwaters (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Prefab shells offer makeshift shelter for flooded Thais – CNN International (edition.cnn.com)
• Bangkok:Thai floods cause less damage despite high tides (laaska.wordpress.com)
• Thai PM: Flooding won’t devastate central Bangkok (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Thai PM: Flooding won’t devastate central Bangkok (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Guest Post: Summer Reflections (By Peter DeWit)

This is my husband, Peter DeWit.

He wrote a note on fb and I wanted to re-post it here. He had asked me to write about our summer, but I didn’t get around to it. He is a great writer and I loved reading about our summer from his perspective.

Peter Writes…

I am usually very reluctant to go back to my home country. It means hours of tedious travel, public speaking, raising funds, and often poor mattresses for my bad back. And I could say that all was pretty well true for much of my time in Canada. Nonetheless something happened in me to strengthen my heart and to return my lost love for Canada.

If you love surprises, so do we, and the surprises began and kept coming…

The beauty of early summer.  I have always had a love for ancient cultures and inspiring landscapes. While visiting England I have experienced the silent awe of walking the ground that was trod by kings and queens of antiquity. The very soil exhales history. While in France the narrow roads winding through fields of green and quaint villages whispered and tickled my soul. The centuries of cow paths now turned  into roads and soldiers’ foot battles must have happened mere inches from our presence. How I want to also boast of my native Holland and it’s windmills and brick roads reminding me of a heritage of hard-working people who knew how to tame nature’s fury; not to metion the ancient cheeze and the salted licorice! Seriously, everywhere one would glance one would be greeted with a monument of man or nature that said, “We have been here way before you, yes, for countless generations.”

But my ‘Oh Canada’, so young, never gave me the sense of majesty and history like my birth continent. As I drove the back roads I saw uneven highway being gobbled up by unhappy growth and the wildness surrounded by sad-sack fences that needed human mending. The major highways were tedious with weeds and uninspiring landscapes. And yet this summer the boredom was replaced by a pulling-in of the beauty of the Maples and Spruce and the wild untamed. I found the green of the grass thick with splendor. The hours on rivers warmed by summer’s heat invigorated my body with nature’s wild and dark-watery embrace. The cool evenings blessed me consistently, giving relief to hot days. The evening fireflies showing off their incandescent wonder delighting our eyes and inspiring a kiss or two by the Sacred Pond.

Then there was the joy of reconnecting with my church life.  This was one place I wanted to ignore, the church stage of pressure of performance , it seemed to kill the natural bent of the land and my heart. How could I avoid putting on a good show in these big buildings built explicitly for the show? Standing in front of hungry-for-validation-ears I wanted to validate myself, to justify my presence and their support of my ministry, or my mission. I asked the Lord to bless me with  Jabez-like provision. I also told the Lord to free me from the worry, the need to ask for money, even if the iron was hot and the shirt needing pressing. I had booked every possible weekend but one. It too got booked in the city of Ottawa on the very day we celebrate our country. It was like Jabez’s prayer was stretching the centuries over and upon us as we gawked with the tens of thousands for a sight of English royalty and being rewarded with a fleeting glimpse. My adopted daughter, who had spent all of 17 months of her 14 year-old life on Canadian soil, squealed with delight on the shoulders of her mother, “I am so glad I am Canadian!”

And there were the unlikely friendships that were conceived unnaturally in Thailand by unknown Canadians who had come to experience first-hand our lives. Instead of fading like the dandelion they took on a new shoot like the bamboo. Barbecues, boat rides, Wonderland, and horseback riding filled and thrilled our days. My family was blessed to live in the heart of Toronto the good for almost a month because of an unlikely friendship. And financial pressures were relieved when a Pastor asked his church near the beginning of our time to bless us so we could have fun without continually thinking about expenses.

Surprised by the response to our message. This could be really the better part of it all. After twenty years of spiritual and physical and mental labour in Thailand we had nothing really to boast about, save the grace of God. We spoke of our trials and failures and the dangers of entitlement. We shared of our changing perspective of what defines the good life. And then we closed the thirty minute presentation raising our Ebenezer to the sufficiency of God’s grace.  Our scars speak not of shame, but of faith’s survival and renewal. So many words of encouragement afterwards left us thinking that the time spent in trials and testings may have had a deeper purpose than we thought possible.

I told my family that I was sad that we could not stay longer and see the snow fall and the air explode from our lungs on a frosty day. I was falling in love not only with the rugged beauty but with the Canadian way. It was all so wonderful and the stories and memories of the summer of 2011 will keep us riding the wave for a while still. Thank you Canada for your land nd freedom. And thank you to the Pentecostal Assemblies, you have blessed me so much and remained my spiritual family for a long time.

Pat Answers #1 The Bah Ram Ewe Effect!

“Bah ram ewe, bah ram ewe, to your breed your fleece your clan be true! Sheep be true! Bah ram ewe.”

Coming to Thailand 20 years ago, I was sort of like Babe the Pig. I was a farang (westerner) in the far east. I really thought I had to become Thai in order to be effective. Problem was… just like Babe would never be a sheep, I could never become Thai. I didn’t even have the slightest clue about how exactly to ‘be Thai’. I thought that if I learned the language I could at least get started. I went to language school 4 hours a day for a year and a half. I learned all the consonants….

And I learned all the vowels…

And I learned how to put them together with the 5 tones so that I could read and write…

Oink.

I still didn’t know how to be Thai.

I ate the food (reluctantly at first, and always with a glass of iced water). I would attempt nonchalance as I ate some really weird foods, hoping to blend in with the locals. Sometimes I knew what I was eating. Sometimes I didn’t. Once a guy gave me a bowl of soup at church, and as I started to swish my spoon around I found little tiny heads… of pig foetuses. I didn’t eat that soup.

I could be a Canadian trying to be Thai, but I couldn’t be Thai.

Oink.

Then I swung the other direction and that’s where Babe and I differed. He persevered patiently, just being his own pig self among the sheep. Me on the other hand, I felt that if these people were going to keep laughing at my best efforts to be Thai, and if this culture was so impenetrable, then I would stubbornly dig my pig-headed Canadian heels in and all you Thai people, well, you could just fuggeddaboudit.

What did digging Canadian heels look like? Well… I started to make comparisons.

Canadian police

Royal Canadian Mounted Police, thank-you very much!

And Thai police…

Whenever I could I made a point to tell everybody how it was done in Canada… in Canada we sit on toilets, not squat. In Canada you don’t drive your motorbike on the sidewalk. You don’t drive down the wrong side of the street. In Canada we this and we that and blah blah blah.

But again, this was a futile exercise. We weren’t in Canada. We were in Thailand.

Oink.

Then, a shamefully long time later, and with a little help from my friends, I learned the Bah Ram Ewe effect; it’s a very good idea to be true to myself. It’s not photoshop or cutting certain parts of Thai culture  pasting them onto me.

Photoshopped & cut-and-pasted

It’s being myself within Thai culture.

Who was I? I was a (slightly angry -okay, very angry, and cinical) Canadian-born, tri-lingual, kartwheeler, who happened to live in Thailand.

Bah.

Living in any foreign city will contribute to the fabric of who you are. I’ve often described a cross-cultural experience like a French kiss; you can’t wipe it off, you can’t spit it out and you can’t pretend it never happened.

I guess I’ve tried to apply the Bah Ram Ewe to everything I do here too. I can share core values and principles of an organization, and I can follow certain people I respect, learn from mentors and leadership, however, if I mimic their methods then maybe it’s just cut-and-pasting. As I write it all out it sounds so simple and I feel embarrassed that it took me so long to learn this. But this is what I learned. What I do needs to come from who I am, not trying to do it like someone else. Just like my trying to be Thai, I found that trying methods of other successful leaders takes so much energy; you have to think about it all the time, like, is this what a sheep would do? is this what a sheep would say? and you have to keep going back to the book. It doesn’t come from within.

For the couple of years I got to hang out with Dave and Rebecca Gibbons in NewSong Bangkok I learned a lot. I watched the movies they had watched. I read the books they had read. I didn’t want to miss a single gathering.

Hanging out with Dave and Beka Gibbons

When they left I knew I couldn’t do things like Dave did. But I did work at allowing the core values of NewSong to be expressed from my own Bah Ram Ewe, from my own DNA.

Bah!

My Bah Ram Ewe is maternal, it’s urban, it comes from the French kiss of cross-cultural experiences in Bangkok, Paris, London, Toronto and Montreal. And the anger, well it’s still a part of it too only now I am consciously trying to direct it at injustice (and sometimes, in weak moments, my patient husband).

I’m still learning, humbly, and I don’t have all the answers down pat… tee hee… and that’s the part where I wrap this up with a clever conclusion that brings us back around to the top.

Bah Ram Ewe! To your DNA be true!