Ya Wa Chon is Thai for Youth

These past few days delivered a long awaited, necessary change of pace. From Wednesday to Sunday, I ventured out of site with two teenage girls (ages 15 and 17) and 1 adult counterpart to a South Central province for the annual Peace Corps/Thailand Youth Development Conference. The Youth Development Conference is a Peace Corps sponsored event, which admits 15 Volunteers with 2 youth and 1 Thai counterpart each—totaling 45 participants. The focus included confidence development, planning for the future, relationship and team building. There were tons of fun games and opportunities to work together. It was a very well executed and refreshing event for Volunteers, youth, and counterparts to attend. Especially thanks to the hard work and dedication of the Peace Corps/Thailand Youth Global Initiative Group and Admin Staff who had literally been planning this event for a year. It also gave me a great outlet to be able to spend time and work with some kids in my community. Truth be told, it couldn’t have come a moment too soon. I was itching to get away. I hadn’t been doing much of anything since I finished my graduate studies in late August (hooray) and election excitement seemed to be intensifying by the hour. Being away from the 3-6 allowed me to forgo the climax of the local elections—election day. I did however get a whiff of the aftermath.

At the Conference...

Thai kids and teenagers are very different than their American counterparts. This became glaringly obvious at the conference. The Youth at the conference were amazingly behaved, attentive, insightful, and friendly. Not that American teens can’t be these things but this was to an extreme magnitude. The way that they came together and worked as an intimate group in such a short amount of time was truly a sight to see. It was quite an experience to witness the flying of words, thoughts, ideas, feelings, and expressions amongst the kids. All of us agreed that these kids were more apt and mature in personal development and assurance than we were at their age. To even get us in a room among other kids from different schools and ages to work and play together at such a level would have been unheard of. The other Volunteers and I recollected unruly teenage years. We all remember going through very elusive and tough phases as teenagers being faced with figuring out our own identities, true friendships, personal goals. I personally recall very tumultuous times of trying to figure out how my beliefs/goals in life fit into the social fabric of family and society. Not to mention how I got to where I was and figure out where I was going. Lots of question and not enough answers.

Individuality vs. Collectivity

I had a friend recently point out a significant difference between the average American teenager and the average Thai teenager. He noted that Thais have more of a sense of self and identity—not in a personal way but collectively. That is to say from a very young age the collective society has been reinforcing their identity and how it functions as part of the group. Therefore, when they reach the stage of adolescence, they already have a sense of self and they aren’t left to seek for it on their own (as in the way an American teenager might experience confusion and identity crisis). Inherently, American culture is more individually focused than Thai culture. It’s all about understanding your personal beliefs, life goals, priorities, tastes, abilities, routines, likes, dislikes, capabilities, etc. Thai culture is more oriented toward how an individual can and should contribute to the collective—whether that collective consist of immediate family, the village, the classroom, or group of friends. Of course, both have varying degrees of collective and individual qualities. American’s can have collective qualities and Thais can have individual qualities. In the rural community where I live, society definitely sways toward collectivity. People do everything together and there in no real sense of personal space. People move in and out of space freely and share many of their possessions with one another. Often times, children will live with their parents until they marry and on into the early years of marriage. Yes, this includes adult children even in their 30’s and 40’s.

When I explained to my neighbors and co-workers that I hadn’t really lived with my family or parents since I was 18, they were a bit bewildered. There were so many questions and concerns. First, it was...why (on earth) would you live away from home starting at the tender age of 18?! Where did you live? How did you get by on your own? Who cooked for you and did your laundry? Who took care of you when you were sick? Weren’t you lonely?! It ended up being a good opportunity to give my Thai friends some good insight into American culture and lifestyle. I explained it’s common for children to move out of their parent’s house once they graduate high school. At a certain point in life, something in our society dictates that it’s time to be on your own. So, we go to college, move away, get jobs, travel, date. In one way or another we test the waters. In a certain manner, I’ve come to realize that loneliness for an American may be naturally different than loneliness for a Thai—or for my villagers anyways. If I’m around people I can befriend, connect with at some level, co-exist with, and communicate with for a given amount of time in one day then I don’t have a need to feel lonely. Sometimes, I need less than that. I could probably go days without seeing a person and not feel lonely. But, I’ve learned for many people in my community, even leaving the area for 1 or 2 days by themselves is difficult because they feel uneasy and alienated outside the village/kinship network that is in constant motion. It’s a comfortable mechanism of survival. Given this mentality, they were very amazed to hear about my lack of loneliness here. Although, they get it. They understand that I come from somewhere else and think differently. Which, really helps them make more sense of that I enjoyed living in a house by myself and having some alone time. Now, if I could only convince them that I also come from a place where we can eat a meal and feel satisfied without eating 3 piping hot bowls of white rice a day!

In Thai culture, things are not cut and dry. While it is true that some people do leave to go to college, they still return to be a part of the household and when they are done, many move back permanently to live and start families. It’s not surprising, then, that virtually everyone in my village (made up of about 1000 people) are in some way related. Even more phenomenal, is the fact that these lines of kinship have remained in the area for probably hundreds of years. The villagers here are literally living on their ancestors land. Pretty cool in it’s own way. They have a strong sense of identity, community, and heritage. Something, I think, I can learn a great deal as I get to know the people better. Once, I was talking to a teenage girl and I was telling her that the system of community here is very different than in America. For instance, I already know my neighbors here and the insides of their houses better than I do the neighbors I had for 10 years in America. They also know me better. She said to me that she believes that Thailand may be behind in economical development that Westerners have already mastered but the development of compassion and community in Thailand is something people here have achieved at a greater magnitude than the West. I’ll be chewing on that for a while.