Photos from the countryside: goats, cacti and villagers.

I found my self becoming quite curious about the life of farmers and villagers in a small village in Nongkhai. Life has become quite difficult since the coronavirus pandemic and the three months lockdown last year. I toured around the village with my friend on a motorbike. We went through large area of green fields. Then we stopped to have a look at a goat farm.

These goats were very friendly and full of curiosity like small children. They seemed to understand human language as they came to say hello to us.

The drought made it difficult to grow rice crop successfully so some farmers have changed to keeping goats. They looked very cute and energetic. I wish I could borrow a small one to eat all the weeds in my garden. But my friend told me that goats would eat everything including bananas and flowers. So, I guess I had to change my mind.

Then we went through the more developed side of the village. We saw new houses being built by a well off villager. He was investing his money in building small houses on his land for renting out to people who came to work in local municipal authority. This villager is smart about finance and investment; I think he would become very rich. Had he known about cryptocurrency, he would become really wealthy as he has lots of cash for investment.

I was quite surprised to see so many pots of cacti in front of a rented house. The people who moved here seemed to be very fond of cacti, this my told me that they were probably people from big city. Villagers would not look at cacti as a cash crop nor very useful ingredients for cooking their food!

Then we visited a friendly family who were busy making baskets to be sold at the local market. The villager also made small wooden seats to earn extra income. They told me that the cost of living has gone up faster than their usual income. So, they had to struggle to make some money. Luckily the ladies could adapt their knowledge of how to make traditional palm leaf basket to more modern shopping baskets.

They also tried to save money by growing vegetables for the family consumption. I did admire their staying power and determination to make money by making things to be sold at the market. I would be in a far worse state as I had no practical knowledge on how to make things to exchange for money. Luckily I could write and blog so that I could accumulate crypto for my monthly bills. God does work in mysterious way! I stumbled upon Steemit a few years ago by chance; I read an article in the local English newspaper. So, it took me several weeks to gather my curiosity to tackle something completely new to me. It has been a rewarding learning experience which turned out to be life-saving during the spread of the pandemic last year. Many companies went out of business and people lost their jobs. My two part-time jobs also disappeared.

I have been trying to teach several people to start blogging in Steemit. Several youngsters did try but went back to their FB as most of their friends were there. It was much harder to teach grown adults as they were afraid of English language on all the pages. I have been trying to get my friends to buy some cryptos. Even this has been quite difficult as they were afraid of losing their private keys! They asked me to invest in cryptos on their behalf! The steep learning curve did put people off. So far, this month I have been successful in persuading a staff at the dentist to subscribe to a local exchange and start buying cryptos. I was rather disappointed that my dentist thought Bitcoin had no substance and couldn’t be touched. Most people think that money has to be tangible and supported by centralised banking system!

I toured the local village with the ideas of giving free classes on blogging and investing in cryptocurrency. But my experience with highly educated people has put me on guard against disappointment and failure. You would be surprised that I did made some thirty teenagers signed up with Steemit a few years ago! Not a single person stayed on with blogging after a few weeks. So, it would be very difficult to get local villagers with minimum education to start blogging and accumulate cryptos! I am at my wits’ end; I know they would need some crypto to survive in the future. Even my cousins refused to listen to me! They thought crypto was a scam! This really reminded me of Peter Schiff!

Have a nice day!

See you.