Kwan

Today, I spent part of my day, fulfilling a family request and promise. I was asked by Duang's Aunt to make a "movie" of her granddaughter, "Kwan". I promised awhile ago that I would do it but did not get around to it until today.

Kwan is 12 months old and lives in the house next door to Duang's parents in Tahsang Village. I have written about her before, referring to her as "Duang's Cousin's Baby".

I have been photographing Kwan fairly steadily since April when she was four months old. She is one of my favorite models and always a sure bet to spend some good time with.

Kwan has lived a short life unlike many if not all babies in the USA. She was born in the local community hospital in Kumphawapi. She left the hospital to live with her grandparents, and parents along with several chickens, two dogs and 3 water buffaloes in Tahsang Village.

Kwan's grandfather is a subsistence farmer who also raises the water buffaloes to supplement the family income. Her mother is partially paralyzed on her left side. She suffers from seizures and I suspect that she has epilepsy. I have not witnessed any seizures but Duang has described them to me and they seem to be grand mal seizures. She has medicine to prevent the seizures but sometimes does not have money or desire to take the medicine.

It always amazes me to know people who have chronic medical conditions and choose to not take their medication. Sometimes people are ashamed to have to take medicine everyday for the rest of their life. In other cases the medicine makes people feel better so they convince themselves that they no longer need to take the medication. These self delusions embark the person on a roller coaster ride of health and debilitation. So it is with Duang's cousin.

Kwan was breast fed like the vast majority of Isaan babies.

Kwan, like all babies spent most of her time sleeping. She slept in small wooden cradle suspended from an overhead wooden frame. During the day she slept outside on the elevated wooden platform in front of her house under the watchful eye of her mother, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors and the two male lost souls who wander around the village.

I suspect that after a visit to Isaan, if she ever made one, Hillary Clinton came up with her book title "It Takes A Village to raise A Child". I won't debate or argue whether or not raising a child requires a village. I will attest to the fact that in Tahsang, the village does raise Kwan.

As a baby I never saw Kwan alone or unattended. She was always being held by someone or in her cradle surrounded by caring people. In Thailand, people are very free in letting other people hold their babies. A have gotten to hold many babies of strangers that we happened to come upon on the streets or in the stores. I even was offered to hold new borns in the Maternity Ward of the hospital.

Kwan has never worn a modern diaper. Pampers and their Thai equivalents are too expensive for the farmers of Isaan. As a baby, Kwan would have a thin small towel between her legs to capture waste. As she got older, she graduated to wearing cotton shorts without underwear - this always made holding her to be like a game of Russian roulette. On several occasions she wet on me. I have been fortunate so far unlike Duang and have not gotten anything worse than a little "water" on me. When nature and Kwan did their business, the grandmother would take the baby remove the soiled clothing, carry the baby to one of the large ceramic urns that captured rain water off of the house roof, clean the baby's bottom, put a new towel or clean shorts on, and returned Kwan to someones willing lap. I was always more willing to hold her shortly after a mop up operation believing that the chances of getting messed on to be much lower.

Kwan has always had a great deal of personal attention. As she got older she graduated to a hammock suspended from two supporting columns of the thatched roof platform outside of the house. Someone was always taking their turn keeping the hammock swinging. Neighborhood children always stopped by to watch and talk to the baby. Mothers with their babies always stopped by to socialize.

Kwan's first solid food was rice - no real surprise there. The rice would be mixed with boxed milk into a loose puree to feed the baby. Baby foods are not widely used in Isaan villages. Babies become weaned and move on to food off the plates and out of the bowls of the adults.

Unlike American babies, Kwan's world is bereft of toys and other objects that we consider essential for intellectual development. When she was in her cradle and hammock, there was a string across the width with a couple pieces of ribbon hanging down. Kwan does have a great deal of hands on intellectual stimulation - people play with her constantly, Lao music is often playing throughout the village, children come and sing to her and talk to her, chickens and dogs are constantly wandering around making noise. Duang, Duang's son, and I always made sure to carry Kwan to Duang's mother's market to look at the Disney character decals on the window. She loved them!

Duang and I have given Kwan a couple stuffed toys to play with. Now that she is a year old she has many more things to play with - empty plastic bottles, plastic jars, plastic lids, newspapers, calendars, pieces of cloth, and anything else that she can get her hands on.

Now that I am using a flash to photograph her - she gets quite entertained. The flash of light gets her all excited and she breaks our into laughter and looks eagerly for the next flash.

In this photo she is quite happy drinking sweet fermented milk - it really does taste good! On this day, a week ago, she realized ow entertaining she could be by laughing. For some reason when she laughed or wanted to show how happy she was, she would throw her head back and laugh. That only encouraged us to laugh which encouraged her to laugh. She is starting to try to talk so she is making some pretty entertaining noises. In truth, Kwan and I are in a fierce competition to learn to speak Thai. At the moment I have a slight lead on her!

Well I made the promised movie today. I used Microsoft Picture Story 3 to combine still photos and music into a Ken Burns type montage. I ended up with three songs - one English and two Lao and many photographs for a 14 minute DVD production. Word has already been sent to Tahsang Village so I expect that we will deliver it tomorrow.