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Article
Fall 2002
By Brendan Conley
Published in the Asheville Global Report
'FROM THE EARTH, A VILLAGE IS BORN'
Mun Yuen Village, Thailand, Nov. 7 - In the mountains of northeastern
Thailand, a quiet revolution is taking place. A diverse group of people
who came together to construct a sustainable village have found that
they are building much more. The group includes Buddhist monks, Thai
students and professionals, villagers displaced by development projects,
and farang – Westerners – several hundred people in all. They’re
spending a month in rural Chaiyaphum province, building Mun Yuen, a
sustainable, self-sufficient community, and the nation’s first
earthen village. "We are building a community, not just houses,"
said Thanai Uthaipattrakoon. He quit his job as a conventional architect
to teach – and learn – Natural Building. "I want people
to know that they can design and build their own home," he said.
As he spoke, a group of saffron-robed monks passed by with wheelbarrows
full of earth. They deposited their load in a shallow pit where young,
sunburned North Americans and Europeans joined Thai students mixing
clay mortar with their bare feet. Above them, a local villager balanced
atop a wall of adobe as he wiggled the last earthen brick into place.
"This is the way to learn about Natural Building," said Uthaipattrakoon,
looking around. "You learn by doing, by really experiencing it.
At first I thought my role would be to help design the buildings, but
now I am really getting my hands dirty, working the hardest I have ever
worked." Uthaipattrakoon smiled as he looked up at the first half-finished
building, a community kitchen and meeting hall. "This building
is beautiful," he said. "But in a way, the structure is not
as important as the knowledge and spirit that we are building together."
Bahn Din
As Thailand moves further down the path of Western development, the
need for alternatives is becoming hard to ignore. Bangkok, one of the
world’s most polluted cities, is a sprawling, haphazard metropolis
with massive daily traffic jams and few open spaces. Corruption pervades
the country’s military-dominated government, and IMF-sponsored
mega-development projects are extracting Siam’s natural resources,
leaving bad air and water behind. As the country becomes deforested,
its famed biodiversity is rapidly eroding.
For Janell Kapoor, one alternative is obvious: build with mud. "I
think we all have an awareness that the world we’re living in doesn’t
make sense," said Kapoor, an Asheville, North Carolina-based Natural Building instructor. "Whether it’s being stuck in commuter
traffic jams, having no time to play with your kids, or all the violence
on television," we all realize that something is not right."
For Kapoor, these imbalances are symptoms of the accelerating spread
of capitalism and consumerism – the process of corporate globalization,
and our own willingness to go along with it. Its a test of the times
we live in now. "The work we’re doing here is part of what
you might call a localization movement," said Kapoor. "Look
at a conventionally built house in the US or Europe, and just try to
track every part of that house – where the materials came from,
how they were created, how all the machines and tools were made. By
the time you’re done, you’ll have traveled the world, strip-mined
mountains, clear-cut forests, exploited workers, and polluted the earth,
all to build a house. "On the other hand, look at how we’re
building these houses," said Kapoor. "We’re using clay
from right next to the site, bamboo and rice husks harvested nearby,
rainwater, and hand tools. Everything is local. The irony is that the
only thing not from here is us, those of us who've flown the thousands
of miles to get here. It's important for us to look at this, too, and
see how we can make the most of our experience. What can we do to carry
this on when we return home?"
At least three construction techniques are being used here to create
bahn din – mud houses. Adobe bricks are made by mixing earth, rice
husks, and water. Wooden forms are used to shape the mud into bricks,
which are left to dry in the hot, arid climate. A thinner mix is used
for mortar. Cob construction is different: a thick mud-straw mixture
is sculpted by hand in layers to form walls. The wattle and daub method
is used to fill in walls between wooden posts or columns of bricks:
a weave of split bamboo, branches, or mud-coated straw is plastered
with a mud finish. Here in Mun Yuen, thatch roofs provide shelter from
sun and rain.
The villagers here were displaced from their former homes and faced
with building anew. They wanted to avoid contributing to deforestation,
and they wanted to build simply and cheaply, to avoid adding to their
debt. After Kapoor led an earthen building workshop at Wongsanit Ashram
near Bangkok last year, the villagers decided that bahn din structures
were the answer.
The Struggle
For Noi Singna, one of the villagers here, the road to Mun Yuen has
been long and hard. It began for her 13 years ago, with the construction
of Lam Khan Choo dam. The huge government development project would
destroy her home."Our life before the dam was good," said
Singna. "We supported ourselves by fishing and collecting bamboo
shoots and vegetables from the forest. "Plua Chamnan, 70, also
lived in the vicinity of the dam. "The government told us that
when they built the dam they would also build an irrigation canal. They
said we would be able to grow more rice than ever before," she
said. "But this was not true. They never built the canal, and the
whole area was flooded, so nothing could grow." Faced with the
destruction of their livelihood, the homeless villagers traveled to
Bangkok, where they intended to press the Prime Minister for compensation.
When he refused to meet with them, they organized a peaceful invasion,
scaling the walls of the Parliament building. Riot police repressed
this demonstration, knocking protesters from the walls to the ground,
and beating and tear-gassing the villagers, including children and elderly
people. In the aftermath, 225 protesters spent 3 days in jail. Still
homeless, the displaced people set up camp in front of Parliament, fasting
and demonstrating for eight months. They were joined by people displaced
by two other dam projects, and supporters organized by the group Assembly
of the Poor. Finally, following a change in government, the protesters
were offered a loan to purchase land. "The government gave us a
7 million baht [approximately $160,000] loan to purchase this 570-rai
[220 acre] area of land," said Singna. "We decided to set
up a cooperative to accept the loan," she added. "This gave
us more legitimacy in the eyes of the government, and it made our group
stronger. As individuals we had no power, but we learned through our
protest that collectively we had power."
The struggle did not end with the purchase of the land. A forest fire
burned the area recently, one that the villagers believe was intentionally
set. Illegal logging takes place on national forest land nearby, and
the loggers perceive the villagers as witnesses to their crime. When
an observation tower was built at Mun Yuen for stargazing, loggers burned
it down, believing that it was being used to spy on them. With the arrival
of dozens of volunteer builders and the construction of the first clay
walls, the village has reached a turning point. "It’s such
a warm feeling having all these people here, working and exchanging
knowledge," said Singna. This community is unique in Thailand.
It is the first in which the residence have intentionally chosen to
establish a collective, democratic model of self-reliance, rather than
following the rush toward 'modernization.' The village is already serving
as a demonstration and learning center. It is open to students of ecology
and Natural Building as well as anyone else who is interested. The residents
have begun a reforestation project, planting thousands of fruit and
hardwood trees. Mun Yuen seems certain to live up to its name –
the words mean "long lasting."
The Spirit
Phra Sutape Chinawaro, a monk who is teaching Buddhist meditation to
the builders here, knows something about struggle. As a member of the
Communist Party in the 1970s, he joined a guerrilla army to fight for
a Marxist revolution in Thailand. After the revolutionaries reconciled
with the government, Chinawaro worked as a secular activist, and then
became ordained as a monk, to work for change in a much different way.
"I discovered that if people use violent means, they will never
be done with fighting," said Chinawaro. Peaceful change, he said,
begins with looking inward. "If you want freedom from capitalism,
you need freedom of mind," he said. "If you want a peaceful
community, you must have
a peaceful heart." The idea that inner change is necessary for
social change is at the heart of engaged Buddhism, a philosophy that
pervades the project here. Indeed, one of its foremost proponents, Sulak
Sivaraksa, a Thai social critic, founded Wongsanit Ashram, which supports
the building project. Sivaraksa, author of Seeds of Peace, has been
imprisoned and exiled for his criticism of the Thai government. He promotes
a philosophy of social change that is radically opposed to corporate
globalization and "the religion of consumerism," and deeply
rooted in the Buddhist ethic of self-awareness and mindfulness.
Buddhism is central to Thai culture, but the spirit seems to have affected
the farang here too. Far from the Western missionary attitude, the foreigners
are here to learn. "I’m still detaching from a very materialist,
consumerist way of life," said Eliana Uretsky, of Berkeley, California.
"Here, I feel like I’m learning how to be a human being."
"I’m gaining a much greater presence of mind about my role
in my own community," said Julie Covington, of Asheville, North
Carolina. "In the past, that was a passive role. Now I feel a need
to be active, to pass on this sense of community." For Katherine
Foo, a Wellesley, Massachusetts resident now volunteering at Wongsanit
Ashram, "Buddhism provides a philosophical framework for activist
work" – a spiritual motivation that is missing from secular
organizing. Phra Chinawaro believes that some great motivation is necessary
to stop the current large-scale exploitation of people and the earth.
"The American capitalist empire is infecting the whole world,"
he said. The struggle of displaced people against government corruption
and the building of sustainable communities are sings of hope, he said,
but the journey toward peace and justice begins in each individual.
Indeed, the infectious consumerism that drives corporate globalization
is rooted in individual desire, multiplied by cultural and economic
forces. Buddhism, with its ethic of selflessness and non-attachment,
offers a way out. Seated on the ground, Chinawaro glanced up at the
adobe wall towering above him and reflected for a moment. "There
are people who know the difference between the bad society and the good,
and they have the ability to choose, to act," the monk said. "They
have a great responsibility, and I place my hope in them."
Natural Building projects in Thailand and the US are ongoing.
For more information, email janell@kleiwerks.com
or visit http://www.sulak-sivaraksa.org.
For more information on the resistance to corporate globalization, visit
http://www.agrnews.org.
The author can be reached at brendanconley@lycos.com.
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