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Many people thought I was crazy to go to Thailand when I did.
I arrived in Thailand in 1997, a few weeks after their currency devalued and the economy collapsed, as part of the sequence of events now known as the Asian Financial Crisis.
I had registered in a teacher training course to learn how to teach English in Bangkok and hadn’t realized the implications of the headlines announcing the baht had unpegged from the US dollar.
Overnight the economy nosedived. People withdrew their money – and often themselves- from the country and the currency value plummetted. And kept plummetting.
Overnight Thai people lost their savings and many lost their jobs within the following weeks as well, as businesses closed shop.
Inflation started to skyrocket.
I saw people walking around like shellshocked soldiers, and a pervading sense of gloom and doom hung over the city like a black cloud. People still smiled at me, but it was forced, and their faces looked haunted by misery.
The Thai people I knew told me that they knew that the global elite, and their own elite, had manipulated the economy and created the crisis, and that they were profiting from the devalued currency. And they knew that it would be them, the people of Thailand, who would have to pay back the crippling IMF loans that no one wanted.
As the crisis deepened, more and more people lost their jobs. My Thai friends had to drop out of their English Teaching College and help family by working.
Then after a few weeks, I saw the Thai people rally and started to get very creative in how they could overcome and survive and overcome this dire situation.
Within weeks there was a great migration in the country as people moved home or moved in with other family members and pooled resources to try to survive.
Many communities had town hall meetings and discussed what to do.
Community Pools
As a result, a number of them started a community pot in the spirit of ‘Ubuntu’ which roughly translates to ‘I am because you are’ or ‘together we rise’. In many places in Africa there is a tradition whereby the locals put a small amount of money into a communal pot in the main plaza and the people most in need were allowed to take it to buy necessities.
The Thai people adapted this idea. They collected a very small amount from many households, with a few women making the rounds everyday, noting all the contributions. Each week one family as allowed to ‘take the pot’ in turn. The order was determined by lottery. The recipients garnered enough money to start a new micro-business or pay debts. Sometimes there were 250 or more families participating in a ‘community pool’.
Although the amount contributed was very small, it added up, and it was the only way they could get ahead.
Seed Banks
I will never forget the day I saw one of my Thai friends pacing nervously, dressed in his finest, saying words to himself like he was practicing a speech. He was waiting to meet with a group of locals and elders, where he would ‘pitch’ his idea for a small business.
If the group liked his idea and thought it was feasible, he would be allowed to participate in their collective and get funding for his idea.
How it worked was that each member of the collective (usually between 12 and 24) would contribute the same amount of money on a set day every month (e.g. the 1st of the month), and participants would take turns being the recipient of the monthly pool of money with which they could start their business.
There was no dropping out unless you died.
The other participants would also give free advice on the business plan and help with free labour to ensure each business had a successful launch and the best chance of success.
This was how many people who had lost their jobs because of the economic downturn got. back on their feet and found new ways to support their families.
Movable Feasts
One day a taxi cab pulled up to give me a ride and I was bewildered by the thatch of green grass like plants that covered his rooftop.
He had planted a garden on the roof.
It seemed to be thriving despite the choking diesel fumes of motorcycles and cars all around. He would pop out and water it when traffic slowed to a stop.
I thought it was a brilliant way to grow food for his family and maybe be able to grow extra he could sell. It was also the only way he could safeguard it, and tend his crop while working full time as a cabbie.
I saw this idea revived in 2021 during the Covid pandemic.
Community Ditch Gardens
I also saw strange happenings in the ditches of the major roadways between towns and cities. In some areas, I would see many people digging and working in what looked like a tangled weed patch scaling the sides of the ditches and in the shallow basin catchement for water runnoff at the bottom of the ditches. My friends explained that the locals had commandeered the ditches to use as community gardens.
This was very smart since in the north of Thailand where I was living, all flat land was already being used to grow rice, and the jungle took over the mountains and was very hard to clear. But the road allowances on either side of major roadways were already cleared.
The were using ancient knowledge of companion gardening to reduce pests and insects naturally since no one could afford chemical fertilizers or pesticides. There was not a bare patch of soil to be seen. A great variety or plants were all growing together, with medicinal and edible plants in the mix. Plants that were sun tolerant and did well in drier soil were planted at the top of the ditches and the shaded the areas lower down the ditches so other plants could grow. Rice was sown in the watery damp areas at the bottom. The community residents took turns watering and tending the plants and all shared equally in the harvested plants.
Markets that Beat Inflation
Photo Credit: Rasita
I noticed another clever thing. In the local indoor market, a second non-descript sign was placed beside the fancy official price list on the wall. My Thai friends explained that the locals had banded together and decided to keep using the price list that existed the day before the currency devalued. They were using that non-inflated price list amongst themselves.
The reasoned that the goods and food that were for sale had been grown when the prices of all inputs was more affordable, and they simply decided not to charge each other the inflated prices so everyone could survive. They chose not to gouge each other. They also allowed barters and trades amongst themselves, noting things in handwritten ledgers kept under the tables and only brought out as needed. Each vendor could choose whether they wanted to accept what was being offered as barter item. by another vendor. Sometimes they showed a list of the things they would accept and the person had the option to go and barter with a different vendor to procure the item or items that the first vendor wanted in order to make the trade. They used the ‘pre-inflation’ list as a benchmark for determining the value of items for trade purposes.
They agreed to reevaluate the ‘base price’ list at the end of the year.
I thought this was a very clever way to get around inflation.
Throughout this time of great crisis I was constantly amazed by how well I was treated as a foreigner. I was never robbed or pickpocketed.
Once a young boy was sent to find me in an open market place to give me back the Bic pen I have left there. He ran for two blocks in the blazing sun to try to catch up to me.
Old ladies I did not know would take my arm as I crossed streets to make sure I got across safely, not for their own safety (the traffic was bumper to bumper and never stopped unless you thrust yourself into traffic, and this always freaked me out so I would stand at the edge of the road for a long time). The often asked if I felt safe traveling alone as a single woman and smiled in relief when I said yes. They knew that tourism would be their best way out of economic debt compounded by the IMF loans their government had agreed to.
My Thai friends spread the word for me that I was looking for an English teaching job after my teacher training was finished, and briefcases and the things I needed for a job interview were given to me so I wouldn’t have to pay prices that they thought were too high to get ready for job interviews. Once a woman who worked at a local guesthouse I had stayed at asked around for a month until she found where I was staying so she could pass along a phone message I had received from a school I had applied at. They wanted me to get a job and stay. It was so touching that even total strangers wanted to help me out. I stuck out like a sore thumb, towering above them all, and glowing with my white skin, so they all knew me, but I had a hard time telling them apart for months.
Despite their economic hardships, my Thai teacher friends took turns inviting me out for dinner and outings on the weekends and someone invited me to join every meal, which was usually fried fish with fresh veggies on the side, and a bowl of rice, with a burning hot namprik sauce, eaten on the floor, using newspaper as a tablecloth.
Lessons Learned
Here is a summary of the lessons I learned
- Co-operating and acting as a community is the best way to get through hard times. Pooling resources instead of being competitive helps everyone survive and thrive. Everybody needs to belong to a community.
- Necessity is the mother of invention: you can grow food almost everywhere if you think creatively and look objectively at where there is space available
- Economic hardship doesn’t have to lead to crime and security issues
- The Thais proved to me that you could still maintain generosity, goodwill and maintain your dignity despite hardship
I believe we all can learn from this, decades later, as we see inflation skyrocketing around the globe and see great volatility in the global markets. It all comes down to the strength of your local community, or ability to create one, to weather the storms, both physical storms and financial crises.
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