Sheppard have just arrived back from our community service project at the Huay Taad School in the Mae Tang area. The school was built by the Ramin Tea company – the surrounding hillsides on the mountain are covered with tea bushes and the tea is sold by Ramin to Lipton! The tea company funds the school in order to give back to the community that picks its tea. Not long ago the school decided to build a basketball court, however, they ran out of money. So we spent our community service building the court. Hancock lay down three slabs of concrete and we just completed laying down five slabs- so the court is well on it’s way to being finished by the end of the fourth groups stay. The labour is intensive- we are digging the sand and rocks for the concrete (thank god they have a mixer this year!) and then we lug it via buckets to the slab we are laying. The girls worked in all aspects of the job as a team- building the bamboo frames, mixing the concrete, laying and smoothing it out and also finding time to play with the local children- who helped too. We were fortunate that so high up in the mountains it was cool weather and not the sweltering heat of the jungle.
It has been a particularly funny week- full of pranks, teen romance and giant bugs. Each morning that we arrived to the work site a stray dog had walked across the slab we laid the day before, but one morning we were presented with some Thai graffiti! Inscribed in the semi-wet cement was a declaration of love for one of our girls- telling them “ I love (insert girls name here) very much.” The village boys were quite smitten with our girls and found any excuse to visit them and help with the project. The flirted by throwing small rocks at our girls and then giggling and they really enjoyed the water fight on the last day of work.
Our Thai guides have a great sense of humour and are really like big kids. They took a lot of joy out of finding a particularly giant bug or spider and scaring the girls. All the insects up in the mountain have a case of giganticism and are everywhere; in the bedrooms, bathrooms, where we ate and anywhere else! Now who can say that they have had breakfast with a giant Tarantula in a plastic bottle sitting next to them? Ms Cusack and I discovered a huge pre-historic Slater like beetle that when you pressed its tail it glowed… none the less we did not want it in our bedroom. I do not think I have heard girls squeal so much and so often as this last few days. But our girls got them back; buckets of concrete or water over one guides head, hiding their possessions so they thought they had Alzheimer’s and last night the girls left a present of their filthy work socks from the week in one of the guide’s tent. Everything was taken in good humour… for most of the girls.
This morning before we left we went to the village for a ‘tour’ and then attended mass at the Baptist church… two hours later the service was still going and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. The girls saw is as a real experience and were very patient- but quite a lot of the congregation was asleep or chatting amongst themselves as the time ticked by.
We were sad to leave today- we had been up in the cool misty mountains and had made some new friends. The vast and stunning views sped behind us as we weaved our way back down the mountain and the calls of the children that ran after our trucks followed. The principal had said in broken English “When you go back to Australia, you in my heart. I no forget. Sad.” And he and the village elder gave us a bag of avocadoes as a gift… it was such a genuine act of gratitude and so very Thai.
Marian Haddrick
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