Tiny Flippers

All along Sri Lanka’s southern coast, evidence of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami is prevalent. In between tourist towns, ruined walls and remains of gutted, faceless homes have been left to crumble. With no tourist income in the area, there is little reason or financial means to bother tearing them down or building them back up. In some places, shops spring up like weeds within the collapsing buildings. And on each of our bus rides, I was overwhelmed by the number of roadside graveyards, wondering if they were tsunami victims.

Among the devastation, Sri Lanka’s turtle hatcheries took a particularly hard hit. Many of them, though they had been in business for decades, are run complete off donations and volunteer work. So, I figured that we should surely go put our money to good use, donating to the rebuilding turtle hatcheries in the area. Kosgoda holds the highest concentration of turtle hatcheries; it is the only place where, of the five species of sea turtle that lay eggs on Sri Lanka, all five come to nest.

Since Sri Lankans consider sea turtle eggs to be a delicacy, and the hatcheries have a hard enough time with natural predators, the hatcheries pay a higher-than-market price to all local fishermen who bring in turtle eggs. They then put them in a “natural incubator” (sand box) until they are ready to hatch. Since turtles hatch at night, using the reflection of the moon as a guide back to the sea, the hatcheries rig a system wherein an artificial light lures the hatchlings into a box instead.

Baby turtles, already susceptible to birds and other predators, are especially vulnerable when they are first born. Not only are their eyes not yet open fully, but their bellybuttons aren’t closed; it’s like ringing a dinner bell for all nearby predators. The hatcheries keep the new turtles in tanks of seawater for three days, by which point their eyes are open, their bellybuttons sealed, and they are ready to go. On the night of the third day, the hatchery workers, along with any volunteers lucky enough to be there, release the baby sea turtles under the cover of darkness.

In addition to giving baby turtles a helping hand on their way to survival, the hatcheries take in wounded sea turtles. Injured turtles can be nursed to health and then released back into the ocean; turtles that have lost limbs and would typically die in the wild remain at the hatcheries, helping to educate local school children (and us tourists). Rare albino turtles, massive and majestic, don’t end up in the wild at all, their luminescence making them immediate prey.

There are obviously many people who are opposed to the turtle hatcheries’ interference with nature. But you have to figure, with sea turtle numbers dwindling, even one more turtle that survives is a small difference. 

The Duties of an Ajarn

In Thailand, being a teacher (“ajarn” in Thai) is a position deserving of respect. On the respect totem pole, only monks and the king are higher. There is even a national holiday for paying respect to teachers, during which every student makes a bouquet and must wai (bow), forehead to the floor, and present it to their teachers. On a regular basis, students are always supposed to be, literally, lower than teachers, so they duck when we walk past. They also crawl up to Thai teachers’ desks on their knees. And, although being a foreign teacher will certainly diminish the amount of respect we receive in actuality, it in no way lessens the cultural expectations imposed on us. This can be an intimidating situation to walk into as a foreigner. 

Having no official rulebook, we are just left blindly feeling our way through the cultural differences. And, from what we can figure out, the rules make no sense. We have been scolded for: wearing non-collared shirts, wearing flipflops, drinking directly out of a big water bottle at morning flag raising ceremony, eating while standing, not using a straw, eating while walking, eating popsicles, not eating food that was offered to us. The list goes on and includes, primarily, things that we see Thai teachers doing on a regular basis. 

The list of don’ts also extends to any personal life you may have in public. What you wear, what you do, what you eat, can all potentially be witnessed by an unseen student, or worse, parent. My piercings are a disruption in almost every class, and if I wear my hair up I can be sure that the constellation tattoo on my neck will serve as a major distraction. Bumping into students on the weekends while wearing my nose ring and potentially showing bits of my shoulder tattoo pumps fodder into the gossip mill. And, as it isn’t naturally occurring in Thailand, cleavage is a big no-no. 

We gain a bit of celebrity. Thais know where we teach. In Ratchaburi, our laundry ladies tracked down where we lived when they ruined some of our clothes. The director of our current school called us on the guesthouse phone one morning, without our telling him where we were staying. Word gets around. We stand out. Drinking beer? Smoking cigarettes? We do it at home or where there are only adults: bars, not restaurants. 

Luckily, in more-touristy Chiang Rai, we stand out less than we did last term. And the school seems a bit more lax overall. But, we still are expected to finish our afternoon popsicles before going back to school, and the students do freak out a little bit when we crouch down to their level.