A long way for bilberries

The Thai berry-pickers who have worked in the Lapland forests went home with a year's income - or some heavy debts

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By Sami Sillanpää
     
      Go on, have a hit!
      A bottle of Thai whisky is circulating in the bus, there is a sing-song in progress, and bottles of beer flow over. The Thai berry-pickers are getting gently trashed.
      And with good reason. They have two months' hard work behind them, scouring the forests of Lapland for berries. And now they are heading home.
      Moped repair-shops flash by the bus windows, Buddha statues and green hillsides, turning to dark shadowy shapes as evening arrives in Thailand.
     
Inside the bus, many have forgotten to change the clothes that they wore in the north, halfway across the world.
      A couple have Ruka woollen hats perched on their heads. Others are in windcheaters with the word "Korvatunturi" emblazoned on the back.
      These 100 pickers are the first returnees of the 414 Thais who have been picking in Lapland this autumn at the invitation of the Savukoski-based company Korvatunturin Marja.
     
From Northern Finland they travelled by bus to Helsinki. Then came a flight to Bangkok, via a stopover in Istanbul.
      Now they have been on the move for nearly 50 hours, but they still have a bus-ride home to the rice-growing areas of North-Eastern Thailand. And now it is time to celebrate!
      The driver cranks up the volume on a station playing Thai country music. The bus turns into a disco. The berry-pickers rock from side to side in their seats and get up to dance in the aisle.
      Flashing party lights flicker on the ceiling of the bus.
      Yi-haaahh!
     
In the beginning, there was love.
      A couple of decades ago, a Thai woman from the north-eastern province of Chaiyaphum fell for a Swedish man. They moved to Sweden.
      There the woman noticed that every year vast quantities of berries were simply left to rot in the woods.
      She begn to invite people from her home province over to pick berries in Sweden.
     
It turned into a business. Later others picked up on the idea. It became a boom.
      This year a total of around 5,400 Thai berry-pickers came to Sweden and a further 2,500 or so to Finland.
      Nearly all of them hail from Chaiyaphum and a couple of neighbouring provinces.
     
The cockerel crows at four. Sikarn Chandabutr gingerly lifts himself up from a mattress in his wooden shack, which has walls on only two of its four sides.
      The long trip from Saija in Finnish Lapland to the village of Bankaeng in Northern Thailand has taken its toll, but Sikarn is full of beans and ready to hit the day.
      By 6 a.m. he is already standing with his sisters at the side of the main street in the village, with bundles of food in their arms.
      The food is given to the monks who walk down the street on the way to their day's work at the Buddhist temple.
     
"The monks may eat only in the mornings. The villagers bring them food every morning", says Sikarn, 47. Everyone around here calls him Khan.
      There was a time when Khan himself was a Buddhist monk.
      He studied at a Buddhist school in Bangkok, and even learnt English there.
      Last summer, when dozens of his neighbours from Bankaeng were heading off to Finland to pick berries, someone came to him with a proposition. He was the only person in the village who spoke anything other than the Thai language, so how would he feel about going with them as an interpreter?
      "I had to leave my work as a monk. It was a difficult decision. I only agreed at the last moment."
     
Now Khan is content with his decision.
      For his time in Finland, he received the biggest wage-packet of his life - 1,700 euros for two months' work.
      And there are a few other pleasures to be had from his new secular life.
      With a soft hiss, the lid comes off a bottle of Chang beer in Khan's hand.
     
The celebrations for those who have come home continue into the morning.
      Food and drink are spread out on a flat top made from bamboo-trunks bound together. It serves both as table and chairs.
      Khan's house may be simple, but it contains eveyrthing that is necessary: beds, a fan, a television set, and a picture of the King of Thailand on the wall.
      On a beam in the bedroom are bamboo shoots left to dry in bags.
      "We go and collect the bamboo from the forest higher up in the hills. Anyone can go and pick them up there - just like berries in Finland", says Khan.
     
The yard quickly fills up with people.
      Neighbours, relatives, and friends alike arrive to greet the homecomers.
      Many of them have themselves only recently returned from Sweden or Finland.
      This is where they live, under the papaya and banana trees; the people who pick the berries of the northern woods.
      "Were there any berries to be had?" they ask eagerly as they sit on the bamboo flooring.
      "Did you make any money?"
     
Foreigners do not often find their way into this part of Thailand.
      Chaiyaphum Province is right in the middle of the Thai countryside.
      The capital Bangkok is six hours away by car or bus.
      That is where the prosperous Thai elite live, an educated lot, with their SUVs and their golf & country club memberships.
      Further south are the fleshpots of Pattaya, Ko Samui, Phuket, and the other tourist beach resorts, to which a hundred thousand Finnish vacationers flock every winter.
     
Here in Bankaeng, the villagers live from cultivating jasmine rice.
      If the harvest is greater than the local needs, the remainder is sold.
      Households also grow vegetables, fruit, and raise livestock for meat. Not much in the way of money is required for day-to-day living.
      Bankaeng residents get their cash income from temporary work and simple entrepreneurship.
      One goes picking peanuts.
      Another raises silkworm larvae on his porch, feeding them mulberry leaves. Chaiyaphum, together with Nakhon Ratchasima Province or Khorat to the south, is one of the centres of the Thai silk industry.
      Sometimes there is work to be had in the region on building sites.
      But taken altogether, the villagers generally do not earn much more than 70,000 to 80,000 baht a year from odd jobs or selling produce - roughly EUR 1,500.
     
It is possible to get by on this sort of sum in a country village.
      But if one wants to raise their living standards, it is necessary to leave the fold.
      The villagers have been migrant contract workers building oil storage facilities in Saudi Arabia, they have worked vineyards in Israel, and they have canned and frozen shrimps in Canada.
     
The Nordic berry season fits in well with their annual calendar.
      When the wild bilberries, lingonberries and Arctic cloudberries are ready in the Finnish woods, the farmers of Chaiyaphum would not have much else to do but watch the rice ripening for harvest in December.
      A trip to Lapland can be arranged quite easily.
      Over the years a network of agents has formed in Chaiyaphum, initially supplying pickers to Sweden and then from 2005 to Finland as well.
      There is no need for advertising. Those wishing to make the trip know whom they should contact.
     
The group that left Bakaeng for Lapland used as their agent a Thai man in a nearby city who runs a small three-person office.
      The local hiring company's partner in Finland is Korvatunturin Marja, an affiliate of Riitan Herkku. Riitan Herkku in turn is a family business based in Mustasaari near Vaasa.
      They sell forest berries on the international market - mainly lingonberries but also bilberries, crowberries, (Empetrum nigrum) and cloudberries. Korvatunturin Marja is one of eight Finnish firms that invited Thai pickers over this year.
     
The first step is for the company in Finland to send an invitation for the granting of visas.
      Then the Thai agent applies for tourist visas for the group, arranges the plane tickets, and organises bus transport at each end.
      The agent charges each of the pickers 63,000 baht, or around EUR 1,300.
      None of these rice-famers can lay their hands on that sort of cash.
      In order to get to Finland, the pickers will have to take out a loan of some kind.
     
Boommak Yodtha, 39, borrowed the money from a local bank.
      The loan has been gathering interest the whole time.
      But as he sits by the table, everybody wants to talk to Boommak.
      Up in Lapland he became a champion picker, one of the best of the best.
      It was hard work. Generally the pickers headed out into the woods at around 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.
      They would return to their lodgings in a former elementary school some time around seven or eight in the evening.
      It was often cold in the forest, and from time to time the infamous Finnish mosquitoes were a nuisance.
     
Boommak had an advantage: this was his second trip to Finland, and he knew from experience where the best spots were to find berries.
      He gathered a haul that was as much as three times the weight of that collected by the first-timers.
      Now Boommak's back is aching and his right hand, in which he held the bilberry scrabbler (a dustpan-shaped implement with a metal comb attachment that speeds the process considerably by comparison with hand-picking) is covered in blisters.
      But Boommak is able to tell anyone who asks that after all the expenses were deducted he has come away with nearly 150,000 baht in clear profit - roughly 3,000 euros.
     
"In two months I earned more than I would usually make in an entire year", he says.
      Boommak got the money in cash in Finland.
      Barely had the plane touched down at Bangkok's handsome new Suvarnaphum International Airport before he was scampering to the foreign exchange desk.
      The Western tourists had to make way as the berry-man powered up to the counter.
     
Two worlds collided in the airport terminal.
      There was one man with a year's earnings in his pocket, and others slapping down plastic and spending similar sums on digital SLRs and iPods.
      Boommak travelled the thousands of kilometres back and forth without setting foot in any tax-free shops.
      He intends to invest the berry-picking profits in an irrigation system for his rubber plantation.
      On the other hand, Boommak did not come back completely empty-handed in the goods department. He brought back some souvenirs for his waiting wife and two children.
      After working hard every day for two months, he took an hour or two off and bought a whole sackful.
      A sackful of what?
      "Used clothes."
     
A familiar ringing sound can be heard from the hammock strung between two palm trees.
      In the village of Bankaeng, nearly everyone has a mobile phone.
      Most families have a motorbike, and some also have a pick-up. The houses have mains electricity and piped water.
      The standard of living here has gone up dramatically in the last twenty years. Thailand is no longer at the bottom of the pile.
     
These days migrants come in from the poorer neighbouring countries like Myanmar or Laos to do the worst and most meagrely-paid jobs that the Thais won't take.
      Even here in Bankaeng, they no longer plough the fields behind a couple of buffaloes.
      The villagers have been able to acquire agricultural machinery - many of them thanks to the money brought in from picking berries.
      "I am very happy that people have had the chance to go off as berry-pickers and to support their families in this way", says the village head Soei Jomkhamsing.
      "The stories of successful pickers have prompted others to follow them."
     
However, there are some less fortunate tales.
      In past years one of the agents passing people to Finland took the pickers for a nasty ride.
      This year attention has focused on Sweden.
      One Thai group protested because there were not a lot of berries to be had, and too many people out looking for them.
      The trip to Scandinavia left them only with heavy debts to pay off.
      The matter is currently being examined by the Thai Labour Ministry.
     
When Montree Artnoo, 39, went off to Finland in July, he hoped he would return with money to pay for renovations on his house.
      Montree's childhood home stands opposite the village store. The downstairs part of the two-storey building is in fact a shelter for cows. The grandparents sleep upstairs.
      In previous years Montree always spent some of the year in Bangkok, driving a taxi.
      With the money he brought home from that, he built a house next to his parent's dwelling, for himself, his wife, and their two children.
     
Repairs to the roof of the building will now have to wait.
      "I was a bit disappointed. I expected a better return from my trip to Finland", says Montree.
      In addition to the fee payable to the Thai agent, the pickers had expenses to deal with while in Finland.
      The berry-pickers lived in a former school that Korvatunturin Marja owns.
      The company provided rice, meat, and vegetables, from which the group's Thai cook made food.
      The company also gave the pickers the use of cars to get around and to get back home from the woods.
      For all these services, they had to pay roughly 20 euros a day per picker.
     
The berry-pickers were not strictly speaking employed by Korvatunturin Marja.
      There were no written contracts.
      The pickers collected berries from the woods according to the freedoms available under everyman's rights and they got money by selling the produce.
      They could sell to whomseover they liked, but nearly all of the goods were sold by the simplest route, in other words to Korvatunturin Marja.
      Korvatunturin Marja paid the Thai pickers exactly what they would have paid a Finnish berry-picker who turned up to sell their haul at a collecting-point: 1.00 euros a kilo for lingonberries, EUR 1.40/kg for bilberries, and EUR 8.00 for a kilo of cloudberries.
     
The Thai pickers collected the berries in rice sacks.
      Montree had to pick just over a sackful of lingonberries every day before he broke even on the day's expenses.
      Many of the pickers were rather aggrieved that the Thai agent had advertised the costs at the Finnish end as being around EUR 200 less than they proved to be.
      Montree was an average picker, and collected 2,424 kilos of berries worth just over 3,500 euros. "Average" is of course a relative concept. He picked nearly seven full buckets of berries each day for two months.
     
According to the calculations of Korvatunturin Marja, Montree's earnings after deductions were EUR 1,083.
      Montree himself calculates the expenses as having been rather greater.
      By his reckoning, the rewards for the two months of work in the Finnish woods amounted to some hundreds of euros.
      Not exactly a lottery jackpot, then, but on the other hand it was more than he would have earned staying at home for the same period.
     
For most of those who picked for Korvatunturin Marja this year, the returns were quite reasonable.
      According to the company's statistics, Thai berry-pickers were paid an average of EUR 3,221, which would leave an average of EUR 805 after all deductions are made.
      Out of all 414 pickers, 65 came out in the red, and conversely 30 collected more than EUR 2,000 in hand when they left Finland.
     
Montree's family intend to put the berry-picking money aside for the children's education.
      His daughter Sirirak will soon be going to a fee-paying secondary school.
      "If the girl has a chance of going on to university, we will do everything in our power to help her", says Montree's wife Mantana Artnoo. "Maybe my husband can go off picking berries again."
     
In the Srisamran temple, a monk sits down in front of the statue of Buddha and looks at the congregation.
      On their knees in front of him are Boonmee Seubsiri, 38, and his 37-year-old wife, who has exactly the same name as her husband.
      Also present are Mr. and Mrs. Boonmee's friends and relatives, for this is an important ceremony.
      While in Finland, the couple encountered some misfortune.
     
"What were you doing in Finland?" asks monk Phra Atikan Samran Sirasamg Waro.
      "We were working in the forests. We were collecting berries", replies Mrs. Boonmee.
      "Berries?"
      "Yes, like small fruits. They are not in a garden, but grow wild, and they have to be found from low bushes in the woods."
      "Ah. I do not believe we have such things in our woods." says the monk. "And did you get money for this?"
      "Not really", Boonmee replies.
      She is not telling quite everything.
     
It was an August evening. At around seven, Boonmee, Boonmee, and three others decamped from the woods in a van to drive back to their lodgings.
      On the way, the driver lost control of the vehicle on a bend and the van rolled over three times.
      The windscreen caused a deep cut over Mrs. Boonmee's eye. Flying glass sliced Mr. Boonmee's ear in half.
      It was bad karma. And hence they have come to the temple in order to contact the spirits so that they can shake off the negative forces that are dogging them.
     
The couple have brought the monk gifts to this end. They have been placed in a bucket under some plastic film: a pair of slippers, a pocket torch, toilet paper, soap, tea, an umbrella - everything a monk might need while staying in the temple.
      The group of supplicants before the monk recite prayers together and sprinkle holy water into cups.
      All bow low and and depart from the temple.
      "I feel relieved", says Mrs. Boonmee. "The bad karma has been lifted from me."
     
The rain is coming down on the roof of the Boonmee family home.
      The rainwater runs off the gutters of the tin roof and into large containers, from where it is used as drinking water.
      In the shelter in front of the house, a number of friends and relatives are gathered as Mr. and Mrs. Boonmee tell of their sad situation.
      After the road accident, they could not work at all for ten straight days.
      Even after that their picking was pretty inefficient.
     
But every day there were costs mounting up. Korvatunturin Marja and its insurance policies picked up the tab for the van and the hospital bills. The firm also subbed the couple a little in respect of their expenses in Finland, but even so the damage when things were totted up was not nice.
      "We lost around 80,000 baht", says Mr. Boonmee.
      This is a huge sum of money - around 1,600 euros.
     
In addition to cultivating rice, the couple has derived an income mainly from the fact that Mrs. Boonmee has the village community's sewing machine at her disposal.
      The Boonmees borrowed the money for their Finland trip from the bank.
      Now they are in debt to the tune of a year's income.
      "Right now I have no idea how we can come up with that sort of money."
     
And money will soon be needed, in particular for their son's vocational school tuition.
      The family's 16-year-old and 12-year-old children lived alone at home for the two months that their parents were in Finland.
      Even under these rather depressed circumstances, the family try to get a celebratory mood going. Someone goes off to the village kiosk to buy a bottle of Thai whisky.
      It costs 200 baht.
      That's half a bucketful of lingonberries.
     
But even if their trip to Finland was not exactly a roaring success, the Boonmees were left with some good memories.
      A kindly Finnish man turned up at the scene of the accident and called for help.
      A Finn whom they had got to know through their work gave the couple a pair of blue caps as a souvenir, with the word "Rautanet" on the front.
      In other respects, there was not much scope for getting to know the details of Finnish society.
      Did you eat Finnish food?
      "Yes", says Mrs. Boonmee. "Pizza."
     
Finnish Lapland is more or less forest and then more forest.
      It is quiet up there, and you can hear a mobile phone ringing without any trouble.
      The Korvatunturin Marja CEO Jari Huttunen answers the phone in Savukoski.
      He is saddened and perhaps a little annoyed that for years the Finns have not been bothered to go berry-picking with a view to making a bit of money at it.
      "The generation that once kept the berry industry going is now dead or getting old and infirm. Finnish pickers these days are a very rare breed."
      This year, like in past years, the vast majority of the berries in the forest will remain there.
     
And yet in different parts of Finland there were grumbling noises made about foreign pickers.
      They take our berries, they come too close.
      In Northern Karelia some less than kindly souls put up signs with skulls on to scare away the foreign pickers.
      The irony of it is that the Finns ought really to be grateful rather than defensive or critical.
      In fact many jobs in Finland have been preserved by the foreign pickers.
      Korvatunturin Marja employs thirteen Finns.
      The volume of berries that the Thai and other berry-pickers who are invited to Finland can collect determines to a great degree how well the firm manages.
      The picking season is only a couple of months of the year.
      "During that time we have to get as many berries as possible into storage so that we can run the business around the year."
     
In 2008, the berry harvest was lousy by any standards.
      The company had to lay off its staff.
      This year things went rather better. The Thai pickers gathered nearly a million kilos of berries for the company.
      Under a tenth of that amount will remain for consumption in Finland.
      The domestic food processing industry uses a lot of berries brought in from abroad, from places like Estonia or Poland. They are cheaper.
      So, what will happen to the berries picked by the Thais?
      "The bulk of them will go for export", says Huttunen. "To Europe and to Japan."
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 11.10.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  First blueberry day exceeds expectations for Thai pickers (7.8.2007)
  Thai berry-pickers are welcome in Finnish Lapland (1.8.2006)
  Thousands of Thai berry-pickers would again be welcomed to Finland (3.3.2009)
  Thai berry pickers earn money in Finnish Lapland (5.8.2005)
  Thai berry-pickers return home after earning year´s salary in Lapland (4.10.2006)

See also:
  Foreign berry-pickers put on spot by empty promises and poor crop in Lapland (4.8.2006)

Links:
  Riitan Herkku
  Riitan Herkku - Wild Forest Berries

SAMI SILLANPÄÄ / Helsingin Sanomat
sami.sillanpaa@hs.fi