Today we returned from our 1 week stay in a rural village community. While there, we built a "stink free" pig barn which is the first step in a community development program that the foundation we're working with is doing in the village. Most people in the village suffer from health problems such as hypertension and diabetes due to lack of nutrition; most of their meals consist of plain rice. So help solve this problem, the foundation is going to help the village people set up a "f.a.i.t.h. garden (food always in the home), so that they can grow their own fruits and vegetable to supplement their diets and income. However, the soil conditions in the village are very poor, so the first step in this process is to start raising live stock so that they can begin to generate their own fertilizer (pig waste). The pig barn is stink free because of the bedding which instead of mud, consist of rice hull which can be scooped out and used as fertilizer. The pig food is mixed with a micro-organism that somehow eliminates the odor, the micro-organism is also mixed in with the bedding.
The village people were all very nice. We actually didn't have a translator with us this week. So we communicated using broken english/thai, a english/thai dictionary, and lots of charades/motions. The people we met liked to watch everything we did whether it was the man pictured our below who sat on his porch and watched us build all day or the children gathering to watch our barefoot, muddy games of soccer every evening.
-Tray