Missive 3 – 2012

When I last left you I was heading out to a market to get a meal. The market experience is wonderful and it is a major pastime for Thais. Hundreds of stall holders set up their tables on a piece of vacant land and there is wall to wall people thronging the walkways. There are stalls for hardware, clothing, home supplies and of course food. There is an exotic mix of all sorts of seafood, deep fried chicken, roasted pork, salads, and fruit you’ve never seen before let alone know the name of. There are potent looking brews of soups and sauces all done up in little cellophane bags tied at the top with a rubber band – put on in a nano-second by the stall holder and requiring at least ten minutes with teeth, scissors, or any other implement at hand, plus a string of expletives, to get off.
My choice was a piece of pork hatcheted into small pieces before my eyes and plastic-bagged with a bag of chili (with rubber band!). This was quite expensive at 50 baht ($1.70). I then went for some BBQ’d chicken on a skewer (10baht), also with the ubiquitous bag of chili. In an attempt to maintain a healthy diet I bought a bag of salad (20baht) containing some seafood, cabbage, green paw-paw, and some frilly noodle stuff with some lettuce thrown in, all in some sort of salad dressing. This is perhaps a risky purchase in a market but it was so hot it frizzled the end of my hair and I’m not sure any living organism could survive in there.
We have a weekly regime for dinner. Monday nights it is the steakhouse, a favourite haunt of ours from past years where you can have as many steaks as you like plus vegetables, salads and desserts for 140 baht (about $4). On Tuesdays we eat with the kids at the orphanage, Wednesdays we go to a huge shopping plaza and eat at the food court, Thursday is market night, Friday at the orphanage, Saturday back at the plaza and Sunday at the orphanage again. Lunch is always at the site, is sent out from the orphanage and is absolutely delicious – “aroi” in Thai. With a team that is a few over 20 you wouldn’t believe how many pineapples, watermelons and dragon fruit we go through.
So food is not a problem here – we are fed magnificently. On the worksite we poured our 3rd floor last week and are preparing the dining room/kitchen/laundry for next Thursday. This building is 40 metres long and 16 metres wide and will take 150 cubic metres of concrete. Malcolm is trying to get the concrete company to work to our timetable rather than the rather relaxed Thai timetable so we can finish this pour in one day. The 4 slabs will end up costing over a half a million baht ($20,000) in concrete, and about half that amount in steel. The steel that goes above ground is worth about one and a half million baht ($50,000). Spending at this rate means that we will run out of money in the next week or so, so we are hoping more donations come flooding in from Australia soon.
Our original plan was to have all 4 buildings with steel up ready for the rooves to go on, but Malcolm’s revised estimate is to have one accommodation building and the dining room to that stage and the 2 storey building up to the first floor. Follow up workers can then see what to do.
As I have mentioned before we have a rich tapestry of people on the team this year and you may be interested in their background and what brings them here. Tim and Stephanie Wade are our Irish couple and have delighted us with their lovely accents and sense of humour. Tim has worked as a project manager in the mining industry and is an electrician by trade. He has spent some time on aid projects in Africa and also in Sri Lanka after the tsunami. They found Mercy International on the internet, became interested in this project, and will continue for a while after the rest of team finishes. I reported that their son who is gravely ill had a better diagnosis but this has reverted to the original diagnosis of aggressive leukemia. Without a miracle his prospects aren’t good.
Sarah Littlejohn was with us for a week or so. Her connection to Mercy is through her brother who is the commodore of the Pattya Yacht Club which has hosted our kids on their beach trips over the last couple of years. Sarah lives in New Zealand and included a week with us in her holiday to see her brother. She may not have expected a holiday quite like that but she spent her hours in the sun and heat working on painting steel and making steel mesh for the slabs. She was one of the ladies in the photo in the last blog. She enjoyed her time with the team even though the working conditions were no doubt trying, and we were sorry to see her go.
I’m finishing this blog ahead of schedule because we have been rained out. Rain on clay means that even walking across the site is a major undertaking with huge clumps of wet clay sticking to your boots and even pulling them off. Today is Saturday and our second day of inactivity although there are plans to shift the mesh making activity onto one of the slabs so we can keep working. We have planned the final pour for next Thursday and don’t want to postpone that if we can help it.
Last night we put on a party for the kids at the orphanage. Dallas and Jenny Joseph, a Kiwi Queenslander couple brought money from their church to provide the food and Graham Wray, the children’s and youth pastor from Brackenridge Baptist prepared some games. We had a great meal sitting on mats on the front lawn and a great deal of energy was expended during the games. It was great to see these HIV+ kids looking so healthy and vibrant although we were reminded of the fragility of their health as they went through their evening ritual of filing past a table taking their medication.
I think this had better be it for a while and I will go out and brave the mud.
God bless
Ron


Some of the orphanage kids (some are 18 now) preparing the BBQ



Rained out on the site

Missive 2 – 2012

It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon as I write after church with the Ban Meata kids this morning. I was the speaker today and it was my first experience with Dtim (the KK manager) as a translator. It went very well and Dtim translated very quickly which keeps the flow going. It was a story followed by a simple message so there weren’t too many complicated concepts.
Last weekend we travelled to Phetchabun after knocking off at 11am on Saturday morning. It was a wonderful “homecoming” and such a delight to see Whun running from her house to greet me – followed almost as quickly by Why and Big Whun. The first time visitors on the team were amazed at their reception and Stephanie, half of our Irish couple, was almost in tears when she said she could feel a spirituality about the place.
Big Whun and the big girls organized a party at the back of their “house” and it was very much like home as we sat around the firebuckets cooking chicken, pork balls and bananas to eat with rice and som-tum and bowls of chili of course. The girls had their karaoke music hooked up to a lap top and some speakers and sang non-stop for hours. There are some young blokes on the team so the girls were very keen to get them involved. Pawinee sat with us and it was good to catch up with her and all that she is doing. Our next trip there will be for her birthday and her housewarming on the 28th.
I found out on Saturday morning via a phone call that I was speaking at church on Sunday so the trip over there in the hired bus was put to use in preparation. Whun translated as usual and it went well. We travelled back that evening ready to get on the site on Monday morning.
We poured the floor on the first of the houses this week and it came up like a dream. Graham Wray (Richard, his Dad has been on the team for a couple of years now) had a good idea for the mesh on the floor of the second house. For the first house we sat in the sun and twitched the 6mm steel rod together for hours. Graham wondered if we could weave the rod into mesh so a team set about doing it. It worked a treat and although it takes about 15 people to move it onto the floor it is now in place for the second pour tomorrow (Monday).
Our team has reached its maximum size – well over 20 – and we are a league of nations. Two Dutch blokes(Edelbert and Hennie) turned up yesterday, a Singaporean lady (Claire Ng) also yesterday, a New Zealand lady (Sarah) last week, an Irish couple (Steph and Tim) – and of course we have a lot of Queenslanders!! Some team members have had their share of problems. Tim and Steph received word during the week that their son (estranged for a number of years) has just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. The news this morning was a little better – it is a more manageable form of bone marrow cancer. A positive outcome already has been the first steps of reconciliation.
Jason, a young man who is a long term volunteer at the KK orphanage, bought himself a new motorbike to get around on, and the following day he T-boned another motorcyclist doing a U-turn in front of him – many abrasions for him and the motorbike. His dad and brother were over to see him and are working on the team. A couple of days after the accident his Dad’s Mum collapsed from a brain tumour so the three of them have flown back to Brisbane. On the positive side worksite injuries are low – a few steel cuts, a bit of sunburn, and some stomach upsets.
I am staying very healthy and the only mishap has been going head over turkey over one of our new wheelbarrows which is poorly designed with the front wheel guard so low it too readily digs into the ground. A fearsome crack on the shins and wounded dignity were the only injuries and both are fading fast. Keep praying for the safety of the team.
We are getting ready to walk down to the local markets for our meal tonight so must close. Maybe BBQ’d chicken and sticky rice. Maybe som-tum with seafood. Maybe pad thai. Drool with envy all you out there.
God bless
Ron


Whun at the party



Karaoke at the party



The old way - tying mesh



The new way - Alex and Sarah weaving mesh



The first slab-with the boxing still on

Missive 1 – 2012

Well, it’s on again! I’m sitting in our accommodation at Khon Kaen and gathering a few thoughts for my first 2012 missive. We have a team of around twenty, most from Queensland and the land we are building on has 2 houses but insufficient to house us all. We have therefore rented a property next door which has a large house but in poor condition. When I arrived the Thai girls had done a wonderful job in cleaning it up, putting in a heap of beds and turning it into quite comfortable quarters. My first surprise on arrival was to find Why (our Whun’s sister) as one of 3 girls from Phetchabun who came with Jip to clean up. We had a lovely but tearful reunion and the chance to spend a little time together before the 3 girls returned to Phetchabun for school after the new year break.
My trip over was uneventful and all transfers went smoothly. My extra 12kgs of shovels made it onto the flight from Bangkok to KK without so much as a comment. On this flight I sat next to an Australian bloke who works at a gold mine in PNG but flies back to KK to see his wife and child every 2 weeks. He had bought his child a trampoline for Christmas so he had marched up to check-in with 50kgs and they didn’t turn a hair at that either.
My first day here was a Sunday so we had no work but went to the orphanage for church. They normally attend a church in KK but the pastor was away so we had it at the Centre. It was delightful to see that the service was run entirely by the kids. They had a couple on guitars and one on the inevitable drums and 2 girls were the lead singers and kept the worship rolling. The music was not broadcast standard but they certainly made a joyful noise! They had some prayers and a Bible reading and although there was no preaching it was a great worship experience.
And now to the building. As most of you know we have a huge project this year with a 2 storey living quarters for the kids, 2 single storey quarters and a huge dining room/kitchen/laundry building. In the last couple of days an excavator has prepared the slabs ready for the concrete pours, the first of which will be Tuesday (Week 2). Our first jobs have been all to do with steel. Part of the team have been painting steel non-stop for days – 900 six metre lengths so far. I have been helping the Thai welders put together 10 metre lengths of steel rod in a frame of 4 to use as reinforcement for concrete beams in the floor. And then for the last 2 days it has been work on a jackhammer preparing the holes and trenches in the pads for the floor slabs.
Malcolm has been flat out like a lizard drinking redrawing plans to cater for some changes of mind about design, trying to organize excavators and backhoes so we don’t have to dig them by hand. And he is coordinating the large team so he has hardly swung a shovel yet but is doing some long hours regardless. It’s hard to believe that we’ll achieve our goal of all buildings with a roof on, but once we get out of the ground things should change rapidly.
Chris and Murray, our other genuine South Aussie builders, are currently working on a new toilet block at the back of our rented volunteer house and Chris has been in Thailand for so long now he is enjoying the status of knowing where everything is in KK, shopping for hardware supplies and being the “on the ground” expert.
One thing we can’t help noticing about our accommodation is the mosquitoes. And they hunt in packs of hundreds. We have spray which fixes them but it is so strong when we use it inside we have to go and brave the outside mosquitoes before returning to sweep the dead bodies off our beds. After one night of hearing them fly in formation past my ear I got out my mosquito net and now sleep without fear. All I have to put up with is the jibes of my “mates” who call it my “princess bed” and wonder when I’m going to get my embroidered flowers put on it!
Malcolm hasn’t missed out on the chiacking. He finds the beds too hard so he hunted around to find several soft mattresses to put on top. Of course we reminded him that you can’t have that many mattresses without putting a pea underneath them to check whether he is a real princess. (As a matter of interest that comment was completely lost on some of our younger team members who had never heard the story of the princess and the pea – what is the education system coming to!!)
At the close of this missive we have just returned from our trip back to Phetchabun. Later this week I’ll get to sharing some of that visit – it was great.
Until then
God bless
Ron



Malc & Ron in a hole



Lunch in the house next door where we sleep



The end of a day on the jackhammer