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| The village of Huay Sai turns out to help a neighbor irrigate his land. |
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| Jacob buying an ice cream from a mobile vendor. |
1.
Protect yourself from UV rays with a hat.
Deliver ice cream with a motorcycle and don’t forget your gloves! Keep smiling
and whatever happens, remember “mai pen rai”--Thai for “no worries!”
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| Pi-Tai's pup waggin' his tail under a parked Warm Heart truck. |
2.
Stay cool Thai doggie style. Dig a hole in the
shade under the nearest pick-up truck. Stateside, you might retreat to the
cooler regions of your home like the basement.
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| One cool cat vegetatin' at Warm Heart's Children's Home. |
3.
Remember that greenery is the cat’s pajamas. Water
your houseplants and spritz their leaves to create your own cooling rain
forest hideaway.
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| Cataloguing books for the Always Reading Caravan (ARC) at Warm Heart. |
4.
Find the nearest empty rice barn and create a
community library. Join a book club, read with friends to keep ideas flowing
and use fans to keep the air moving.
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| A seasonal cornfield that periodically goes underwater. |
5.
Watch the corn grow by a banana tree. Remember
that without the sun, we’d become Ice Age fossils. Contemplate how the natural
forces of nature cause roots to reach for the earth’s core and leaves
to unfurl towards the heavens following the pull of universal yin and yang.
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| Drink fluids early and often. |
6. In Thailand, most gas stations give you a free
bottle of water with a fill-up. Don’t forget to stay hydrated! Drink plenty of
water during the day before you are parched. Perspiration is nature’s natural
coolant – don’t let your human radiator run dry and overheat.
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| Pi-Beuh's wife staking out a frangipani sapling. |
7.
Plant a tree to create shade. In Thailand, this
frangipani will easily grow some 20 feet tall. Remember to baby your sapling
for the first year or two by watering during drought. Protect young plants from
excessive winds (here by staking). In the North Carolina Piedmont, protect them
from rutting deer with a surround of chicken wire.
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| Waterfall in a national park near Phrao. |
8.
Cool off in a waterfall and enjoy nature. The
soothing sound of flowing water – from a burbling brook, a lake lapping the
shoreline, or ocean waves – is sure to refresh your spirits as well as your toes.
Breezes rustling through the bamboo leaves and singing birds are a bonus.
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| Taking a siesta by the newly built Girls House at Warm Heart. |
9.
Take a siesta to avoid the extreme heat
of the day. The Spanish word siesta derives from the Latin ‘sexta hora’ or sixth hour after dawn. The
Thais also divide the day counting from dawn and many enjoy a noontide break.
You might find monks napping in a nearby “wat” or monastery temple.
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| A wat overlooking the Phrao valley. |
10.
Visit a wat -- a Thai Buddhist monastery temple. Ancient
temples are often good places to cool off. Stateside, a local museum or
historic home might do the trick.
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| An Eri silkworm feeding up and preparing to cocoon. |
11.
Feed an Eri silkworm a
cassava leaf and support local micro-enterprises like silk weaving. Don’t
forget your local wildlife and put out water for birds during a hot spell.
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| Looking off the back balcony at the cow barn. |
12.
Pray for rain. And when it
arrives, find shelter with friends to wait out the storm. These Thai Brahman
cattle were a gift from the local monastery and are not for eating! Their
manure, however, enriches the soil and is highly prized by local farmers who
will buy it by the bag.
Thinking of ya'll down Carolina way from the Phrao valley. Stay cool! And as they say around here, "Sawadee-ka!"
The Warm Heart Foundation is an NGO founded by the husband-wife team of Michael Shafer and Evelind Schecter to help the people of Phrao help themselves. Read more about Warm Heart here:
