A huge development budget is pouring into the South, but some local women are out to prove the cliche that sustainable development must come from within
Makluesong Sainan-areneedeng, also known as Song, had been up since 2am to milk the para-rubber trees on her small plantation. Then she did her housework before changing into the proper dress of a traditional southern Thai Muslim woman and left her home at 9am to attend a meeting at the Loh Jood Health Station in Waeng district of Narathiwat province.
Besides taking care of the plantation and her family, Song has always been active in learning traditional medicine and healing.
"I love learning, especially anything to address health problems," said the mother of three, whose husband passed away a few years ago.
The meetings are a collaboration between local women in the sub-district and the Chao Phraya Abhaibhubejhr Hospital Foundation. The women wanted a forum to learn from each other and from the hospital, which has been sending staff to chronicle the local wisdom on healing and medicine.
"It's our principle not to impose our ideas or beliefs on the locals. We want to learn and study their knowledge in a systematic way and give it back to them," said Dr Supaporn Pitiporn.
The meetings are attended by women from nine communities who call themselves the Vanita (woman in the local dialect) group. The meetings in Loh Jood have evolved into lively affairs and cover a wide range of topics. It might surprise many people that the public gatherings are much more likely to focus on the interference of "structural violence" in their ability to earn a living than the ongoing unrest that has resulted in more than 4,000 deaths since January 2004 in the deep South.
Loh Jood has remained peaceful in the midst of the violence, and the fact that the minority Buddhists in the sub-district co-exist in harmony with the majority Muslims stands as a testament that the conflict has nothing to do with religion.
Aeuy Samo-sorn was born in Khao Sam Sib, one of the two Buddhist villages in Loh Jood. Now 46, she is one of many Buddhists in the area who can speak the Malayu dialect - spoken by most Muslims in the South - fluently. Her parents moved from Tumpat in Kelantan state of Malaysia more than 50 years ago, at a time when the Thai government was encouraging Buddhists from the other side of the Kolok River to come to Thailand and take up citizenship, and even allocating land for them.
Buddhists and Muslims have been living there in harmony for generations and except for the head covers worn by many of the latter you probably couldn't distinguish between them.
"We share knowledge and culture and we respect the differences between us. When our Muslim friends arrange any activity we normally can join them. At the same time, when we have any event or ceremony, if they can join, they will. But if not we understand that they may have religious restrictions," said Mrs Aeuy.
Buddhists and Muslims in the South share common social and economic problems, such as high unemployment - often even for those who have earned bachelor's degrees - and the vulnerability of young people to drug abuse and unwanted pregnancies.
In the meetings they brainstorm to assess their needs and look for solutions. For example, they look at the high cost of living compared with their incomes, and see a direct relationship to the inadequate prices paid for mangosteen, rambutan and other local agricultural produce.
The hospital foundation staff have introduced bookkeeping methods to the women, who have learned that the majority of their families' expenses go for food and medicine.
"We should try to reduce our expenses by encouraging our women to grow whatever we eat," said Mareenee Aredernan, another active member of the Vanita group, who added with a laugh that she and many other women are encountering problems with goats devouring their home gardens. Generally, in small communities in the South goats and cows are allowed to roam freely.
Ms Mareenee is concerned that so many people don't know the usefulness of the local herbs and vegetables, but she and other Vanita members are not discouraged and plan to share their knowledge and their plant stocks with the community and also find ways to curb the invasion of animals into their gardens.
SUSTAINABLE PATTERN BROKEN
It might seem strange that people who live near the richly bio-diverse Bala Hala National Park should have to exchange herbs and other plants.
Traditionally, people in the area had always lived a self-sufficient lifestyle, growing rice and vegetables and collecting wild herbs and plants from the forest for home consumption. Whatever extra they had was sold for cash. This pattern was broken by the advent of the para-rubber-driven economy a few decades ago, as most of the area was turned into plantations.
As the population grew and land ownership was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the majority of villagers were left with little land to farm. What's more, access to nearby forested mountains was curbed after they were declared protected areas. Many villagers were forced to hire out their labour as rubber tappers.
By the Vanita group's analysis, the strenuous work and stress took a heavy toll on the local population, particularly on women and old people. According to Ministry of Public Health figures, chronic illnesses, particularly diabetes, hypertension, and terminal diseases such as cancer have been on the rise among the elderly. The women surmised that the decline in health was due to changes in diet.
This led the women to realise the importance of their ancestral diets and encourage each other to cook more of their traditional foods and desserts. The desire to get back to their roots has also led to a renewed interest in traditional healing.
Song has been attending basic health care training sessions and combining what she's learned with traditional massage to help some locals with health problems. She is eager to learn more and help her community harness its all-too-often forgotten local knowledge to improve health care.
"I want to learn more about the holistic approach and preventive medicine," she said with a smile.
The Chao Phraya Abhaibhubejhr Hospital Foundation is pleased to report that in Loh Jood sub-district the use of medicinal plants and traditional healing and massage are still alive. The foundation has found more than 20 local healers in the sub-district.
Meenoh Deureh is one these. The 76-year-old woman's house is full of herbs and vegetables. She cannot speak a single word of Thai, but her knowledge of herbs is second to none. She showed three kinds of leaves which yield the same aroma as lemon grass, but are each slightly different in shape, taste and effect.
She has been educating young people and is also a community role model as she has long been cultivating medicinal plants in her home vegetable garden.
"When I was young, I went to my mixed-orchards in the forest and collected vegetables and herbs and brought them back home. Now most of those mixed-orchards have been replaced by para-rubber plantations," she said.
She added that a good diet helps in preventing illness. Unfortunately, this stream of healing has been marginalised and neglected throughout the country, and in most Muslim communities especially little attempt has been made to develop and incorporate it into public health care.
"This is the reason why we try to collect this knowledge and keep the practices, or else they will be steadily eroded as most of the practitioners are advanced in age and the younger generation has little interest in inheriting their wisdom," said Dr Supaporn.
The Loh Jood women have expressed concern about the increasing loss of biodiversity in the forests, much of it due to illegal logging, which has continued unabated in many protected areas.
The women were unwilling to mention illegal logging in their discussions as it might jeopardise their safety. They even avoided talking about many so-called development projects that have been implemented by different agencies in their area. For the fiscal year 2010, 16.1 billion baht has been allocated for development in the southernmost provinces. This is separate from the portion of the 173.2 billion baht budget for national security and 8.9 billion baht to prevent terrorism that is earmarked for the South. One woman said that some of these projects may be good, but few have anything to do with helping locals earn a living or get an education.
Dr Supaporn said the foundation does not wish to impose ideas on the Vanita group. "We want them to learn and propose what they want to do by themselves," she said, adding that the foundation has little funding but is helping with small, sustainable projects.
Dr Supaporn again stressed that there is an urgent need to collect information from traditional healers as most of them are advanced in age.
"This is one of the activities that we are occupied in at the moment," she said, adding that to encourage women and young people to learn and appreciate their own local wisdom is also a foundation priority.
"If they do not appreciate the value of their traditional way of living, it will be hard to preserve the knowledge for the next generation. We want them to be aware; then hopefully they will automatically conserve the knowledge and employ it in health care and a sustainable lifestyle."
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