Life is fragile

I have a great Thai friend here whom I have known nearly all of my over nine years in Thailand.  He is my best friend, my community in Bangkok.  I look after him and he looks after me, each in our own way.  I do not think I would have survived here without him.  I will put it this way.  To live a life in a Bangkok you need at least one close local friend, someone who can mentor you and guide you along the way. 

Well my great friend has been sharing an apartment for eight years with an American guy.  Once again, they looked after each other in their own ways.  I guess that is part of life here.  In the last week, this guy returned home to the USA for good.  It was time for him to do so and off he went.  My friend was devastated to lose such a close friend and confidante.  So, at the age of 40, there he was this week in tears, wondering what will life be like without his great mate.  Life is fragile. 

In the same week, I went to Thai Immigration for my annual visa.  It is a long way to go and when you get there, you just follow the sign for aliens.  Yes, here I am named by the government as an alien.  So I get my queue number 45.  I wait five hours to be called up to desk 44.  There I am greeted by a most unhappy and unfriendly female Thai Immigration officer.  She takes my papers, goes through them and just says "Three months".  Internally, I collapse.  What is this?  Well, it turns out that the government has issued a new rule that affects my category for getting a visa.  Instead of a year, I now get three months at a time.  This means I have to go out to Immigration every three months to get a new visa.  What a pain!  But deeper than that, it makes me think about how I am seen here and how much my contribution to here is valued by Thai society.  It all makes me wonder.  Then I think how I will deal with this every three months as it is a lot of red tape.  I think about possible implications of this in my life here in general.  Truly, life is fragile. 

Listen carefully

When I went to school to learn Thai, our Thai teacher had three guiding principles for learning Thai.  They were:
Listen carefully.
Watch carefully.
Talk carefully. 

This Monday, I went to a meeting of the Bangkok Church on the issue of helping refugees.  I went with a full list of agenda items.  I did wonder how to approach these issues in the group.  One was a bit sensitive and so I spoke with the priest concerned before the meeting.  This encounter gave me a sense of how to proceed. 

Then in the meeting, we were given a written summary of operations for the Bangkok Church efforts.  It is a strange experience but I can read and understand Thai better than I can speak it.  Speaking remains my greatest challenge and it is a barrier I remain determined to break.  So I work away with my dictionary to understand what is before me. 

I see that I am named as a consultant to this group.  This confirms me in my way to go.  I will focus on listening and this I do.  I scrap my list of items to be shared and keep two that I judge as high priority and speaking to the overall efforts of the group.  It was a fascinating experience to sit and listen.  I heard not just all that is being done but also observed how they share and how they operate as a group.   

I live in a country where they are always playing the Thai card.  They see their being Thai as making them different and better.  We hear about American exceptionalism but there is definitiely Thai exceptionalism.  As I observed the meeting, I could name that this was not so much a Thai church meeting as just a church meeting.  I could have been at a church meeting in Brisbane as people were sharing in the same way with the same dynamics of power at play.  It just was that they were speaking Thai and doing it in a Thai way.  No matter our nationality or culture, we are all human and have so much in common. 

I did listen and so I learnt but I was there as a consultant and I needed to speak as well.  I judged that it was best to speak Thai no matter how difficult that may be for me or how poor (or different) my Thai may be.  I gathered my courage and towards the end of the meeting shared my two points.  I made sure I spoke in Thai.  By focusing on only two points and speaking in Thai my message was simple.  This was all a good and different experience for me. 

At the end of my contribution to the meeting, I got a round of applause, not for what I said but that I spoke in Thai.  From a conversation afterwards, I know for sure on one of my two points that, while they may have understood my words, they would not have understood the sense of what I was sharing as the concept of social participation that I sahred is not part of their lived experience.  I am too western. 

Still the best way to be a consultant is to become a part of the group and speak with them.  Listening is the most important of  my teacher's three principles.   

And we think we have problems

This picture shows Rohingya found at sea lnguishing at a temporary refugee camp in Myanmar.  They are obviously thirsty and getting water the only way possible at the time.  And we think we have problems. 

This picture appeared on my Facebook and I was just struck by it.  I was so taken not just by the horror of human desperation it depicts but by the utter humanity it shows us.  So I searched for its origin and found it came with a line from the Dalai Lama: 
"No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster."
How true!  Then I also think of the line from Mathhew 25 - "I was thirsty and you gave me to drink". 

Being here with Caritas, I have become in an unplanned way a little cog in a big wheel that is turning to help stranded Rohingya stuck in the south of Thailand.  It is one of those challenges in life where you just value what you can do and appreciate that something done is better than nothing tried.  You just do something for the sake of humanity and for the sake of one's very own humanity.  I don't wish to proceed down an expected line of discussion here but rather highlight one simple part of my experience in trying to further assistance for these poor people. 

I was at a Caritas Asia conference last week where I facilitated a discussion on their situation.  As a result, I became recognized as the resident expert on the topic which I am not.  The real experts are those down in the south of Thailand giving out the food and water and offering the accommodation.  Anyway, as the point person at the conference, I was asked what is being done to help to which I naturally replied:
"Instead of asking questions, how about volunteering to do something?"
At this time in proceedings of the conference, there had been no one new coming forward to actually do something to help.  These inspired few words raised a welcome response as now there are a team of volunteers acting in our little corner of the world to do something.   

It just upholds my theory that you don't need the big project, the big money to do good.   A few simple and spontaneous words from the heart can have as much an impact for good as any amount of money or as any sophisticated plan for action. 

A little bit of New York in Bangkok

I went off to a conference on human trafficking being held in Bangkok by Caritas Asia.  I may have been looking forward to the conference but I never expected what greeted me in the surrounds of the hotel where it was being held.  The hotel is part of a new development which has taken a cultural theme, displaying works of contemporary art throughout its space.  It was like walking into a bit of New York in Bangkok.  I was just overcome.  On realizing what I was surrounded by, I became a tourist yet again in a city that has become home.  I found myself automatically walking around the area looking at the pieces of art, taking it all in and taking photos like any tourist would do.  I was gobsmacked, as they say back home.  Bangkok is so full of surprises.  You think you know it and then you discover something else new. 

So what to do as I want to share my joyous discovery?  Let the pictures tell the story this week.  Enjoy.

Well, while I was enjoying the art of my new surrounds, I went into the conference on human trafficking.  It began with the testimony of a young Thai guy, really only a boy, who had been taken in by the offer of big money to work on a fishing trawler.  The money was the bait for getting a boy from poverty onto the boat and into the slave trade of the regional fishing industry.  He and others like him were taken from Thailand by boat to Ambon in Indonesia and made to work on fishing boats as slave labour.  These boats went out for one to two months at a time. The conditions were harsh.  The work was long and tough.  Any pay was meagre. 

As he shared his tragic and heartfelt story, I felt so disconnected as here I was in my newly found bit of New York in Bangkok listening to a lad talk about a world so cruel and ruthless, a world so ugly, a world so far away but yet part of the same world.  "How can this be so?" was my feeling question. Our world can be so disconnected.  We can be so divorced from the harsh, everyday realities faced by so many around us.  How to understand?  How to reach out?  How to be with the other?