"Baan Dada children's home and community services is a project of the Neohumanist Foundation. It started as a boys home in Huay Ma Lai village, Sangklaburi, Kanchanaburi province in 1994, in an effort to protect the growing number of disadvantaged children in the area. Sangklaburi borders Burma (Myanmar) where many refugees and migrant families moved to this area due to poverty, disease, and political repression by the Burmese military Government."
http://www.baandada.org
We arrived at Sangklaburi bus station just before 5pm which was luckily the time we had arranged to meet Dada. An hour and a half passed and we started to worry! Sangklaburi is a small town - we had no number to call, the only internet place was closed and we weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves! Our journey had started at 9pm the previous evening so we were pretty tired and spaced out, not to mention covered in 2 days worth of grime!
Just after 7pm a fairly new but slightly worn silver pick up truck with a blue cage on the back rolled to a stop and a friendly faced, if slightly sleepy, looking guy hopped out and walked towards us. "Debbie/Will"? he asked. Dada had found us! He then informed us that the plans for the beach had all changed again and we were now not going until the end of the month! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh - 24 hours of travel later! That was the point that we realised that Thai time has a whole new meaning to the time we are used to back home! After 3 weeks we have adjusted so be prepared for us to be forever late in the future!
We chatted for the 20 minute drive to Baan Dada Children's Home. Dada is a Neohumanist monk, originally from the Philippines, who came to Thailand over 15 years ago to help disadvantaged children. He has been at Baan Dada ever since. Dada is a Sanskrit word meaning elder brother. If you are a Neohumanist, a monk is called a Dada and a nun is called a Didi.
We arrived at the home and some inquisitive little faces appeared to say hello and help us with our bags. We met the others volunteers who had just finished dinner and were sitting at a long wooden table in the outdoor eating area. We met Erin from LA, Janelle from Calgary in Canada, Angie from North Carolina, Chelsea from Rhode Island, Dan from somewhere in the States(!) and Martin from England (who now lives in Thailand and runs a volunteer organisation called Dragonfly http://www.thai-dragonfly.com - all the volunteers except Dan (and us) had found Baan Dada through Dragonfly). Everyone seemed really nice and we had our first (of many) tofu, veg and rice dinner. Neohumanists do not drink alcohol or smoke, don't eat meat or dairy and also do not eat onions, mushrooms or garlic as they believe they create feelings of arousal so we were to begin three weeks of a major diet change!
The guys took us to the volunteer house a few minutes walk from the main house which was more plush than we'd expected - a western toilet, hot shower, even a kettle and toaster for when we fancied a snack or cup of tea. We settled in, had showers and got a pretty early night ready for an early start the next morning.
The next couple of weeks were a whirlwind of excitement and the most rewarding and memorable experience we have ever had and one we we will always hold close to our hearts.
There are over 60 boys and girls at Baan Dada between the ages of 2 and 19. Many of them are originally from Burma and fled from refugee camps or were brought to Dada by parents that could not care for them. There are 3 mothers and 1 grandmother also living at Baan Dada and they do all of the cooking for them (and us) - a challenge catering for all those hungry tummies! They do an amazing job - at first the idea of tofu, vegetables and rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner seemed a bit daunting but we grew to love it!
They have a weaving room in which the mothers and some of the older children design, scarves, bags and other accessories - Dada is currently trying to set up a gallery on the website so people can buy things online. The children are encouraged to be self sufficient to give them better prospects for the future - they make and sell cards and lots of the older boys are very talented in art and music. We didn't meet a few of the older boys until we took everyone to the beach in Chaam (Southern Thailand) in our third week with them, as they are in a band called The School of Rock and after doing some local gigs were sponsored to go to a music training college in Kanchanaburi. We picked them up on our way to the beach.
Dada also runs a goat lending project - he has 20 or so goats and will lend a pregnant one to poor families in the area, they care for it until it has it's baby then they return the mum and get to keep the baby goat. There are also other ongoing projects such as rubber trees which have been planted and are expected to be ready for production in 2012.
While we were at Dada's we helped to build a new mud brick house to be used as another volunteer house. Meng or "Super-Meng" as we renamed him, is the miracle builder at Dada's and lives there with his wife and children - Mala Eh, Mala Oo and Cha ou. We call him Super Meng as despite having a club foot he works from morning til night and seems to be invincible! He put us to shame as we sweltered and sweated doing menial jobs he could do 10 times faster! He was very patient with us though and we managed to get it complete by the time we went to the beach.
It may sound like an obvious statement but I feel it is one that really does need to be mentioned as it's something both us and the kids struggled with every day - it was SO HOT!!!! I can't even describe how much the heat absorbs you of all your energy and spits you out, sweaty and exhausted! By the afternoons, the kids were drenched and playing games inside or outside was too much effort - thank goodness for the local river, Ban Mai, which we took the children to as many afternoons as possible. Safe and shallow, it was the perfect place for them to cool down and play in the afternoons and a nice break for us too! We got to see water buffalo and elephants come to drink and bathe occasionally which was awesome.
In our first week at Dada's we tried to structure our days by splitting the volunteers into 2 groups of - half of would help Meng with whatever construction work he needed that day and the other half would teach a lesson to some of the kids after breakfast. The next day we would alternate so we didn't get too many blisters or lose our voices!
Lessons were mainly English although Will taught a pretty successful maths lesson one day - the kids knew far more than we'd anticipated so we had to move away from addition and subtraction and onto multiplication pretty quickly! I think he may have a future career in teaching!
Lessons were difficult to organise sometimes as you never knew who you would be teaching - you could have a range of 10 to 30 kids between the ages of 3 and 16 which, as you can imagine, is almost impossible to keep everyone's attention! Some would be staring at you blankly whilst others would be bored and yawning at how easy the lesson was!
We did quite a bit of art and crafts with them - we helped them paint a massive seascape on one of the big white walls in their common room - all ideas from pictures they had drawn the previous day.
Lessons lasted anything from 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours (depending on how well it as going!) then we took the kids outside and played games. One day we played team games with water balloons which was hilarious and turned into a full blown water fight!
Lunchtime was at about 12.30 then we played more games with them in the afternoon, painted the common room then went to the river. We tried to get an hour of 'rest' back at the house before dinner where we had tea and toast parties (always to be remembered!), read books (or in Angie's case, napped!) and prepared resources for the following day's lessons and games.
After dinner the kids usually watched a movie in the common room and we hung out with them for a while before heading back for an early night. Night time was the time that lots of them just wanted to play and have lots of cuddles - if you sat down you'd be sure to end up with a sleepy body or two sprawled over you - I still cannot fathom how they manage to fall into a pretty deep looking sleep in the most uncomfortable positions! We were always off to bed before the kids though and were yawning and ready to crash out by about 9pm! Handy really seeing as all the movies they watched were badly dubbed Thai or American - when we turned the English subtitles on one night, could not stop laughing at how ridiculous it was! Some poor person had obviously taken the time to translate each single word into English but it was totally incomprehensible!! One evening we made bread with the kids and cooked it in their homemade mud brick oven (which tasted fantastic!). Another night, after discovering that none of our fellow volunteers had any idea what banoffee pie was(!), attempted making one, although we had to substitute cream for yoghurt so it wasn't quite the same! Still good though although the mass sugar intake was a bit of a shock to the system!!
Our first weekend at Dada's we took the kids to a local fair which was definitely a cultural experience of Thai life! It was a heaving affair of bright lights, thumping music, food stalls and fairground games such as hoopla, darts and shooting. There was a boxing ring set up on one side of the fair where a hundred or so men, from 9 years up to adult, were entering themselves into Mai Tai fights. They were paired off according to size and we watched a few fights - nail-biting and superbly agile - powerful kicks to the chest and elbows to the legs were plentiful - one kid of about 12 or 13 got knocked unconscious for a minute or two - needless-to-say his opponent won!
On the other side of the fair, and battling for the loudest commentating, was a stage where beauty pageants were taking place for girls, from the age of about 5 upwards. It felt slightly wrong to be watching these 5 year old children strutting around in skimpy outfits, wearing far too much make up, with their families screaming at them from the front row! The winner, as we worked out, seemed to be the person who received the most garlands at the end of their dance. People in the crowd would throw garlands and flowers up to the child of their choice - it was certainly an experience you wouldn't see in England!
On Wednesday Will and I took some of the younger kids to Whispering Seeds, a kindergarten right next to the Myanmar border. It is an amazing place, which you will see from the photos, run by a Western guy called Jim. There are 8 children living there at the moment and Jim is trying to adopt all of them, a seemingly impossible task that has been going on for years. The kids guided us down this tiny leafy track and when the path was too narrow to drive down we jumped out and walked the rest of the way. We crossed a river to get there, which gets so flooded in the wet season that it makes it impossible to cross so they have to relocate to Sangklaburi, not exactly an ideal situation. Apparently some Western architects visited a few years ago to build a bridge for them but left after encountering problems with the bridge unfinished.
The design of the buildings at Whispering Seeds is so carefully thought out - all the buildings are made of mud and bamboo and each are uniquely designed, some of the windows are stained glass effect, with coloured glass bottles embedded into the wall, others have shaped bamboo in the windows creating different patterns, even the floors have raised stencils of flowers and other patterns. They run a construction workshop there where people travel from all over the world to learn green building techniques.
Our second week there was just as fun but it didn't seem like we got as much done as in our first week - the new house was almost finished and Meng didn't need our help anymore. I think it was a mixture of starting to feel a bit tired and being excited (us and the kids!) about our trip to the beach in Chaam on the 31st - although we held our breath and crossed our fingers hoping that it would happen as it had been rescheduled a few times by then!!
It had been a real mission for Dada to organise the beach holiday as most of the children at Dada's are not Thai, are not Thai citizens, and are therefore not permitted to travel without extensive paperwork for each child - a lengthy process which involved Dada having to travel to Kanchanaburi (4 hours drive away) on many occasions. There are various immigration check points through the Sangklaburi area where ID cards and passports are checked. If Dada was caught with a child without the relevant paperwork, he could be fined a large sum or, worse, have to bribe the officials an even larger sum so the child wasn't taken from him and sent back to Myanmar.
On the Sunday of our second week Preschanta and Ramesh, two of the older boys, took us for a tour of Sangklaburi. We visited Three Pagodas Pass, home of the (currently closed) border checkpoint with Myanmar. We could look over the barrier into this different country but, apart from the fact they drive on the other side of the road, there was no difference in the snippet of land we could see. They also took us to a couple of temples in the area and to a massive wooden bridge which runs over the lake in the middle of the town. When we passed an immigration checkpoint, the guards didn't give our white faces a second glance but checked Preschanta and Ramesh's ID cards. Their cards only permitted them to travel within the Sangklaburi area - no further. Imagine - being 18 years old and only being able to travel within your home town and no further! Crazy.
Just before our trip to Chaam the days seemed to be getting hotter and hotter. We started having thunderstorms in the late afternoon which were awesome (and so refreshing!) The raindrops were huge - it feels like a jug of water has been thrown over you each time you get hit and it may sound weedy but they actually sting!! One night there was no rain, just endless low rumbles of thunder and continuous flashes of lightning across the sky. It went on for hours like that but no rain ever came that day. The stars were awesome too - we walked to the top of the hill behind our house one night to watch the sunset which was beautiful.
The Saturday before we left Dada's to go to Chaam we visited another Neohummanist run children's home in Sangklaburi run by a Didi. It was very different - they had about 160 children living there and obviously have much more money than Dada. It was good to see all the work that had gone into the home although it didn't quite have the same 'family' feel as at Dada's - it felt a bit more like an institution - maybe because there were so many children.
When we got back from Didi's, Dada asked Will and I to drive one of the mothers to the hospital with her little daughter, Tutu as she had a big bump on her head that had got infected. A bike had fallen on her a few days before and a lovely purple tennis ball had appeared that just seemed to get bigger by the day! We got to the hospital just as they were closing for lunch(!) so had to wait for an hour to be seen. When the nurse finally called them in we could only imagine what they were doing to the bump on her head as her baby cries went from your average wail to a bloodcurdling screaming. It was so horrible we nearly had to leave the room! When her mum finally brought her out half of her head was covered in a white bandage and the rest of her face was bright red from tears. Poor little tot didn't have a nice time - apparently they lanced it. However a couple of days later and she was back to normal again!
That night some of the kids put on a dance show which was brilliant. Harish, one of the older girls (formerly a boy), choreographed all the dances and the kids loved it. They'd even made their own costumes and had kept it a secret from the volunteers. It was a great night!
On Sunday, our last day in Sangklaburi, Dada announced that he wanted to leave for Chaam the next morning at 3am!
To be continued.......!
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