Dear everybody

         For we adults – who remember such things:  It’s been … such a very long time: over two years. Half a life-time when you’re young & they won’t let you go to kindergarten,  even grade school & you’re only  play ground is on the street. Finally, now, as I write, our children ( also your adopted slum children of Klong Toey)  are ‘back home’ – where they want to be, really, back in their ‘class-rooms.’ 

Take off your shoes at the door, come barefoot into their own class room which is also a Holy Place. A place where you learn to read & write & pray and meet life-long friends. ” Folded hands, respect / hello/  to the Statue of Our Blessed Mother of Jesus & the Buddha & ‘Wai’ their teacher who loves them, almost as much as their granny.  An old fashioned class room:  teacher,  note books & home work & lessons/ even with  teacher ringing their school bell calling everyone to salute the flag, to recite their prayers & begin class for the day.  

It’s been a ‘grim’ dreadful  time.  Even for the stray cats & mangy slum dogs.: not so easy to scrounge. Less eatable garbage.  

Our kids being mostly on the street; not many homes with television sets, not much at home to eat, not many homes with ice -boxes,  missing lots of meals,  often hungry, has not helped make it through each new day.  But our kids are resourceful:  that happens when you are hungry day after day, you quickly learned the art of slum trash survival:  different price for used plastic bottles, empty beer bottles, paper of all sorts.  Whatever the junk man will buy, plus you learn to read his scales, so he doesn’t try to fool you on the weight.   

And during all of this:  yes, fewer kids attend our slum kindergartens than before the covid days. Down from one thousand six hundred to about an even one thousand. Less school  children everywhere through-out Thailand.  We deal with whom we have.   Whom the Good Lord send to us; one & all.

Our kindergartens are still scattered in fifteen slums. In all those slums,  our kindergarten kids (of a class room  size) stuck together.  A miracle in itself. True,  they were mostly of the same neighborhood, but more than that:  protected each other, even on the street & slum back alley-ways. The police in those areas noticed this, and when someone bullied our kids, &  lots of thugs did … the children ran crying to the police  who came to their rescue.  And for some reason,&  I’ll never know why, our 5 – 6 year old kids mostly did not run drugs.  Had every reason to do so: easy money, but refused. (Just take a package down the street…) 

So in grim times of the past couple years, our kids ‘made it’ on their own. ’  The kids who kept the dreams alive, like, yes I shall learn to write my own name.  The kids who go out early morning, before kindergarten, &  collect trash to sell, especially when dad is gone forever,  &  granny is sick, & mom ‘is caught at work’  can’t come home yet.  

And  finally, personally, I myself goofed up a week ago, injured my right eye. Tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) go into for surgery for partially detached retina. Our kids tell me I winked at a frog! Who knows?  So I must rest my eyes for a couple of weeks.  Besides that, all is well.  We carry on.  We realize our kindergartens are now more necessary than ever before.

Why?  I suppose the biggest reason is:  Our Slum children tell us so.

All for now – prayers & Respect as always     Fr. Joe & all of us.