Welcome the Harvest

A child on a farm sees a plane fly by overhead and dreams of a faraway place.
A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home. -Carl Burns

The past couple of days have been pretty eventful, though all days here are eventful really. But I’m pretty sure most of will you not have read about something like this before…I had certainly never done anything like this before. Yesterday we moved up to the fourth floor of the building since there was a meeting being held in our classroom that we weren’t told about until that very morning fifteen minutes before class started. No worries though. The fourth floor has good accommodations for the class, so we all piled into furnitureless room (it reminded me of home), pulled out chairs and cushions for the closet and laid out. We did some worksheets and vocabulary at first, but eventually we began watching Monsters Inc. in English with Chinese subtitles. It was a big hit.
That afternoon Mrs. Kao and Celeste went to work at the shelter for girls who had been physically and sexually abused. Concerned that my presence there may be more detrimental than helpful, we decided it was best for me to stay back at the center. So each afternoon I go downstairs and eat lunch with the other employees. Cash insists on getting or making lunch for me every day (like I said, coolest woman ever), and I have to struggle to let her let me wash dishes or help out.

Anyway that afternoon, since I had some free time, I met a couple of the secretaries from the second floor who were anxious to speak English with me. So we talked a bit in Chinese and a bit in English (our skills were fairly comparable) and then I was off with Cash to go shopping for ingredients for the next days baking. We went to an underground department store/supermarket to buy our supplies. Food is expensive here. With the exception of fruit which is grown locally, the prices are intimidating as Cash pointed out several times. Cereal, dairy products, chocolate, and especially peanut butter are all incredibly expensive. We bought eggs, butter, and some fruit for the pancakes and waffles we planned to make and headed back.

Cash explained more of the work that the TFCF does for the children, which was very tiring and difficult for her since she did not know many of the words in English, so I really appreciated her talking to me. I know exactly how frustrating it is to try and carry on a conversation in a foreign language and one as serious and technical as this one was incredibly daunting, but she tried anyway. We used Google translator actually to get some of the technical words.

So if I haven’t already explained this yet I really should. The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families provides a plethora of services all over the island and here in Taitung makes an incredible impact on the community. They provide health and nutritional aid, education services to young children, sponsor older children to go on to high school and university, take care of orphans, physically and sexually abused children, send out a mobile library to the surrounding villages in the mountains and much more. I could not possible explain everything that they do. But it is absolutely vital to these people’s lives. The people who work at the center are completely dedicated; the social workers are on duty twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Cash originally worked in the government but left to work for the TFCF and works to help teach parents about saving money and basic accounting and money management. It is this function that we are hoping to expand as well by incorporating a micro-credit venture in the existing infrastructure that offers the necessary education to support the project.
So hopefully you guys found that interesting, but if not I promise it gets more intense from here. We went to a village in the middle of the mountains today to celebrate a festival for the harvest with one of the tribes. The second we got there we were greeted by a drunk sixty-six year old lady dressed in tribal celebratory garb who grabbed Celeste and me by our arms and marched us to a nearby house all the way saying “I love you, I love you” (in English mind you). Cash couldn’t stop laughing at her, at me, at the situation really. It was incredibly bizarre. We asked her name but she said just to call her Ama (which means grandmother). We were thrown into a circle of people dancing around and left to follow everyone else. It was incredible, and awkward, and exciting all at once but we managed to escape after fifteen minutes. Of course, our escape was momentary.

We then ran into the village chief, equally drunk, who desperately wanted to give me “a huggie.” He only gave me a handshake fortunately but none of us could really understand what he was saying. And so we escaped yet again, walking past a house where children and adults were playing a drinking game where they stripped off their clothes. It was only the beginning of the game though I think, since no one was nude. Like I said, it was an interesting experience.

We went next to the only school in the village, an elementary school where there were children playing in the back. From what I could see, it was a good facility and it was nice to escape from the excitement of the festival for a little while. We met and played with the local kids, who were shocked by how white my skin was compared to theirs. They were really curious about me, about whether I could play baseball and drive a car. They also wanted my stuff. It was funny when they asked for my hat, a little less funny when one of the kids maybe five years old sincerely asked for my eyes.

Jeff, the guy from the mobile library who used to be in the military took us to the ancestral home of the village where there was a medicine women and the village elder. The medicine woman (who had a master’s degree and had just one an award from the government for being one of the most influential community activists in the country) performed a ceremony to the ancestors, explaining who we were and why we had come. Then things got a little tense. The village elder, who was also drunk, asked Jeff and Mrs. Kao what we were doing there and was worried that we would disgrace the ancestors. Jeff and Mrs. Kao explained why we were there, what we were doing, Jeff explained that he was half aboriginal and that we all worked with the TFCF and the elder said that he would give an offering after we left to appease the ancestors and apologize for us being in there. The medicine woman was from a younger generation than the elder and so though she tried to speak and explain that it was alright, he held rank above her. But then there was a rather rapid transformation and the man invited us to look around and take our time. It was very confusing. It was only later that we learned that the man was not the village elder but just a drunk man pretending to be and having a little fun. But since he was still from an older generation than the medicine woman, she could not speak out against him. It’s kind of funny actually, but it did reflect a change going through the community, a balance between modernization and tradition.

In the past, the tribes were self-sufficient, grew their own crops in the mountains, and hunted in the mountains for their food. After the government came in and introduced running water, electricity, even satellite dishes for limited television, there also came taxes and the hunting grounds were closed as nature preserves. Modernization has brought better living conditions, but the traditions are dying. The middle schools and high schools are both boarding schools in other villages or in the city, and once the children leave, they can never really come back and keep the traditions.

As we were trying to leave, Jeff and Mrs. Kao were approached by the principal of the school (also drunk, yes just about the whole village was drunk), who kept talking to them and wouldn’t let them go, asking why no one every came to his village to teach the children for the summer, they needed help, the village needed help. Mrs. Kao couldn’t promise anything, the TFCF cannot afford to send teachers out to every village, and she can’t speak for them anyway. It was sad that we couldn’t help them, but the principal kept talking and talking until both Jeff and Mrs. Kao were desperate to escape. We all did eventually and hopped in the van to head back down the mountains. They view really was stunning. I am still constantly impressed with the beauty of the peaks, or of the ocean peeking through a gap in the ranges.

Like I said, it was an interesting and unforgettable day. If any of you ever get a chance to participate in a traditional festival do so, but be prepared.