Missive 5 - 2013

One thing that is slowing us down and is frustrating the life out of Malcolm is the Thai contractor for block laying, rendering and tiling who doesn’t pay his workers so they don’t turn up on site. Pawinee has therefore arranged for a team to come from Phetchabun to render and tile the dining room/kitchen/laundry and they are making progress. There is something quintessentially Thai about them and it is interesting to see how they live. They camp on the site in little tents and seem to live off the land as well. They have nets in which they catch small fish from the dam and they cook their meals over a fire behind the building they are working on. One of the women has already levelled a small patch near the dam and planted a few things which are no doubt destined for the cooking pot in a few weeks’ time. There are at least two families living there including a couple of children, one maybe four and the other only one. The one year old has a sleep in a hammock strung between two posts on the building and Mum, who mixes mortar for the tiling, dashes over every now and then to give the hammock a swing. There is no day-care for working Mums in Thailand! It was a delight to watch the father, as fathers do everywhere, take the kids for a ride around the site in a wheelbarrow and to hear the squeals of delight as he went through mud, over some bumpy bits and up onto the building slab. As we walk the streets around the site we come across a range of homes from the obviously wealthy to the obviously poor. Just down the street there is a family that owns a couple of cows and they are housed at night in the most ramshackle shed you can imagine with a drinking trough, straw on the floor, and a number of ducks bedded down with the cows. I reckon you could plonk the baby Jesus in there and have a pretty genuine nativity scene. Last Sunday I visited an Australian Dutch bloke and his Thai partner in a neat little house in a back street behind the site. I met Ben (75 years old) and Rut (in her 40’s) last year when I was out walking. I took Alan Baker with me and we were welcomed like old friends, given a cup of tea, and we spent an hour and a half chatting with them. As a result of my visit last year they came over to the site a few months ago, made themselves known to the small team that was here at the time (some Queenslanders with Richard) and cooked them a meal. Ben migrated to Australia in the 50’s, lived in Perth and trained race horses so we had a long conversation about drugs in sport! He is also an acquaintance of Brian Cousins, Ben Cousins’ dad, so that was more grist for the mill in our conversation. Just a little sideline here. We worked a bit late one night this week and there was a beautiful red and purple sunset and overhead were thousands upon thousands of white cranes flying in V-formations and taking several minutes to complete their “flypast”. It was a wonderful sight not to be missed. Now where are we up to with the building? – and this is pretty much the final report as we all pack up by the middle of next week. We have poured more square metres of concrete this year than last when we poured the four building slabs. We have poured verandahs front, back and sides on the 3 houses, verandahs on the front and side of the dining room, a basketball court size play area, a road through the middle of the site, and a path along the front of the buildings. The big pours, 4 and 5 truck loads, are proving quite difficult as the concrete goes off quite quickly in the heat and we struggle with our numbers to get it floated off while it is still workable. Without the helicopter we would have no hope. We have put ceilings in the dining room and bottom storey of the 2 storey house, flushed and painted them. The electrical work has been done in the 2 storey house, and a huge amount of plumbing has been completed – there are blue PVC pipes everywhere. A local Rotary Club has offered to put in a water filtration system so we have been working frantically (mostly Richard) to get another few hundred metres of pipe in under the paths before we poured so we could get the filtered water to each of the houses. All in all we have made a huge difference to the site in 6 weeks notwithstanding the comment at the head of this missive about the hold-ups. Our bodies are showing signs of weariness and there will be a certain pleasure next week in not having to get up and go to work shovelling dirt in the sun in 37 degree heat. But the sense of satisfaction is enormous and there is a real sense amongst the team of serving God as we give these special kids “Life, hope and a future” as Mercy International’s vision statement says. Colleen arrived in Thailand yesterday and today (Friday) she travelled to Phetchabun by bus and was met by Mum Whun, our Whun, and all the girls from the big girls’ house. On Sunday I travel there in time for her birthday – it will only be the third time I have been with her on her birthday in the last 9 years! The next missive will be of a different flavour as I change gears and spend 4 weeks at the Phetchabun Ban Meata and get involved in some admin work – as yet undefined! Until then God bless Ron The difference we've made in 6 weeks Manger scene The ramshackle cow shed The 3rd house going up Ben & Rut

Missive 4 – 2013

I thought a word picture of a typical day might give you some of the flavour of our stay here. I wrote earlier that the day seemed to start at 5.15am when Jai starts rattling the pans, but I must confess that it is 7.45am before I, and all the others appear for breakfast. Most of us live in the “yellow house” (very creatively named as you will see from the photo). It is a rented property to cater for teams on the site just 50 metres down the narrow street. It has several bedrooms upstairs and a large living area downstairs which has beds for 3 people. This is where I sleep with my mosquito net (my princess bed according to the others) and Trevor, my travelling bear in pride of place on the pillow. There is a lounge area where we sit and eat or read at nights, and over a serving bench there is a fridge, cupboards and a sink. The kitchen is attached at the back and is typically Thai with slatted walls – Thais hate cooking smells in their houses. Back to breakfast. I usually have a bowl of cornflakes and toast with vegemite and cheese. The toaster is a high-tech looking thing but makes the slowest toast in the world – it’s hard to tell whether it’s cooked or just went stale waiting. Actually Thai bread never goes stale because there are enough additives to keep it going for weeks. Before 8am it’s on with the work boots and over to the site to continue with a job or get a new one from Malc. This week I have been relieved of channelling conduit and spent the time boxing up for concrete. We have large steel frames with a timber face which we use and re-use for boxing and these have to be manoeuvred into place, pegged or fixed to a verandah post for example, the dirt levelled inside, steel mesh laid inside, steel pegs drilled into the walls to tie the slab to the building if it’s a verandah, trenches dug at the edges for a thicker edge, and level pegs put in with a laser so the screeding can be done accurately. At 10am we take 30 minutes off for “smoko” back at the yellow house where we are served with cordial, pineapple, watermelon, papaya and some uniquely Thai little jam filled biscuits. We are then back on the job for another two hours before repairing to the yellow house for lunch. This is a highlight and we have been served some wonderful Thai dishes, prepared with minimum or no chilli. The Thai workers sit down in the kitchen and I usually go out there to get some chilli or to try out some of their spicy dishes. The two afternoon sessions, split by afternoon smoko, are only one and a half hours which is great because the afternoons can get pretty hot. As I write this we have finished a day’s work in 37 degree heat and everyone drinks copious amounts of water to replace the copious amounts lost through sweat. We have actually been blessed with some pretty mild weather with a few weeks of temperatures in the high twenties. We knock off at 5pm and head for the showers to wash off the grime of the day. You wouldn’t believe how nice a cold bottle of Coke Zero is at the end of the day. We then organise ourselves for our evening meal. Sometimes we go to the little local eatery for the world’s best pad thai, sometimes we drive to the steakhouse, sometimes we get food from a local market, and sometimes we go to Central Plaza, a huge shopping complex with a whole floor of food outlets like KFC, Sizzler, Maccas (expensive) and a food court (cheap). The evening at the yellow house is made up of sitting in front of laptops (emails and writing blogs!), and in my case working through my crossword book, doing my Bible reading and devouring a number of novels. Everyone wanders off to bed at various times (they are nearly all old people here!!) and I am usually the last go at about 10.30pm unless the novel is very gripping. Well, that’s the shape of the day for 6 days and we have Sunday off, going to church with kids at the Ban Meata centre in the morning and then lazing around for the afternoon. We have just about exhausted the tourist potential of Khon Kaen – that took up the first Sunday afternoon! We received some sad news this past week. Some of you would remember Tim and Steph, the Irish couple, who worked with us last year and who received news while they were here that their son had contracted leukaemia. After all the usual treatment over the last 12 months he died a few days ago. There was some good news in that he had been estranged from his parents for a number of years and that situation was resolved. He also went to church with his parents in the last days and heard the gospel clearly which Tim and Steph believe had an impact on his life. As I conclude this missive the Dutch people are leaving us so we are a much depleted workforce and our chances of finishing some things in the original plan are fading. The last event for the Dutch was to bring all the kids out from the Ban Meata centre to witness the unveiling of the marble plaque announcing that the first completed house (well, almost) is designated the “Dutch House”. I have mentioned before that they raise enormous amounts of money doing lots of normal things (eg, Thai dinners) and a few bizarre things (eg, breaking the ice and swimming in the river, 24 hour stationary bike rides). As I conclude this missive it is a lazy Sunday afternoon and getting very warm again. The last few days have been over 35 degrees so working out in the sun getting ready for concreting tomorrow has been a hot business. A few of us went over to Tescos (large shopping centre) for lunch at their food court today and tonight we will wander over to the market on the local school grounds and pick up a few items for tea. For me that will be some chicken pieces, maybe some chopped pork, a spicy salad in a plastic bag, and some sticky rice, also in a plastic bag. Don’t you wish you were here?! One more blog next week before I head back to Phetchabun to meet up with Colleen who is leaving Australia this Thursday and arriving at Ban Meata on Friday. God bless Ron

The Yellow House

My bed

Yellow house kitchen

Dining room before the next round of concreting

Missive 3 - 2013

Let’s start with our trip to Phetchabun last weekend. It was a flying visit as we left on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday afternoon. One of our neighbours here at the building site runs a 12 seater minibus so we hired that for the journey and we did the 200km journey in about 3 hours with a stopover at a huge service station with shops and food outlets. The toilet stop was made interesting by some new signs which we have not encountered before - there are now 3 choices, Men, Women and LadyBoys! Our arrival at Ban Meata was hugely anticipated by me as it was the first time I had seen my Whun for nearly 12 months. It was worth waiting for and we both shed a few tears over each other’s shoulder. Teams that arrive there receive a rapturous welcome and this was no exception – those who have come for the first time are always impressed, fall in love with the kids, and find it hard to leave. It was the Australia Day weekend so on Saturday night we had an Aussie BBQ Thai style at Pawinee’s house. We got out the little earthenware buckets the Thais use as a BBQ, loaded them with charcoal and a couple of us sat over them for most of the evening with hamburger patties, pork pieces, chicken legs and some prawns. It was idyllic – sitting outside on a warm evening, eating our fill as it came off the BBQ, consuming many bottles of Pepsi Max and a few of the blokes had some bottles of Leo, Thai beer. The older girls joined us (Mum Whun’s house which includes my Whun) and they sat cross-legged around the BBQ’s as they love to do and polished off any of the food we hadn’t eaten. As I said in an earlier missive, this is Thailand and I love it! We had worship on Sunday morning and it was wonderful to be back with our Thai family. I was preaching (4 days’ notice which is pretty good) and spoke on listening to God, using the story of Samuel and Eli. I dramatized the story and they responded well. After lunch Richard and I took the big girls (13 of them) to the Than Thip waterfall for a swim and it was great to spend some more time with Whun. We were back by 4 o’clock and left for Khon Kaen ready for the working week. A word about the Dutch. We met the Dutch team of four at Phetchabun and they came back with us. Annetta, Adelbert, Hennie and Corrie actually raise our average age. Corrie is 78 years old and is up a ladder painting, and when the concrete trucks came in she grabbed an implement to drag the concrete around! She stays with us on site and the other 3 stay in a hotel and travel out daily, much to her scorn. But they do a great job and later this week before they leave there will be an unveiling ceremony of a plaque on the “Dutch House” with all the Ban Meata kids out at the site for the occasion. There has been great progress on the site in the past week and a panoramic view in an accompanying photo will hopefully give you an idea of where we are up to. We have a concrete road that comes from the back gate and is now nearing the dining room. The third house is beginning to go up and concrete is coming again on Tuesday for the verandah. I have spent the entire week (with time off when the concrete trucks come) chasing walls in the upstairs house for conduit. This week I will chase walls for co-axial cable and then I will chase walls for the plumbing. I have been going to bed with the taste of dust in my mouth it looks like that will be true for this week as well. Our 2 young girls, Jade and Tori, have been putting up the ceilings in the first storey house on their own. Great progress from never having done anything like that before. They are anxiously watching for any untoward muscle growth! They will gain some notoriety through a journalist friend in Kingston who is publishing their story in the Kingston Leader and a couple of other SE papers. Some of you who have been reading this blog for a number of years now may remember that our first impressions of chicken being BBQ’d between bamboo sticks was that it looked suspiciously like flat rats. You will be delighted to know that when we visited our local market to get our evening meal the other night we came across the genuine article. Two rats, skinned but complete with head, ears and giblets were laid out on the slab. We didn’t ask what they were worth because nobody in our group had any desire to buy them. The accompanying photo shows Richard looking a bit interested. Right next door to the rats was a sort of porta-cot teeming with what looked like cockroaches but were obviously edible because the deep fried variety were for sale in a basket along with grasshoppers and other insects. There was a piece of hard plastic fixed around the top of the “cot” so although these bugs swarmed up the sides they couldn’t get out. Not wanting to be a latter-day John the Baptist (no honey available!) we gave all this a miss. And to finish with some news about Murray. Those of you who know him know that he has a huge bushy beard, Ned Kelly style. On Sunday he went down to a local hairdresser and said he wanted nitnoy (little bit) off. He came back with nitnoy left on! He just looks as if he hasn’t shaved for a few days and I don’t think he even recognised himself in the mirror because it hasn’t been that short for 25 years. He thinks he’ll have stay in Thailand for a while or they won’t let him out with his current passport photo. Enjoy the read and until next time God bless Ron Richard and the flat rats Boonsalit with the first bite out of a tortoise found on site Panoramic view of the new Ban Meata Ron with Giv, Why and Mum Whun at the top of Than Thip waterfall