On another day Khamma decided it was time to introduce me to farming - Thai style. We walked over to a field where her brother and sister in law were cutting some rice, which is probably the 'easiest' part of farming rice! When you think about ploughing in the mud and planting in waterlogged fields then I think the cutting part is probably the easiest - but it is also back breaking. There is an obvious art to cutting so that the back ache is, shall we say, at best moderate. But back ache is back ache which ever way you look at it and this a great way to get it, extreme or moderate - 'Up to YOU!'
Without being disrespectful to Buddhist teachings I can now see why suffering has a pivotal role in finding the path to enlightenment. There is plenty of suffering in farming rice!
Top picture shows how to get serious backache, and the bottom picture shows how to get moderate backache. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism state; To live we must suffer: Suffering is caused by craving: Suffering can be overcome: There is a path leading to the end of suffering. The rice growers noble truths are; To grow rice we must get back ache: Therefore backache is caused by rice growing: Rice growing cannot be overcome: The path leading to the end of backache is the path that leads home to the village, but no rice, therefore suffering!
Soon after the rice harvest expedition Khamma decided it was time for me to earn my keep and introduced me to the Thai way of growing potatoes. As a somewhat gardening novice my knowledge about growing potatoes is limited to just putting seedling potatoes into a composted vegetable garden, waiting a few months for them to grow, pulling them up and well, eating them. You've guessed it, not quite the same in Thailand.
I was a bit puzzled by the arrival of about five hundred 'sticks' each roughly three feet six inches in length. Khamma's mum (affectionately known as 'Mama') spent a whole day very carefully cutting them into lengths of about six or seven inches and even more carefully bundling them into piles of about thirty or forty sticks tied together with string. Hmmm! I thought. I wonder why she is being so methodical, but waited to see what would happen.
After breakfast (that's another story!) Khamma appeared in her finest potato planting gear and we set off for the potato field. The head cover is supposed to prevent the sun from making her natural dark and deep exotic, beautiful sun tan into an even darker, deeper one. (It is strange but many Thai ladies make great efforts (like the above picture) to prevent the sun from giving them a sun tan 'to die for'. They often use skin whitening creams to give the illusion they are pale. Khamma looks upon my pasty English skin tones with envy. Bliss!)
In the field I received tuition in the art of potato planting and then understood why Mama had cut the sticks so small and precisely bundled them. Each stick was planted upright, and there is a 'right side up' as opposed to an 'wrong side down'. I will have face Mama's 'yak yak' if I get it wrong. This was fairly hard work but great fun sliding about in the mud. Not as much suffering, until harvest.
Top picture - Raymond Joseph farang potato farmer. Bottom picture - Khamma, resplendent in finest potato growing attire!
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