I have learned a lot about myself in the last two months. More in this last week than the previous seven combined. These last ten days have been so saturated with beautiful moments that would take a small novel to relate them all. The best I can do is simply vent what I have been learning, and hopefully some cathartic cohesion will take place giving you a picture of what i've been seeing and feeling.
I should note that I came to Thailand with no intention of finding myself in the middle of nowhere, waist deep in snot-muffins. It simply came up.
For the last week i've been living at an orphanage for boys who lost their parents to AIDS.
Seventeen kids, ages 6-19.
I've spent my days working at an orphanage for boys and girls who are all HIV positive.
Fifty kids, ages 1-14.
My mornings are long.
I wake up around 6am and eat sticky rice and chicken with Ood. We talk about the kids, about stress, about money. He goes off to the office, and I ride my bike from the boys home down a brown dirt road through the rice fields, past the old woman carrying a bundle of sticks on her back, around the cows being herded the opposite direction. The mist in the mornings is incredible here. It rises from the fish ponds and envelopes the chicken coops on stilts over the water. When the sunlight comes through the haze, everything glows.
Rural Nongkhai is beautiful. I feel like i'm the only farang for miles around. Old men in the fields smile and wave when they see me ride past. Motorbikes packed with schoolgirls burst into giddy squeals when they pass me. To them i'm not just another rude foreigner. People here are genuinely kind and curious.
My bike has no brakes. It wakes me up avoiding the gaping potholes and the chickens. I have to time it perfectly coming into the driveway of the Sarnelli House. This is the home for kids who have HIV. Most of the kids are around 7, and most of their parents are dead. Their relatives want nothing to do with them.
I've learned that there is no language barrier between a child's laughter and a hug. I am convinced these small children do not speak in thai, but in feeling. There were never any moments of misunderstanding between us, never any miscommunications or awkward silences. They simply spoke, and I could understand.
I have learned that I am a human jungle-gym. And a motorcycle, and a horsey, and a tickle monster, and a swing set among many other things. During the morning I play with the children who are too sick for school. They greet me with laughter, with pokes, with hugs. I don't think they have ever seen anyone my height. Many games evolved from this fact, all of which entail throwing out my back while swinging four of them into the air.
"Pe Tohbee! Keun! Keun!"
Two grab onto each arm interlacing their fingers, squealing in delight as I spin them around. After five times I need to sit down. They're all so dizzy they fall over, giggling hysterically. I'm winded, laughing with them. This game was fun until one precocious little cute snot named Gao discovered that my trousers did not in fact have a belt.
The next time four of them were airborne, a fifth snuck up and pantsed me in front of everyone.
I'm sure it was quite a laugh, seeing a giant oaf spinning a bunch of squirts in circles with his pants around his ankles, unable to pull them up for fear of dropping a kid.
I've learned that you can play a soccer in sandals. One evening after coming home from Sarnelli, a game formed out of nowhere. Two of the kids were kicking a flat soccer ball around on the lawn, and I joined them after watching them in the evening haze. It soon became a game of 7 on 7, with two little tykes in each goal box, too slow to run with the larger boys. A six year old goalie named Kay took a solidly kicked ball directly in the face, throwing his little head back into the goal bar with a resounding clang. It looked like it hurt a lot, but it kept the ball from going in, so everyone cheered and shouted their approval. He just stood there for a moment, confused about whether to cry or smile with everyone's praise coming at him. He sniffled, grinned and bucked right up. Kids learn to be tough in a boys home.
We kicked the ball around for a long time on that brown lawn while the sun set and cows grazed next to us on the road, dinging their bells in the long sunlight.
I have learned that every child here has a story. This place is full of them, more dramatic and extreme than any I have ever heard.
The older girls are quiet.
Tadam and Jom are 12 and 14 years old, both too sick to go to school. They sit and watch us play with the little ones. Tadam contracted HIV when she was sold to a taxi driver and raped. She is blind from her illness, but still smiles and laughes when I try to speak with her in thai.
Jom's mother is visiting for a week before she goes off to work for a year. She can't afford to keep her while she climbs out of debt. Her mom is HIV negative, and is too afraid to ask how Jom contracted it. She knows her uncle had HIV and died from it. The connection there is too frightening for her to accept. She is tall, pale and lonely, but this is the only place she can afford to live.
Many children here have survived through attempted abortions, through abandonment, through extreme poverty. A pair of brothers here were found scrounging through garbage bins, searching for food.
Harder lives than I have imagined. But they still play, they still smile.
We humans are resilient.
Part II: Truism | Stories Index