It has occurred to me that I haven't mentioned anything about Thamuang for a long time. The thing is there is not much happening. It is the season where the rice fields are just left to recover and attention turns to repairing, building and maintaining the houses and machinery. Many of the menfolk have been lucky to find building work in various temples or house building projects, but this work is often in far flung villages meaning they have to stay away from home for a few weeks. The womenfolk are making gardens or burning charcoal for the Thai kitchen cooking pots. Khamma is working hard burning all the bits of wood left over from the house building. She makes a fire then buries it in soil and lets it smoulder for a day or two after which it is transformed into charcoal. Easy as that but it is hard work and as far as I can gather the production isn't all that high. It is a traditional low cost (no cost) way to make fuel and even though she doesn't really need to, Khamma is very keen on maintaining this way of life.
She has started to make a vegetable garden in a corner plot at the front of the house. She will grow chili, coriander and that sort of thing to supplement the mushrooms and bamboo shoots. One her main problems is to stop the free range chickens from destroying her efforts. It is a relatively stress free life she leads! Thankfully Khamma is fully recovered from the illness she had in England.
Khamma's sister is getting married to Jean Luc from Toulouse in France this year. There has been lots of 'toing and froing' to Bangkok to get visas, but it looks like everything is getting sorted out. The wedding will take place in France and then there will be a Thamuang wedding towards the end of the year. Also one of Khamma's many nieces is getting married to a local young man in March and I have been asked to play in the band following my debut performance at Owerrrouse warming last July, but sadly I cannot be there. The groom is expected to pay a dowry or 'sinsot' to the bride's family. It is an old tradition and to be fair most of the money is spent on the party which can last all day and all night, but I expect some money will be kept back one way or another. The sinsot and buying gifts can add up to quite a bit, but worth every penny.
There have been some events at the school with the boy scouts putting on a gang show and Yo apparently had some part to play which was very good.
The weather has been blisteringly hot with no rain so I imagine by about mid-day everybody stops work and either sleeps or chats for the afternoon whilst lying in a hammock sipping tea.
I am looking forward to going to the village for a long weekend in a couple of weeks time. There is a just a hint in the Thai newspapers that the unrest seen towards the end of last year might resurrect itself again at the same time. Unbelievably it is the red shirts this time around that are unhappy with the current government and Thaksin is making stronger claims he is going to come back to Thai politics. First one side then the other each demanding the impossible. Still if they do close the airport for a couple of weeks I can make sure the chickens don't eat the plants in Khamma's garden.
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