May 2551 1

Volume 1 Issue 10

May 2551

Can you believe DDW has been on the road for seven months already?! We sure can’t believe it. A blink of the eye and this yearlong journey will have come full circle. Looking back at previous newslet-ters, we realize that much of our attention has been on the inspiring deaf people we have met, but we are just as often in the masses of hearing people…everyday and everywhere…on buses and trains, in restaurants and cafes, at youth hostels and temples, and so on.

For example, we recently spent 72 hours in transi-tion from Chiang Mai, Thailand to Luang Prabang, Laos with a group of sixty plus fellow travelers from twenty different countries, all hearing, except for Christy. With no means of easy escape from each other, we shared a bumpy, swervy, intense bus ride along the mountainside, 18 hours on a cramped, overbooked, standing-room-only slow boat down the Mekong River with the southeastern Asian sun beat-ing down on us, and an overnight stay at a local farm village where the only available hostel had no elec-tricity, questionable bed bugs, and a bathroom that made any public squat toilet more appealing.

Regardless of the conditions during this three-day journey, something magical happened: people who had no clue about the concept of a deaf “community” on day one were educating each other about deaf cul-ture by day three. It often starts when someone ap-proaches us drawn to our use of sign language, which stands out even in a room full of ten different foreign languages being spoken. We can feel the eyes watch-ing us, and sometimes their heads even bob hypnoti-cally, moving in sync with our signing hands. After we break the ice, the first question our new hearing friends almost always ask is, “So sign language is uni-versal, right? That must be cool to know a universal language!”

But of course, sign language is not universal. The roots of sign language, just like any verbal language, are influenced by culture and geography. For exam-ple, the sign for “Thank you” in Japan is adopted from the karate-chop-like gesture a sumo wrestler makes after winning his prize money, whereas in China, “Thank you” is signed as a fist with a bending thumb to represent the subtle head nod Chinese people use to acknowledge thanks in passing.

Enabling Awareness, Witnessing Breakthroughs

www.discoveringdeafworlds.com

What is DDW?

Dave Justice and Christy Smith are travel-ing the world to learn and share stories of empowerment, inspiration, and connection between international Deaf communities.

Discovering Deaf Worlds (DDW) is an opportunity to give deaf people worldwide a voice. For more information, photos, vid-eo logs, and newsletter stories, visit www.discoveringdeafworlds.com.

BREAKTHROUGHS, continued on page 5

Aboard the slow boat to Laos where lifelong friends were made!

2 Discovering Deaf Worlds

What is Global Reach Out?It’s all about empowerment. Global Reach Out (GRO) is an outreach

organization dedicated to building a global network of Deaf youth, to cre-ate cross-cultural bridges, learn from one another, and improve the quality of life in their home countries. GRO founder Alim Chandani explains, “Many organizations currently exist to serve deaf communities internation-ally, but none exist that utilize a peer-to-peer model to ensure that empow-erment, rather than dependency, is the result of their collaboration.”

Leadership and independence are the focus for this recently established non-profit organization. With past delegations to Thailand and India, GRO’s workshops have encouraged foreign delegates to step into a leader-ship role and interact more within their communities. Anthony Balogh, the first GRO delegate staying in Thailand for six months, is researching the pros and cons of local deaf youth’s lives. He is organizing a weekend retreat where twenty deaf high school students throughout Thailand will come together to foster leadership skills and solid networking relationships.

Do you know of a Deaf student or friend that may benefit from being a GRO peer-to-peer delegate? Want to learn more about GRO? Visit www.globalreachout.org.

Alim Chandani (front) and Anthony Balogh are expanding opportunities abroad for peers.

Not sure how to connect with the deaf community in Thailand? Just take a short stroll through one of the many street markets and you’re bound to see hands waving through the air in no time. Full of colorful farmer pants, paint-ings of Buddhist temples, wooden frogs that croak, and thousands of other unique souvenirs, these street markets provide a venue that many local Thai vendors de-pend on to make their living. On our first day in Bangkok, we met Laksana Rotrungsee, an eccentric deaf woman who has worked her butt off for the past year at one of the busiest intersections of Khao San road, a backpacker’s haven. It’s no easy task to be on your feet all day, with clothes always soaked from

spontaneous heavy rains while dripping in sweat from the blaz-ing southeastern Asian heat. Yet from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., six days a week, Laksana and thousands of other vendors work their stations with a smile, trying to earn a few thousand baht to support their businesses and their lives.

In downtown Bangkok, des-ignated stretches on Silcom and Nai Lert roads are reserved for deaf, blind, and physically disabled people holding a special permit, required by law. So if you keep

your eyes open in these areas, it is guaranteed you will bump into someone signing on a daily basis, es-pecially where the streets are flooded with back-to-back deaf vendors.

Deaf vendor Laksana Rotrung-see communicates with local shoppers using a calculator.

Deaf Vendors Everywhere In Thailand!

On May 27, Dave and Christy are off to Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Have any contacts, cultural advice, or words of encouragement?

Pass them along to info@discoveringdeafworlds.com.

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Born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, Jay Bunnag has always been actively involved with the deaf com-munity, while confronting educational barriers head on. “You have to understand,” Jay states, “deaf schools in Thailand do not have a feeling of ‘being proud deaf ’ or producing deaf leaders for tomorrow. They agree that hearing are better, smarter, etc.”

Jay is an alumni of Chonburi School for the Deaf, where he has recently taken the initiative to establish an alumni network. He was awarded an international scholarship opportunity to attend Gallaudet University, the only liberal arts university in the world for deaf peo-ple. At Gallaudet, he continued to build on his founda-tion of what rights, abilities, and strengths deaf people have, while earning a bachelor’s degree in theatre arts and a master’s degree in deaf education.

Jay has since returned to Bangkok and is giving back to his home country. “It’s my duty to serve in return and I enjoy making a difference in my homeland every time a new plan is planted,” he says.

With an extensive background and international awareness, Jay serves as a positive deaf role model, roll-ing up his sleeves to raise the standards for the deaf com-munity. He is the only deaf teacher on the deaf educa-tion faculty at Ratchabhat Suan Dusit University, where

he teaches core courses for its deaf education program, in addition to teaching Thai Sign Language and Eng-lish and evaluating students in internships. He serves as a mentor for leadership, management and community development skills to future teachers of deaf students in Thailand. These students, with Jay’s support and guid-ance are currently producing an online Thai Sign Lan-guage dictionary.

We want to take a moment to acknowledge people like Jay Bunnag, who seize the moment of international opportunities and later give back to their home coun-tries. Keep up the good work, Jay!

Jay Bunnag demonstrates how Thai Sign Lan-guage differs from American Sign Language.

Spotlight on Jay Bunnag: Giving Back

A profile of F4 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Last September, a young deaf man, who goes by the name of F4 because of a tattoo on his right fore-arm, was dropped off at the door-steps of the Deaf Development Pro-gramme in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He has no passport, no identity, and no known family.

While F4 is cheerful and friendly in conversation, he has no devel-oped language (written, signed or spoken).

Have you seen him before? Please share any information you might have to help unravel his story.

For more information, visit http://discoveringdeafworlds. blogspot.com/2008/04/do-you-know-who-i-am.html.

Do You Know Who I Am?

Help DDWstay alive to the end!Donate at:

www.discoveringdeafworlds.com

4 Discovering Deaf Worlds

A Thank You to Our Sponsors

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Jay Bunnag, for introducing us to the Thai deaf community, the King’s Palace and late-night egg tosses.

Bob and Glenda, for delivering our new videocamera (wahoo!) and bringing a much needed slice of home to our halfway point on this trip. We love you!

Anthony Balogh, for allowing us to be a part of your experience here in Thailand. Good luck in fulfilling your dreams!

Shout-Outs!Shout-Outs!Shout-Outs!

Donate to DDW by going online!

www.discoveringdeafworlds.com

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May 2551 5

These conversations often lead to a more in-depth chat about deaf culture, conversations that sometimes carry on for many hours. After all, we are on a boat or a bus or a train for the next umpteen hours to our next destination; why not make the most of a cultural exchange? And so it goes. While we learn about the uniqueness of places like Israel, Switzerland, Austra-lia, and India, they learn that deaf people do in fact have a language and a culture. They learn that lip-reading isn’t so easy after all and begin to adjust their communication style by speaking clearly, keeping eye contact, and using a gesture here and there. They learn that deafness is not so much genetic, and begin pos-ing questions about everything from deaf education to the various cultural differences in the deaf commu-nities we have visited.

As we travel the world, we feel it is our duty to educate hearing people on deaf culture. And we know we’ve made an impact when we see the conversations happening independent of our involvement. For in-stance, we once overheard a person say, “Wow, it must be tough for Dave to be the one always translating things.” And out of nowhere, one of our hearing traveling buddies stepped in with, “Yeah, but Christy translates just as much when they’re with deaf people in other countries. She’s deaf and more visual so she picks up on the different sign languages better, so they

sorta balance each other out with the translating.” This was a proud moment of awareness, demonstrat-ing equal standing, from a hearing person in reference to a deaf person. The ripple effect has begun.

BREAKTHROUGHS, continued from front page

Thai Bush MedicineWhile trekking through the rainforest in Northern Thailand, leeches are everywhere. They crawl

up your shoes, onto your skin, and start sucking your blood! While these tiny creatures may seem harmless, their bite will stop your blood from coagulating. So if you can’t stop the bleeding with the typical gauze, pressure and band-aid, try the Thai rainforest village way: press a thumb full of ashes from the wood of a nearby campfire onto the wound. This stops the bleeding immediately.

HELP! HELP! Call ___, um___,?If you were to be in an accident, injured, or robbed while traveling, what number do you call?

911 is not an international number, so do your homework and have Thailand’s emergency digits tucked away in the back of your head – just in case. It’s better to know it and not need it, than to need it and not know it! The number is: Thailand-1155.

International Travel Tidbits

This is the May 2551 issue of the DDW news-•letter - at least, according to the Thai calendar, which follows the birth of Buddha instead of the birth of Christ.There are over 2,000 wild elephants in Thailand.•In 1999, Thai Sign Language (TSL) was of-•ficially acknowledged as the national language of deaf people in Thailand. This recognition was signed by the Minister of Education on behalf of the Royal Thai Government.Thailand is listed in the Guinness Book of •World Records for the world’s biggest ham-burger, largest mass scuba dive, and man with the longest hair. In 1950, American-trained Thai educators in-•troduced American Sign Language in the deaf schools, so TSL and ASL belong to the same language family.Krating Daeng, a type of ox that is otherwise •known as Red Bull, originated in Thailand.

Did You Know...?

6 Discovering Deaf Worlds

Thai Sign LanguageIn each issue, DDW prints the fingerspelled alphabet of a visited country.

For more information on deaf culture in Thailand, connect with the National Association of the Deaf in Thailand (NADT) at www.geocities.com/nadtthai/indexeng.html.

The website is available in both Thai and English.

On December 26, 2004, the second largest earth-quake in the world ever recorded struck the Indian Ocean with a magnitude of 9.3. A series of devastat-ing tsunamis were triggered pushing waves up to 30 meters (100 feet) high over the coastlines of eleven countries, including Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.

Let us remember the 230,000 victims of this trag-edy and acknowledge the power of mother nature as these communities continue to rebuild their land and their lives.

(Photo at left courtesy of www.rc-racing.com/2005/january/tsunami/tsunami-photographer.jpg.)

A photographer escapes to higher ground as tsunami waves rise.

Restoration from the Asian Tsunami

Looking for a good read on the road? If you’re looking for a good read on the road, in the air or by boat,

here are a couple of books we couldn’t put down! Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, and Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Both books take you to faraway places and give a glimpse into the human spirit’s ability to endure through challenges that life throws at each one of us.