New Life Project youths celebrate graduation
Last month young men from the New Life Project at Chumphon celebrated success in their school studies at a ceremony which took place at the Duang Prateep Foundation. Six of the students had completed their senior secondary education and two of the students had completed their junior secondary studies. The schooling had been carried out under the supervision of the non-formal education system. The successful students were joined at the ceremony by their families and staff from the DPF. Also present were the chairman and vice-chairman of the foundation along with representatives from the Klong Toey District Office and the Port Police Station.
The successful students spoke about how their stays at the New Life Project had transformed their lives. Some of the parents also spoke about the situations that had led to their boys going to the New Life Project and how their boys had changed through the stay at Chumphon, in the South of Thailand.
For one of the successful Chumphon students the occasion was also an opportunity to say farewell before travelling to Japan for a period of language study. He is now learning Japanese at Kobe YMCA for one year and another student from the New Life Project will be going to Japan later in the year.
20th anniversary building finished, Mitsui Oil donate to New Life Project,
At the New Life Project for Girls, in Kanchanaburi province, the 20th anniversary building, which was started last August, is now nearing completion. The new building will make it possible to increase numbers at the project site from the present 13 to a total of about 50. The building contains a general activity area, a vocational training room and a library on the ground floor. The upper storey has two classrooms, two dormitory rooms and a medical care room. It is hoped that a further new building will soon be started at the project site, enabling more girls to stay at the project.
Mr. Shinichi Akabori, the General Manager of Mitsui Oil in Bangkok visited the Duang Prateep Foundation last month with three of his colleagues and made a donation to the New Life Project for Girls at Kanchanaburi. The contribution from Mitsui Oil will be used for the creation of a reservoir at the project and the development of fish farming and agricultural activities.
The attached file <newbuilding.jpg> shows some of the children at Kanchanaburi in front of the new building.
Outing to Pranburi river
A party of ninety-nine children and supervisors went on a three day, two night outing to the mouth of the Pranburi River, near Hua Hin last month. The children who went on the camp came from the Slum Children’s Art Club, the Special Education Project for Hearing Impaired Children and the New Life Project. The children were busy painting and playing in the sea and on the beach.
The attached file <outing.jpg> shows one of the children at the camp receiving some painting assistance from two camp leaders.
Chemical fire sufferers - human rights victims
Supporters of the victims of chemical fires at the Bangkok Port are exploring the possibility of the victims being recognised as victims of human rights abuses under the new constitution.
In the present constitution, which was adopted in October 1997 a national human rights commission was mandated, for which the enabling legislation must be enacted by October 1999. A draft bill was recently approved by the cabinet but there has been widespread criticism from democracy and human rights organisations that the objectives of the constitution are being ignored as the proposed bill protects the interests of politicians and bureaucrats.
End of school year
The school year finished in the middle of March and children are now out of school for the long summer holidays. At kindergartens affiliated to the foundation special events were held to mark the end of the school year. When schools reopen in May the oldest kindergarten children will have gone on to primary school with a new intake of slum children beginning their school experience at DPF kindergartens.
There is a report on school drop-outs because of the economic recession in the News from Thailand section.
Organisations recycle print cartridges to raise money for the DPF
Nine organisation in Bangkok, (embassies, UN organisations and companies) are raising money for the DPF by saving their print cartridges for laser and inkjet printers for recycling. For each cartridge saved in a specially designed box a contribution is made to the Duang Prateep Foundation by the company that collects the cartridges for recycling. Other organisations who are interested in this scheme to protect the environment and support the work of the foundation should contact the International section at the Duang Prateep Foundation.
Dr. Vithavas Khongkhakul appointment
Dr. Vithavas has been a trustee of the Duang Prateep Foundation for many years and is presently Vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees. Dr. Vithavas has been a frequent visitor to the foundation but from this month he will be seen even more regularly because he will be taking up a new full-time position at the foundation as Executive Chairman. Dr. Vithavas will be overseeing the offices of International Relations, Public Relations and Education and the Duang Prateep Kindergarten. The appointment of Dr. Vithavas will help to relieve some of the administrative burden from DPF founder and Secretary General Prateep Ungsongtham Hata.
Email addresses
The email address of the Duang Prateep Foundation has been altered slightly. The new address is <dpf@internet.ksc.net.th.com>. Email sent to the old address, without the ‘com’ at the end, will still reach the DPF for the time being. Email can also be sent to <dpfaids@cscoms.com>. Foundation email is often sent from <hollow@asiaaccess.net.th> and this address can also be used when replying to the foundation.
There is more about the Duang Prateep Foundation at the end of this newsletter, see ‘Faces in the Crowd’.
News from Thailand
Poor suffering in recession
There has been widespread criticism of the government for the slow disbursement of funds aimed at reviving the economy and easing the hardship of poor people in the recession. Loans totalling more than US$700 million have been provided by several international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund but so far little of that money has been used.
A US$29.5 million scheme to provide training for laid-off workers is yet to start because the money has not been made available. Out of US$120 million provided to the Government Savings Bank for medium term loans, only $1.1 million has been distributed so far. Only 136 projects, from 3,000 applications had been approved.
According to the details in a survey announced last month, the poor are suffering disproportionally to the rest of the population in the current recession. The survey shows the poor are receiving 25 per cent less income on average while their average cost of living has risen 40 per cent. The survey, organised by an academic and NGOs, was carried out in Bangkok slum communities, rural areas and at factories.
The study on the poor in slums, carried out in 40 Bangkok slums, found that the cost of living had risen 32% compared to before the crisis. 38% of slum dwellers were jobless and 57 per cent of slum dwellers were in debt. In rural areas the cost of living has risen by 30%. The crisis has also reduced the amount of money family members working in Bangkok remit to their homes in the villages. According to the survey about 80% of Northeastern labourers no longer remit money to their family. The other 20% have reduced the amount they remit by an average of 36%. A survey of factory workers showed that they have experienced an average drop in income of 19% per cent since the start of the crisis.
Reports suggest that women are being particularly hard hit. Of the workers registered as being laid-off in 1998, about 58 per cent were women. Many of the women laid-off from factories are old unskilled and poorly educated. As many of the women have no savings they have had to take poorly paid jobs, working long hours in often unsafe and unhealthy environments.
Controversy about school dropout figures
The National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) and the Office of the National Education Commission (Onec) have been arguing about the number of children dropping out of school because of the economic crisis. The NESDB has questioned the notion that the current crisis has led to a massive increase in school dropouts. The NESDB has suggested that projections based on a survey carried out by Onec last year were highly misleading. The NESDB suggested that the decreasing rates of children not attending schools represented an improvement over the pre-crisis years. The NESDB further states that the low demand for labour is encouraging children to stay in school.
Onec believes that between 250,000 and 300,000 students are being forced out of school because of the current crisis and it is possible that the number could rise. The Onec secretary-general rejected the NESDB findings as amateurish. The Duang Prateep Foundation shares the perception of Onec that many children are leaving school because of the economic recession. From over 2,500 children receiving financial assistance for their education through the DPF sponsorship programme over 200 have stopped their studies due to family financial problems caused by the recession. Other non-government organisations report similar high levels of school drop-outs.
In reality it is likely that the economic crisis is leading to a widening education gap between the poorest sectors of society and the rest. Many poor people who have dropped back below the poverty line because of the recession are having to pull their children out of school. However, middle class families, who are not so deeply in crisis, are possibly encouraging their children to stay on at school because of the lack of work opportunities. The large numbers of children ceasing their education is serious for poor families and for Thailand, where secondary school enrolment of just 37.5 per cent is among the lowest in the region.
Drugs reported available in kindergartens
The Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) reported last month that the use of narcotics is widespread throughout Thailand and is proliferating in schools, even including kindergartens. The Minister in charge of the ONCB admitted that drugs problems had already penetrated kindergartens but quoted the ONCB as stating that the problems among young children are not serious. The minister was deeply concerned about the proliferation of drugs at secondary schools.
The Education Ministry last month reported on a survey on drug consumption among students carried out in the first eight months of last year. According to the survey, amphetamines was easily the most popular drug among students. The survey showed that 7,681 students throughout the country used amphetamines, 1,596 students used solvents, 517 used heroin, 513 marijuana and a further 439 students used other drugs.
Anti Aids vaccine begins
A large scale trial of an HIV/Aids vaccine designed to protect against the strain of the virus predominant in Thailand was launched last month. The trial will involve 2,500 volunteers who are recovering intravenous drug-users. The vaccine was created by combining a protein from the cover of the B and E strains of the virus. The E strain is prevalent in Thailand and neighbouring countries and can more easily be transmitted through heterosexual sex than the B strain, which is predominant in the USA and Europe. Intravenous drug users were chosen for the test because they account for 40% of HIV/Aids patients. Volunteers were given details of the trial and had to pass a test to prove their understanding of Aids.
FACES IN THE CROWD
A JOURNEY IN HOPE
A book by Chris Bale.
A baby girl, a family of sugar workers, a disabled man, a student, a well-meaning banker, a village women and a boy with leprosy. Nobody rich or famous. Just faces in the crowd. Yet each with a remarkable story to tell.
Chris Bale met them all during 20 years of working with charities in Asia. He lost contact, but many years later set out to find them again, hoping to see how their lives had changed.
Chris Bale’s journey took him to Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and the Duang Prateep Foundation in Klong Toey slum.
The chapter below is provided with the permission of Chris Bale and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This material is the copyright of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and no part may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The book, which has many illustrations, is available from the Duang Prateep Foundation at a cost of 750 baht plus packing and postage. All profits from the sale of the book go to support charities in Asia.
------
Thailand, Klong Toey Wittaya Buitsak
An Uneasy Relationship
I became involved with Wittaya Buitsak almost by accident and certainly against my better judgement.
It all started in Klong Toey, Bangkok's biggest slum, home to more than seventy thousand people and a place with a terrible reputation. Few Bangkok residents and even fewer tourists step inside Klong Toey's crowded alleys, but in 1989 I went there to visit the Duang Prateep Foundation, which organized educational sponsorships for slum children.
I was a sceptical guest. Child sponsorship schemes are popular with donors but many development agencies avoid them, arguing that helping communities is more effective than helping individuals, that singling out a few children for sponsorship can be unfair and divisive, that sponsorship schemes are difficult and expensive to administer and that they foster outdated concepts of dependency. I had a head full of such prejudices.
The Foundation's staff introduced their work, which even then was helping more than two thousand children and their families, and it was hard not to be impressed. At a Duang Prateep kindergarten, dozens of four- and five-year-olds, dressed in simple uniforms, stood up as we entered their classrooms and shouted 'Sawasdee' - Welcome. The Foundation's staff said there was no shortage of sponsors wanting to help these little ones but that finding support for tertiary students, who didn't look so sweet and whose tuition fees were much higher, was more difficult, sometimes even impossible. Perhaps that was hardly surprising, but I was appalled. Klong Toey children who had qualified to study at university level were, almost by definition, pretty special and deserved support. So, forgetting all my well-rehearsed objections, I offered to sponsor one.
Back in Hong Kong a few weeks later, a letter arrived introducing 'Vittaya Pudsak' as a young person needing help. That spelling of his name, incidentally, was the first of many versions to appear over the next few years - in addition to Vittaya Pudsak, we had Vitaya, Wittaya and Witthaya, Budsak, Bootsak, Buitsak and Buithsak. The changes had no significance, of course - his name was, is and always will be [in the book Wittaya’s name is written in the Thai script but cannot be produced in this newsletter] .
Wittaya was twenty years old. He had been helped by the Foundation during his secondary school years but had then stopped studying because his family couldn't afford to send him to university. He wanted to study mass communications but needed a scholarship of 6,000 baht (then about 230 dollars) per year to pay for his tuition. His father was unwell and the family depended on his mother, who earned a couple of thousand baht per month by selling khanum toey, tiny coconut desserts which she made in bowls not much bigger than thimbles and sold from a barrow in the slum.
These personal details about Wittaya and his family were interesting, but in a sense they were also irrelevant. If the Foundation had introduced a girl studying hotel management or a boy training to be a seaman my response would have been the same. The aim was simply to give some small help to one young person trying to break out of poverty and it just so happened that the student chosen for me was Wittaya.
I sent off the first payment and some time later received a long letter from him, written in Thai but with an English translation from the Foundation. He explained that when lack of money had forced him to stop studying, he had left Bangkok and travelled to more remote parts of Thailand. The trip had obviously been a real eye-opener. He wrote:
I got a lot of experiences to answer my questions. The best experience I had was to be an assistant teacher to the hill tribe children in the north of Thailand. These children are not different from the children of the towns. Children everywhere are like flowers which are just coming into bloom.
I concluded that I had to come back to Bangkok to further my study, to get more knowledge and a degree which is acceptable in today's Thai culture. I lack knowledge - that's why I decided to further my studies.
The Foundation encouraged sponsors to write to their students but I never did. In fact, I began to feel uneasy about our relationship. Twice a year Wittaya sent short but highly respectful notes, reporting on how his studies were going and expressing his gratitude for my support, but frankly I could well afford the money and felt slightly embarrassed by his profusion of thanks.
Even when he wrote that he would like to receive letters from me and to know about my country I still didn't respond. Now, I wonder why not. Was it just uneasiness about the unequal nature of the relationship? Was I trying to keep him at arm's length and, if so, why? Was it just laziness? I don't know, but I certainly regret not allowing the relationship to grow into something stronger and more rewarding for both of us.
Although I didn't write to Wittaya, I did once visit him during a trip to Bangkok. It was the briefest of encounters. We met at the Foundation, went on to his home, exchanged small gifts and, with one of the Foundation's staff acting as translator, had a rather stilted conversation. Then we said goodbye and returned to a six-monthly exchange of sponsorship cheques and letters of thanks.
By 1994 Wittaya was approaching the end of his studies and wrote to say that he hoped to work in the countryside 'as I know there are few people interested to develop the area.' That was the last time I heard from him. The following year the Foundation said he no longer needed support and asked me instead to help a girl at a vocational college. I didn't even know for sure whether Wittaya had graduated. It was an unsatisfactory end to what had been a rather unsatisfactory and uneasy relationship.
So in 1997 I went back to Bangkok, to find out what had happened and to meet Wittaya again - this time not as sponsor to student, but as man to man.
The Search Begins
I didn't expect to stay for more than a few days. The Duang Prateep Foundation had given me a contact number for Wittaya and it seemed the search would be straightforward - which only goes to show how wrong you can be. The search - or, rather, the wait - for Wittaya became a frustrating trail of inadequate information and long delays, a lesson in patience and the ways of Asia.
The first call signalled trouble. A friend at the Foundation frowned as she put down the phone.
'That was his grandmother,' she explained. 'She says Wittaya has gone up-country and she doesn't know where he is or when he'll be back.'
I walked to Chulalongkorn University, the most renowned and prestigious institute of learning in Thailand, hoping to find a student who could act as my interpreter, so that I could go to Wittaya's home and speak to someone face to face. It was the Saturday morning before mid-term exams and the campus was almost deserted, but there were four students in the English Club and one of them was eager to help. His name was Songphon Mungkongsujarit.
'Very long, isn't it?' he laughed as he spelled it out. 'But you can call me Sunny.'
Sunny was in his final year of a course in electrical engineering and hoping for a scholarship to go overseas to get a Masters degree. He was Thai Chinese from an upper middle-class family and had never set foot in Klong Toey but was intrigued to find out whether the stories of squalid living conditions and rampant crime were really true.
'Just studying pure engineering is useless,' he said. 'I must open my vision.'
Sunny called Wittaya's home and managed to speak to his wife, Somchit, who agreed to meet us early the next morning. She gave instructions on how to get to the family home in Klong Toey - turn left in front of the school, turn right when you get to the wall of the port, then take the third lane on the right and walk until you see a house on the right with a blue gate.
It was a two-storey building with a concrete floor, wooden walls and a tin roof, hemmed in by similar homes on either side and opening onto a concrete alley which was barely wide enough for two people to pass. We sat downstairs in a large room which had clearly been much lived in. On the walls were a family photograph, a picture of the King and Queen and a large poster of a pop group. An electric fan silently freshened the warm morning air.
Wittaya's mother, Mrs. Buitsak, sat on the floor, a plump, smiling woman in a cotton blouse and skirt, with gold earrings and a gold bracelet. Somchit was tall and slim, dressed simply in a T-shirt and sarong, and Vichit, Wittaya's strong, boisterous four-year-old son, was playing on the floor stark naked.
Somchit explained that for the past year Wittaya had been working for a construction company in Krabi, almost one thousand kilometres away in the south of Thailand. He came home for only a couple of days each month and she didn't expect to see him again for three weeks. No, she didn't have a contact number for him and simply waited for him to call. She thought he would probably call again in two or three days' time and said she would tell him that we wanted to see him.
Mrs. Buitsak was all smiles but Somchit was clearly suspicious of this stranger come searching for her husband. She was polite and friendly but reticent. She told us that she and Wittaya had met at a party when they were students. She confirmed that they had both graduated, told us that she worked as a secretary for a multinational company and that she was about to study for a Masters degree. But that was about it.
She went upstairs and found a large photograph of Wittaya receiving his degree from Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn. Mrs. Buitsak showed the picture to Vichit, probably for the umpteenth time, and said she had been so proud of Wittaya on that day that she had cried. Her little grandson, grasping the moral of the story, burst into the chorus of a popular Thai rap song:
Torn lek lek, mai rian nang seu,
Thor khun mar, tong kut rong taow!
If you don't study hard when you're young, you'll only be able to polish shoes when you grow up!
We said our goodbyes and left. I wondered briefly about going down to Krabi and trying to find Wittaya there but decided against it. Krabi was only a temporary workplace. Klong Toey was home.
There was only one thing to do. Await Wittaya's return.
The Flame of Enlightenment
One day, outside the swanky World Trade Centre, I met a young man called Lek, who was studying English in order to advance from being a hotel waiter to working as a receptionist. He asked what I was doing in Bangkok and when I mentioned Klong Toey he frowned. 'People in Klong Toey no good,' he said, placing his fist below his nose and snorting in imitation of a glue sniffer. Then he tapped his finger on the side of his head. 'Bad people,' he said. 'Crazy.'
The name Klong Toey means a canal fringed with pandanus trees. Slender pandanus leaves are used in flower arrangements and to add fragrance in cooking, but there was nothing elegant or fragrant about Klong Toey, no pandanus trees in sight. It was a just a big city slum, a sweltering, sprawling maze of huts, many of them squeezed between the Port of Bangkok to the south and an expressway and a railway line to the north. The slum was so large that it was divided into twenty-four communities. In some, such as the one in which Wittaya and his family lived, the houses were built on dry land with solid materials, but in the worst areas they were just ramshackle huts, odd bits of wood and metal hammered together, standing on stilts in pools of stagnant water and linked by a vast network of narrow crisscrossing paths.
Most of the people in Klong Toey earned meagre money as labourers at the port or as vendors, and the average family income was about 6,000 baht or 150 dollars per month. There was the usual depressing catalogue of problems that beset poor people in large cities at the end of the twentieth century. Children as young as seven sniffed glue. Drug abuse was rampant and the sharing of needles had spread HIV. Drug dealers operated quite openly.
'Even small children know which house to go to,' said one social worker. 'It's as easy as buying toffees or sweets.'
Yet in the middle of this notorious slum lived one of Thailand's most famous and most respected women, Prateep Ungsongtham, founder of the Duang Prateep Foundation, the organization which had first brought Wittaya and me together.
As a teenager, scraping rust from ships in the port, Prateep had noticed that her fellow labourers often missed work because they had nobody to look after their children. She had opened an informal - and illegal - school in her home, charging one baht per child per day, and was soon caring for one hundred children. The school became the focal point of the community. Prateep survived attempts to evict her, and her success made other residents realize that they too had rights. In 1978, when she was just twenty-six, she won Asia's version of the Nobel Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, and used her prize money to launch the Duang Prateep Foundation - literally, the Flame of Enlightenment Foundation.
Twenty years on, Prateep almost ran into her office for our early morning meeting, elegantly dressed and looking for all the world like a bustling businesswoman. Only a red AIDS ribbon in her lapel suggested someone more interested in people than profits.
'I'm sorry I'm fifteen minutes late,' she said, speaking quickly and glancing at her watch. 'No, seventeen minutes. Sorry, sorry.'
I was the first engagement of another busy day. Her diary included a meeting with officials about setting up a fire station in Klong Toey, greeting a party of visiting schoolgirls, hosting a photographer from the United Nations Drug Control Programme, attending a ceremony at a kindergarten to mark the Buddhist Khao Phansaa festival and planning an anti-drugs mini marathon.
Prateep lived with her husband and two sons in a small house barely fifty metres from the Foundation. I wondered why, being so aware of the slum's problems, she still chose to live there.
She burst out laughing. 'I have no money,' she said, 'no money to go anywhere!'
Then, becoming more serious, she said that when she won the Magsaysay Award in 1978 the money had been enough to buy four townhouses in Bangkok and she had thought for a moment about buying one for herself.
'But another thought coming in - if I take the money and buy a townhouse, people in the community will look at me and say oh, I am selfish, just trying to find a way to escape the problem by myself, so I decide to put the money to start the Foundation.'
Then, another burst of laughter.
'You know, in those days one town house was - you know how much? One hundred thousand baht. Today, five million!'
Then, becoming serious again, 'But if compared to the work of the Foundation, that is nothing, could not be compared.'
I wondered whether, after living in Klong Toey all her life, Prateep felt she knew the place and its people inside out or whether slum life could still surprise her. Oh, she said, she could still be shocked. Just a few days before she had met a young handicapped boy outside her house, his head covered in scabs. She had swung into action, first tracking down the boy's grandmother and then discovering that his father was one of her former students. The man's wife had run away and left him with four young children, but the basic problem, concluded Prateep, was poverty.
'I know my student,' she said. 'He's not very clever, but he's not stupid. He works very hard but his wages are very low and when one member of the family has a complication - like this boy now - we have no system to support them.'
The previous evening after work Prateep had gone out to buy the boy some clean clothes, and she was planning to register him as a handicapped person, so that his family could receive 500 baht per month from the government. He would have to be educated and, if no other facilities were available, she would admit him to the Foundation's own kindergarten, just across the road from her office.
'Come,' she said, 'I'd like you to meet him.'
We walked out into the maze of houses and small stores and Prateep soon spotted the boy's brother. She asked him to fetch the boy, and a couple of minutes later, along one of the slum's narrow paths, the two of them walked towards us.
Am was four years old. He could not walk steadily and held the hand of his older brother. There were scabs all over his scalp, but what really struck me was how dirty he was. There was a thick black grime under his fingernails and the risk of further infection to his scabs was horribly obvious. In addition to his physical problems, he seemed to be mildly mentally handicapped.
Prateep squatted down and talked to him, her peach-coloured jacket sweeping the dirty pathway.
'You ask me why I stay in the slum,' said Prateep. 'This is why. Because I can get the information. When I go to the market, I meet so many people. Every Saturday I join with the community people for night patrol, so that I can see. If I don't stay in Klong Toey, I don't know.'
She conceded that the slum was not the ideal place for her own sons to grow up. In fact, she said, it was worse now than it had been when she was a child. In her early years the only drug addicts in Klong Toey were old opium addicts, but now there was widespread abuse of heroin and amphetamines and many people sniffed glue.
'What do you think your boys learn from growing up in Klong Toey?' I asked.
'To be a fighter. Not physical fight, but my sons have ideas and reasons, and even when we quarrel with each other they can find very good reasons against me,' she said.
But were conditions in Klong Toey really worse now than when she was a girl? Wittaya's mother said things had improved enormously over the twenty years she had been living there.
'If housing, pathways, water and electricity, yes, she is totally right,' said Prateep. 'But look at the chemical explosions in the port, seven or eight hurting this community, and now they are going to build an even bigger chemical store. How many fires we have, how many drug addicts we have?'
So which of Klong Toey's many problems was the most serious? Which worried her most? Was it the overcrowding, the poor sanitation, lack of hygiene, the threat of fires and chemical explosions, loan sharking, crime, drugs, poverty, inadequate education? What?
She thought for a time and then surprised me with her answer.
'Destroying community leaders,' she said.
Two forces, she explained, had vested interests in undermining strong community organizations and good leaders. The first was the Port Authority, which wanted to reclaim land at Klong Toey and knew that resistance by strong communities would make its task infinitely more difficult. The second force were the gangsters who operated in the slum and whose businesses, such as drug dealing, were threatened by community education and community spirit. These two forces, Prateep said, tried every means to bring down good community leaders.
'Every time when any good movement happens they will try to find some weak point and set up bad rumours,' she said. 'So this worries me most. In the long run, it is weakening the community.'
Sometimes the struggles also weakened Prateep. One of Thailand's biggest drug dealers was based in Klong Toey and such powerful criminals were threatened by her work. In a quiet moment she admitted that over the past couple of years the strain had begun to tell and she felt that she had aged quickly. There had been many death threats.
'They want to kill me,' she said.
'Do you take the threats seriously?'
'Yes. I don't mind in the daytime, but when they come to my house in the night I do feel a little bit scared.' Then she laughed again. 'But if I am still breathing, I keep fighting!'
The Duang Prateep Foundation had been started to provide education for children in Klong Toey, but had grown to become a large agency running a wide range of services - community development programmes, AIDS prevention, a children's art club, rehabilitation of young drug addicts, services for the elderly, a school for children with impaired hearing, emergency assistance, a young women's project, a credit union and a rural relocation programme for people who wanted to leave Bangkok and return to the countryside. It had even acquired a couple of secondhand fire engines and formed its own team of volunteer firefighters.
'It is not the right way, to just only do education,' said Prateep. 'We have to find some way to voice our concerns about the way of development.'
'So you're no longer a teacher,' I said. 'You've become a politician.'
For the first and only time in our conversation, her face became stern.
'No. I am not a politician,' she said emphatically. 'I am a social worker, a social development worker. I have to use the politics to help the people and to prevent more people from suffering, but I am not a politician. No, no.'
Despite diversifying its services, the Foundation's primary focus was still education, with fifteen slum kindergartens around Bangkok and more than two thousand five hundred students being sponsored.
'Education is the most important part,' said Prateep, 'but we should not think that education is only classroom and children. We should include the parents, the community, community leaders, help them to think that if we want our children to get a good education then what kind of environment we should create. If the community is good, even if the children have problem they could not turn bad.'
'Eh!' she said in exasperation. 'I cannot explain well enough in English.'
'No, you're very clear, but let me turn it around. If the community is bad, is it impossible for the children to turn out good?'
'Everyone when they are first born is same same, but most children can be influenced by their environment, the way of the parents and the community surrounding them,' she said.
Another smile broke across her face.
'But even if the environment is bad, some will be good - like me!' Peals of laughter.
We went outside again to take some more photos. After so many years in the limelight, Prateep was completely at ease before the camera.
In the street, two young men were shouting loudly, drawing attention to themselves, but when one of them spotted Prateep he immediately fell silent and came to stand in front of her with his head bowed.
'Drug addict,' she explained.
She checked his arms for needle marks. There was none, but Prateep was not fooled.
'He just inject in some other part,' she said.
She talked to the young man for a while and suggested he join the Foundation's New Life programme, which took young people away from Klong Toey to be rehabilitated on a farm in the southern province of Chumphon. The man was clearly drugged and could scarcely focus as he tried to answer. He said he would think about it in two or three days' time.
'Why wait?' she said. 'Come today.'
The man prevaricated again, warning that he might not get along with the staff at Chumphon.
'If you don't like it, I'll bring you back here,' said Prateep. 'I give you my promise.'
She pulled the man's head to her shoulder, stroked his hair and gave him a few words of advice. Then, after they parted, she turned to me and said glumly that he would never join her programme. She had been trying to help him for three years without success. If the police arrested him, at least he would be put into a rehabilitation programme, but they couldn't be bothered. He was just one Klong Toey addict, one among hundreds.
We walked back to the office, passing a gaunt man in a grey shirt and shorts who was smiling vacantly, as high as a kite.
'Sniffing glue,' said Prateep.
We had not been in the street for ten minutes, yet in that short time we had, without looking for them, met two young drug addicts and a glue sniffer - and all this in the most prosperous and well-established part of Klong Toey.
There remained much darkness for the flame of enlightenment to dispel.
Culture and Community
Meanwhile, I waited for Wittaya.
Sunny called Somchit every couple of days to see if there was any news but never got a clear answer. One evening he spoke to Wittaya's father who said that, maybe, his son would return the following week.
'But what does that word "maybe" mean?' asked Sunny, exasperated.
We had no idea whether Wittaya would return the next day, next week or next month. In fact, I began to wonder if he would ever come back, but on reflection the lack of information from his family was understandable. A tall pink foreigner had suddenly arrived at their home and started asking all sorts of personal questions. Why was he so interested in Wittaya? It made no sense, all this talk about a book. Better be careful. Talk to Wittaya when he came home. Anyway, what did it matter which day Wittaya would return to Bangkok? He would return when he returned.
There was nothing I could do. Except wait.
Not that waiting was any great hardship amidst the charms of Bangkok. Whenever the heat and pollution began to feel oppressive, a sudden splash of colour, a fragrance, a taste, a graceful gesture or a detail of design would lighten my mood. I would be walking along a busy street, choking on vehicle fumes, and suddenly catch sight of sunshine glinting on a temple roof or drops of water glistening on a mound of freshly picked orchids. Or, passing a building site, spot amongst the mess of rubble and scaffolding a spirit house decorated with fresh puang malai, little garlands of white jasmine, yellow marigolds and red rosebuds. In a garden in the red-light district of Patpong, a group of musicians sat on a low teak table under a mango tree and played tinkling traditional music, their notes lingering in the air like wisps of smoke from incense.
The days slipped slowly by.
King Bhumibol went to Wat Phra Keow and changed the clothes on the Emerald Buddha in preparation for the rainy season, and that very day a huge black storm cloud formed over Bangkok and the first rains fell. The baht fell, too, losing almost a quarter of its value, bad news for poor people who would soon find imported items soaring in cost.
One morning Sunny and I turned off at random down a narrow pathway to explore a different section of Klong Toey, what you might call a middle-class slum neighbourhood. Again, delicate details drew my eyes away from the squalor - a little shrine wedged between two huts and decked with fresh flowers; a row of orchids hanging over a porch; a cage of brightly coloured birds outside a rice store.
Prateep had said that ten major fires in Klong Toey in recent years had left more than twenty-five thousand people homeless, and walking down between the densely packed huts the potential for disaster was obvious. No fire engine could possibly enter those narrow lanes, yet dangerous chemicals were stored just a stone's throw away, behind the port wall.
A woman, dripping with sweat, pushed past us with a heavy barrow of ice; an old man sat cross-legged on a wooden platform in front of his hut, about to eat a fried fish; two young men lolled on a small balcony, chatting; many mothers were washing clothes in large bowls of suds; the owner of a small electrical repair store was examining the innards of a video player; an old woman sat in the doorway of her home, smoking a hand rolled cigarette.
We meandered along in no particular direction, exchanging greetings and smiles with people we passed, observing, chatting, comparing impressions, and then suddenly we emerged on to a patch of open ground where some fifty people were clearing rubbish to make way for a children's playground. It was a completely accidental discovery and the most extraordinary sight.
The area was about half the size of a football pitch and was bisected by a concrete path. On one side of the path was a thick platform of rotting garbage, almost waist high, and residents with rakes were standing on and around the platform, tugging the garbage into large wicker baskets for others to drag away. Most of the workers were men but there were women too and even some children helping around the edges. One middle-aged man was so drunk that he could scarcely coordinate his movements, but even he had a rake and was tearing wildly at the mound of putrid waste. The stench was foul and all the workers wore cotton masks over their mouths and noses.
On the other side of the path, the area being cleared was not land but water. Many houses in this part of Klong Toey were built on stilts above stinking, stagnant pools. The water had been poisoned and turned a vile black by years of pollution, although on the surface there was a rich growth of plants. In one corner, garbage and weeds had formed such a thick crust that a man was able to stand on it. Workers along the path were raking in all the rubbish they could reach, and a high pressure water pump which was usually used for firefighting had been brought in to loosen the larger clusters of plants and rubbish.
I began to take photographs, unable to resist a shot of an immaculate spirit house decorated with many fresh puang malai, the pure white jasmine flowers contrasting with the blackness of the pool.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something moving and realized to my horror that a small boy was actually in the water, pulling at the most stubborn bits of rubbish. He was swimming slowly through the blackness, dragging a raft of garbage and plants behind him, and when his load became too heavy, a worker on the path stretched out a rake and the boy clung on to the prongs and was dragged to the side of the pool. He moved a sheet of corrugated iron, charred timbers from a hut fire, an old football, plastic sandals, clumps of plants and polystyrene boxes - and all the time he was swimming in poisonous filth.
I couldn't take my eyes off him and squatted down beside the pool, taking photographs, grimacing and cursing quietly as the black water lapped at his lips. Years before in Manila and Calcutta I had met families who made a living by scavenging on municipal dumps, hardworking and eagle eyed people who picked through the garbage as soon as it was dumped from a truck, knowing exactly what they were looking for. That was not a pretty sight in tropical heat and a haze of flies or, worse, during the monsoon, when the rains turned the top layer of the dump to liquid. Yet I had never seen anything so repulsive as watching this little lad swimming in the filth of Klong Toey.
Eventually he clambered out, dragging himself across the piles of debris he had helped to retrieve. Despite the scorching heat, he was shivering. He walked down the path and began to wash, scooping clean water from a large pot and pouring it over himself. He had no soap and it took a while to get rid of all the rubbish that had stuck to him.
'How old are you?' I asked.
'Eleven.'
'And what's your name?'
'Ton.'
'Why did you go into the water?'
'Someone told me to.'
'Weren't you worried about how dirty it was?'
'No.' A long pause. 'But now I feel not comfortable.'
He walked off down the path towards his home, scratching himself furiously. There was a large open cut on his left leg.
Seeing Ton in the water had been so repulsive, so shocking, that I had ignored the rest of the clearance, but after he had gone I realized that revulsion had to be tempered by admiration. It was actually an impressive and well-organized community effort. The residents were all working as volunteers, giving up Sunday, their one free day, to clear the area. Everyone had been equipped with a mask and a rake, and two girls walked around the site dispensing glasses of iced water. Loudspeakers called on other residents to come out and join the effort and announced the various organizations and individuals who had contributed to the cost of the new playground. Someone had donated rice to feed the volunteers.
I wondered what Sunny made of it all.
'Of course, the place is disgusting,' he said, 'but when I see the people working together to help themselves - that impresses me a lot. When people have community spirit, they can fight for anything.'
We were introduced to Plaeng Sridanoi, doyen of Klong Toey community workers, who had moved to the slum forty years earlier. I asked whether most children were now able to study and find jobs which allowed them to move away, and Mr. Sridanoi said it all depended on education. Some children were fine, but others from very poor families could only afford to study for nine years of compulsory education and then fell in with 'bad people'.
'We are trying to protect them from drugs and crime,' he said. 'Maybe this day is an example. We are trying to build a playground so that they have somewhere to play sport and not get involved with drugs.'
As we sat beside the path talking to Mr. Sridanoi, a boy came by on an old pink bicycle. It was Ton. Half an hour after climbing out of the pool, he was dried and dressed and had stopped scratching. His morning's work was over. No big deal. Just another day in Klong Toey.
I went back to my room at the YMCA and stood for a long time in a hot shower.
As Firm as a Mountain
And still I waited for Wittaya.
One week became two, two became three, three would soon become four. In a couple more days I would need to go to the Immigration Department and ask for an extension of stay. The wait began to seem like a huge waste of time, a rather ridiculous obsession. I didn't even know Wittaya Buitsak. Suppose he turned out to be a thoroughly unpleasant character. What a disappointment that would be.
Then, late one evening, Sunny called in great excitement.
'I have the good news!' he said. 'Wittaya is right now here in Bangkok. He can see you tomorrow morning.'
'Great!' I said.
A pause at the other end of the line.
'But I am not free,' said Sunny. 'I have classes tomorrow morning.'
Poor Sunny! After all his help and enthusiasm, he never did meet Wittaya, but we couldn't let this chance of a meeting slip and so a friend agreed at short notice to stand in as translator.
Wittaya walked up to me the following morning, smiling gently, his hands placed together as if in prayer, making a respectful wai of greeting. Five years on and the boy had become a man. I noticed his eyes, sunk deep in his head, and his large, strong hands, but what struck me most forcibly, even in those first few minutes, was how self-possessed he was. In a very Thai way, without a hint of loudness or arrogance, he took charge of the situation. A man to have beside you in a crisis, calm, steady, strong.
I apologized for having troubled his family with so many calls.
'Mai pen rai, mai pen rai,' he said with a smile, 'never mind.'
We began to make up for lost time.
Wittaya explained that he had graduated from college two years earlier with a degree in mass communications, but had then joined his father's small business, maintaining pipelines for an international oil company. Later he had joined a larger company as a purchasing officer and was now working on the construction of a new airport in Krabi, in charge of stock control and with three workmen reporting to him.
He liked Krabi, didn't miss Bangkok and didn't mind the long drive home at the end of each month, but he felt restless in the seething city and often took himself off to the forests of Ratchaburi, to walk, camp and hunt wild birds for a couple of days. Young Thai men traditionally spend a few weeks or months as monks, making merit for their families. Wittaya had not yet done this but said, 'When I am in the forest I feel more calm than people who have been a monk.'
'How often do you escape to the forest?' I asked. 'Once a month? Once a year?'
'Once a month,' he said, adding with a smile, 'if twice a month is possible, it's better.'
But why, after studying mass communications, had he gone into the construction business? Well, he said, it was a matter of money and opportunity. You needed connections to succeed in the media, but construction was different and he hoped to start his own company. He had been in Krabi for almost a year and reckoned he needed three or four more years' experience before setting up on his own.
'Do you really think it will be possible to start your own company?' I asked.
'Possible,' he said, speaking softly but with a firmness and confidence that left no doubt about his determination.
After we had been talking for an hour or so, I asked him to cast his mind back to his childhood in Klong Toey. Did he agree with his mother that living conditions in the slum had improved over the years, or was Prateep right in saying that things had deteriorated?
The atmosphere between us suddenly changed. Wittaya paused, thought for a moment and then, instead of answering my question, turned to my friend.
'I want to ask Chris about his book,' he said seriously. 'I want to know what about the effect for Thailand.'
My friend turned and translated Wittaya's concern. 'He is a little bit worried, a little bit confused,' he explained. 'Me, too.'
Their concern was that I might use their words to project a negative image of Thailand, for they had learned through sad experience that foreigners didn't always understand or respect the dignity of the Kingdom. I said that most people overseas had never been to Thailand and that many of those who did come as tourists didn't get beyond the Grand Palace, the floating market and the seedy bars of Patpong. I hoped simply to show another side of Bangkok life and to tell part of the story of one of the city's six million people.
Wittaya accepted this explanation but said that he was not an open man. He liked to keep to himself. If another man got too much information about his life, he said, that man would own his life. Anyway, he was not a successful man - for instance, he knew little about agriculture.
'He says that anything he tells you from his knowledge or from his experience or from his heart is just coming from a small man in society,' said my friend. 'He cannot speak for other people.'
After an assurance that I was not seeking to portray him as a hero or as a spokesman, Wittaya said, 'Okay, I'll answer your questions. Firstly, because you helped me in the past and, secondly, if I can help you to reflect the true picture of our country I will feel good.' The decision of a polite, dignified, uncompromising man.
Wittaya's sharpest early memories of Klong Toey were of the excitement of walking through the slum on rickety boardwalks which spanned the pools of filthy water and having to balance carefully to avoid falling in. The physical environment today was much, much better.
'Surely my son's prospects will be better than mine,' he said. 'When I was four years old, my parents' vision for me was very different from my vision now for my son. I have a wider vision than they did. I know about the importance of education.'
Prateep had said that growing up in Klong Toey was teaching her sons to be fighters. What, I wondered, had it taught Wittaya?
He thought for a while in silence, tapping the table top, regarding me steadily. The question implied that Klong Toey was specially terrible and he wasn't going to allow such an inference to pass unchallenged.
'Sure, when I was in college and my friends found out that I was from this area they said, 'Wow, you're from slum Klong Toey.' But not everyone from Klong Toey is bad, you know. There are good people from this area as well.'
Outsiders saw only the negative side of the slum and ignored the important fact that Klong Toey was a place where people without much money could rent a cheap space to live right in the centre of the city.
'Mind you,' he added, 'the one thing that Klong Toey people are afraid of is fire. Deep in their hearts they are afraid of it, and so if they can find a way to leave Klong Toey they will.'
'Do you think you will move?'
'Sure.'
He thought for a moment and then qualified his answer. If he could be certain that his family home wouldn't be cleared by the Port Authority and if the danger of fire could be reduced, then he would stay. Klong Toey was home, the place where he had grown up.
Mind you, growing up had been a painful business, particularly in his teenaged years when his relationship with his father had been very stormy.
'He wanted me to come home at the same time every day,' he said. 'I said to him: "You raise me like a girl, not like a boy. I want adventure."'
Even as a man, Wittaya was still searing in his criticism of the way in which his parents had brought him up, at one point saying, 'I would hate myself if I raised my son as I was raised by my parents.' Yet there was not a trace of bitterness in his judgement and he was scrupulous to exonerate his parents from blame and to stress that old wounds had healed.
'It's not my parents' fault,' he said. 'Farm people think only about agriculture, they know only what time to plant, what time to harvest. They don't think about the future, they just think about where to get food for the next meal.'
The angry teenager had taken himself north to Chiang Mai, working as a volunteer on a forestry project, giving his labour in return for food and a place to sleep, learning about the problems of Thailand's hill tribes. Eventually, as he had told me in that first letter eight years earlier, he had met a teacher and helped to teach tribal children.
'I found that some people were less fortunate than me, some people were poorer than me, they couldn't even read or have enough food to eat,' he said. 'They deserved help from other people more than I did. So I asked the teacher what I could do to help them and he asked me a good question - "What did you graduate in?" At that time I hadn't graduated in anything, so his question made me think that I should come back to Bangkok and complete my education. At that time I had only a technician's vocabulary.'
So Wittaya had returned to Bangkok and resumed his studies. At precisely the point at which many Klong Toey youngsters were snared by a web of drugs and crime, Wittaya had matured and forged the values and beliefs which still guided his thinking as an adult.
'I still haven't found myself very clearly,' he said frankly. 'I still have a dream to help the hill tribe people, but in my present situation I have restrictions. I have a wife and a son. If I leave my family now and go back to work in the mountains - well, in my deep heart I don't feel it would be the right thing to do. But I still have the intention to help.'
In fact, he had more than an intention. He had a long-term plan to be successful in his work and then to move back to Chiang Mai, to get a Masters degree in agriculture and to have his own farm. There, living in a rural community, he would get to know people's problems and be able to talk to them directly. He would hire poor people to work his land.
'I think that is a very close and direct way to help people,' he said.
This was not naive idealism but the considered aspiration of a mature and sensible man, someone who was determined to discharge his responsibilities as a husband and father but who at the same time wanted to help other people. His motivation to help sprang mainly from his experience in the mountains but also, he said, from the fact that he had been given financial assistance during his education.
'The foundation helped me to receive so that I know also how to give,' he said.
'What dreams do you have for your son?' I asked.
'Well, I don't expect that he will be in this occupation or that occupation. He can choose for himself. As a father, I will be a support to him. My son makes a decision to walk. If he falls, I'll bring him back up again, but I won't hold him while he walks, or walk instead of him.
'The important difference is that now I am a father I'm ready to really hear my son, to accept him and to understand him. When I was a boy I didn't have such a person. I am my son's best friend. Now he is only four years old so he doesn't have many questions, but when he grows up I am ready to answer his questions. I will compensate for the things which I lacked when I was a boy.'
However, the father who had fought so hard to become himself knew that his son would also have to struggle.
'I have a dream for him,' he said, 'but it depends on him to work hard for himself. As far as I can, I will offer him everything he needs - food, education, whatever - but the future depends on my son.'
After we had been talking for a long time, I asked Wittaya whether he would mind if I took some photographs of him as he spoke.
'Why?' he asked.
'Because it will help readers to relate to your story if they can see pictures of you and your family.'
'Are they essential for you?'
I considered.
'Well, no,' I said, 'I can't say that they're essential. They would be very helpful, but only if you are happy for me to use them.'
We talked about this for some time and eventually I suggested three photos - the one of Wittaya receiving his degree, one of him now and one of him with his son. He acknowledged that the degree photograph would show that he had successfully completed his formal education and so gave me a copy. He allowed me to photograph him as we spoke, but he didn't want Vichit to be pictured in an article about him.
'Vichit will have his own life,' he said.
What a beautiful, respectful thing for a man to say of his four-year-old son.
I began to take photos, but whereas Prateep had positively performed for the camera, Wittaya was unsettled by it. The nervous, diffident character showing through the lens bore no resemblance to the self-assured man chatting beside me. So I stopped. Perhaps one lucky shot had captured a fair likeness. If not, the picture would have to be painted in words.
I said to him, 'You've already told me that you don't regard yourself as a successful man, but are you a contented man? You're only twenty-eight and still have most of your life in front of you, but how do you assess your life so far?'
'Right now I am content,' he said. 'I feel quite content that I have a Bachelor's degree and that I passed the difficult turning point when I was a teenager without getting into trouble. So far, so good.'
There was no arrogance or complacency in his assessment. It was just typically Wittaya - a fair and realistic appraisal by a quiet, serious man who at times during our conversation seemed almost to be an observer of his own life, sounding more like a coach than a player, talking about himself with a remarkable objectivity and honesty.
We talked and talked over two days. I asked endless questions and he recalled memories which were sometimes painful, but there were also times, over lunch or crawling through the traffic in his pick-up truck, when we chatted more generally, about everything from the Karen rebels in Burma to our favourite movies.
Eight years on, Wittaya and I became friends.
He said he enjoyed our conversations because we talked about things he could rarely discuss and he had to use his brain to think about my questions. I said that I had learned much from his answers.
'I think that everybody has a good side and a bad side,' said Wittaya. 'I'm not the best and I'm not the worst. I'm in the middle. I won't oppress people, won't take advantage of other people, but at the same time I won't let other people take advantage of me.'
I recalled the words of a younger, greener Wittaya, in that first letter to me eight years earlier.
I like mountains and forests. The mountain gives me a sense of security, determination and the greatness of nature. Maybe this is the place which forms my personality. It makes me become a determined person - that is, whatever I do, I'll do it with my whole spirit and whole strength until I succeed. Never give up. As firm as a mountain.