The shack immediately became a chapel kindergarten:   to teach the kids – including Miss Brown Rice of 50 years ago to learn to pray properly & read & write their names. . That  Our Lady of the River surely wanted her slum slaughter house children to be beautiful: know how to pray & read & write.  
And so it began.  Our first kindergarten in Our Lady of the River abandoned shack next to the canal leading into the River.  Our first slum slaughter house  kindergarten welcoming all:  Buddhist/ Catholic/Moslem.
 

She struggled out of the taxi with our street mom & the nice police lady – walking barefoot  – itchy, scratchy, but not hunched over, not afraid,  not like a six-year-old they just dragged out of the thorns & thistles & that other stuff: stinging nettles. Or just as bad, from pavement sleeping in a patrol station while her parents pumped gas.

Her little girl complexion:  imagine: buying a package of used mosquito bites at your neighborhood supermarket store – plus a full head over-loaded with lice.   
She was tears galore, but if you listened hard, you could make out her whisper, over and over, as tough as a five-year-old in rags can whisper;  “ I won’t cry’ no matter how you hurt me, you can’t make me cry.’ – I promised -  only nice girls who have mommies to hold them can cry & I don’t get no mommy to tell me she loves me.  

Actually, her tears are what saved her. A couple of our slum lads “the bhoys” as the Irish call their special lads happen to be riding by on their motorcycle: …saw her dad slap his daughter/  Slap her too much, too hard, shouldn’t have slapped her at all, but it was a habit with him. Mom just watched afraid.  He slapped her all the time also.  The ‘bhoys’ stopped & slapped dad too much  & too hard until his eyes jiggled.  He agreed to take daughter to hospital right then and there.

We call it: the Miss Brown Rice Petrol Station Miracle.  This is how ‘it went down.’ Our ‘bhoys’  

The young priest, always something of a misfit, chose an unconventional spot to start his preschool: a former pigsty near a slaughterhouse in one of Bangkok’s poorest neighbourhoods.

For a fee of a penny or two a day, the Rev Joseph Maier took in children from the most destitute families, teaching them to spell their names in Thai and feeding them what was often their only meal of the day.

He also lived nearby, his neighbours the castoffs in the capital: butchers, scavengers, street vendors, professional beggars, thieves and prostitutes. Wooden planks formed walkways over the muddy ground, which turned into polluted swamps during the rainy season.



 

In this difficult time please help Mercy Centre, walk together with us to educate the slum of Thailand… 50th Anniversary Mercy Centre

You can support Mercy Centre by sending your contributions to:

TMB Thanachart Bank (ttb)
Account number: 958-2-04735-4
Account name: Human Development Foundation

To me, Fr. Joe, the old priest, I imagine how much like young Jesus this young boy must have looked and acted, and I try to show respect and honor. 

‘Thanks for walking with us’ said Father Joe