Welcome to Robmoyung Slum

What comes to your mind when you think of the term slum? Usually (to me at least) this word conjures up images of marginalization, squalor, or even hopelessness. Technically a slum is something that fails to qualify for one of the five following categories, access to improved water, access to improved sanitation, security of tenure, durability of housing, and sufficient living area. Yet, media and preconceived notions tend to purvey a very specific image of what a slum is. My experience in the slum, however, gave me a far different picture of what it means to be a slum community and what these communities can achieve.

I stayed in Robmoyung. The community had several factors that would qualify it as slum. First they do not have access to water and either had to use a well for water to bathe in and pay for water from a nearby village to drink. They also do not have access to electricity so they had to get it from a generator or neighbor. Yet this community had made great progress as they had secured the right to rent the land they lived on as opposed to living there “illegally.” This allows residents to live without the fear of being suddenly displaced (although the lease is only for three years). The lease was obtained from the State Railway of Thailand (SRT). SRT had been losing money and had the opportunity to sell this land to much higher paying businesses but instead were convinced to respect the rights of the community and give the deed to the community members currently living on the land. This is not the only success of the community. CODI also gave 30 households 20,000 Baht (approximately $600). In fact, we had our exchange with the community right after they decided who would receive the money, so we got to see the excitement and happiness that exists a community successfully progressing. The rest of the household would receive the money later. Furthermore, there is plan for the government to install power lines and grant the community access to water.

On a tour of other neighboring slum communities, we were exposed to even more successes. All had deeds to their land, and many of the communities did not resemble slum communities at all. Interestingly, the various communities looked like a timeline. Since the different communities received money at different times they were at different stages of development. Robmoyung was one of the last communities to receive money, so it was one of the least developed. Still by looking at the other communities, one could see the bright future and possibility of development for Robmoyung.

Much of the credit for this success must be given to the 4 region slum network. This is a movement throughout Thailand to help people get housing rights. By percentage, the Khon Kaen network is most successful. Nine out of the ten communities that have joined the network in Khon Kaen have received leases, while the tenth community only joined three months ago. Through successful organization, The Four Regions Slum Network has successful gained rights and funding for their communities. They look to continue their success through work the government and government organizations such as CODI.

This trip to the slums was striking for me because it revealed two important things. First, be careful about your preconceived notions. The slum communities I saw were far different than what I expected and places of progress. Second, these successful slum communities showed the power of organization. By working together among themselves and working with The Four Region Slum Network, these communities were able to achieve great successes. The development and progress of these communities shows the power of success organization and the potential it has to create change.

Matt Levin
University of Pennsylvania

Should the Government Be Required to Give Landfill Workers Safety Equipment?

At our exchange with landfill community members, I was surprised to learn that the problem with the village wasn’t that they desired different jobs, but that they wanted their job of scavenging in Khon Kaen city’s landfill to be safer. They wanted the government to simply provide them with boots, face masks and gloves. While this seemed an easy solution, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Is that really the government’s responsibility?”

Don’t get me wrong- the scavengers are doing a huge service to the city by picking out plastic bottles, aluminum cans, coffee cups and a great deal of other trash. In fact, they have saved the landfill eight years of staying open by recycling all of this waste that other people have decided to simply throw out. However, this job is their choice. They enjoy their job because they can work whenever they have the need or the desire. They don’t have to meet certain quotas or take orders from a boss. They have freedom. Also, when asked if they would try to find another kind of job when the landfill does eventually close, they replied that they will follow the trash wherever it goes. Because this is their choice to do this work, how can you make the argument that the government is responsible for providing them safety equipment? If I decided to go off on the street and pick up litter, would it be up to the government to provide me with a trash spear?

While it is the government’s job to keep their people safe, it is also impossible for the government to cater to every small group. If every small group did come to the government with their demands, there is no way that they all could be met. If the government did accept this kind of job and legitimize their work by giving them safety equipment, would the scavengers then have to be required to pick out a certain amount of trash to be able to keep these benefits? As of now, if the government fulfilled their demands, who is to say that the scavengers would continue working as hard and saving as much time for the landfill? If the scavengers accepted the equipment, it seems that they would have some sort of implied responsibility, and would thus lose some of the complete freedom that they have now.

So is the real responsibility of the government to provide safety equipment for a group who chooses to do this or is the responsibility of the government to provide more avenues for unskilled workers? It is a very gray area. While the workers say that they would like to continue doing what they are doing, is this because that is the only thing they know, or because they really enjoy the benefits of freedom that much? It is hard to imagine that anyone would prefer to work in a landfill, digging through other people’s trash, no matter what the advantages are. Nearly all of the villagers who live in the community at present came to the landfill following their parents, and grew up doing this job as a child. In an area where opportunities were scarce, they created a job sector that didn’t exist before. This having been said, if new, safer jobs were created, would these people take them? And if they didn’t, would this be because they didn’t want to give up the advantages that they have now or because they would have to change their skill set to something they have never experienced before?

So this simple question is really not so simple. Ideally, yes, the government would provide these workers who are doing this great service a few things to make their lives a little easier and a lot safer. However, where is the line between government involvement and autonomy? Can you ask for something from the government without giving up a little of your own personal freedom? Would this just be an easy fix for a very complex issue? Would it be legitimizing work that is so ridiculously unsafe even with the simple request of boots, gloves and a face mask? Would this lead to government responsibility if a catastrophe did happen? There are so many questions with no right answers. The only thing for certain is that everything has a cost.

Jenny McGinnis
Western Michigan University

Tons of Trash and the Lives of the Marginalized

The drive from the university to Khon Kaen city landfill was one of nervous laughter and uncertainly of what lay ahead. We were to spend two days living in a community of 220 people who live directly next to the city’s landfill. The villagers live next to the landfill because they are scavengers; they search through the trash to find recyclables. The first day we took a tour around the huge area led by the community leader who explained how the landfill worked and what everyday life was like. The next morning I awoke at 6AM thinking about the trash that we would soon be scavenging through to find recyclables and other things of value.

A group of students and I prepared for the dirty job ahead with long pants, boots, gloves, hats, and scarves to cover our faces from the smelly fumes. Many of the workers only have boots and long pants. We were given rakes and baskets for the valuables we would discover and headed down the road. We arrived to find many people already working on the landfill, as many start the day at sunrise because of the cooler temperatures. A full-loaded garbage truck arrived and we all attacked the trash looking for plastic, glass, cardboard, and electronics. Diapers, rotting food, plastic food wrappers, toys, shoes, DVDs, toothbrushes, clothes, paper, and purses were some of the things found during our relatively short time scavenging. I thought to myself; this toothpaste or this plastic potato chip bag could have easily been mine.

The life of a scavenger is dangerous because you can easily step on glass or a needle from the bags of medical waste that arrive every day. Most of the scavengers have at least one story of a time they were seriously injured from something they stepped on while working in the landfill. Hazardous gas from the massive trash pile and contaminated ground water are part of everyday life. During the rainy season they drink rain water but during the dry season they have to buy water because of the dangerous chemicals in the groundwater. The community water for showering and cleaning is pumped about 100 feet from the edge of the landfill. They have been told there is arsenic in the water but were never told the levels of arsenic and what other chemicals the water contains. They keep working here because this is the only thing they know how to do and they are comfortable with this kind of lifestyle. During our exchange, I asked “What do you want for your children?” and they immediately replied that they want their children to be educated so they don’t have to work at the landfill like their parents.

During our exchange with the community we learned that the current community of 60 households started with a few individuals who started picking through the city’s trash and eventually moved to the landfill to live permanently. The economic downturn has made life more difficult for the community for two reasons; a decrease in consumption and therefore trash and increased unemployment which had led to more scavengers working at the landfill. More scavengers means increased competition in the landfill. However I was glad to hear that the villagers have an agreement not to steal or grab objects discovered while working alongside each other.

Before the economic downturn, villagers could earn 30,000 baht a person per month ($900USD). Today they earn 5,000-6,000 baht a person per month($150-$180USD). The economic downturn means less consumption and therefore less waste but also the price of recyclables has decreased as well. Today they earn 10 baht/kg of plastic water bottles or 28 baht/kg for glass bottles. Today most villagers work 15 hours a day and do not have time free time, but it wasn’t always this way. Before the economic downturn they were able to work fewer hours which left them with more free time to spend time with friends and family as well as organize together in an attempt to try to get equipment like gloves and boots from the local government municipality.

Modern capitalism coupled with consumerism encourages us to buy more stuff to make ourselves happy and to make our lives more comfortable without thought of the negative consequences. It is expected that we all take part in the massive consumption that depletes the planet’s resources. After we put something in the trash we never see it again; but it goes somewhere and the scavengers of Khon Kaen landfill will be the last humans to see it before it is buried under the tons of new trash that arrive every day.

I took pictures at the landfill even though I wasn’t sure if it was morally right to take photographs of the workers in the landfill. I did take pictures because I knew I would never have an opportunity like this again but I wasn’t sure if I would ever show the pictures to anyone. I'm worried that people in America will look at these pictures and think to themselves "those dirty poor people." This people have been marginalized by powerful external forces like globalized economies, government policy, capitalism, poor education, etc. One of your friends or family could easily have been born into a landfill community like this anywhere in the world. One billion of the world's population lives in slums and any of us could have been born there instead of a wealthy family in America. So think of the things you throw away everyday and don't take your comfortable life for granted.

Brodie Henry
Champlain College

Thinking Self-Reliance

Our first unit brought us to Yasothorn Province, into the homes and rice paddies of our host families and the lives of people working for the AAN, Thailand’s Alternative Agriculture Network. We met with organizers and consumers of Yasothorn city’s growing green market, the president of the AAN and its regional coordinators, villagers and farmers. Aside from the foremost goal of assisting farmers through the transition to organic farming, a repeated theme was the hope to bridge the urban with the rural, and to spread access to safe food past the villagers who have already seen the promises of food sovereignty.

Ubon Yoowah is the AAN’s regional coordinator for Yasothorn. One of the things he said to conclude our exchange was that to foster community self-reliance, we need urban people who are aware of the situations for rural people, and rural people who want to connect with urban communities. It left me thinking, how do we build this bridge?

One of the AAN’s goals is to find this connection between Thailand’s urban and rural communities. And the green market in Yasothorn has made a lot of progress towards that goal, by starting to introduce city eaters to rural growers. But could there be a deeper connection between these two sides of their food system?

My host father in Yasothorn is a wiseman in our village. His organic rice paddies, divided by papaya, passion fruit and mango trees, rows of herbs and carefully chosen nitrogen fixing roots, are seen as an example of ga sayd pa som pa san, integrated agriculture. He teaches farmers in his village about seed saving, and spreads encouraging advice about the switch to organic farming to his more hesitant neighbors. He is sharing the wisdom of his ancestors. He is on the committee that started Yasothorn’s growing green market, and values a direct connection with the people that eat his food. He doesn’t think it’s right to grow food that isn’t safe for consumers to eat.

Right now he sells them a safer final product, but they don’t watch it grow. What would it mean for my host father to teach people in Yaso city what he teaches his fellow farmers? The rural producer could teach a lot to the urban consumer. What if one of those things was how the urban consumer could become his own producer? Members of the AAN told us all week that they hoped safe food could connect the city with the farm, and that they wanted to get youth involved in the movement. I walked away from the green market dreaming of an urban garden at the nearby school, tended by the students guided by the wisdom of farmers like my host father.

As high a value as I’ve always placed on a certain “worldliness,” and the importance of learning from other cultures’ perspectives, I was caught off guard this week by how strong my urge was to rush back home and work towards these connections in the States. At home, the mechanisms are growing through which we are weaving the rural into the urban: CSAs and farmers markets, even a few rooftop gardens and urban farms. But just as the year-old green market in Yaso made me think, even as it brings organic food to the attention of most city folk for the first time, is farmers selling their produce to those in the city a reciprocal enough relationship to connect the rural with the urban?

I find myself anxious to get back home and plant vegetables on pavement, bringing urban communities together by sharing what it feels like to be so connected to your food. For the next four months, though, I am learning what self-reliance might really mean in Thailand. To have seen (and tasted) the pride my host family felt in the food they grow and share, I think that on their weekly trip to the city market, they could bring a lot more than their food – they could bring the lessons of such a self-sufficient livelihood.

In Yaso and other cities, what is a farmer’s role in spreading the word about organic, self-grown food? For the AAN’s goal to bridge urban and rural, planting gardens in vacant parking lots sounds pretty fitting into the movement towards an alternative agriculture. I want to go back to Yasothorn to bring my host family, their compost, and their food wisdom to the city, to plant an urban garden that could help the green market teach the lessons of safe food to both the rural and the urban communities it feeds.

Maina Handmaker
Bowdoin College

Are agricultural subsidies the way to go?

In the U.S, I’ve come to know organic consumers as somewhat of food elitists. Sure maybe they’re healthier for it. But after watching the type of customers that stroll down the aisles of Whole Foods Market, I can’t agree that they are aware of anything more than the price they are paying for it. Being caught in the act of buying organic food, what I call “I’m better than you” food, reflects the power U.S. subsidies has on not just the producer side but consumer side of agriculture.

I never really thought whether this was the same behavior of consumers in Thailand or not; I more or less assumed it would be at least in comparing consumers between Bangkok and Isaan. But I realized through a week of exchanges with Northeastern farmers in Thailand that it’s clearly not the same. In an exchange with some members of Yasothorn’s first Organic Green Market, I felt it important to bring up the question of price dynamics and the difficulty poor Thai consumers may have in switching to buying a more expensive product. Apparently, my question was completely irrelevant as they informed me that organic vegetables are priced no differently than chemically-grown vegetables, sometimes even cheaper.

Later in the week we had another exchange with contract farmers at a sugarcane farm. Again, I felt a necessary question was something along the lines of “do you get paid differently for selling the company organic sugarcane versus chemically-grown sugarcane?” They quickly responded that despite all the terrible agreements they knowingly and unknowingly signed for in their contracts, the company had no preference whatsoever on the manner in which their product was grown so long as the appropriate yield was received.

So here’s the explanation from the perspective of a farang (white person) working with farmers in Isaan: The only reason prices are actually different in the States is due to the agricultural subsidies which create artificially low prices for large-scale cash crops. Without the aid of premiums, organic farmers are forced to sell at a higher price, but in doing so reflect the true costs of producing. Fair enough, I learned something new, still shocked.

My reflection over this unit brought back these thoughts of America’s agricultural subsidies. I really feel that increasing consumer demand would be a successful attempt in expanding the amount of organic farmland in Thailand. Furthermore, I want to think that a way to do that would be by incorporating subsidies in which Thailand could take advantage of promoting organic food as a better product and eventually push for a more organically grown, environmentally-safe agriculture industry- assuming consumers begin demanding it the way in which American consumers do. But at the same time, it could so easily take a turn for the worst too, as I have observed in the States. Take for instance, the latest push for Fair Trade products in the U.S. Another very interesting fact that I learned in my time here was that in order to get a certification label for a “Fair Trade” product, the company need only 2% of its product to actually be certified, a percentage lowered from 5% after Starbuck’s fought it down.

Although Fair Trade is not necessarily associated with organic, certainly it relates to my point in that regardless of the benefits in increasing consumer demand for organic food, it creates the potential for companies to exploit that demand by manipulating well-intentioned policies to fit their own agenda, thereby throwing out the purpose of such policies in the first place. So then how should Thailand or any country really, go about appropriately convincing its citizens that the way to farm is organic?

Kara Heumann
Indiana University