Thailand Journal 2011 #5

Today was our first full work-day – and it WAS a FULL day. The first work day is always a bit chaotic with two different projects going at different places and trying to get everyone settled in. We headed out at 7:45 and went to a local school. Four team members will work here most days helping various-aged students improve their English.

The rest of the team will be working on “Uncle” Prasarn’s farm. This is an annual project that we’ve been doing for the last several years. The university has adopted Uncle Prasarn and his wife, Nang. By way of a brief explanation, Uncle Prasarn lost his legs in a train accident some years ago. Since then it has been up to his wife to keep the large farm running. She gets some help from her sister-in-law, but the farm is huge and the heavy rains the past two years have created a number of challenges. The most urgent need right now is repairing the roads on the farm. The roads have such deep muddy ruts that Nang’s tractor is unable to access her crops. The corn is nearly ready to harvest and they may lose it if they can’t get to it.

A nearby business has donated left-over pieces of rock to use for building up the roads. We had use of a pickup (with unusually difficult steering), which we filled up with stone and then drove back to the farm and started filling up the large potholes. Back-breaking work but we have an energetic group of people this year who had a lot of fun with this project. So much fun in fact that they asked if they could come back in the afternoon and keep working. That’s a first. What a great group!

The school where the teaching members were working offered to make our whole group lunch – in spite of our appearance – which was unkempt to say the least. The food was delicious and it just kept coming. They prepared quite a spread for us.

This evening the whole group went to another annual project, which is helping out at the Muak Lek Adventist Center. Here an evening program takes place every night where kids of various ages can come for activities and to work on their English. Everyone was finding their way tonight so it felt a bit unorganized, but after the first hour the team members were eagerly planning activities for the next day. We’ll help out at this project every evening for the rest of our time here.

From there we went to a small outdoor market. It’s always an interesting experience for those who’ve never been to a typical outdoor market. The senses are a bit overloaded with the sights and smells. As Lorraine likes to say, if you weren’t a vegetarian before you will be after walking through one of these. It’s always fun to hear the different reactions when everyone returns from this adventure.