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 hand and lunch money in pocket.
On Wednesday, after the second day of class, already a few of our primary school kids had been suspended. They didn’t do anything wrong apart from acting like the seven- and eight-year-olds they are—shooting spitballs and passing notes in class that contained impolite drawings and misspelled words. So we begged and groveled a bit and the headmaster said he’d take the little devils back.
The leader of the gang (I call them the “Incorrigibles”) is seven-year-old Lek. He’s in second grade and already calculating sixth grade mathematics, but he still can’t write his name. He says he doesn’t want to write his name and when Lek doesn’t want to do something, it’s often beyond heaven or earth to change his mind.
Another one of the Incorrigibles is Miss Huke, also aged seven. Her mom is Thai and her Belgian Dad is a tough guy (and a few other things) living in Chiang Mai. He can handle almost anybody but he can’t handle Huke, and mom seems to be, well, we’re not sure where, so she’s with us. Huke said she’d quit wetting her bed if we bought her a new school uniform. She wanted to look pretty on the first day of class and insisted she could never be in the hand-me-down uniform that her house mom gave her, even if it fit. Of course, we found her another one. Not new, but newer.
Lek and Huke are back in school on a two-month probation with promises of no more spitballs. Nevertheless, Lek was sent home again today. This time, the issue was shoes. He says he won’t wear shoes in school. His teacher insisted and he replied, “Why? I come from the slums. We don’t wear shoes at home or when we play. How will wearing them help me learn better?”
It was an excellent piece of kid logic when you think about it, but it failed to persuade his teacher, who believes with omnipotent adult logic that a little discipline goes hand-in-hand with learning. So Lek was sent home again, this time only for a day. He’s a smart and courageous kid, just not overly fond of the rules.
Meanwhile, Huke has had to promise that she would stop calling her teacher names in whatever Belgian language her father speaks, but only if the teacher will be nice to her. And so it goes.
We have four children with AIDS entering the first grade this week, and that is so great—one of the best things ever! The headmaster is understanding and says he’ll talk to the parents and make them understand that our kids with AIDS are just kids, too, and are no threat to other children.
These children aren’t always healthy, though. Even with the most current medicines, they will all die in four or five years, maybe a few years longer if they are lucky.
But right now, today, they’re in primary school, which is so unbelievably exciting, especially for the new first-graders. They’re big kids today going to a big kid school. It’s such a huge event!
Another of our new first-graders is Noi, a bright and healthy girl who graduated in the top of her kindergarten class. She proclaims that she will be a great female scholar in Thailand, and insists that she will be either a doctor or a truck driver when she grows up. In Noi’s world, these are the two coolest things you could ever be.
Noi is beautiful but not looking her best at the moment since we just shaved her head of lice. These lice were tough; regular lice shampoo wouldn’t kill them, so we had to resort to the old fashioned, sure-fire method of head shaving. No hair, no lice. Noi sneaked back after the haircut and gathered her hair in a box. Later, when her house mom discovered the hair and asked Noi what it was doing there, she said she wanted to keep the lice to see just how big they would grow, maybe even have a pet. She said she always wanted a pet.
So as you can see, our children are not the spoiled kind. Most of them are smart and all are fearless—Lek, Fluke, Noi, and toughest of them all, the children with AIDS.
Every day, our kids show us that there is nothing to fear. They lead us in the dark, show us the way through the grim Slaughterhouse, and tell us to believe—no, make us believe!—they can be anybody and do anything.
Imagine Noi as a truck driver. You try telling her it isn’t possible!