How it happened

As mentioned in the previous post, a prominent monk was killed the day before yesterday. I went to the service to pay respects (you get none if you give none). I met his brother who told us what happened. Many people owe the temple money and they decided to clean up their finances and the monk was the only one who knew all of the information. One man apparently did not like this idea and hired a assassin. The assassin's brother over heard the conversation but did not know who was to be killed.

The monk was to have a meeting with a banker (who I also met last night), but the banker was late. The monk went to the bathroom where the killer was waiting. He shot him from a few meters away as he was leaving the toilet. The bullet went through the heart and he quickly bled to death.

After the murder, the brother of the assassin told the police of his suspicions. Unfortunately, the assassin had escaped. The police and army are looking for him but he has certainly fled to Burma by now. Two rebel groups along with the internal spies (who are everywhere) in Burma have said they will try to capture him but it will be difficult.

Will there be justice....we will see.

Justice along the border

A highly respected local abbot, Luangpor Uttama, died of natural causes a couple of months ago. People came from all over Thailand to mourn this great man. An interim abbot or head monk has been overseeing the temple and the ceremonies along with the royal family of which Luangpor Uttama was a friend.

Last night, the 68 year old interim abbot, Phra Kru Kanchanasitthisarn, was shot and killed. They do not know who shot the abbot except that he was Mon (an ethnic group) clothing. The reaction here is a bit strange...sadness, of course, combined with resignation. I have heard it a few times, "This is a border area, the killer will just disappear."

It remains to be seen if the killer will be found, but what is clear is people that my friends, who are from Burma, have lived with such limited rights for so long that they do not trust any government institution to protect anyone, even an important monk.

Stuff we learned this year by BBC

The BBC has an interesting story about 100 things we learned this year including:

• The lion costume from the film The Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.
• The Pope sometimes wears Prada shoes.
• Coco Chanel started the trend of getting suntans in 1923 when she accidentally got burned on a cruise.
• A cow gives off enough methane gas in a day to fill 400 liter bottles (no more complaints about me!)
• A polar bear would beat a lion in a fight (this sounds like the sort of research done at Moe's bar on the Simpsons)

Either way, a fun list is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/index.html#a007948

I used to think....

I remember a few years ago when I used to have my sanity and I would see people driving in the back of pick-up trucks and think "What Idiots! Don't they get how dangerous that is?"

Yesterday I was making my 3.5 hour (each way) trip to the dentist in a truck I borrowed and a guy flags me down. I stop the truck thinking he would want a ride. When I stopped (why do I do these things?) the guy speaks to me in Thai and happens to use 3 of the 10 words I know. Yes he wants a ride and he wants to go to the same city as I am going. He says in broken English "bring 10 friends?" Then, a whole group of kids jump into the back of the truck.

We rode the hour and a half to the town with the guy trying his best to make small talk. This involved calling his friends, telling them he was sitting next to a foreigner, a lot of laughter, a couple of times practicing the sentence with his friend on the phone, more laughter and then a question like, "Where you go?" It turns out they were a group of university students on holiday. At the end of the trip they were quite pleased to get such a long ride to their location and they decided to take many pictures of me.

You may think 9 people is a lot of people in the back of a truck, but the other day I counted the number of kids getting out of the back of a pick-up truck (which serves as a school bus). It had already made two stops and there were 41 children packed on it.

Christmas Sangklaburi Style

There are a surprising number of Christians here, cosequently, they do celebrate Christmas. The local church had a Takraw tournament. Takraw is kind of like volleyball with a woven bamboo ball. You can use your whole body except your hands. The men have amazing agility and are able to "spike" the ball over the net a tremendous velocity.



The night featured a little festival at Baan Unrak Children's Home. It is always fun for me to hang out with the kids and see some traditional Karen dancing.

Helping old Burmese soldiers

A long time ago the Brits controlled Burma and there are still some soldiers who are alive who helped them. An NGO is providing funds to help support these soldiers. A series of miscues required a dozen e-mails and caused months of delays but they are finally getting money. My friend Joyti had just given this man his money...about $200. Quite nice that they have not been forgotten.

Finally!

We finally broke ground on the new bathrooms. They are digging a new septic tank in the foreground and the holes for the footings in the background. Still not sure where the money will come from to finish, but it is good to get started!

Some kids

I was over at the temple where we are working on the project and struck up a conversation with a couple of boys. The boys are from Burma and their parents had sent them to the temple for three years. They were very happy to live at the temple because, despite the enormous deficiencies, it was much better than their life with their family. With their family they could only work on the rubber plantations and could not go to school. They said all they want is to learn to read and write like other children.

Doin fine

Sandy's mother had her surgery and, outside of a good bit of pain is doing fine.

It started with a little cavity

I had a cavity on a tooth with a crown. They had to take off the crown to fill the cavity and then they decided I needed a root canal (4 treatments for this). Now the cavity turns out to be just under the gum so I need oral surgery and then a months recovery then I have the new crown. Looks like I will be staying in Thailand for a couple of months.

The best news!

I saw my friend talking to the little girl I wrote about whose mother wanted her to come work with her at the brothel (http://steveandsandy.blogspot.com/2006/11/pay-her-off.html).

The little girl ended up working tending cattle and my friend said she was filthy and emotional. They talked her into coming back with them for a little beach holiday with some of the kids she used to be friends with.

30 minutes ago went by his place to see how she was. She had showered and was absolutely beaming. She still has the most beautiful smile and was laughing like before. I just hope she stays after the vacation is over.

1/2 way there

The project I am working on is evolving. I decided to reduce the size of the bathroom I am building and now I am going to finish the dining room, kitchen and build a water storage tank so they will have water all day (they only have it a few hours a day now).

Thanks to donations from Anita, Mandy and Mirco I now have half the money for construction of the project.

Thanks to all!

Double Whammy!

Yesterday I dropped Sandy off at the airport early in the morning. I took the busses (7 hours) to return to my house and found our dog missing. I am not sure where he went but I will miss him (and Sandy too!)

Good bye at the school

The school had a big goodbye party for Sandy (and a little bit for me). All of the kids made cards, they had cookes and drinks for all the kids, had a slide show of Sandy and the different classes. They gave us some presents and sang to us. A really touching end to Sandy's teaching experience.

How to keep 'em begging

I had assisted in making arrangements to get rice for the kids at a temple months ago. The donor approved the rice after a few weeks.

The donor works through another NGO (Non-Government Organization) to transport the rice to the groups. The NGO's supervisor was out and nobody could decide to bring the rice to the kids. After I made many visits over 2 weeks, I finally got them to bring the rice. The rice was not edible because it was full of bugs.

I contacted the donor who asked the NGO to check on the rice. The NGO promptly forgot to do this. I went 2 days later and they said they would go the following day...which they did not. Finally, I told them we could go together the following morning. I showed up at the appointed time and the man had not gotten approval go (he has no papers and there is a checkpoint between our town and the temple). He made some calls and got the approval.

We finally arrived at the temple and he saw the rice and sure enough he agreed...can only feed the spoiled rice to pigs. The bags had arrived with many holes so the rice was going everywhere (and of course providing easy access for insects). The temple changed the bags because of the mess the broken bags were causing.

So...60 bags of rice were delivered, some spilled, some was eaten even though it was spoiled. 52 spoiled sacks of rice should have been replaced but they said they could not take the bags because they had replaced the broken bags so it could be other people's rice and the weights were not precisely the right amount. Soooooo....they only delivered 8 new bags. This should last a couple of weeks while we try to sort it out.

Until the new bags came, the kids kept begging for food.

Scaling back

I was hoping to build bathrooms that would provide enough space for well into the future and do some other small projects around the temple (finish the kitchen and dining room and repair an additional bathroom). It looks like the majority of the money will come from my own pocket so I need to scale back on what I am doing. Right now I think I will make smaller new bathrooms and that is probably all I can do. It is too bad.

Saying goodbye

Sandy has told the kids that she is leaving. Tommorow is her last day at school and some kids have already said their goodbyes including P0n. One girl wrote a little card to Sandy that had two hearts and read, "I give to Sandy I love Sandy". Nice.

Thanks for donating

I just wanted to thank Clayton, my parents, my nephew Joseph, and my friend (who I always thought was a loser but turns out to be a pretty good guy) Andy. Your donations to help the children at the temple are greatly appreciated.

Forgot the beds

I just realized that I did not put any pictures of the beds that are being made from the donations gave me in the past. They are two seperate beds that can be bolted together. We waited until the work was done on the home to start them so they would not get damaged being moved around. Either way they are most of the way finished and the kids have started sleeping on them.

Thanks to everyone who supported this project.

Strange Ballons!

I forgot a funny thing at the World AIDS day march. One NGO was giving away condoms which immediatly became funny ballons for the kids. I am not sure this is what was intended, but at least the kids are becoming comfortable with using condoms.

First donations

I have gotten the first donations for the bathrooms...thanks! (I wrote about it initially here: http://steveandsandy.blogspot.com/2006/11/you-gotta-do-something.html

I am still well short of having sufficient funds to complete the project so if you are interested in donating from the US please look at the instructions here: http://steveandsandy.blogspot.com/2006/11/if-you-want-to-donate.html

I am trying to make arrangements for international donations. If you do not live in the US and want to donate, please write me at ssnidero@hotmail.com.

Thanks in advance for helping the children here!

Load 'er up!

Selling furniture made in Burma is big business because it is difficult to get wood in Thailand. We frequently see these trucks that are completly overloaded transporting the furniture from our area towards Bangkok. I can not believe they make it up the steep hills that surround our area.

World AIDS day celebration

I attended an AIDS awareness march and festival
on Friday. I am interested in the topic, but I went mostly to support some friends who organized it and others who had children performing in the festival.

The children wore traditional clothes and did traditional dances. I have come to love the gentle hand movements in traditional Thai dancing.

Many women from Burma wear a powder on their face to protect their skin. I found this woman who was selling some noodles particularly beautiful partially due to the leaf design she made on her face.

The first good-bye...to a lovely woman

Sandy will be leaving next week to take care of some family matters. We do not know if she will come back. I will likely have to follow, but I am not sure when and for how long, so we are starting to say good bye to friends...maybe forever. This is the bad part of making so many friends.

Maelake is one of the housemothers at Baan Unrak. She was a student of mine for computers about 4 years ago and a student of Sandy's for English this year.

Because we think she is so warm and friendly, whenever Sandy and I talk about her we always say, "She is such a lovely woman". We decided to take her out for dinner in a normal sit down restaurant to say good bye and give her a little present. One surprising thing from the evening is it was the first time in her life she had eaten in a restaurant.