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I’ve spent 30 months in the Kingdom of Thailand – far longer than I ever anticipated. In that time I’ve worked primarily for anti-trafficking NGOs along the Burmese border region. When I wasn’t doing that, I was traveling with my camera and teaching English to pay the bills. My last NGO experience – one I imagined was going to be a perfect fit – ended up severely gutting me and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disillusioned with the entire sector right now.
So what next? Return to America? Head to grad school in London? Continue living in Chiang Mai – a city I love and feel completely at home in even if I was feeling a bit stagnant? Or bite the bullet and move to Bangkok City? I’ve always been a big advocate of change, challenge and getting out of one’s comfort zone so I chose Bangkok. I’ve always loved the Big Mango. I know living in this mega-metropolis will not be the same as visiting. I expect challenges and frustrations. The heat alone is suffocating. I am out of my comfort zone again which is not an uncommon place for me to be anymore. I’m fortunate to be with my best friend who also happens to be the man I love and adore. I know there is strength where we overlap. I’m in a city of possibility. Anything can happen here. Anything. So it’s June 2013 and I find myself living in a five bedroom house with three Africans who keep me on my toes and entertain and engage me on a daily basis. My day-to-day life is not unlike an episode of New Girl only better, funnier, multicultural. I’m fortunate to land in the city with a house full of individuals who embrace me like family. Big gratitude to Abishai, Angel Ishmael and Christin Gloire. You guys rock my world.
The future is uncertain. Even when you think you know where you are going, you often end up somewhere uncharted. But perhaps you end up where you were always supposed to be. This year has humbled me in many ways. It’s kicked my ass and presented me with challenges I didn’t foresee. Do I shirk them or rise to meet them? I’m on my feet. My gloves are off. Welcome to a new chapter. A new chapter that forces me to move forward. Forces me to grow, to change, to adapt. Vivre maintenant!
Noël Lindquist Photography is having a promotional print sale! You can order any one of the prints featured in this gallery or any image on our Web site. Each 12″ x 18″ print costs a total of $45 USD which includes international shipping and handling to your doorstep! E-mail us the name of your print and your mailing address and we’ll do the rest. Easy as 1-2-3!
I’ve been thinking a lot about whether it might be time to pack it up and say goodbye to the Kingdom of Thailand. When plans A and B fall through and you’ve given it all you have to give, you think to yourself, maybe I’ve done what I came here to do. Maybe the chapter is over. Maybe it’s time for some perspective. The people who love you in your home country want you to return. The people who love you abroad want you to stay. It’s not so easy to uproot when you’ve built a life 8,000 miles away from your homeland. You have friends and lovers and colleagues and interests and you are indeed at home in a foreign land. I am torn between two worlds – one foot planted on two continents. You get to a place where you don’t necessarily know where you belong anymore. People back home can’t necessarily relate with this. And returning means you walk away from all the possibility, adventure and internationality – the enchanting life abroad that even with its twists and turns and highs and lows has taken you so much further than you thought you could go. How can you walk away from that? Not easily, I’m afraid. A friend recently posted an article about this on my Facebook wall. I relate so wholeheartedly with this excerpt:
“So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realize that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two. For the rest of your life, or at least it feels this way, you will spend your time in one naggingly longing for the other, and waiting until you can get back for at least a few weeks and dive back into the person you were back there. It takes so much to carve out a new life for yourself somewhere new, and it can’t die simply because you’ve moved over a few time zones. The people that took you into their country and became your new family, they aren’t going to mean any less to you when you’re far away.
When you live abroad, you realize that, no matter where you are, you will always be an expat. There will always be a part of you that is far away from its home and is lying dormant until it can breathe and live in full color back in the country where it belongs. To live in a new place is a beautiful, thrilling thing, and it can show you that you can be whoever you want — on your own terms. It can give you the gift of freedom, of new beginnings, of curiosity and excitement. But to start over, to get on that plane, doesn’t come without a price. You cannot be in two places at once, and from now on, you will always lay awake on certain nights and think of all the things you’re missing out on back home.”
Let me also add that you lay awake at night not knowing how you can possibly ever leave. How can you close a chapter of your life that has been perhaps the most spectacular chapter? A chapter filled with things you never imagined possible – a chapter spanning Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, India and Nepal with adventures, experiences and stories from each place. A chapter that has allowed me to work in human rights which five years ago was only a pipe dream. A chapter that has brought people into my life from all over the world and made me a better person for it — England, Ireland, Germany, Turkey, Republic of Congo, Russia, Canada, Zambia, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Chile, Argentina, Japan, South Korea and China. To stay or to go? That is the question. Some tell me that when you are ready to return you will know. Some tell me that the excitement of returning wears off and they want nothing more but to be back out in the world again. I can only follow my heart which right now is torn between two worlds.
“We find that the world is becoming one community. We are being drawn together by the grave problems of overpopulation, dwindling natural resources, and an environmental crisis that threatens the very foundation of our existence on the planet. Human rights, environmental protection and great social and economic equality, are all interrelated. I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for oneself, one’s own family or one’s nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the best foundation for world peace.” – His Holiness the Dalai Lama
It’s been nearly two months since my last confession. So much has gone down in such a short period of time and I find myself in flux yet again. Such is the international life, I suppose. In mid-February I was hired to work for an NGO in northern Thailand that runs a shelter for ethnic minority hill tribe girls who have been trafficked or run the risk of being trafficked. I really thought it was a dream come true. Something I’d been holding out for for months. I was ecstatic and grateful and ready to be back in the game. On the surface it all looked so fantastic just as the country of Thailand itself does. And just like the country of Thailand itself, underneath that beautiful, shiny veneer lies dysfunction and ugliness. So it turns out that the dream job was really a nightmare and I’m not really at liberty to say all the reasons why.
Fundamentally, the values and heart were in the right place but strategically it was a cluster at best. You can’t fly before you can walk nor should you try. It’s probably not a good idea to hire people to run your organization who have very limited in-country experience, little understanding of Thai culture, and no background in the non-governmental sector or human trafficking. You can’t expect to grow so far so fast without considering your current capacity and how to grow it forward. That indeed is very dangerous. You must keep your eyes on those you are striving to help. Their well-being should be your highest priority – not how cool you are perceived to be; and how you want to be the biggest and baddest in the world. Lesson learned: those who have to tell you they are a certain way to put you at ease may very well may be the opposite. Lesson number two and perhaps the most important: Thai men in power are impossible. My time working for and with them ends here.
I walk away with disappointment and disillusionment. I walk away having been stabbed in the back once again. I walk away unable to do one damn thing about it. No protection. No jurisdiction. No license. I walk away knowing I will be misrepresented. Knowing that I run risks in saying what I have said here. I walk away knowing things I wish I didn’t know. I walk away believing wholeheartedly that everyone’s karma is their own. I can only try to respond intelligently to unintelligent behavior.
So on this day of April 25th sitting in my studio apartment in Tambon Chang Puak in this city of Chiang Mai that I have called home for almost a year in this country of Thailand I have resided in for nearly two-and-a-half years, I wax sentimental. What am I supposed to take from all of this? What are my lessons? I cannot think that any part of this path has been a waste of time or money. We all learn what we are supposed to learn. We all experience what we are supposed to experience. Each step in life takes us further on our journey as the path reveals itself. As Robin Sharma once said, “Challenge, conflict, confusion and uncertainty are beautifully orchestrated vehicles for growth.” We are pushed beyond our limits. We are forced to move forward.
I refuse to paint you a false portrait of reward and sacrifice and goodwill. This field is laden with over-sensationalism, misinformation and self-interest. Anyone who tells you otherwise is delusional. Look, no one expects perfection but we can do better. You may accuse me of many things – I am certainly not perfect, far from it – but I am honest, real and raw and that’s the only way I know how to be. In a country of conformity, superficiality and corruption, being this way does not bode well for me.
What I know for sure is my heart is broken for the second time in this country. What I also know is that I refuse to give up on my dreams for anyone. Right now everything is hanging in the balance. I am without work; back to the drawing board and with a visa that expires on May 9. Anything is possible now. I defer to the universe to show me the way.
