Squatter psychology

For the past 3.5 years, I have been a squatter. I have lived in the Permsup community, a place of uncertain existence. Permsup has been home to about 500 people, the majority of whom have lived there 12-15 years or more. Some have lived there for 40 years. Ever since before I moved in, we were aware that a road project was scheduled to come straight through Permsup, evicting everyone. This pending eviction has hung over our heads like a cloud that destroys hope for the future and the freedom to plan.

It has affected me in very concrete ways. Because I never knew how long we would be here, I always felt hesitant to invest in my house and in long-term thinking programs of development. If I had known Permsup would still mostly be standing 3.5 years later, I would have made a lot of improvements to my house, both for my own living situation as well as to be a community resource center, perhaps with a computer lab for teaching skills to the neighbors and so on. In affect, the cloud of eviction forced me to live like a camper, wanting to live there among the people to identify with them and stand with them in solidarity and build relationships, but afraid to really move in and invest like this was truly my home. I was always afraid any investments made would be bulldozed away in short time.

And so it is for my neighbors as well. They live an uncertain existence, never feeling like this is truly their home, but cherishing the cheap housing it provides currently too much to plan for a better and more costly future. Without land rights, a community cannot develop. There is no foundation.

I am now in the process of moving out of Permsup into the Samaki Patana community, just down the road.  [Have now moved by the time of posting this.]  Samaki Patana is a much bigger community, perhaps 2500 residents, and more diverse, with significant populations from every region of Thailand. There are some sections that are as poor as Permsup, but there are sections that are better off. It is a secure living situation for the people, with a legal, long-term (30 year) land rental agreement with the owner, a foundation that provides for the healthcare of Buddhist monks. There is a narrow street that goes through the community, giving more access. The water runs all the time. The electricity is sufficient. The rental room I’m moving into actually has four concrete walls and a concrete foundation and a sturdy roof that won’t threaten to fly off in a windstorm. This as opposed to the termite-ridden wood of my old house in Permsup, situated above a swamp-turned-garbage-dump with political posters for walls. (My new concrete room is still over a swamp.)  We can even get phone lines into Samaki Patana apparently. Which means I could actually get internet at home in my new slum. How ’bout that! The digital divide is coming down.

But in spite of all the ways in which it is physically nicer, I want to come back to the psychological/mental dimension. Yes, my living situation will be nicer, but beyond what that can explain, my heart feels like a tremendous weight has been lifted and a cloud has been removed from my vision. I feel a new joy that I didn’t have before. What is this joy? It is the freedom to build. The freedom to plan. The freedom to invest. The freedom to be. The freedom to look forward to the future.

And besides my own newfound freedom to, it is a freedom from. It is a freedom from the nearly fatalistic lack of planning mindset that prevails in a squatter community. I love my brethren in Permsup, and they are hardworking people, but I have to determine that their worldview pre-determines their life situation. What I mean is, there is a predisposition against planning for the future. Because of what? There are several reasons, starting with the need to appear generous to and concerned for others.  There is a tie to community, and more significantly, a tie to community opinion, that halts any thoughts or attempts to plan and work and climb oneself out of the poverty situation.

One of my hopes in moving out of Permsup at this time is that it will serve as an example to my neighbors there to get diligent in planning for their own moves to wherever they might go.  I hope, in fact, that some of my fellows in the house church and network of friends there would follow me into the Samaki Patana community (where there are many openings).

My thoughts are still pondering on all this, I’ll hopefully post more later.  But for now, I wanted to post my incomplete thoughts in process because I see in the transition how significant all this is.  Pray for my Permsup neighbors…they need to prepare themselves to move in advance of the eviction….