The Rainbow Caravan &
Phaaphaa Buddhist Ceremony
May, June & July 2004
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The
Whispering Seed is forever greatful to these three wonderful young people,
Rin, Tuk and Dtu, also known as the Rainbow Caravan. Several months ago, Nao’s sister
Rin and two friends, Dtu and Tuk came to us with an tremendous about
of energy and desire to help the whispering seed in whatever way that
they could. At that time, we had lost our farm in Pittsanulok and
were desperately searching all over thailand, once again, for the
new home land for the childrens home and community learning center.
They came to us with the idea that what we needed most at this point
was to be able to purchase land, to have a secure place where we could
start in with all of our hopes, dreams and plans. Their idea was to
raise money to pay for whatever land we were to find. |
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With
lots of planning and talking, they came up with a commitment with each
other to work together for 8 months to raise the money needed for the
land. They had several ways in which they were going to do this, but
the main one was to travel around Thailand and several other countries,
playing traditional Thai music and sharing about their culture to raise
donations. Part of their plan was to also be involved in some kind of
cross-cultural exchange with other youth.
They decided to start in Thailand for the first three months and see how it went and then to move on to another country. As the three months began to wind down, we had found a piece of land along the Burmese border where we had decided we wanted to relocate the project. Fortunately, the land was extremely inexpensive, only $2,500 USD for the 12 acres of land. At this time, they had raised a good bit of money playing music all over Thailand and sharing about our work and they had set up a Buddhist alms giving ceremony called Paapaa to also help raise donations to pay for the land. They chose the 11th of July to be the ceremony day and a group of 12 of us drove to a beautiful temple about 5 hours outside of Bangkok to a temple along the Cambodian border. We spent two days at the temple with some wonderful monks and nuns and then travelled to the ocean for an afternoon. As miracles happen, the money that
they raised playing music and through the Paapaa ceremony was just
enough to completely pay for the land. |
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Now that they have reached
their goal within only three months, and without leaving Thailand, they
ready to make new plans. Dtu will continue to study and share his music
with children in Thailand and will help us work on the land of whispering
seed. Once children come into our care, he will be a music teacher for
the kids, teaching traditional Thai music. During the month of August,
he will work with Shank, a Korean student from an alternative school
in Seoul staying with us, to create evening music lessons for hte local
children at the local temple. Rin and Tuk are looking into traveling
to the US to join a Teacher Education Program in an alternative school
and continue to help with anything that is needed to keep things moving
for the project. |
     
    
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