Feeling the Heat

 In Mae Sariang as in all of northern Thailand, March – May is the hot season and without a doubt it lives up to its name. It is also very dry. The rains will stop usually in November-December and it might not even sprinkle a drop until May-June. So in March and April, when the hottest temperatures are experienced, it is extremely dusty. Fields are also burned off in February-March to prepare for planting and numerous fires on the forest floor put on a n
ightly light show. The fires, smoke, dust and sun combine on many days to produce a hazy, orange cast. And again, I might add, it is HOT!

Duane with the candle that couldn't take the
heat. It just half melted, slumped over
and gave up.

The 1980s were also a time when air conditioning was available but not widely used. The prevailing wisdom in mission circles was that even if an air conditioning unit was affordable, the cost of the electricity to use it was not. We were told that the cost of electric power was based on how much was used. If only a little was used, the cost was low. However, if a person could afford to buy expensive things like refrigerators, TVs, and air conditioners and were using lots of power, then they should also be able to afford higher electric rates. Besides, none of the people we were there to serve had air conditioners so why should we?

So, we used fans. Even just sitting and reading or writing, if we weren’t outright sweating, our entire bodies were glistening with a sticky, fly-paper glow. And we had no use of the “stick a fan in the window and let it pull in a gentle air-flow all around the house” idea. We were after max-evaporation so we sat in the direct airflow of the fan, preferably at high speed. All day. All night.

Yes, paper work was a challenge. Any hand or arm movement would drag along any number of lose pages that had bonded with our “gorilla glue” like skin. Then, if the breeze from the fan caught hold of a corner, the page would detach from our skin and fly across the room. Any effort to catch the newly launched page with the opposite hand would launch additional pages that had been stuck to that arm. Loose leaf chaos ensued. We soon caught on to the art of living with sticky skin and flighty papers though I can’t say we ever really mastered it. Still, we soon learned to never start a writing job without writing utensils, paper and most importantly, paper weights.

Of course it was hot at night too. Sure, the windows were open but in the hot season the night air was no cooler than in the day. Plus, the nights were still and the air outside rarely moved. Fortunately, we usually had ceiling fans which would keep some air flowing over our entire bodies. We would go to bed complaining of the heat, and wake up complaining of the heat but apparently, we had slept in between complaints. So, I guess the fans had helped.

Marcia with the same half melted, slumped over
candle today. We've kept it as a symbol of
the heat in Thailand.

In our first house in Mae Sariang, we slept in an upstairs bedroom. It is well known that heat rises so
naturally, the upstairs was hotter than downstairs. The electricity would sometimes cut out so we kept candles around the house strategically placed so we could find them in the dark if needed. One of those candles was a 4 inch thick candle on a small pedestal that sat on a hallway dresser. One morning we looked and noticed it had half melted and slumped over. It hadn’t been lit or hadn’t been near any source of other heat. It just got discouraged in the hot season heat, half melted, gave up and slumped over. We knew how it felt. We felt the same way almost everyday and that candle became a symbol for us of the hot season in Thailand. We kept it as a souvenir and still have it today.