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
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