VCDF

An artist named Kru Nam couldn't ignore the street kids she passed every day - where did they live? Did they have mothers? Why weren't they in school?

So one day she set up a canvas on the street and began to paint. And the kids came to watch... a few here, a few more there. The next day she came back - this time with extra supplies for the kids to paint along with her. The kids had nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, no one watching out for them. So Kru Nam did something about it.


Volunteers for Children Development Foundation now runs two orphanages in Chiang Sean and Chiang Mai and two drop-in centers in Mae Sai and Chiang Mai. The orphanages provide a more stable, consistent, long-term opportunity for the kids to get off the streets. The drop-in centers are a place for kids still on the streets - many of them are young boys working at the bars for western men- and is a place for them to nap, relax, and receive education (including STD, HIV/AIDS prevention information).


So that's the information.



But the story is really in the individual faces. Each comes with a past of sexual exploitation - too awful to sensationalize on this blog - or neglect, or child labor, or abuse, or a combination of all of those and then some. They are loved back to life by the VCDF staff. Through art therapy, for example. And through a venue where they are allowed to be loud, silly, giggly, sweet, crazy kids.

Engrish

This post is dedicated exclusively to Sweeting - a fellow engrish lover and inspiration for these photos:

A universal truth.

Excuse me, Mr. Joe but when does the Grand Place open exactly? I'm hedging my be's on this one.

Well... I guess when you think about it, that is what we do.

I promise this is a restaurant menu and not a brothel services list.

I am not sure I actually want to know what a demon moustache is.

Only if it's sometimes.

Alliteration at it's best.

Perhaps "fresh" has a different meaning than I'm aware of?

Thai attempt at diet rap?

Please leave your machetes, dogs, and cigarettes at home but be sure to bring your best karaoke song requests.

Too much indeed.

So many tenses, I don't even know where to go with this one.

Well I guess that's one way of looking at it.

So... provided I give 10 points, I can take it to jail with me, right?

"You lose what you do not share"

On Tha Pae Road in Chiang Mai, there is a cluttered storefront with layers of paintings obstructing the already tiny doors in. Once inside, you're met with piles and piles and layers and layers of paintings filled with happy colors and gentle blessings.

Live your dream, don't dream your life.

Think global, Act local.

It is better to dance in the rain than to weather the storm.

John Gallery has been open for 30 years. He is beautiful - with kind eyes and smile wrinkles. His initial goal was to reach 100,000 paintings but he has far surpassed that and told me he is now aiming for 200,000. I bought a medium sized painting that says "Do what you love, the universe will take care of the rest." He threw in a few extra paintings as gifts - "Because I have so many! You lose what you do not share," he said.

Soi Cowboy Update!

Here is an exerpt from an email I received from Bonita yesterday...

"I THINK you went with Jit on outreach to Soi Cowboy? Just to let the team know that as a result of outreach, particularly to Soi Cowboy, we had ELEVEN girls come to English class. We have not had so many new girls in a very long time. Thank you! We had to divide them into two groups - beginners and four others who could converse a bit but wanted reading and writing skills."

Makes me teary :)

And wondering about which particular girls came. I can see their faces. Which eleven were they?

Oh, the potential!

To Dream Again

The Home of New Beginnings doesn’t look like much from the outside-in. The street gate creeks open, the cement in the courtyard is cracked, the picnic table seems to be slowly succumbing to cobwebs. Outside the door there are 50 some-odd pairs of shoes (women will be women no matter where they come from!) and a cranky turtle snaps at you from his terrarium home as you step in. But for a place focused on the inside-out, there is nothing more appropriate than an unassuming three story equivalent to an American row house.

Bonita Thompson wondered what she was going to dig her heels into when she and her husband Roy moved to Thailand some five years ago to alleviate travel stresses for his job. There are other organizations working with the bar girls in Bangkok – other organizations doing wonderful work – but Bonita’s dreams are deep, not wide. And 30 girls out of the bars later, the Home of New Beginnings is a place for capacity building. A place for hope. A place for safety.

A place for women to dream again.

Counseling is a virtually unknown idea to Thailand so for a group of Thai women who have not been given enough formal education, been beaten and left by their alcoholic husbands, told they must support their family (their entire family – grandparents, kids, parents, cousins), then certainly mistreated and perhaps raped by customers… Bonita has her work cut out for her.

HNB girls go out to Nana Place and Soi Cowboy and befriend the girls there – offering them English lessons (which they can get, free of charge, regardless of their intention to leave the bars). The hope is this exposure to the house will make them feel welcome, comfortable, and expose them to the fact that there are other ways to live. Other opportunities.

Home of New Beginnings offers a free place to live, food, and a support system of all the women who live there. HNB gives the girls in the house a weekly stipend so they have something to live on and perhaps even send back to their families who are depending on those baht. The girls educational needs are assessed and then met (two girls are in University and most others are working towards Grade 12). They are taught sewing and other craft skills (they sell shirts, bags, little cute hair barrettes, journals, greeting cards, table runners out of the house for some extra income). Capacity building.

Still, there are empty beds. A pay cut and more difficult work (studying is more difficult than sex, perhaps) doesn’t sound overly attractive to most of the 2,000 girls in Soi Cowboy and 3,000 girls in Nana who must provide for their families back home. To this, Bonita shrugs her shoulders and admits the home’s emotional capacity is probably less than the amount of open beds they have.

The Home of New Beginnings needs are:

-Money. The monthly overhead is about 8500 USD. There is only 2200 USD pledged per month. Each month comes with $6300 worth of anxiety. Each. Month.

-Bar fines. Home of New Beginnings throws a huge Christmas Party for any girl from any bar who wants to have a night of food, friends, music, presents. But they have to pay the bar fine to get that girl out of the bar for the night. They also want to be able to pay the bar fines for girls who don’t feel well on any given day. Most girls work 28 days of every month and are not able to take the night off if they don’t feel good without paying their own fine. How much? About 800 Baht or 24 USD.

-Interns. Good ones. Self-sufficient, previously traveled, extremely relational and confident interns willing to give a six month commitment.

-A new refrigerator. And a fixed or new AC unit for the classroom.

-Teams to come paint beautifully girly colored rooms!

On a happy note, the house mama named Ann is coming to visit (of all places) Pleasanton, California in a few months and all she wants to do is go to breakfast at Country Waffles and have a huge serving of whipped cream on her waffles. We can do that for you, Ann - we'll order all the whipped cream you can stomach :)

Silly Farang

Talked to the girls for a few hours tonight on Soi Cowboy. Swallowed deep, put on my Thai smile like it's all fine and normal to be hanging out with topless prostitutes.

Brought them fruit - mangoes spiced with red chili flakes, green grapes. Got there before it got too busy, too crazy for them to talk.

One girl said I needed a tan and could come back and work with her.

Two asian men asked how must I cost. How much? How much?

Not for sale.

The same girl who said I need a tan also told me I'm fat and if I stay in Thailand, I'll eat Thai food and get skinny. "Honey if I get skinny like you, I'll also have small tits like yours." She thought that was really funny. And I do too :)

A dad was in one of the go-gos with his 15 years old-ish son. The son looked absolutely terrified.

The mama-sans were nice to me until the clock struck 10pm. Then I was taking up prime real estate in front of the stage and needed to vacate. They were nice then too, but I still had to vacate. She hoped I'd come back and she'd see me soon.

One girl said she had been in Bangkok - which for her means in the bars - for six days. Six months you mean? Six days, she re-confirmed. Then she had to go on the stage.

A girl asked me if I wanted to try what she was eating. I really didn't but did anyway. After I took a cautious bite she told me it was "mou" and puffed up her cheeks. "MOUSE!? Lady, I'm a farang! We don't eat mouse!" She laughed for about five minutes - translated what I said to the other girls (more laughter) and clarified what I had eaten was actually "mouth." A duck's, apparently. Well ok then. That's slightly better. I told her I don't like the bugs they eat from the bug carts either - because the legs get stuck in my teeth. She thought that was funny too. Silly farang.

Waking

Little thrills me more than waking up on the first morning of a trip. So often I arrive under night’s cloak; all my orientation completely off thanks to an extra 50 baht worth of suspiciously circular turns to find our destination on Soi 4. Friday night in Sukhumvit. Alive with “closed” bars – their patrons “finishing up” their beers.

In an effort to clean up the drug trade and mafia activity – and perhaps to curtail international reputation for other surreptitious proceedings – a few years ago, the Thai government mandated that bars in Bangkok close at 1am. Public outcry ensued, causing an amendment to the rule and allowing some bars in some areas to be open later. Unexempt bars now just turn the house lights off, move patrons to the street tables, and serve until clients dissipate. I first experienced this during my 2007 trip when all the lights on a whole strip of bars went dark but my waiter offered me another Singha through his characteristically toothy thai smile.

Back to this morning. My fascination with time is perhaps eclipsed by the phenomenon of travel. Yesterday (or two days ago thanks to the International Dateline), I left San Francisco and today – Bangkok. Clad in what I’m hoping looks bohemian (but in fairness amounts to wrinkled clothes and wild hair) I “sawadee’d” our hotel security, denied “where are you going” taxi drivers, and dodged the morning noodle stands. Appear like you have a destination, adjust bag to front of body, hide eyes behind sunglasses. And look…

Beers at 9am? Really, gentlemen? Breakfast with last night’s courtesan? Well, how decent of you. I see a sign for Starbucks but fight my instincts with a streetside iced coffee instead.

Signs – Massage! Melodies Guesthouse: Nice rooms, Happy bar to make your dreams come true! Tiff Gold Shop. Charming Bar. Nana BTS.

Faces – girls weary from working last night, one older (retired?) woman, red-faced white men with beer bellies, a pimp?

I’m looking for heartbreak but I sense normalcy.

Good Morning, Bangkok.

Making a Mess

On Christmas Eve, I cut my mom off right before she was about to share Jesus with a friend of ours. I threw my hands up between them and told the friend to retreat from the conversation. Why am I afraid of making a mess?

Part of my thinking is I want people to see a different church than the stone they grew up around. A church where they experience freedom and authenticity. A church that's - well - not afraid to make a mess.

What I've assumed about the non-Christians in my life is that they have heard the gospel before. John 3:16 is a tired line that they aren't buying. I’ve been a slave to that assumption.

The reality of Jesus walking on this earth, the profundity of what that means for us, is something they are "happy I feel strongly about" or "glad my faith is important to me." But in processing some of this, I can think of only two friends who have ever asked me what I believe in. And I can think of many more than two friends who I'm not sure *really* have heard about who Jesus is, why He came.

The second part of 2 Corinthians 5 is packed with the gospel message:

Verses 14-15: For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

Verse 17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Verse 21: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Compelling. Convincing. For all. New. So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In the same chapter, Paul says "If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you." Maybe you needed to read or re-read those other verses. But that last one is for me today - a call to be out of my mind. A call to make a mess.

2009

The title of this entry is intentionally devoid of adjectives, qualifications, or predilection. I'm conflicted.

My initial and quickest reaction to 2009 is it's a year I am glad to say goodbye to. I've never felt like this before - never felt such a strong readiness for a year to be over. I've been saying things like "I'd be lying if I said it was a great year" or "You know what? It was a weird year."

I lost my job. I said goodbye to friends and closed a chapter on a life I loved. Taylor's baby is dead. Geoff is fighting cancer. My dad's business sucks and watching his discouragement is beyond upsetting. Julie and Darren's financial situation stinks right now. I'm stressed out about getting into school and having no back up plan. The asshole who attempted to rape and murder my roommate didn't take the plea bargain so now we are answering calls from lawyers and getting knocks on our doors from the defendant's legal team three days before Christmas.

So life's hard, is it? I guess I didn't really know that before this year. But I think - I know - I can't throw away what 24 other years have taught me. Life is interesting. Fresh. Full. Unexpected.

I think to how this year started. In Barcelona. And Rome. With friends. Ones I could have never imagined I'd have.

I think to opportunities I had and seized.

And of little moments that are still making me laugh or smile. A blooper reel of sorts:

Meredith's impression of the opossum Liz almost hit...

Unbelievable rainbows over Niagra Falls

Peak-a-boo!

OMG, Disgruntled Boo haha!

By far the cutest picture potential RUINED thanks to Muffin.

Excuse me, sir? I'm trying to read.

Sorry Maus. I couldn't help myself.

You guys think walking through KELLY'S is more scary than walking through Apex?

Am I looking FORWARD to 2010? Sure. For a new niece. In anticipation of a move to a city I can't wait to dig my heels into. For another year of unscheduled weekdays. For the fact 2009 is behind me.