It is Saturday and I just got back from a 5:00 am run in Chiang Mai with one of our legal studies interns, Gillian Gough, from Saskatchewan, Canada. The run was an easy slow paced 7.5 miler (or 12km), which we began at 5:00am, a little before the sun rose. Having experienced a wonderful cross cultural and international “potluck” dinner last night at the Chiang Mai BABSEA Volunteer House, my belly was filled from the evening before, so going slow in this early morning was a grand idea. Still the run was scenic, watching the sun come up, the markets being set in motion and the monks walking often in single file, collecting alms.I ran with Gillian, who I must say is an incredibly open minded, budding future lawyer, filled with the desire to explore the social justice side of life and the marvels and frustrations that this brings. She is poignant in her questions and perceptive in her analysis of situations and people and she is wonderfully kind and considerate. She has been a class A running partner as well. Her discipline and determination are inspiring. Recently, I had the pleasure to witness her burst through her maximum running distance wall of 10km. Together we are slowly increasing our abilities week by week.
On this morning, as we ran along I purposely kept my IPod music slow to allow my thoughts to develop and not wander as they usually do. This allowed me to think about the evening before and our BABSEA potluck dinner which simply required one email to go out to all of our interns in Chiang Mai at the beginning of the week and four days later we had an actual feast of food representing countries across the globe.
In just mentioning a few of the many dishes, I must say that the Vietnamese spring rolls were to die for; the Thai pork sausage salad a spicy delight; the Polish platski (what we Jews grew up eating and calling potato latkas) were crunchy on the outside and light in the middle; the Louisiana chicken and sausage gumbo made by my nephew Jason (his first solo cooking meal) was rich in diverse flavors; the Russian omelet was “cloud in the sky” fluffy and light; one of my favorites, Lao pork larb, was just spicy enough to satisfy my tongue and roof of my mouth; and then there was the rice pudding, apple/mango crumble, the American bar-b-que’d chicken; one cannot forget the lightly breaded and juicy chicken fingers; the Japanese miso soup; the potatoes in curry; and so many others epicurean delights.
Yet the food was not the most delicious part of the meal, and this is what I thought about around mile 2.5 of this morning’s run. What I was really feasting on last night was watching the diners themselves, coming from Thailand, Laos, USA, Canada, Poland, Russian, France, Britain, Australia, and Vietnam, all on the same legal studies program and all laughing, cooking, eating, joking and just thrilled to be together.
Many of them during the dinner were still deeply involved in discussing the previous night’s event of going to a Male Sex Club with our Partner Organization MPlus, to do HIV/AIDS outreach prevention. The conversation progressed from utter amazement, to uneasiness, to the challenging of societal gender roles and paradigms, to down right sadness and even some outrage at the “lack” of free choice faced by the performer/workers from the night before.
So these were my thoughts and at mile 3, or kilometer 4.8, I thought about how I sat on the floor last night, just observing the interaction and thinking “how did all this happen?” How did it come to be that all these people would be here as a result of something I and our BABSEA team was so fortunate to be a part of? What experiences would these people carry away from this time of their lives? Would the experience positively shape them to go on and better their own world and the world we all live in? I also just kept thinking about the food they were eating and what this could mean. Just about a half a mile later, I recalled a question that someone asked me at the Global Alliance for Justice Education 5th Worldwide Conference in Manila, Dec 2008. An inquiring mind wanted to know how BABSEA actually builds bridges and gets Community/Clinical Legal Education programs to work together with institutions throughout the region. The answer I usually gave as to a core method was “food.” I explained to a conference of legal educators that we helped organize from over 50 countries that when you get people from different countries and backgrounds to eat together and actually cook together, this one action develops a bond often making the achievement of many other objectives easy.
Last night was no exception and in fact illustrated the point pretty fully and it was clear that “bridging” was happening all over the place.So, rounding mile 4 this morning I thought back to a different type of experience I had this week and one that occurred during a run just 3 days before. Just a few days back I finished work around 5:30 pm, an early day, and shot home to quickly get in a 30 minute workout and before returning to the BABSEA Volunteer House for Human Rights Movie Night. Greg and Justyna, our Polish Interns, were doing a presentation on the History of Poland and the Solidarity Human Rights movement. I needed to get in my scheduled run and I only had 30 minutes so I jumped on the treadmill, raised the incline level up a few notches, and began running an approximate 9 minute mile, trying to knock out a quick 3, trying and trying to stick to my 18 week running plan.
I hopped on to the machine, which is quickly becoming “soul mate”, synchronized my IPod-Nike pedometer and began to run at a relatively brisk speed for me. I was stunned that after one mile, I was not in any way breathless nor tired and I felt good, running along, listening to music and watching the news on the television above my head. It seemed that my training plan was actually working and I was experiencing the positive results.
It was then, a little after 1 mile, that a news story came on about a Russian Human Rights worker that was just killed. Her name was Natalia Estermirova and she was known for being an outright critic of the Kremlin and the ongoing human rights abuses going on in war torn Chechnya. She was kidnapped in broad day light and then shot and killed. This was absolutely a story I wanted to hear and understand more about so I took out my earphones and began to watch the news and even turn up the volume of the television a tad to hear better over the hum of the running machine I was steadily pounding on.
At this moment I was asked by a woman next to me if she could have the television remote as she wanted to change the channel. Although I was very interested in what I was watching, I felt that I only had about 15 minutes left to go and that it would have been selfish of me to say no. I also figured she wanted to watch the news in Thai language.I passed the remote to her and waited for her to change the channel.Little did I suspect that I would next be seeing on the screen the Chuck Norris 1980’s action movie Braddock-Missing in Action III. The movie is about an ex-Vietnam veteran from the USA, Chuck Norris, who goes back to Vietnam to “rescue” a bunch of Anglo-Asian children, “trapped”, according to the movie. The children were just one more result of the aftermath of what I grew up being told was the “saving the world for democracy” war that occurred between the USA and Vietnam, with the USA on the “correct” side of the fence.
Was I hoping to have the news back on and learn more about Natalia Estermirova? You bet I was. Was it going to happen? Not a chance. So I adopted the mai pen rai (never mind) mindset and felt that I would be entertained in a different way for another fourteen minutes by Chuck.
Now this was a movie I originally just loved for what it was and what it was not. It was a pure action movie, lots of kicking, punching and blowing things up. It is a movie to sit and veg out to while mindlessly chomping on popcorn. That was the best thing about the film but it was really best not to think deeper into it because when one does, it reveals so many dark aspects of how many of us fail to build bridges but instead look to abolish borders, even when some borders are beneficial. I have been talking about this movie somewhat over the past year, which is when I think I saw a snippet of it last. I have been talking about it since that time because I realized something that was clearly not apparent to me in 1988, when the movie came out and I was 21 years old. At that time I had very little geographical understanding of much beside where New York and Florida was.
So what was the movie about? This is the deal. The final scene of the movie, which I was fortunate enough to be watching, has Chuck Norris crash landing near the Vietnam border, with a plane filled with children. The plane is shot down and everyone survives with Chuck (aka Braddock) having the duty to get them over the border, out of Vietnam, and to the safety of the neighboring country where U.S. army troops were waiting for this daring rescue to happen, and for Braddock to continue to fulfill his destiny of being the hero that he was meant to be.
Ok, so this is easy to understand and maybe stomach, if you believe this is how things are or were.,
What has disturbed me about this movie since seeing this same exact scene last year was the fact that Senior Chuck was trying to get across a bridge with the “evil” Vietnamese on one side and the wonderful country of Thailand on the other side. On the Thailand side the US troops were clearly invited guests of the Thai government and supportive of Braddock’s activities.
The problem with all this is lies in the fact that Vietnam and Thailand do not share a common border whatsoever and this movie, created more than 20 years ago, simply eliminated either or both the country of Cambodia and the country of Laos. Both of them shared, and share, the commonality of being the nations between Vietnam and Thailand. The fact that the movie did this unabashedly, and with complete disregard for the recognized existence of a defined nation state, made me marvel and even angered me to some extent. I also have been pondering, since realizing this fact last year, approximately how many people from my home country have watched this movie and made this discovery. Few to almost none I would think.
We at BABSEA work hard to dissolve the imaginary and imposed borders that separate us, but in doing so we focus on ways that concertedly try not to offend nor minimize the understanding that some valid borders do exist and that there is relevance in people identifying themselves with a nation or people. We see the unfortunate occurrence of so many people being stateless in their own “home” countries due to the failure to have valid national identity cards and we recognize many of the positive aspects of being a member of a defined nation, with defined borders, including many of the rights and protections that accompany this membership.Yet, it seemed perfectly fine for Hollywood to just disregard this fact and as a matter of convenience, just simply wipe out the existence of a country because it did not suit the script. Arrogance, gall, and ineptitude were some of the adjectives I was using to describe the makers of the film, and possibly even Chuck himself, although Chuck seems to have taken on being the brunt of a significant amount of jokes over the past year, so I thought I would spare him a little bit.
Now, let’s get back to the treadmill, my 5 minutes left, my running stronger than I have in probably 2 years, and the part of the movie that it became very clear that Vietnam and Thailand shared a new border. At this moment I looked over at the woman watching the movie to see if I could discern from her facial expressions that this movie simply wiped out the existence of one or two of her neighboring countries. There was no expression I could see that would have indicated this to be the case but this was not definite proof. I looked at her through my peripheral vision, trying not to be obvious, as my 30 minutes was ending in a sprinting crescendo and could not tell if she was aware of what has troubled me for some time and was glaring in my face once again. Then in the last 30 seconds I ran at a top rate speed and quickly it all came to an end.
I never came to know if what was so outrageous to me ever registered to my treadmill neighbor, nor will I likely ever know. Instead, I packed up my things, dampened with sweat, and ran to the building next door, where I live, for a quick shower and then back to the BABSEA House to learn about Poland and the Solidarity movement.At the close of the presentation on Poland I asked our two Polish interns what they were most proud of about their country and what they would like to change the most if they could. They both agreed on exactly the same thing. What they were most proud of was their rich history. Interestingly, what they both agreed they would like to change the most about their country was also their history and the way that so many people in their country now use and rely on their history to keep from advancing, being open minded and going forward. What brilliant insight!
I and other BABSEA team members watched this presentation in a room of people coming from countries that I knew existed, even if some people in Hollywood did not, and working with them and bridging them together to dissolve the imagined and imposed borders that separate us. We also are working with them to be proud of their history, while trying to not let it get negatively in the way of their future.
As Gillian and I ran the final mile this morning, watching the sun rise over the mountains into the sky and appreciating the cool breeze that continues to bless us in the early morning hours here in Chiang Mai, I was glad to be a part of this process. I thought about running for justice, eating good food with wonderfully open minded people from around the world, and learning to bridge using respectful means and methods. What a beautiful way to start the day.
15 more weeks until the New York City Marathon!
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