Karen as a student stopping to smell the jasmine.
Karen Genzink, an ISDSI alumni from Spring, 2007 wrote in to catch us up on what she’s doing now and how ISDSI has impact her life. Karen is currently interning with International Justice Mission, an international human rights agency that secures justice for victims of sexual exploitation and violent oppression, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Karen writes:
While studying overseas as a part of Calvin’s International Development Studies program, I experienced Thailand in a way that most travelers, passing through, are never able to. I lived with families in their homes, woke up at the crack of dawn to tap rubber trees with my host-parents, kayaked for a week along the coast of the Andaman Sea to learn about the relationship between coastal ecology and local communities, and helped my host-mom prepare blah dek (fermented fish paste) for dinner. What I learned in Thailand during my semester with ISDSI (International Sustainable Development Studies Institute, based in Chiang Mai) is that, while I did have some unique wisdom, experience and perspective to share with the people I encountered there, I, in turn, had a lot to learn from them.
ISDSI creates courses that allow students to learn directly from the people who know Thailand’s communities, culture, environment and way of living best: the local Thai people. ISDSI instructors prepare their courses by meeting with villagers to learn what they would like to teach American students about their way of life. As a result of this, courses are taught by the very people who know their surroundings and are willing to explain what “development” means in their context and experience. For example, students learned how the local people are affected by government-constructed dams by the very fishermen whose livelihoods depend on the river.
Before this semester, I did not fully appreciate the impact that ecological factors have on people. Understanding and promoting human rights has always been important to me, but caring for or even considering the environment as a part of the formula for addressing human rights issues never made it onto my radar. After listening to villagers’ frustrations and anger as they shared with us ways that both the environment and human-induced disasters have affected their livelihoods, I have come to understand how interconnected the two are.
While I learned dozens of lessons about development theory and practice through my experiences, what left the deepest impression on me were the relationships I built with the individuals I was blessed to meet. Despite the language barriers, I experienced gracious love through the families who opened up their homes to me and treated me, a strange American, as their daughter. I learned to express my love to them with a humble willingness to wake up early, brave the mosquitoes and the heat, get dirty, feel uncomfortable and follow their lead. I could not help but admire and respect the great knowledge and experiences of people who are in so many ways different from me.
In Thailand I gained a wonderful and necessary foundation for my degree in International Development Studies, and that has been invaluable in my present work as an intern with International Justice Mission in Cambodia. I am grateful, and humbled, that I have been given such incredible opportunities to engage in the lives and culture of Thai people all over the country. From my gracious family in Hin Lat Nai, a small Karen village in Northern Thailand, to the fishing families I lived with in a part of Northeastern Thailand called Isaan, to the Southern Muslim family who called me “daughter,” I was received with openness and love. I learned that, if I hope to share the ideas, theories and practices concerning international development that I learned in undergraduate course at Calvin College (in Grand Rapids, MI) and positively influence families in communities where I am the outsider – wherever I am, I need to first be quiet, listen and learn from the people themselves. In Thailand, I learned what a blessing it is to share our lives with each other.
