Missive 1 July 2008

G’day to anyone who is listening! This is the first of the blogs for our stay in Thailand and to reserve the “epistles” for our building excursions, perhaps these can be called the “missives”. We’ve been here two weeks and have been plunged into the busyness of the place in such a way that it seems we have been here forever.

We had a good flight over from Oz and I particularly enjoyed my dietary meals (which come early) without copping a pillow behind the ear from Malcolm Lawrie on the other side of the plane. Stepping into the car park from the airport was like walking into an oven and I was watching Colleen out of the corner of my eye to see if she was going to march back into the airport and get a ticket home. We survived the first night in Rob and Jean Dunk’s lovely unit in Bangkok and the next morning headed for Phrae.

I was able to do the lion’s share of the driving and gave Rob a break and we had a pleasant trip north of some 500km. It was a real joy to go there because John and Sharon, Yu and Pawn, and the 5 babies have all moved out to the land – the new orphanage which our building team worked on a couple of years ago. And it was a special joy to spend some time holding and walking around with little Ploy whom we first encountered in February at 3 days old. (Her story is in one of the epistles if you can negotiate your way to it).

Our arrival at Phetchabun was very exciting. We couldn’t have felt more hugged if we had had an encounter with a boa constrictor. Staff and kids swamped us and it was so good to see our Whun again – and I think Why was just as pleased to see us.

Some of you know that Glom (manager of the orphanage) was having a baby, and she had a little boy the night we arrived. Glom and Parnit were told it was 95% a girl so they stocked up on a mountain of pink stuff. A couple of days before the birth the doctor said, “Oh, 100% boy!” We went in to the hospital the next day and it was strange to see this little bloke all dressed up in pink.

While we were at the hospital we had our (Colleen’s really) first experience of the Thai way of doing things. We needed to have rabies and Japanese encephalitis shots and fortunately we had big Whun with us to translate, but even then they thought we actually had rabies. After sorting out that little difficulty we were issued with little cards that gave us entry into the mysteries of the Thai health system, and told to sit in the waiting chairs. These are reasonably comfortable and need to be. There were 2 desks in front of us and both of them had 2 nurses sitting looking at us. After a while we were called to the desk where our blood pressure was taken, and then told to sit in the waiting chairs. Half an hour later we went into a room to see a doctor who wasn’t too bad with English and he sent off an order with the nurse to get the vaccine. We were then directed to the waiting chairs and we sat and stared at the nurses for another 15 minutes before one of them got up and said, “One moment”, before disappearing down a corridor. We figured she couldn’t count because 45 minutes later we were called into another room and given the injections. We then took a slip of paper to the payment desk and were directed to another set of waiting chairs. 15 minutes later we paid and it was all over. Interestingly, throughout the entire 2 hours, we were the only people there!

We went back for our second JE shot a week later and they gave us another rabies shot too. They want us to come back in a month for a third rabies shot. We hope they are right and are keeping an eye on each other in case we start foaming at the mouth.

Work for us started in earnest within a day or so. For the first time Mercy is presenting a formal written annual report – so guess who gets that to do. There is a volunteer here at the moment who is a marketing manager so I got him onto the fancy stuff of making it look good in Publisher. Those of you who have persevered this far into a boring Word document will understand the wisdom of this move. I’ve written pretty much all the rest including Pawinee’s director’s report and Rob’s founding director’s report – they are happy with them but I’m hoping the readers won’t notice a strange similarity in style.

That has kept me in the office for part of the day but with plenty of excursions outside to measure up for two huge dams being dug on the farm site, supervising the boxing up for paths at the new school building, a day in my work clothes pouring concrete, arranging with Pawinee and the windows man to have windows put in the school building, marking out silage pits for feed for the cows, and a few dozen other small jobs. I’ve barely started trying to get my head around how the finance of place works.

Colleen has been immersed in her work and has discovered a few things she hadn’t imagined at the beginning. Glom brought little Berm (said very short like “Bm”) home after a couple of days and on limited duties because of the “caesar”. Despite her age and role she also hasn’t much experience with babies so Colleen has been showing her how to bathe him and advising about feeding. The Thais tend to rug their babies up in several layers, and put hats and gloves on them despite the tropical heat. I reckon this is why they can eat so much chilli – it must be like eating cucumber compared with what they’ve been through as a baby. Colleen has been encouraging Glom to keep him a bit cooler but she is competing with Glom’s sister who is also here to help and as soon as her back is turned he is cocooned again.

She has also started on the sponsorship task and is busy with photos and letters and written profiles. She has also started conversational English classes with some of the staff and these have been going particularly well. The heat has been bothering her a bit although we have air-conditioners in the unit that Rob has kindly moved out of to give us some accommodation. I have been pleasantly surprised with the weather and it doesn’t seem a great deal hotter than when we are here building. Most days it is a bit over 30, very humid, but so far it’s not bothering me a bit. With the blessings of air-conditioning I think we will survive.

Today I have spent the whole day with Mark, the expert in corporate structure who is helping Mercy restructure to cope with the size of the organisation. I have been getting my head around the process he is using because I will also keep this going after he leaves in September. I am up to my ears in project scoping documents, role description proformas, strategic planning spreadsheets, mission statements, and site development plans. I’m thinking of taking Jargon 101 at the local university. Oh …., and all these have to be translated into Thai.

If it sounds like we are not enjoying it, it wouldn’t be true. We have time to do lots of crosswords together at night because the range of TV stations is limited. The only one in English is an American programme called “Russia Today” so Colleen has become the fount of all knowledge about Russian politics, sport and current events. There are several God.tv channels of fairly full on speakers so we stodgy evangelicals have to take them in smallish doses at the moment. We do have a DVD player so we will get into the habit of enjoying a few more movies. Last Saturday we did some shopping in Phetchabun and spent a most enjoyable hour in the icecream parlour (eat your heart out Malc!) at the new Tescos with another volunteer couple who are here at the moment.

We’ve only been here a couple of weeks but we are feeling that God has put us in the right place. Thank you to the many people who are praying for us and supporting us – we are very conscious that we need God’s power and presence to work effectively here.

My goal is to get one of these up every few weeks – keep an eye out for it.

God bless

Ron & Colleen