Austausch mit indigener Gemeinschaft 2024

Our Thailand project was a wonderful experience and a chance to learn about the differences between our cultures and traditions. It started with a visit from Suraporn Suriyamonton, an inspiring person, who brought her culture and traditions into our classroom. She showed us a calendar of the traditions the Karen, her community, celebrate around the year. Additionally, she made us aware of the political problems they have in Thailand. We loved talking to her and questioning her about her community and the similarities and differences we noticed.

After this, we started to read a graphic novel titled “Let’s Go Back Home”, which had been sent to us by the Karen. In this graphic novel we learned about a young man who went to a big city to pursue his dream of studying and then came back to his community to relearn his people’s traditions. The comic also introduced us to traditional rotational farming that the Karen use to sustain themselves. Even though many Western people think that the Karen harm the rainforest when they use fire clearing, this actually improves the health of the forest when letting it regenerate for 7-12 years.

We also watched a documentary by Dr Prasert Trakansuphakon to further our knowledge about the Karen way of living. This helped us to interview the scientist and his son, who experienced a similar life as the main character in the graphic novel “Let’s Go Back Home”. In the videoconferences with them, we learned about their goal to save their traditions and culture despite the government accusing the Karen of destroying the forest and making laws to forbid them to cultivate land in the forest.

With all this information we talked to the students of the Khunmaeyod School. In this videoconference we learned about the daily lives of teenagers in indigenous communities. The students were really energetic, lively and great to talk to. This made the experience even better. We loved to learn about their interest in social media, because this is a similarity that we share.

More here: https://goetheschule-ib.de/thailand-austausch-2024/