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28 August 2003
Dancing down the
Chao Phraya
NEXT time you're in
Bangkok, take one of the many riverboat night tours that go down the
Chao Phraya, the river of kings. The cruise can be a treat, since you
don't see much of the pollution, your attention focused on the
splendidly lit-up temples and the Grand Palace along the river.
Typically Asian, the tours will offer karaoke and dancing to Thai
country music, which I usually find a bit difficult to take, except when
in the company of good friends.
Which is why I'm feeling bad that this year I'm unable to join a group
of friends as they dance down the Chao Phraya. These are the
participants who come from all over the region to participate in a
training workshop organized by the Southeast Asian Consortium on Gender
and Sexuality. (With such a long and unwieldy name, I'm going to just
use the word "consortium" for the rest of the column.)
For about a year now, I've been quite busy helping to organize the
consortium, which includes several universities in the region. There are
two secretariats, one based at Mahidol University in Thailand and the
other, I am proud to say, at the University of the Philippines. The
consortium handles several programs for training and research.
I see the consortium as an opportunity for the Philippines to get back
into the mainstream of human resources development in the region. Up
until the 1980s, the Philippines was a leading center for learning,
bringing in scholars from throughout the region to train in agriculture,
medicine, public health, the social sciences. Today, for a number of
reasons, the Philippines has lagged behind as a regional training
center. I suspect the main reason people no longer think of the
Philippines as training grounds is that while we are good at advising
other countries on what to do, we just can't seem to get our own act
together. There are times, when Filipinos lecture at regional
conferences, with self-confidence and in the most elegant English, where
I can see the audience thinking, "If you're so smart then why are
you so poor?"
Working with the consortium has made me think harder, too, about how
we've estranged ourselves from the region, preferring to align ourselves
with the West, or more specifically, with Mother America in our politics
and lifestyles. As we distance ourselves from Southeast Asia, we lose
part of our history, forgetting that during the pre-colonial period,
there were in fact economic and political ties between our islands and
the rest of Southeast Asia, as well as China.
We forget that we share so many common problems even today--from traffic
to gender inequities--rooted in a common past. I'll write about the
reasons for these similarities in future columns but for now, I just
want to say we stand to gain from looking at our neighbors, and engaging
in dialogue, rather than lecturing as experts.
In the consortium's ongoing workshop, which I had to leave early because
of teaching duties at home, we had two Filipinos among the 24
participants and I could see they were enjoying their discovery of
Southeast Asia, bonding closely with the Lao, Cambodians, Vietnamese,
Thai, Burmese, Malaysians, Chinese, and Indonesians. On a trip to the
market last week, two of my "students" turned the tables
around, teaching me how to pick out sturdy lotus plants by looking at
their roots, stems, flowers. Back in the bus, the Cambodians offered us
lotus pods. I'd always thought they were for decoration and only now
learned you could peel them open to get the seeds, which are said to
have a calming effect.
There's been more, of course, to the interactions than lotus seed
eating. What has always struck me during our workshops are the way
Southeast Asians refer to the past, the Vietnamese to "the
war" and the Cambodians to "the genocide." The past is
still often present, painfully. Reviewing proposals for research grants,
there was one from Vietnam that wanted to look at the sexual health of
the disabled. The proposal pointed out that 10 percent of the Vietnamese
population have a major disability. This is more than 25 years after the
end of the Vietnam War.
Working with our Southeast Asian neighbors helps me appreciate more the
paradoxes of society and history. I think of Cambodia and its Angkor Wat
civilization dating back to the 10th century, and how its capital Phnom
Penh was once described as the Paris of the East. Today, my students
refer, with bitterness and sadness, to "the genocide," almost
as if their history is now divided between "before" and
"after" that holocaust. Human history, we are reminded by
Cambodia (and the Philippines), is not marked by linear progress. Our
frailties and our arrogance mean all kinds of detours, even moving
backwards.
For all the talk of Buddhism and its messages of peace, the region has
had its share of ruthless and bloody wars and civil conflicts. There is
some peace now, but it remains tenuous, given the global mood for war
and the penchant of local politicians to whip up chauvinist feelings.
But I'm optimistic. At this last workshop, one of the Vietnamese
students brought me a gift from another Vietnamese who had attended last
year's workshop. Last year I had read out poetry by the 19th century
Vietnamese woman poet Ho Xuan Huong. This time, my Vietnamese student
sent me a long poem, written in the 18th century by Dang Tran Con amid a
civil war.
The poem, "Lament of the Soldier's Wife," should make us think
hard, every time we watch the epic war films that are so popular these
days in Asia. Let me share just one passage: "Your wife must be as
son/ to your parents, as father/ to your child, to comfort the old and
teach the young, there is none/ but myself, for how long must I/ suffer
a wounded heart?"
I will miss the cruise down the Chao Phraya not so much for the dancing
itself as the spirit of carefree camaraderie, a respite from a troubled
past, maybe even a ritual of hope and renewal for the future. |
