Friday 12 Aug, 9pm.
Hi everyone!
So I'm sitting here in my room on the farm at the Children's Shelter as there has just been a blackout and so everyone has gone to bed. And when I say blackout here - I mean black out as there are no city lights to light up the place. It is pitch black!! There is also no internet connection now so I'm writing this in Word to put on the journal later.
I think there has been a blackout maybe due to lots of rain - this afternoon it rained so much that their pond / lake started to flood. I'm actually staying an extra night for free here as it was too dangerous to drive back to Chiang Mai tonight with the rain so heavy - so yay I get an extra night!
Today has been a nice day - just hanging out with the kids, playing the hand games and doing drawing. Just now I sat with some of the kids while they watched bad Thai soaps on TV - apparently they love them! Audra (the american volunteer here) also did a signing class for the south african kids here which I participated in as well. Apparently in deaf communities, deaf people give other people names in sign language - my given name meant ghost with a nose ring!! Apparently they think I am very white like a ghost!! hahaha. There are some very cute kids here.
Tomorrow I'll go back to Chiang Mai and then maybe head to Chiang Rai (further north). It's been good staying here and learning about all the stories of the kids' backgrounds and how they came to be here. There is absoluntely no official child protection organisation for these Hill Tribe kids as they are not Thai citizens. If people know that these children are being abused and neglected there are only charities such as this foundation to help them. Even then, many Hill Tribe people will not let their children go to the Foundation unless they can sell them.
Audra tells an awful story about how they found a deaf child locked away in a cell - his mother had died in child birth and the father abandoned him and another man took him. However this man worked all hours of the day and didn;t know what to do with him so locked him in a cell with a little window. The people at the Foundation kept coming to visit him and give him food and hold his hands. They asked the man if he would let the boy come to the Foundation but the man said no, he was fine where he was. So the Foundation spoke to the village Elder to get him to talk to the man but this didn't work either. The man then said he would only let the child go to the Foundation if he was paid for it, however the Foundation could not do this due to principle as then other people might want to sell their children to the Foundation. They continued to visit the boy and hold his hands and put pressure on the man to let the boy come to the Foundation. After a while when they came one day, the boy's window had been boarded up so that there was only a tiny whole. After this, the boy and the man dissapeared and they have never seen him again. They fear that he may have been sold.
So this is the kind of awful reality that many deaf kids from Hill Tribes face...it's horendous. And to think that not even a child protection authority or the Police would have done anything to save this child. And apparently there is a higher percentage of deaf people in Hill Tribe communities...
When the children come here they are malnourished and with behavioural problems from being abused and are often withdrawn. They are skin and bone but with the distended stomachs. Then after an adjustment period here at the Foundation they become healthy and functioning children again. In the Hill Tribes there is no sign language and so the deaf children have never been able to communicate before. And so this Foundation teaches them sign language and for the first time they can communicate their feelings and wants! Just because of this they now tell Audra trivial things just because they can. E.g. we were sitting and eating and a boy kept coming on his bicycle and giving Audra updates on what was happening with his bike, or another child would out of the blue tell Audra that whales are very big but they don;t bite. It was funny!
It's amazing to think that some of these really cute and outgoing kids were once withdrawn and could not communicate. You would never know when you see them now - they sign like crazy!!
Apparently the kids who are deaf are mostly born deaf due to genetics, but some become deaf due to high fevers with no access to health care. The Hill Tribes however also believe that if someone gets sick it is evil spirits. Then the children that are born or become deaf are rejected and abused and neglected because they are seen an evil.
Apparently many of the Hill Tribes know about this Foundation and will contact it to ask them to collect an abandoned child. The Foundation is hoping that in the future, the deaf kids here may go back to their villages and help the other deaf kids in the village learn how to sign. But here they are also being given an education and the opportunity to live independently but with support with then they are older.
So - that is the story! Or some of it...
See you all for now...
xxx Orna
