It did feel odd having Christmas in a hot place that doesn’t really celebrate it. The plus side was being away from all the commercial hype back at home (yet receiving so many lovely cards from there), the downer of course was being away from family and friends. The one thing that did put us in the festive mood was a visit we made to the KHT dormitory.
This dormitory was built less than a year ago to replace one that was very much falling down. It houses 70 children from the tender age of 5 up to about 13. They would otherwise live too far from even a primary school and so fail to get any basic education. As the Thai school year is broken up into just 2 four and a half month long terms some of these children only see their family once or twice a year. The girls sleep in one huge room and the boys in another, on bamboo mats on the floor. The dormitory is funded by KHT so each child has a blanket and mosquito net- very unusual compared to a lot of the school dormitories we’ve seen out here. The children also prepare and cook their own food.
On the 22nd December I, Michael and the 5 other KHT volunteers drove down to see the children and throw them a wee Christmas party. We had put together 70 small stocking type presents and stocked up on some party food. When we arrived the children were typically shy at first, some ran away, others crowded together to see why so many of us had suddenly turned up. We held the tea party first, giving out little football and heart shaped foil wrapped chocolates, marshmallows and biscuits. As I was handing these out I was struck by how grateful the children were, even for one tiny chocolate ball they did a little wai (Thai equivalent of a handshake) of thanks before taking it. After a while I noticed that no one was eating and I then realized that they didn’t know that what I had given them was edible! I literally had to open up the marshmallow and the chocolates and demonstrate eating them (poor me!!) before they caught on! Handing out the biscuit tin was a different matter and it was very amusing to see such similarities with people all over the world- some took just the one biscuit while others walked away laden with a store to last them a month!!
Once we were satisfied that they had probably had more sugar in that hour than in all their previous days put together (I didn’t envy the Karen ‘housemistress’ that night!) we all went outside for a bit of football, balloon blowing and pressie giving. Again we had to show them how to unwrap the presents and in a lot of cases try and explain what they had (the strips of plastercine particularly baffled one boy!)
The highlight for me was watching the children play with the balloons. Mum and Lizzie had sent some and I only brought them to the dorm at the last minute. As I blew them up there would be a crowd of children watching, all tensed up in case it popped. We showed them how to make their hair static but mostly they just ran around with them as it got darker and darker, all happy as larry! It felt more Christmassy than ever to drive away with all 70 children waving happily and shouting out goodbyes.
In the near future KHT is hoping to build a volleyball court and a playground for the dormitory as well as set up a mushroom hut and a pig farm so we will keep you updated…
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