“All of your stories are so sad,” a friend said. “Are there any happy stories in the Bangkok slums?”
He’s from a nice neighborhood, doesn’t know Klong Toey, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and told him the happiest story I could think of at the moment—about a thirty-one-year-old woman named Samlee.
She and her older sister grew up in the care of her Uncle Shorty and Auntie Tanom. She barely remembers her mom. Only that her name was Vipa and that she was petite and beautiful with a lovely complexion and long, black hair flowing down her shoulders. She remembers her dad better. He would come by the first day of every month and leave money with Uncle Shorty and Auntie Tanom to take care of his children. She remembers him as tall and scary looking but gentle when he held her.
Samlee was always told to call him “uncle,” and she only found out the truth years later. She didn’t understand why he would only visit at night and always avoided windows and bright lights. He came alone, never with Samlee’s mom, who would visit during the day. Samlee’s father was a notorious gangster, a hit man, feared by all and always hunted by police.
While Samlee was still a child, one day, the first of the month came and passed and he didn’t show up. He never returned. The next time her mother visited, she was dressed in black, her face red with tears. Samlee never saw her mother again, either.
Uncle Shorty homesteaded under the Three Soldiers Bridge by the railroad tracks near the Slaughterhouse. Their home was always damp with the canal water, most of it coming from the passing long tail boats whose wakes splashed into the side of their shack. Like all the children living under the bridge, she swam and bathed in the canal, which led to skin infections that took years—until young adulthood—to heal.
The family had one light bulb, one fan, one rice-cooker, one mosquito net, one plastic clothes container, and one wooden food cabinet with bowls filled with water beneath its legs to keep the ants from climbing up into the food. No refrigerator. No gas stove. No TV. Not even a radio.
Their only source of drinking and washing water was at the slaughterhouse, where Samlee went twice a day from early childhood on, hauling buckets back home. The slaughterhouse water supply would be turned on when work began at eight o’clock in the evening. On Sundays, when religious custom forbids the slaughtering of animals, they didn’t turn on the water until after midnight.
Fifty-four families lived under that bridge. Samlee was the prettiest girl and Uncle Shorty was the most respected man. He rolled his own cigarettes and the smoke eventually killed him. He only drank beer on rare occasions after he got paid for a carpentry job, and almost all of his money went toward his family. Family always came first.
Uncle Shorty tried to instill in Samlee and her sister a sense of pride. He gave them his family name and told the children that they were Klong Toey girls and to be proud of it—to be proud of their home and family.
Samlee was a month into first grade when Auntie Tanom died. Uncle Shorty kept her body at home for two days, as he didn’t have any money to pray at the temple. The neighbors brought in a cot to place the body on because the high river tides sometimes flooded the shack. Uncle Shorty in his love and grief was worried that mosquitoes might bother Auntie Tanom, so the whole family slept next to her body under the mosquito net.
The family went to a Chinese benevolent society for a donated casket, the cheapest kind made, and carried Auntie Tanom to the temple for cremation. After Auntie Tanom died, Samlee’s older sister, though only in sixth grade, quit school and went to live with a man. Said she was tired of being poor.
Samlee finished her six years of grammar school near the top of her class. That same year, the city evicted the fifty-four families living under the bridge, and Samlee and Uncle Shorty were relocated to another home in Klong Toey.
When Samlee graduated from high school, she entered a polytechnic college but had to drop out during the second year. Uncle Shorty was sick. Her favorite professor told her to come back when she could but for the next two years, Samlee took care of her Uncle Shorty, bringing him back and forth to a government hospital four different times. Samlee was almost eighteen when Uncle Shorty died.
Before long, she met a sweet-talking man from the Flats in Klong Toey. He took her to the beach for a weekend and then moved into her house, the one Uncle Shorty left her. There was no wedding ceremony. No dowry. No respect. And he wasn’t faithful. During her first pregnancy, she knew she wanted to throw him out but decided to devote all her strength and energy to her child.
When it was time to go to the hospital, he was hanging out somewhere else, so neighborhood women took her there. After her son was born, she gave the boyfriend the boot.
Samlee needed money, so she found a friend who could care for her baby while she took on temporary work. At her new job, she met another man, this one handsome and a high school graduate with a fulltime job.
Their first three years together were happy and a second child was born, this time a daughter. After that, Samlee applied for a teaching job at one of our kindergartens and we accepted her immediately.
Unfortunately, her husband began playing with drugs, copping from an uncle who was a dealer. Then he lost his job. Then he began selling the stuff. And then, when Samlee went to teach in the mornings, he began taking their baby on his rounds. Samlee knew nothing of this until her husband was caught. Seven different times she went to court on this case, pleading on his behalf, paying fees and fines, and eventually, mortgaging the home.
So when, exactly, does this story get happy, you’re probably asking.
After the trial, the husband continued on his downward spiral, this time with amphetamines. Took up to twelve pills a day, which is almost unbelievable. Of course, he got caught again and this time, went to prison for a long stretch.
Samlee seized the opportunity. She got a divorce and applied for a loan from our slum women’s credit union to get her life out of hock. She promised she would continue teaching kindergarten and pay back the loan from her wages. Today, she’s keeping her promise.
Protective of her children and fearing the influence of the neighborhood drug problem, Samlee has moved her family out near the airport in an area the city has designated for slum relocation. Both of her children excel in school. Her ten-year-old daughter is always near the top of her class—one year, even first! Her son is in high school and likes boxing, computers and English, in that order.
Samlee’s story is happy in a Klong Toey way. She’s our kind of hero. Beaten up but never beaten, Samlee never (not once!) ever thought of quitting. If we hadn’t helped her, she would have found another way on her own. Uncle Shorty was a fine role model and Samlee was paying attention. (Her older sister, sad to say, didn’t have the same drive. She recently died of AIDS in our hospice.)
There’s a popular rock ballad in America about a rose in Spanish Harlem. That’s our Samlee—an orchid in the Thai slums. Most folks see the filth, drugs and hopelessness in Klong Toey, but in a kindergarten classroom here five mornings every week, there stands a thirty-one-year-old teacher who loves her children and tries with all her heart to give each of them a sense of pride in the Klong Toey slum, just as her Uncle Shorty did before her. She’s even changed her family name back to Uncle Shorty’s and changed her kids’ names, too.
And that’s what I call a happy story.