Whilst on Community Service we stayed at a place called the Royal Project- an establishment set up by the King to conduct research into 'cash crops' for the Hill tribe villages. In order to discourage the cultivation of opium the King has gotten the tribes to farm in other high return crops such as Arabica coffee, Japanese Cucumber, Orchids, Avocados etc. As a result we were surrounded by coffee plants and other more exotic crops.
Our accommodation, whilst still basic, had a wonderful eating and rec area, a small cafe and the girls shared apartments. One thing about Thailand, that wherever we have gone, the beds are HARD! It may well look like a mattress, but to touch it is a slab of wood. This has been quite unkind to our hips and shoulders but apparently it's good for you. My pillow top chiropractic mattress with latex pillow back home would beg to differ, but when it Thailand I do as the Thais do.
Every day we were trucked out to the the local primary school called Ban Pang Hang to work away at building them a canteen and eating area. The first day we looked at the grassy slope and were told we were going to make it level- so we got out our hoes and took out one side of the hill and lugged it over to the other side and packed the dirt down. Once that was done, and that took a day and a half, we made the wooden frame for the concrete slab. The girls loved to hammer! In fact a lot of them loved the hard labour and learning new skills so much it makes wish we had wood work classes for them- every young woman should have a well stocked tool box and know how to use it!
Then came the concrete mixing. It was all done by hand. Buckets of sand, buckets or water all passed in a chain to a large container which was then mixed with a hoe with concrete mix and gravel and then poured into the frame. It was hard and arduous labour and took another day and half and we hadn't even seen the school children yet! Our group was unlucky enough to arrive during their public holidays so it was only on the final day that we were there that we got to spend some time with them; teaching English and playing games. At first I thought that the girls would be quite miffed about that but they just focused on the canteen and kept in mind that they were building it for the kids and that was the most important thing.
The school, set up by the Lion Club originally some years ago, has two main buildings, about 60 children and two teachers. A Thai Christian Missionary comes to teach the children English every week and I was really impressed with what they knew. We sang songs together, went though the alphabet and numbers and then we played pretend 'shops' where the girls had to speak in Thai and they had to speak in English- it was all a bit adorable.
At the end of the time there the girls all felt a huge sense of accomplishment and pride in what they had done. As a reward, on the way back to the Prem Centre yesterday, we stopped at a local waterfall and the girls swam and squealed under the flow from way above. It was a great ending to one part of their stay here.
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