On the recommendation of dear Ramesh, I ended up spending a few hours today in an eccentric little museum of a man who dedicated his life to mosquitoes,nature, and the power of art and beauty that keeps the world in balance.
I pulled up to the house-turned museum in a tuk-tuk and was swiftly greeted by a little old man with a smiling soul. He asked where I came from and happily escorted me into his quirky little museum. Housed inside is a collection of insects (with a specific interest on mosquitoes), artwork, natural wonders, Manop's random thoughts, scientific and historical data and artifacts, and relics of 80 some odd years of a man and his wife dedicating themselves to classifying mosquitoes in Thailand.
I can't begin to describe the wonderous things inside--so I'll just name a few.. There is a collection of termite art where wood modified by termite holes would be titled "dog and bird"--(one really had to reach to the cobwebbed realms of your imagination to see what Manop saw). The walls inside housed his artwork influenced heavily by Thailand's Buddhism, awesome use of color and shape, mosquitoes, balance with the world and of course the power of nature. There was a room dedicated to Malaria, Dengue, and Filariasis which was a random smattering of diagrams from text books, Manop's typed thoughts on the subject, and labelled field notes and scientific specimens along with the story of when he almost died of malaria as a young boy after forced relocation due to political instability caused by the Japanese Army.
After the tour, I spent a few hours picking Manoj's brain about what he thought were the major barriers of taming the malaria epidemic. He spoke of the appropriate uses of DDT and how we needed to be using it inside the home and not diluting it and spreading it outside the home. He thinks that ecosystems harmonize themselves and if we truly understood the disease from a larger standpoint of not just host, we would be able to figure out exactly where to do an effective intervention that was not based on chemicals. He cited the lack of confidence in the mind body connection as a barrier to cure and the medical establishment and drug companies pushing medicines. He also talking about the political barriers to malaria and how governments sensationalize the problem into being bigger than it is.
We talked about the force of nature and how modern medicine is trying to change things like creation (cloning) and aging. I helped him edit a story he was working on for the museum. He told me to come back anytime and please stay at the museum next time. It was one of my favorite experiences in Thailand so far to meet a man so gently fusing nature, science and his passion of mosquitoes and sharing it with the world.
