Notes from Wanakaset

March 19, 2013

The Mesa program ended for me over a month ago now. I have not had steady access to internet to write. I am so grateful to my host farm and friends in Mae Tha; they taught me so much and treat me like family–I feel like I have truly made some friends I will have for life. No really, I like almost cry when I write that. To wrap up Mesa Michael took me to do a debrief at an organic rice breading organization–Kapook (Mesa Alum) who helped teach english at Wanakaset came too, as well as Dilip (a friend from Bhutan living in Mae Tha at the time to working on seed production). I am not at this moment even going to attempt to write about how amazing my first three months here were! After Mesa Greennet/Earthnet Foundation (Mesa’s parnter here) asked me if I wanted to stay and help teach some english to a farmer who is about to do Mesa in the states. I was happy to stay. The past month and a half or some has been tiring because I have moved around a lot and things have not always go as planned. I had to get a visa and since then I have be floating between two coffee and tea farming villages in the Chiangrai region. I continue to learn and understand things more. The picture above is from Ban Huay Krai. Huay Krai is a small village with several different languages spoken and electricity that comes from solar panels. It is deep in the mountains and my phone doesn’t work even when I climb the hill, as my friend Pi Tip has done in the photo… The weather in the mountains is pretty nice compared to the city and it is very beautiful. Huay Krai is in the shadow of Doi Pha Ngom if you want to google that… Right now I am in Bangkok to meet with people at Greennet about staying in the north longer to work with the coffee and tea farmers. Nothing is certain yet but it sounds like they are open to some ideas I have and I may be able to do some work I feel really good about. Thanks so much to Mesa for getting me here. Good luck to all new Mesa farmers in the states!