Friday 12 June
See the gallery White Temple & other things for photos from this post.
So I’ve resorted to trimming my own fringe with a pair of nail scissors. The results are questionable, but considering the overall state of my hair in this humidity, my fringe is the least of my appearance concerns.
Our 3 new volunteers arrived last week & it’s good to have some extra hands around the place. Including the 2 co-directors, we’ve now got 3 Australians, 2 Canadians, 2 Americans, & 1 from the Philippines. Two more arriving tomorrow – not sure where they’re from. Some of the kids’ sponsors sometimes come to visit, & a woman from the U.S. who sponsors about 5 or 6 of them also arrived last week. She comes about every 3 months & spends a few weeks, bringing lots of clothes, toys & games, and contributing more money to the needs of the kids she supports, on top of the sponsorship payments she already makes. She’s very cool & all the kids love her.
Last week I took a day off – my first in 4 weeks! We get 1 day off a week, & can either take them or save them up. I hadn’t really wanted or needed a day off until then, but had the urge to get out & about in Chiang Rai to see & do some stuff. First stop was the White Temple, which is only a 15 minute drive from town & was AWESOME. Construction started in 1998 & is the design of a controversial local artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, who has also painted incredible murals on the internal walls of the temple which are still being completed. There is a monk inside the temple, sitting on a little platform at one end, meditating, & other than noticing that he was there & looked quite peaceful, I didn’t really take much notice of him, mostly because it seems rude to gawk… But now I’m wishing that I paid more attention, because rumour has it that he’s a wax dummy & they have them in temples all over the place. Outrageous! There was much debate at Barry’s on Saturday night over whether this is true or not, but I’m yet to get to the bottom of it.
After the White Temple I had a few things to find in the day market, then I signed myself up for a massage to reverse some of the cycling/gardening/driveway relocation work of the past 4 weeks. It was a good one, which would have best been followed up with a dip in the ocean & a few drinks in the shade and a cool sea breeze, but alas this was not to be & instead it was back out into the baking Chiang Rai afternoon for me.
The biggest challenge for me to deal with since I arrived is dealing with the hygiene. On a personal level it’s pretty good – all the kids shower & brush their teeth every day (sometimes difficult to enforce with only a couple of kids in the house I grew up in!), but in terms of the house, especially the kitchen, it’s really not that great. From what I can work out, this is down to a few things; with the housemothers being hilltribe (and actually we still only have one housemother, & it’s far too much for one person to do), they have come from the villages where they do things differently to how we do them in our nice shiny cities. They don’t have refrigerators, or plumbing, or any of the conveniences or education about hygiene that we have, and it’s a bit of a challenge for me to get used to. The other main factor, as always, is money. There just isn’t any money to have a fund that flows constantly to replace cleaning stuff; to fix things that break; to install hot water for the kitchen; or most alarmingly, an outfall for the open drain that runs through the kitchen & straight off the back walkway & lands on the ground right next to the house. This runoff contains everything that would normally go down a sink, and much, much more. Chicken & pork bones; fish heads, tails, guts; mango seeds; cooked rice; vegetable scraps….. And then it sits, festering in the roasting sun & humidity, stinking up a storm. Not to mention the rats & cockroaches that must love it…. From the moment I arrived here I wanted to do something about it, & when Kitt (a local guy who runs a tour company & does loads for us) was here having a look at the leaking roof, I asked him to take a look at it with me. I explained my idea to install a pipe, 4 or 5 meters long, off the drain & out into the field, & asked how much. At 1500 baht including labour, I couldn’t resist, so told him to go ahead & by the next day I had funded my first project. It’s made such a difference, & even though it’s all still getting dumped in the field, at least it’s a few meters away & the smell, nay, stench, is that much further away. I've uploaded some "before" photos & will take an "after" photo soon.
But for every yin there’s a little bit of yang, & the sad news is that the 2 girls who left the centre & still haven’t returned, won’t be coming back. There was a phone conversation that revealed that one of them (who’s role model is her older sex-worker sister) has been un-enrolled from school, and Donna the sponsor went to visit the other girl in her village to see if she could convince her to come back, but was told that she, too has been un-enrolled and that she just wants to stay in the village and get married – she’s 14. So, you just do what you can, & remember that that’s all you can do.
One of our most accident-prone boys broke a bone in his hand, punching his friend in the head at school in a play fight…. He had to spend 2 nights in hospital & have an operation to set the bone in place, because it was snapped in two, with one bit pushed up underneath the other bit. This meant that Nabee the house mother spent one night there with him, which meant that there would be no one to cook breakfast the next morning. I said I would do it, & some of the boys volunteered to help, which was entirely necessary because none of us even know how much rice or water to put in the cooker…. Thankfully that went off without a hitch & everyone seemed happy enough.
I still can’t get over the difference in the kids who went back to their villages, but came back to the centre. Especially the girls, who are starting to get really friendly with me & just seem like completely different children to the ones who were punching, kicking & biting us on that terrible day…. One of them even gave me a comedy massage one night. She’s a tiny little girl but is really strong, & apparently is really good at Thai massage. So anyway, this massage I got was hilarious – it was like she was on fast forward, flipping me over, bending my legs all over the place, flapping my arms… it was fun & a good bonding experience, I think.
There are loads of fireflies around where we live & they are super cool! I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before so I’m a bit fascinated by them. The first time I saw one was in my bedroom one night when I was going to sleep – I turned the light off then when I got into bed I noticed a really bright, tiny light on the ceiling….then it started moving around the room & for a moment I wondered if there had been some funny mushrooms in my dinner…but then I realised that it must have been a firefly. After that I started noticing them around the place at night, especially when I’m walking or cycling down our road, which doesn’t have many streetlights, & the fireflies are everywhere. I even made a complete arse of myself one night when a few of us were walking to Barry’s & I looked across the road & saw a bunch of tiny lights drifting across the sky & said something like “hey look! There’s a pack of fireflies!”….and then I heard the noise….it was a plane…..
A very exciting event this week – we got some ducks. 25 of them. Volunteers have tried in the past to keep chickens to have a constant supply of eggs for the house (we go through about 240 each week), but those efforts have failed – the first time because a dog got into the pen & killed them; and the second time because the chickens broke their necks or something. Anyway, now there are quite strict rules in place with regard to keeping chickens - something to do with bird flu, I think, & you have to have some sort of licence or permit or something. But the rules aren’t so tight for ducks, so there you go. They started laying eggs right away, & I think we’re getting around 10-15 per day. They’re really funny to watch – whenever anyone goes anywhere near the pen, they all waddle over to the corner furthest from the gate, quacking away & get into a close huddle, then are really quiet – like they think they’re hiding & we can’t see them. It keeps me amused, anyway. Funny what keeps you entertained when you have no TV.
By the way, the baby bird didn’t make it….
