Regarding the contexts of education and pedagogy, both games and laughter occupy an absolutely imperative role. Not only do they effectively break up the monotony that so often creeps its way into the classroom, but they also provide all parties involved with a unique, entertaining means of engaging with the concepts at hand. Or, at other times, games are just a downright fun break. That's okay too.
Laughter is the oil that lubricates the engine of the language learning process. In my opinion, having fun is absolutely integral to remaining pedagogically productive, especially in an environment such as SDC where community occupies such a central role. Productivity and enjoyment (or rather, fun) come hand in hand, with laughter representing a major component of this equation. This soundscape is a clip from a scavenger hunt we did revolving around comparatives and superlatives.
As a huge coffee fan, the drink played a continuous role in my day to day life at SDC. Northern Thailand is a hub for coffee bean production, so it was great to have rich, delicious beans sourced directly from the part of the world I was living in. Below are the sounds of the coffee production process we had developed at SDC (ie. beans, grinder, aeropress).
My students were always so curious about the coffee as well, ever eager to help in the grinding of the beans and always asking questions (my favourite being: "Teacher, is this one sweet?" everytime we would open a new bag of beans). Coffee Morning is the name of my favourite cafe in the nearby provincial capital of Mae Hong Son
Chickens stand as highly symbolic in Karenni culture and play an important role in many key aspects of ritual life. Chickens not only serve as a source of food (eg. meat and eggs), but also as a tool for consultation regarding rituals, festivals, and/or significant decisions. This is done in the form of reading the chicken bones. A chicken will be slaughtered and the elders or community leaders of the animist religion will read the bones to make a prediction and/or decision about the event in question. One good example of when this is done is to determine the dates for the annual Deeku festival, held every year sometime in September.
Chickens roam freely around SDC, their noise an ever-present facet of the sonic landscape.
Unlike many places we may be familiar with, night time along the Thai-Burma border does not bring with it an absence of sound. Silence is, in essence, a foreign concept at and around SDC. The night is truly alive. Rain, crickets, cicadas, dogs barking, the cyclical crowing of the roosters beginning around 1 am each night. A sonic mosaic.
This is the sound of the road into Ban Mai Nai Soi Refugee Camp, via truck. The road is heavily rutted, consistently under-maintained, and often becomes a literal mud pit during the rainy season. It is used by countless individuals, refugees and aid workers alike, to travel to and from camp on a daily basis.
Taken from The Border Consortium (TBC), 2018: Ban Mai Nai Soi is the northernmost camp in Thailand and has a population of more than 10,000 people, almost all of whom are of Karenni/Kayah ethnicity and come from the state of the same name in Burma/Myanmar. Around 2 percent of residents come from areas in Shan State. The camp dates back to 1989, when an original refugee settlement of this name was established on the Karenni/Kayah side of the border. The group moved many times before they finally settled at the camp’s present location in March 1996, with a population of around 1,700. Six years later, two other camps, Ban Tractor and Ban Kwai, were consolidated with Ban Mai Nai Soi to make one camp. Read More >
Every September, Karenni people along the border region, within Karenni State, and all around the wider world celebrated what is known, in English, as Deeku Festival, an event centred around the symbolically important foodstuff you see depicted in the photo below. As you can see, Deeku, quite an intriguing looking food, is comprised of three different segments tied together with a cord made from the husk of a leaf. The three parts represent the three distinct groups of Karenni people: Kayah, Kayan, and Kayaw. The festival is one of the only times each year when all Karenni people celebrate together as one, and as such, Deeku itself stands as a powerful representation of symbolic unity for all Karenni people; a unity in shared beliefs surrounding rights, livelihood, and peace.
An extraordinary food that carries with it a significant degree of both cultural meaning and importance.
The river that flows nearby SDC, though portrayed as quite calm in this audio recording, possesses many a different face. It provides, as a source of fresh water as well as fish and amphibious food stuffs, but also threatens, with flash floods an ever-present reality during the long rainy season, which lasts from July through to October. During 2017, we had two instances of borderline flooding at SDC, with incredibly high water levels encroaching upon the school compound. Inside camp (Ban Mai Nai Soi Refugee Camp), threats of severe flooding are even worse and floods of some degree occur on almost an annual basis. Such a reality is truly a testament to the precarity that surrounds the lives of refugees, both across the border region and around the world.
This is the sound of the tokay, a large gecko found throughout the region of Southeast Asia. Beautifully coloured with blue and green speckles, the call of the tokay is as interesting as it is bizarre. A Karnneni folk story, one I heard from numerous individuals during my time at SDC, posits that the jaws of the tokay are incredibly strong, and that if you are bit, the lizard will not release its grasp until the next time a thunderstorm occurs.
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AuthorDuncan Chalmers and the students of the 8th Annual Advanced Course at SDC. |