Return to Nonjan

I just got back from a four day homestay in Nonjan, an illegal forest community in the Phu Pa Man National Park. They have no electricity there. It is insanely remote. 15 of us are compiling a human rights report for the village. It was a bit of a guessing game to figure out just what ESCR rights were violated but it was fun. Kind of.

I spent the last couple days nonstop interviewing villagers about their lives in Nonjan. They were evicted in 1986 and then they moved back and then in 1991 during Khor Jor Kor in Thailand they were evicted until 1992 when the program was cancelled. Since then relations with the National Park have vastly improved but they are still illegally residing on National Park land. Right now they can never hold a permanent deed for the land they have lived on for generations.

I lived with Paw Samai who is the Minister of the Forest Temple. The villagers back in 2005 built a new wat and when the park rangers came to stop them the woman of the village surrounded the ranger and kidnapped him.

These villagers are pretty intent on their right to the land. Cortney and I are writing a feature story on the village. The issue of illegal forest communities is huge in Thailand. Millions of people live in National Parks across the country.

I went to a drum circle one of the nights I was there. And by drum circle I mean circle of drunk old men, including the NGO and the headman banging around on water coolers drinking copious amounts of whiskey. Sam sang Sublime and Newsies songs for them.

Amazingly Nonjan was cold and it rained for the third time since I have been in Thailand. One morning P'Dai brought some of us out on a two hour trek through the forest. Most of the community depends on the forest for about 50% of their food and we got to see just what they took from the forest. P'Dai was pretty awesome and the forest was so vast and full of bamboo trees and rock formations and caves and massive red ant nests.

Today we interviewed some National Park rangers, hopefully we will soon get to interview the Royal Forest Department. So basically my life right now is revolving around the feature story and the human rights report. My brain is fried. We've got about a week of really intense writing, editing and such but I am actually pretty excited to produce this thing.