RIVERMAN MERCY CENTER PROJECT NEW LETTER TO ALL @ SCHOOLS
8 September 2023
During the last 55 years that I have been ‘stumbling, walking un-surely along rickety half mended wooden walkways in the slums of Bangkok’, I’ve never seen or heard of it being named a national emergency crisis – that means: no education of 3 to 6 year old slum orphans and daily slippery slope of being abandoned - those ‘dumped along the path, losing their moms & dads’. Welcome to the savage world of abandonment - no education - a slum orphan.
The Klong Toey slaughterhouse - all of Klong Toey - was and is a savage place – we have tried to drench that savageness in the mercy of love and education and prayer for 55 years.
The kids – whose moms washed the pig guts each night in the slaughterhouse also asked to learn to read and write, so they could teach their kids for a brighter tomorrow. Maybe their kids could do better but there wasn’t much interest from the ‘higher ups’. Clean pig guts were urgent - education was not.
Then it changed. A thrown away old book pretty much destroyed by wind & rain (been there forever) on the side of the road.
On that fateful day when three ladies timidly came to our Sister Maria, holding lit joss sticks, asking Sister Maria if she would walk with them… just a few steps away really – to that shallow ditch alongside the road leading into the old slaughterhouse and if Sister Maria (who was known as holy & kind) would pick up that discarded broken old book – lying there with broken bottles and plastic – a broken old book … some of the pages blown out by the wind & weather. Books, especially old beat-up books, are sacred… never take a foolish chance to touch that book.
Everyone was afraid to stop and pick it up. You never even step over a book, never pick up a book foolishly. You never know what spirits, good or mischievous might live in those book pages to bless you or haunt you.
That’s how it all began. We still have that book. At least few pages of it.
Some of the pages were blown out by the wind & weather. Books are sacred… everyone afraid to stop and pick it up. You don’t know how it got there and by touching it – what kind of luck it might bring you; fire or water. Some ladies came with lit joss sticks and asked our Sister Maria to come and pick up the book and place it under a sacred tree – under donated dresses given as merit making for favors given; evil avoided. So she did. Then half of the book went to Sister Maria’s chapel – under the slaughterhouse bridge where she said her daily rosary, and the other half to a sacred place in the temple near an old statue of the Buddha, and relics of sacred bones of ancient monks from even before the temple was built.
No one had ever heard of a school in a slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse kids are slum worst. Their parents butcher pigs. They live in, above and around the pig holding pens where they truck in and butcher 3,000 pigs nightly, and of course Buddhists do not butcher large animals. Their temple is safe across the canal. Catholics are lowest on social scale. No church, only a tiny chapel under the railroad bridge where Sister Maria says her rosary daily. Catholics are the only ones willing to butcher pigs and the women wash the entrails.
Don’t need to read and write. So simple. There was no school. No books. Only that cast away book found in the ditch alongside the road.
But the women wanted a school for themselves and their children. Carrying candles and their joss sticks they walked with Sister Maria who was carrying the book with torn pages the few steps to a non-used pig holding pen. They had cleaned the pen the day before. There was a shelf and they asked Sister Maria to place the book there. They left their candles there with joss sticks and asked Sister Maria if she would say the prayer the ‘Hail Mary’ so that the mother of Jesus & the angels would protect everyone and that place.
Thus began our first day of school; our first school. There, in that now blessed former pig pen, pages of the book across the canal in the Buddhist temple as protection and in the Catholic chapel under the bridge – to be with a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary - to guard the children and their parents – and protect them in the pig pen.
Why? Because there had been so much death there – even if just pigs and water buffalo – but still of death and a school is a place of life and new birth.
They asked Sister Maria if she would take one of the dressed donated to the sacred tree near by – left there as merit making – bring one of the dresses – one of the more beautiful ones also to the school because the mom who had donated that dress was now dead and her six-year-old daughter asked that the spirit of her mother be there with her in the dress as she came to school each day. She wanted to be one of the first students in our pig pen school along with the other slaughterhouse children….all of this under the picture of our blessed mother – the mother of Jesus.
And so it began – our slum kindergartens. Yes, of course, I, Father Joe, was there during all of this, but do give credit where credit is due, and all this happened because of the holiness of Sister Maria…. and the courage of these wonderful slum moms. Who by the way, also did learn how to read and write. Their children taught them.
Bangkok was in crisis - no early schooling for small children - still isn’t. So we, instead of a march … in our quiet way – began a huge revolution – we have broken all the rules, and our revolution still goes on today.
Prayers…Fr. Joe and all of us
The Klong Toey slaughterhouse - all of Klong Toey - was and is a savage place – we have tried to drench that savageness in the mercy of love and education and prayer for 55 years.
The kids – whose moms washed the pig guts each night in the slaughterhouse also asked to learn to read and write, so they could teach their kids for a brighter tomorrow. Maybe their kids could do better but there wasn’t much interest from the ‘higher ups’. Clean pig guts were urgent - education was not.
Then it changed. A thrown away old book pretty much destroyed by wind & rain (been there forever) on the side of the road.
On that fateful day when three ladies timidly came to our Sister Maria, holding lit joss sticks, asking Sister Maria if she would walk with them… just a few steps away really – to that shallow ditch alongside the road leading into the old slaughterhouse and if Sister Maria (who was known as holy & kind) would pick up that discarded broken old book – lying there with broken bottles and plastic – a broken old book … some of the pages blown out by the wind & weather. Books, especially old beat-up books, are sacred… never take a foolish chance to touch that book.
Everyone was afraid to stop and pick it up. You never even step over a book, never pick up a book foolishly. You never know what spirits, good or mischievous might live in those book pages to bless you or haunt you.
That’s how it all began. We still have that book. At least few pages of it.
Some of the pages were blown out by the wind & weather. Books are sacred… everyone afraid to stop and pick it up. You don’t know how it got there and by touching it – what kind of luck it might bring you; fire or water. Some ladies came with lit joss sticks and asked our Sister Maria to come and pick up the book and place it under a sacred tree – under donated dresses given as merit making for favors given; evil avoided. So she did. Then half of the book went to Sister Maria’s chapel – under the slaughterhouse bridge where she said her daily rosary, and the other half to a sacred place in the temple near an old statue of the Buddha, and relics of sacred bones of ancient monks from even before the temple was built.
No one had ever heard of a school in a slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse kids are slum worst. Their parents butcher pigs. They live in, above and around the pig holding pens where they truck in and butcher 3,000 pigs nightly, and of course Buddhists do not butcher large animals. Their temple is safe across the canal. Catholics are lowest on social scale. No church, only a tiny chapel under the railroad bridge where Sister Maria says her rosary daily. Catholics are the only ones willing to butcher pigs and the women wash the entrails.
Don’t need to read and write. So simple. There was no school. No books. Only that cast away book found in the ditch alongside the road.
But the women wanted a school for themselves and their children. Carrying candles and their joss sticks they walked with Sister Maria who was carrying the book with torn pages the few steps to a non-used pig holding pen. They had cleaned the pen the day before. There was a shelf and they asked Sister Maria to place the book there. They left their candles there with joss sticks and asked Sister Maria if she would say the prayer the ‘Hail Mary’ so that the mother of Jesus & the angels would protect everyone and that place.
Thus began our first day of school; our first school. There, in that now blessed former pig pen, pages of the book across the canal in the Buddhist temple as protection and in the Catholic chapel under the bridge – to be with a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary - to guard the children and their parents – and protect them in the pig pen.
Why? Because there had been so much death there – even if just pigs and water buffalo – but still of death and a school is a place of life and new birth.
They asked Sister Maria if she would take one of the dressed donated to the sacred tree near by – left there as merit making – bring one of the dresses – one of the more beautiful ones also to the school because the mom who had donated that dress was now dead and her six-year-old daughter asked that the spirit of her mother be there with her in the dress as she came to school each day. She wanted to be one of the first students in our pig pen school along with the other slaughterhouse children….all of this under the picture of our blessed mother – the mother of Jesus.
And so it began – our slum kindergartens. Yes, of course, I, Father Joe, was there during all of this, but do give credit where credit is due, and all this happened because of the holiness of Sister Maria…. and the courage of these wonderful slum moms. Who by the way, also did learn how to read and write. Their children taught them.
Bangkok was in crisis - no early schooling for small children - still isn’t. So we, instead of a march … in our quiet way – began a huge revolution – we have broken all the rules, and our revolution still goes on today.
Prayers…Fr. Joe and all of us
