[Dryerase] AGR Culture a village is born

[AGR]

Asheville Global Report
www.AGRNews.org

Reprinting permitted for non-profit use, and by the members of the DryErase 
news wire.


 From the earth, a village is born

By Brendan Conley

Mun Yuen Village, Thailand, (AGR) Nov. 7—  In the mountains of northeastern 
Thailand, a quiet revolution is taking place. A diverse group of people who 
came together to construct a sustainable village has found that they are 
building much more. The group includes Buddhist monks, Thai students and 
professionals, villagers displaced by development projects, and farang -­ 
Westerners -­ several hundred people in all. They’re spending a month in 
rural Chaiyaphum province, building Mun Yuen, a sustainable, 
self-sufficient community, and the nation’s first earthen village.
“We are building a community, not just houses,” said Thanai 
Uthaipattrakoon. He quit his job as a conventional architect to teach (and 
learn)
natural building. “I want people to know that they can design and build 
their own home,” he said.
As he spoke, a group of saffron-robed monks passed by with wheelbarrows 
full of earth. They deposited their load in a shallow pit where young, 
sunburned Americans and Europeans joined Thai students mixing clay mortar 
with their bare feet. Above them, a local villager balanced atop a wall of 
adobe as he wiggled the last earthen brick into place.
“This is the way to learn about natural building,” said Uthaipattrakoon, 
looking around. “You learn by doing, by really experiencing it. At first I 
thought my role would be to help design the buildings, but now I am really 
getting my hands dirty, working the hardest I have ever worked.” 
Uthaipattrakoon smiled as he looked up at the first half-finished building, 
a community kitchen and meeting hall.
“This building is beautiful,” he said. “But in a way, the structure is not 
as important as the knowledge and spirit that we are building together.”

Bahn din
As Thailand moves further down the path of Western development, the need 
for alternatives is becoming hard to ignore. Bangkok, one of the world’s 
most polluted cities, is a sprawling, haphazard metropolis with massive 
daily traffic jams and few open spaces. Corruption pervades the country’s 
military-dominated government, and International Monetary Fund 
(IMF)-sponsored mega-development projects are extracting Siam’s natural 
resources, leaving polluted air and water behind. As the country becomes 
deforested, its famed biodiversity is rapidly eroding.
For Janell Kapoor, one alternative is obvious: build with mud.
“I think we all have an awareness that the world we’re living in doesn’t 
make sense,” said Kapoor, an Asheville, North Carolina-based natural 
building instructor. “Whether it’s being stuck in traffic, having no time 
to play with your kids, or seeing violence on television,” we all realize 
that something is not right.” For Kapoor, these small imbalances are 
symptoms of the accelerating spread of capitalism and consumerism -­ the 
process of corporate globalization.
“The work we’re doing here is part of what you might call a localization 
movement,” said Kapoor. “Look at a conventional house in the US or Europe, 
and try to track every part of that house -­ where the materials came from, 
how they were created, how all the machines and tools were made. By the 
time you’re done, you’ll have traveled the world, strip-mined mountains, 
clear-cut forests, exploited workers, and polluted the earth, all to build 
a house.
“On the other hand, look at how we’re building these houses,” said Kapoor. 
“We’re using clay from right next to the site, bamboo and rice husks 
harvested nearby, rainwater, and hand tools. Everything is local.”
At least three construction techniques are being used here to create bahn 
din -­ mud houses. Adobe bricks are made by mixing earth, rice husks, and 
water. Wooden forms are used to shape the mud into bricks, which are left 
to dry in the hot, arid climate. A thinner mix is used for mortar. Cob 
construction is different: a thick mud-straw mixture is sculpted by hand in 
layers to form walls. The wattle and daub method is used to fill in walls 
between wooden posts or columns of bricks: a weave of split bamboo or 
branches is coated with mud plaster. Here in Mun Yuen, thatch roofs provide 
shelter from sun and rain.
The villagers here were displaced from their former homes and faced with 
building anew. They wanted to avoid contributing to deforestation, and they 
wanted to build simply and cheaply, to avoid adding to their debt. After 
Kapoor led an earthen building workshop at Wongsanit Ashram near Bangkok 
last year, the villagers decided that bahn din structures were the answer.

The struggle
For Noi Singna, one of the villagers here, the road to Mun Yuen has been 
long and hard. It began for her 13 years ago, with the construction of Lam 
Khan Choo dam. The huge government development project would destroy her home.
“Our life before the dam was good,” said Singna. “We supported ourselves by 
fishing and collecting bamboo shoots and vegetables from the forest.”
Plua Chamnan, 70, also lived in the vicinity of the dam. “The government 
told us that when they built the dam they would also build an irrigation 
canal. They said we would be able to grow more rice than ever before,” she 
said. “But this was not true. They never built the canal, and the whole 
area was flooded, so nothing could grow.”
Faced with the destruction of their livelihood, the homeless villagers 
traveled to Bangkok, where they intended to press the Prime Minister for 
compensation. When he refused to meet with them, they organized a peaceful 
invasion, scaling the walls of the Parliament building. Riot police 
repressed this demonstration, knocking protesters from the walls to the 
ground, and beating and tear-gassing the villagers, including children and 
elderly people. In the aftermath, 225 protesters spent three days in jail.
Still homeless, the displaced people set up camp in front of Parliament, 
fasting and demonstrating for eight months. They were joined by people 
displaced by two other dam projects, and supporters organized by the group 
Assembly of the Poor. Finally, following a change in government, the 
protesters were offered a loan to purchase land.
“The government gave us a 7 million baht [approximately $160,000] loan to 
purchase this 570-rai [220 acre] area of land,” said Singna. “We decided to 
set up a cooperative to accept the loan,” she added. “This gave us more 
legitimacy in the eyes of the government, and it made our group stronger. 
As individuals we had no power, but we learned through our protest that 
collectively we had power.”
The struggle did not end with the purchase of the land. A forest fire 
burned the area recently, one that the villagers believe was intentionally 
set. Illegal logging takes place on national forest land nearby, and the 
loggers perceive the villagers as witnesses to their crime. When an 
observation tower was built at Mun Yuen for stargazing, loggers burned it 
down, believing that it was being used to spy on them.
With the arrival of dozens of volunteer builders and the construction of 
the first clay walls, the village has reached a turning point.
“It’s such a warm feeling having all these people here, working and 
exchanging knowledge,” said Singna. The community is unique in Thailand -­ 
in a way, the European-American concept of an intentional community has 
been imported here. The village will serve as a demonstration and learning 
center in the future, open to students of ecology and natural building. The 
residents have begun a reforestation project, planting thousands of fruit 
and hardwood trees. Mun Yuen seems certain to live up to its name -­ the 
words mean “long lasting.”

The spirit
Phra Sutape Chinawaro, a monk who is teaching Buddhist meditation to the 
builders here, knows something about struggle. As a member of the Communist 
Party in the 1970s, he joined a guerrilla army to fight for a Marxist 
revolution in Thailand. After the revolutionaries reconciled with the 
government, Chinawaro worked as a secular activist and then became ordained 
as a monk, to work for change in a much different way.
“I discovered that if people use violent means, they will never be done 
with fighting,” said Chinawaro. Peaceful change, he said, begins with 
looking inward. “If you want freedom from capitalism, you need freedom of 
mind,” he said. “If you want a peaceful community, you must have a peaceful 
heart.”
The idea that inner change is necessary for social change is at the heart 
of engaged Buddhism, a philosophy that pervades the project here. Indeed, 
one of its foremost proponents, Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai social critic, 
founded Wongsanit Ashram, which supports the building project. Sivaraksa, 
author of Seeds of Peace, has been imprisoned and exiled for his criticism 
of the Thai government. He promotes a philosophy of social change that is 
radically opposed to corporate globalization and “the religion of 
consumerism,” and deeply rooted in the Buddhist ethic of self-awareness and 
mindfulness.
Buddhism is central to Thai culture, but the spirit seems to have affected 
the farang here too. Far from the Western missionary attitude, the 
foreigners are here to learn.
“I’m still detaching from a very materialist, consumerist way of life,” 
said Eliana Uretsky of Berkeley, California. “Here, I feel like I’m 
learning how to be a human being.”
“I’m gaining a much greater presence of mind about my role in my own 
community,” said Julie Covington of Asheville, North Carolina. “In the 
past, that was a passive role. Now I feel a need to be active, to pass on 
this sense of community.”
For Katherine Foo, a Wellesley, Massachusetts resident now volunteering at 
Wongsanit Ashram, “Buddhism provides a philosophical framework for activist 
work” -­ a spiritual motivation that is missing from secular organizing.
Phra Chinawaro believes that some great motivation is necessary to stop the 
current large-scale exploitation of people and the earth. “The American 
capitalist empire is infecting the whole world,” he said. The struggle of 
displaced people against government corruption and the building of 
sustainable communities are signs of hope, he said, but the journey toward 
peace and justice begins in each individual.
Indeed, the infectious consumerism that drives corporate globalization is 
rooted in individual desire, multiplied by cultural and economic forces. 
Buddhism, with its ethic of selflessness and non-attachment, offers a way out.
Seated on the ground, Chinawaro glanced up at the adobe wall towering above 
him and reflected for a moment.
“There are people who know the difference between the bad society and the 
good, and they have the ability to choose, to act,” the monk said. “They 
have a great responsibility, and I place my hope in them.”

Natural building projects in Thailand and the US are ongoing. For more 
information, see www.kleiwerks.com (email janell at kleiwerks.com) or 
www.sulak-sivaraksa.org.