I should have been paying attention to Somwong Wongprajun even before he started wearing socks on his hands. Somwong was another one of the volunteers on the trip that I took to the Tibetan village. Even without the socks on his hands, he was unlike the rest of us. For the most part, we were middle-aged, middle-class westerners, trying to avoid a 9 to 5 lifestyle. Somwong (whose name sounds almost like 'someone') was a handsome 26-year old doctor from southern Thailand. He had signed up for this trip for a number of reasons, not the least of which was because he thought he'd meet some attractive young women.
Being decades younger than the rest of the crew put an abrupt end to Somwong's romantic fantasies. Fortunately, he had another motivation. Somwong has been dreaming about Tibet for most of his life. When he was 9 years old, he saw a television documentary about Tibet. "What was it that you liked?" I asked. He said, "Everything." I imagined him living next to the warm ocean, surrounded by jungles, eating seafood and tropical fruit, and then learning about a landlocked nation high in the snow-capped mountains, where the dietary staples are yak meat and toasted barley. It's not the first place that *I* would be longing to visit.
On the second day of our three-day trip to the the village, Somwong and I were riding in separate vehicles. My car had stopped at the top of a mountain pass, and a few minutes later, the truck he was in stopped too. At the pass, the view of the landscape was spectacular; a bowl rimmed with mountains, endless rolling hills carpeted with fragile, delicate grasses, and a sky so blue and clear it made my head explode.
Somwong jumped out excitedly. He was was prepared for cold weather, dressed in a polar fleece jacket on top of a sweater and long underwear. On his head he wore a knit cap, pulled down over his ears, and on his hands, in lieu of gloves, he had stretched the eye-catching white gym socks. It was maybe, 55 degrees out. I could understand his improvisation with the gym socks; how much of a market is there for warm gloves in Thailand? I was more surprised that he was able to buy a knit cap in Bangkok, until he explained its availability with two words - "Hip Hop". MTV spreads fashion trends without regard for climate.
Despite his preparations, Somwong was shivering, if not from the cold, then from his excitement. "When I am a little boy, I dream about Tibet." he said. "Today my dream is true!" It looks corny on paper, and it even sounded cliched at the time. But his enthusiasm was infectious, and more than the socks, it was his unguarded affection for everything that we saw and did that made him stand out from the rest of the group.
Somwong was also the only volunteer who spoke even less Chinese than me. He could usually express himself by quietly and carefully miming his requests, but there were times when even my limited speaking abilities were helpful. When Somwong and I went to the market, I could help him to bargain for Tibetan clothing. Being more familiar with China, I could better guess which stores were likely to sell bottled water and peanuts. The only time I suspected that his inability to communicate was a problem, was when he said, "If I learn to speak Chinese, the first question I ask is 'Why you don't make better toilets?'"
Together, we encouraged each other to push a little harder and wander a little further. Faithful WDTW readers may remember that it was Somwong who suggested the famous Ghengis Khan yak ride. Another morning, we had a short time to kill before leaving the small town where we had stayed on our way to the village. Somwong and I started exploring and found our way to the local elementary school, where we got completely carried away playing with the children.
We took some pictures of our playmates, and soon I got swamped by an ecstatic mob of 5 and 6 year olds, fighting to see my digital camera (which Somwong later dubbed the "effective child attracter.") The impossible desire to see the live, moving image in my digital viewfinder, and simultaneously be in the picture, was driving the kids delirious with frustration. Crouched down at their level, caught in the pushing and shoving, I had the feeling of being buffeted by waves at the seashore.
During the pandemonium, I lost track of Somwong. It was getting dangerously close to the time that our car was scheduled to leave. The school was four stories tall and had dozens of rooms. Somwong could be in any one of them, or anywhere else in town for that matter, and he wasn't even carrying a watch. Luckily, I could say in Chinese "Where is my friend?" Fortunately one of the children understood me, and miraculously, that student lead me to the right classroom. When I got there Somwong was calmly giving a mathematics lesson.
We hurried back towards the hotel, and had gone about two-thirds of the way when Somwong realized that he had lost his hat. He felt sure that he had it when we first left the school, and he did not want to be up in the mountains without it. If we went back to look for it we would surely be late - extremely late, since we were already out past our departure time. But I could not deny him the comfort of retrieving one of his weapons against the cold.
When we finally got back to the hotel, our car was gone. The thought that we were stranded in a tiny Tibetan town was impossible to consider, so neither of us did. In fact, our car was out driving the streets, anxiously trying to find out where we were.
I felt sorry for Pam, our group leader, since she was responsible for our safety. I know she must have been worried when we didn't show up at the designated time. But when we were walking back from the school, Somwong had declared that our morning there was "better than a tour." So I can't say that I regretted our irresponsibility.
Because Somwong was a doctor in Bangkok, he was the one we'd turn to in the case of an illness or accident. As much as I liked him, I had some trouble with the prospect of putting my life in the hands of a guy young enough to be my son. But on the one occasion when Somwong needed to to practice emergency medicine, he was impressively competent.
Late in a day spent riding horses to a monastery in the mountains, Pam fell off her horse and landed in a mountain stream. She came up with a nasty gash on her forehead; her face was covered with blood. It was unnerving to see the person on whom we depended in need of help herself. But Somwong was not disturbed at all, and he filled the vacuum of our concern with thoughtful attention.
We had a rudimentary first aid kit, and Somwong systematically investigated its contents. From what I saw, there were lots of diarrhea medicines and gauze bandages, which he dismissed as irrelevant. There were also several packages of condoms floating around in the box, and each time Somwong picked one up, he stopped and looked at it curiously. I had to think that a 26-year old single man from Thailand knew what a condom was, and I couldn't understand why they caught his attention.
The second or third time he picked one up, he tore the pack open and handed the slippery condom to me. "Please fill this up" were his first words - which momentarily took me aback - "with cold water from the stream." He was looking for a sterile container to hold something cold, something to place on the injury and reduce the swelling. What could I have been thinking? He also showed resourcefulness when he realized that we had no rubbing alcohol and he sterilized the area around the cut using the local moonshine (approximately 140 proof).
Pam wanted to make sure that she took proper care of the cut, so she asked Somwong for his recommendations. He insisted that he would continue his care, and explained his intentions. "If you are my regular patient, I treat you one time every day. If you are my rich patient, I treat you two times every day. If you are my mother, I treat you three times every day." Pam got the mother-level treatment.
Somwong was not only trained as a doctor, he was also raised as a Buddhist. The combination gave him the ability to be both helpful and understanding; to know when to step forward and when to hang back. It was a quality that served him well in his work, and a lesson to me in how to live responsibly.
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