Fireworks over Chiang Mai

It’s not easy getting a barbershop quartet together in the middle of Thailand. So instead we had three older, grey-haired women, carrying the tunes to songs like “America the Beautiful” and “This Land is Your Land” in a manner that would lead most spectators to believe harmonizing was never invented. I was inside the U.S. Consulate grounds in Chiang Mai and as I walked around, I felt like I had been transported back to the Newburgh Summerfest for the evening. The balance of faces was suddenly very heavy on the white side, kids running around with puckered little drying American flags painted on their faces. There were hot dogs and McDonalds hamburgers and pizza and apple pie, root beer and Dr. Pepper. There were people in gaudy red, white and blue hats and American flag shirts. There was even a bouncy castle that remained incredibly enticing throughout the hour and a half I was there.

The tune crept quietly over the loudspeakers. I didn’t even hear it until, “what so proudly we hail,” and by the time it got to “the twilight’s last gleaming,” the entire place was standing straight up with hands over hearts. And then, in the middle of Asia, about six or seven hundred American citizens belted out “And the rocket’s red glare! The bombs bursting in air!” BOOOOM came the first explosion from behind the flag we were saluting. We sang the rest of that song with fireworks exploding every few seconds, the kind of fireworks that are so close you can feel them in your chest. But I think this feeling was amplified a bit by another tightening in my chest.

I remember a conversation I had with my mom just a couple of days before I left for Thailand. I had been practicing a few key Thai phrases and sauntered into the kitchen to practice them on her. She asked me if I knew how to say “My name is Andrew” and “Where is the bathroom?” Then she asked me if I knew how to say “Where is the American Embassy?” and I kind of chuckled and made some remark about how I would likely be telling people I was Canadian anyway to avoid certain problems Americans can often face overseas with our image in lots of places. And then she said to me, “You know, it’s really too bad it has to be that way.”

As I stood there tonight listening to that song and the rumble and tightening in my chest, I realized a couple of things. There are a lot of things our country does very wrong. There are many policies we goof up on and our greed as a world power often makes us do things that go against our own founding principals. But … there are also a lot of things that we have done and continue to do right. I think that being at the place I am in my life, a college student at a fairly liberal school, I am taught to think that our nation and our leadership is pretty jacked on everything, and that most everything American is gluttonous and selfish and greedy and bad. And don’t get me wrong, much of it is.

But there is also freedom, and freedom is a darn beautiful thing. It’s often times not until you are in or very near a place that has much less freedom and independence that you realize just how much these freedoms afford us … not only physically, but intellectually. We have a freedom to think how we want and to tell people what we think. We have the power to change our situation if we don’t like it and to make a difference in the things around us if we choose to.

The fireworks display lasted about four minutes, and by homeland standards was a pretty weak show. But I have to say, I’ve never felt as patriotic on a fourth of July as I did tonight, standing in the middle of a city in Asia with my hand over my heart. Take a moment today to really consider what it is that these things, these freedoms, afford us. Look at the first amendment, and try to imagine what your lives would be like without it. I’ve seen what lives can be like without it, and it’s not a pretty sight.

What is it that defines what “An American” is? We’re taught to think it’s our leadership and our wars, and often times unfortunately, to the rest of the world that’s exactly what an American is. But the truth is that you define what an American is. As the body of America, as its citizens, we are the ones that can show the world what we truly value as a nation and as a people. Let’s think about how good of a definition we’re putting out there.

And to sum everything else up, I’ve spent the last week and a half traveling around with Global Refuge. We happened to be passing through Chiang Mai for the evening, just in time to celebrate with our fellow countrymen, and will be heading north again either tomorrow or the next day. The village I’ll be in up north hasn’t exactly heard of the Internet yet, so I don’t expect to be able to make an entry from there. But I do have to renew my visa before the medical team gets in from the states, so hopefully I’ll be able to make a post then. Hope your summer is going well. Thanks, as always, for reading, and God bless.