More Saturday

Saturday morning ended with a visit to the Holy Infant School, run by four Dominican Sisters.  Sister Marcellina from Argentina spent time showing us around the school, a fine building with extensive land around it. With Khom Loy foundation we are helping establish an extensive school garden.  It is a happy home for 39 children. I am puzzled as to how a funder can discontinue support for any project which cares for children in continuing need, but then I am not in possession of the full facts.  Sadly, I suspect, neither is Sr Marcellina.

Aftenoon and a quick but as always inspiring visit to the Mae Tao Clinic, where we met three children who had benefited from the money sent through us by Children of Crisis to the Burma Children Medical Fund.  One girl had her life saved by a heart valve replacement, another little boy had been terribly burned in an accident, but is alive and healthy.  There will be more about this in next week's enews, when I can give you photos.  Techical issues dog our every step at present.

Thus to Hsa Mu Htaw, a favourite school, where we have been involved in mushrooms, lunches and now a 'vertical garden'.  The reason for this call is an interview ith the school head, Daw Htet Htet Aung about the value of school lunches, which was duly given, but we have to promise to come back Sunday so that we can see the children dance.  This is a promise easy to make.  The interview will be included in a podcast in a couple of weeks.

Thus to Shway tha Zin, another school new to us where we are involved in a school vegetable garden, again with the extraordinary Khom Loy foundation.

The school boarding house is run by a monk of quiet but palpable authority. It turns out that for some years he has covered the running costs of the school from his considerable earnings as a reputable astrologer. Now the school is too big and outside help is required.

An amazing day, but more to follow.

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Catchup

Apologies for lack of posting over the last few days.  Duty forbade the joys of blogging. Wednesday was spent leaving Pattaya and arriving in Bangkok, with an oasis in Lat Krabang at the unique and remarkable Camillian Centre for children with special needs where we met the egregious Fr Giovanni, a man whom fate has decreed should do good things in this world, an opportunity which he has seized.

Thursday saw some very interesting, useful and unbloggable meetings in Bangkok, ending in a truly enjoyable dinner at the British Embassy where our host, the Ambassador, Mr Asif Ahmad, proved both very generous and very funny.  Othe guests, including the former Prime Minister of Thailand Khun Abhisit Vejjaijeiva, showed real interest in our work.

Friday by contrast was spent in a van travelling through Thailand to Mae Sot.  Much of the journey is across the flat centre of the country, fertile aluvial deposit laid down over millennia by rivers descending from mountains in the north.  Then at Tak we take a sharp left and head for the hills, the mountains separating Burma from Thailand.  The road winds upwards through dense jungle, although the most danger in this jungle comes from other drivers.

In the evening we met Sandra, Joanna, and Nobel, jointly representing Room to Grow, our Canadian partner organisation with whom we have been working for three years.

The first appoitment was a briefing on the lunches we have been providing to five migrant schools since July of last year.  Joanna Flint introduced the schools

Then on to Agape School where the irrepressible David Min Naing, Head Teacher, spoke about our lunch programme and its effects on his students. Like many schools Agape teaches children whose parents work in factories, on farms and, uniquely to Agape, from an outlaw community which lives neither in Thailand nor in Burma but on the wide bed of the River Moei which marks te border and belongs to neither. Children at Agape benefit from a school farm which includes pigs and frogs as well as vegetables. Afte nutrition training, the school shop now sells mainly fruit and vegetables instead of more packaged but less nutritous food. David made the point that parents who are working for 18 hours each day have little free time to make up their children's lunch tins, and on 120 baht each day (less than 3 pounds/5US dollars) little money either.

To be continued...

Tuesday 7: Good Shepherd Sisters

Monday we visited one of our special projects, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.  For many years these good women have worked with the disadvantaged women of Pattaya to help them escape from exploitation.

`Disadvantaged` is a deliberately vague term embracing women without work, and women in low paid work as well as women involved in the sex industry.  All are at risk, all are vulnerable to exploitation.

The Good Shepherds help by offering training in languages, hairdressing, Thai massage, cooking and other vocatational skills.  These are added to by courses on self esteem, sexual health, and other relevant topics.  The objective is to give vulnerable women the inner strength andconfidence that will enable them to make their own decisions.

As Pattayz has grown over the years, the demand for  women sex workers has grown wwith it.  Few women are more vulnerable than girls from Laos, Cambodia and Burma  brought to Pattaya by Traffickers.  They are in Thailand illegally and speak no Thai.  They are scared to go to the police.  The Good Shepherds are now teaching Thai as a foreign language.

No photographs on th isvisit for obvious reasons.

Hit the ground running

A great start.  Our little team left Pattaya for Rayong first thing on Sunday in time to join the children at the Camillian Social Centre for Mass and lunch.  Covered in children vying for hugs, none of us felt remotely unwelcome in the chapel.

Lunch with seventy children, other supporters, Fr Peter and Fr Dao was followed by visits to
 the Independent Living Centre which is presently home to 13 older children, shortly to grow to 19 when six more move from the Social Centre after the end of the semester in March.

Then on to the Garden of Eden, which last year made great strides forward with its farming projects - fruit, vegetables, pigs, fish, chickens, frogs - only to see all its fish and some of its crops washed away in the floods.  Huge concrete tanks were picked up and moved by the force of water, but cracked beyond repair in the process.  Some of the damage has already been repaired, but there's a lot of work still to do.

Back to Pattaya and the happiness which is the Fr Ray Children's Village where 52 children live in homes of six to eight  children.  In a blissfully green and tree covered site, with its own farm and footall pitch, this is a wonderful home and community.

Today started at 7:45 with the Flag raising ceremony at the Redemptorist Vocational School.  One of the Computer and Business English students spoke movingly about her life and achievements.  Four years ago, aged just 16, this lady came to the school without formal education. Four years later, she is on the brink of going into the wider world equipped with Thai, maths, colloquial English and computer skills.  Maybe we can do a short film for the website.

Then to the Pattaya Orphanage, where Adele (first time here as a mother)  found the baby room upsetting.  The babies are beautifully cared for, but her heart was touched by the thought that a mum, however young herself, feels she has to leave a tiny baby.  Today there were sixty children under two, of whom ten were less than six weeks old.