Slum people always rebuild their homes after fires. Always. And as quickly as possible. I’ll tell you why in a minute. First, let’s revisit the Tap Gaew slum the day after the fire. You could still smell the fire as you approached. The families that had been burned out were camped temporarily next to an…
She was given the nickname of Poey, meaning “plump,” because that’s what she’s been since infancy—just a little bit plump. She used to rent a room in the Tap Gaew slum for 1,000 baht a month—less than a dollar a day—until she started the fire. She didn’t start it intentionally. She accidentally left a candle…
The man who died was named Somchai. Perhaps it was murder; nobody knows for sure. He died from a hard blow to the head. He had been drinking a bit of the Eleven Tigers, a tonic made with rice wine, so some people assumed that he just fell down and hit his head, but the…
Miss Vipa’s nickname is Jai, meaning, “heart.” Jai is a high-powered poetry-in-motion waif, skipping, hopping and jumping to her destinations. If there’s a tree nearby, she climbs it too. Just six years old and a star pupil in her kindergarten class, Jai is that rare one-in-a-million child, a pure joy and blessing to everyone she…
This is the most fabulous wedding story I’ve known in thirty-three years as a priest and at least 500 weddings. It’s about a famous model in Bangkok and ten street children she asked to be her bridesmaids and flower girls. Can’t use her real name, I promised, so we’ll just call her Model Lady, because…
The school year in Thailand starts in May, and last Tuesday was the first day. We have over 200 kids in our Mercy Centre homes and every school-age kid attends school so it’s a huge day for us, too. The preparations are immense, getting all the kids kitted out in uniforms with proper schoolbooks in…
Pim, aged twelve, had been “walking” drugs for six years. In Thai they call these people “horse walkers.” She walked them all over Southeastern Bangkok. That’s where she’s from—born and raised in Klong Toey. Two months ago, police caught Pim and arrested her Uncle Pai-lawd. That brings the total to sixteen family members currently incarcerated….
Her name was Janchira. She was fifteen when she drowned in the Chao Phraya River near the Dao Kannong Temple early one morning. She had jumped off a sand barge that was moored for the night until tomorrow’s high tide when it would be towed to the sand pier just past the Slaughterhouse. She jumped…
Miss Naree is the oldest of the Gang of Four. She’s eight plus a bunch of weeks. Her nickname is Jit. She doesn’t read or write very well yet but when it comes to arithmetic, double wow! When you’re eight, reading is for cartoon books and something barely required to play computer games. Arithmetic, on…
Her mother was from one of the old Catholic families in Ayutthaya and was born and raised in the water buffalo section of the Slaughterhouse. The second time she was released from jail, she decided she wanted a child. So she found a man for that temporary union and Tik was born. Just two weeks…
