*for some reason i could only get the blog to show up in the comment section. read the comment on this blog for actual blog...*
Friday, November 30, 2007
Last Day in Thailand
* so sorry that it has taken so long to post... the computers in the outback have not allowed me to sign into the blog. i am on a sneak mission connecting claudia's computer to the computer in dude's office. have written one blog about last day in thailand on the computer which i will upload now and will write more tomorrow when we return to a real city*
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G’day mate! I have safely arrived in the lovely land of Oz, met up with my dear, dear baby sister and we are already deep into our adventures! So sorry it has taken me so long to write, but its quite difficult to find internet access in the Outback.
Before I begin to tell you about the delightful time we are having with the kangaroos and emus, let me tell you about my last day in Thailand, so that the Asia chapter of my tales ends on a happier note. Kwang, the only English speaking employee who works at the tsunami orphanage, had a little trouble finding me because I had switched hotels, but when she finally did, I was taken to the orphanage and introduced to the most wonderful children in the world. The orphanage is only supposed to hold 20 children, but now holds a little over fifty children and the owner receives requests for more children to be taken in almost every other day. The building was built by the government, but receives no funding, so all of the supplies and the staff’s wages come from donations. All of the children in the orphanage are either tsunami survivors or have suffered as a consequence of the tsunami. When we first arrived, the only children there were the youngest ones—babies who were not ready to attend kindergarten. The youngest is 5 months old, and obviously not a tsunami survivor. However, his mother suffered so greatly after the tsunami that she could not fathom having to care for another life when she could not care for her own. Days before she gave birth to the child, she approached the orphanage and threatened to kill the baby if they would not accept it into the orphanage. One of the saddest stories I heard was about the cute little three year old who seemed to have an odd attachment to the cleaning woman. It turns out that the cleaning lady is actually her mother. The woman was pregnant with the girl when the tsunami occurred, and already had three children. She and her children were close to the beach when the tsunami occurred and the strength of the wave literally tore two of her children out of her arms and she could hear them screaming for her until they drowned. As a result, after giving birth to her beautiful daughter, she broke down. Every time the new baby would cry she would hear her other children crying for her. It became too difficult for her to care for the one surviving son and new daughter. She left the children on the stairs of the orphanage and fled. She sought solace in a medication house with monks and returned to the orphanage many months later. Though she was still unable to take full responsibility for her children, she wanted to stay connected to them, and despite the fact that the orphanage could already not afford the staff that they had, the director hired the mother to help clean so that she could be close to her children during the day. She has slowly adjusted and just in recent weeks she has been able to take one child home every weekend and is trying to gain enough strength to reunite her family. Such a heart-breaking story! I met a wonderful Canadian woman who helps at the orphanage as often as she can. She is a single parent of two who had done a home stay in Thailand a few years before the tsunami and come back after to Tsunami to look for her family. It took three months and the only survivor of the entire village that she stayed in had been a very young boy that she had played with once or twice while in the village. The boy was living in the orphanage and she took it upon herself to sponsor the child and devote her life to helping other survivors. She and her two lovely children spend a few months in Thailand every year and her children have given up Christmas for the next four years in and asked their friends and loved ones to donate to their orphanage funds instead. The children then get to decide on their own how to spend the money every year while they are visiting. This allows them to be able to take the children on field trips or buy them nice presents and snacks etc.--really amazing for a nine year old and a seven year old to understand the significance of such a sacrifice. The Canadian woman was quite wonderful herself. Her name in Thai means bird because she is known to chirp (talk) so much. She did a wonderful job explaining to me how the orphanage is run and how one can contribute to the organization. One of her projects this visit has been to create a log of all of the children with whatever history they have and a brief description of their likes and future desires. This is to encourage visitors and inquirers to look at the individual children and hear each person’s own story. It is also a way of asking people to sponsor children. The orphanage cannot even afford enough rice to feed all of the children and so often the staff makes up for what they cannot afford with their own meager wages. This is one organization where it is clear that every penny will go directly to helping the orphanage support the children and not to anything else. Soon after Stephanie (Canadian woman) had explained the way the orphanage functions, the kindergarten children came home from school. Immediately, the most adorable little girl came up to me and started singing a song to me that looked something like the Thai version of the brusha-brusha-brusha song (think Grease). Then she crawled into the seat next to me and took the glasses off my face and placed them on her little face and insisted that I take a photo of her. We played together for a while, before she ran off to play with her friends and I just fell in love. I asked if she had a sponsor and Stephanie went to check and she did not. It turns out that Non, (my baby) has chronic ear and skin problems. Her skin problems cause her to have open sores all over her body very often and her ear problems are so bad that she is most likely to go deaf before she reaches 20. The doctor’s in Phuket have refused to operate on her ears before she is ten, but, by that time, it will be too late to prevent her from complete loss of hearing. Stephanie says that within the last year she has noticed significant changes in her ability to hear, and when I called to her to say good-bye (she was playing on the playground) I ended up having to yell her name before she noticed that I was there. The normal sponsor pays for food and education for the child (if enough children get sponsored they could actually think about expanding the building and paying all the staff members) but I am in the process of contacting doctors to see if I can get her an operation to prevent her from complete hearing loss. She is such an adorable little dumpling! I will post pictures of her as soon as possible. Also, if anyone else is willing to sponsor a child, please let me know immediately and I will give you the contact information for the orphanage. They desperately need any help they can get—even if it is just a one time donation.
So, hurrah, my last day in Thailand was just wonderful and this blog has already gotten too long for me to write about my adventures in the Outback. Claudia and I are having a great time, but you will have to wait in suspense to hear about all of our lovely adventures.
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