Visit to Ban Pong Hi to find sand and deliver rice

On Nov 24th we drove to Ban Pong Hi to take a GPS and a map to get one of the Lahu villagers to search for suitable sand for the Bio sand filters. The plan was to return the same day. Annie and Resa went with Bev and I. Since Kids Ark had received some money for donating rice to four families affected by HIV/AIDS we also decided to buy 8 bags of rice and deliver them that day. We left Resa off in Fang to order a loom so the villagers could do wider weaving. We bought the rice in Fang. One bag, about 20 quarts of rice, cost 850 baht for old rice and 750 baht for new harvest rice. We learned that old rice expands more and tastes better and hence the higher price. We then went on to Ban Pong Hi to meet with Sila and the villager that was going to do the search. You can zoom in or out to see where it is located with respect to Chiang Mai and the Burmese border. The tall mountain at about 2 o'clock from the marker is where we eventually drove to. More on that later in the blog....


View Ban Pong Hi Village in a larger map

When we arrived neither Sila nor the villager were there so we went to get lunch as we were told Sila would return after lunch. The villagers were planning a ceremony to pray for the well being of the king the next day so there were a lot of people doing preparations etc. Finally we sat down with Sila and the villager and went over the plan to look for suitable sand, how to preliminarily inspect the sand with a magnifying glass and what characteristics we were looking for. We had printed out a map of the area and following the advice of a geologist we showed him where to look, how to collect samples and mark the bags with the number from the GPS. We gave him 4 days at $6/day plus paying for gas. Believe it or not that was a good days pay! Once we finished the training we headed out to deliver the rice. One village Mae Hang is 4 kilometers (2.5mi) closer to Burma on a pretty bad road. One section is so steep they have a concrete surface but the rest could sure use it too! KA has a project to pay for the transportation to Ban Pong Hi for the kids from this village of about 50 homes to attend school. Most homes seem to have solar cells for some power, but I didn't have time to investigate the water and sanitation situation as we had other villages to visit.

We had plans to deliver rice to four families, all living in different villages, but after our trip to the next village we had to abort mission, as the trip to the next village took such a long time and we had to drive back to CM.

This village is located high up in the mountains and whenever we visited Ban Pong Hi we had seen this village and had always wanted to visit it. Getting there was quite an exciting trip - the road was a dirt road, very, very steep and also deeply rutted. Several times along the way Sila and Bev had to come out of the truck to help me navigate the ruts. The scenery was magnificent. Once we arrived in the village I was told that that road is hardly ever used nowadays and that there was a better one to use!

Here are some pictures....
(remember click on the bottom of the slide to have the slides transition faster)


PS Update on the search for suitable sand: we think we have found a source; our next step is to actually use the sand in a filter and test it. More to follow in the next blog; I am keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed!