Hello

The shack is close to the main road in Sahatsakan, just a km from the dinosaur park. The streets are clean and lined with solar powered street lamps. You can enter the shack through a small dirt road. The pastor told us later that he had to machete his truck through yesterday in order to bring a new door for the house. 

When Gaewta and I arrived, we were 30 minutes ahead of our scheduled appointment with the pastor but he told us that we can go visit with her first. She came to the door with knitted brows when Gaewta called out, “มีใครอยู่บ่” 

When we introduced ourselves as friends of Acian, she smiled showing a pleasant face. Gaewta invited herself inside and looked around examining all that she had and lacked. Then told her to quit smoking. รำไพ said she’s stressed. Finally, Gaewta concluded that she is only lacking a mosquito net. We then brought in the bags of clothes, plastic dishes, sticky rice and mosquito net that we had prepared for her. 

I asked her if we should put up the net but she said she will do it by herself, tying her waist length hair up as she spoke. Gaewta informed her that I’m a foreign teacher, “she’s not Thai.” รำไพ gave me a smile and said, “she speaks Thai so clearly.” Obviously not clear enough because she had trouble understanding me twice to which Gaewta concluded to be the problem of my accent. 

I asked her how old she was. She said she was born in 2531, making her 31/32 now. We asked how old her kids were and her two older boys are in ป4 and ป2 while her youngest daughter is in kindergarten. This is the village where she grew up. The father of her kids is from Korat but she is no longer with him. Instead she has a new husband in her own village. But he does not treat her kids well so she left his house and moved into a shack at the edge of the village which once belonged to a blind grandmother. However, she has allowed him to visit when the kids are at school. 

I also asked her if she can grow vegetables and she smiled and said yes. Gaewta asked, “where are you going to get water for gardening?” Surely, water would be cheaper than having to buy food. There’s also a dam less than half a kilometer away. Gaewta thinks that cutting down some of the surrounding forest to build a daybed outside would be a better use of Wes’s time (assuming that Wes would be building a wicking bed). At the very least, she wouldn’t have to be stuck in her house being depressed.

We took a look outside to where her water was kept in two large clay urn. There wasn’t much water left in there. When we asked how she gets the water out, she pretended to jump. Her bathroom was only half finished meaning the squatty potty is only half covered by a 3 walls. Gaewta complained about having no place to sit when รำไพ got a tarp from her house to put on the ground. She then closed the opening of the bathroom with a makeshift tarped wall so we didn’t have to look at it as we sat outside. 

Gaewta asked questions about how she makes a living to where she gets her food and water. She answered them as politely as possible but when Gaewta asked about clothes for her kids to go to school (inquiring whether she has bought them uniforms)…she cried and went back into her house. 

While she was crying inside, I whispered to Gaewta that maybe she is asking too many questions but Gaewta replied that this is the only way we’ll know how to help her. รำไพ is not working and she attributes it to her health but also because she has never had to work before having a husband to take care of her. She believes she has Hep B but is unwilling to go get diagnose because she is afraid. Her kids go eat the leftovers from the monks at the temple and bring her some. Some days she said she would have her kids beg in the village for money. 

Fortunately, Acian and his wife arrived not long after she went back home crying. Acian explained that the day he had saw someone living in this shack, he had been praying to God asking God to show him what the next steps of his ministry should be and he felt like รำไพ was God’s way of answering him. Acian knew that nobody should be living in the shack because the blind grandma that lives here is in the hospital and has not been here for years. 

As he walked up the dirt path to the shack, a little girl ran up to him and asked, “grandpa, who are you looking for? the old grandma who lives here is dead.” He then met รำไพ and heard her story. He encouraged her to continue living here until the grandma comes and kicks her out which he doesn’t think will happen. รำไพ said that she had asked around and the people in the village thought it’d be ok for her to stay here too. Since then, Acian has brought in a door for her, as well as rice and water. Christian brothers and sisters has also brought in clothing for them by hearing about this on Acian’s facebook. 

รำไพ says that when people come visit, she is อาย, แกรงใจ and doesn’t have much to say. She also turned down Acian’s offer to enroll them in a program in Khon Kaen where her kids would go to school and live in a home but the parents would live somewhere else while the foundation would help them find jobs. We do not know why she turned it down. She did not share any of her thoughts. Acian was also kind enough not to ask. 

Before we left, I gave some money to Acian to help find someone to fill up their water urns and anything else they may need. Acian also told us that the village head had requested that people visit them once in a while so that they will learn to live on their own and not on the charity of others. 

While Gaewta and I were driving back, she asked me if I smelled urine in the house and I said no. I have a terrible sense of smell which is great for house visitation work. She was not amused by my comment. While Gaewta is a little aggressive for my taste in the way she “helps”, she really does have a heart to provide for this lady. She wants to go back tomorrow to bring her a steamer basket for the sticky rice that she has given because she realized that she didn’t have one. I told her that we must respect the village head’s wishes and probably wait at least a week. They have already lived in that shack for over a month without a door, they could probably wait on a steamer basket.