Baan Mitratorn in Chiang Dao

While we're here in Chiang Dao we're volunteering in an AIDS orphanage. Established in 1998 by the Sisters of St Paul de Chartes, it serves 60 children -- 44 who are HIV positive and the rest who have been impacted by AIDS, either their parents have died or they were abandoned or brought to the orphanage because their families could no longer care for them.

The facilities at the Baan are both stark and in an odd way, luxurious. The facilities are certainly better than most of the children would be living in in the hill villages around here. Wide open sunlite rooms with tile floors. But the walls are bare and the children sleep in one large room for each gender on mats on the floor. The youngest is three and the oldest is 17. Most seem to be in the 3-10 age range.

The children get retrovirals twice at day and all seem quite healthy. The drugs are free, funded by the Thai government - for all Thai people in fact. Far ahead of US policy! So even when these children leave the orphanage, they will have access to treatment. Some of the children have been adopted by foreigners - Peng showed us a book with many pictures of sweet Thai faces in France, Sweden and Germany. It doesn't seem to be part of the Thai culture to adopt a child not of your family, so most adoptions means the child leaves Thailand.

We walked over to the school to meet the children as they came out of classes = all in their uniforms. They raced up to meet us, climbing in laps and dragging us to see something, all the while chattering in Thai. From what I have experienced, this is not typical of Thai children, although they are far more comfortable with many adults than most American children. (There is a practice here that ALL adults look out for ALL children.) Plong, a little girl about four years old, crawled up into my lap and another little boy wanted to take pictures with my camera. Thank goodness for digital. He loved taking a picture and looking at it.

Other older girls (maybe 9-10) were pushing some of the little ones on a big swing, singing songs that had the cadence of the jump rope songs we sang as kids. One song tumbled into another, and finally they began to sing Chang Chang, the elephant song we learned from Judy Pine before we left. It was fun to join in with them and see the surprise on their faces as we began to sing along in Thai.

Tomorrow I'm going back to work in the school. It will be interesting to see the practices in the classroom. At the end of the day assembly yesterday, all the children lined up in straight rows by class to sing a song and listen to announcements. Far more disciplined and orderly than any middle/high school I've seen.

The high school girls at this school are all boarding students who come from the hill villages. They were all headed for the sex trade industry and were gathered in by the Sisters. Peng says that the incredible poverty in the hill villages makes it an almost impossible situation for the families when there are too many mouths to feed, so this schooling situation is a blessing. Sitting with the 13-17 year old girls with their open smiles and quick laughs, it is hard to think of them as potentially on the streets of Bangkok servicing some foreign tourist. They were curious about us and our lives, asking many questions, each one followed by a quick laugh. Each looking to the others. One young woman had the best command of English, and she asked most of the questions, but looked always to the others for confirmation of the appropriateness of her ideas, and the others offered quick suggestions in Thai.

Finally, the bell rang and all the children left the school yard to gather tools and cleaning equipment to clean the school before leaving for the day. After the grounds and building were cleared, the girls marching band formed and performed for us, including a complicated foot routine and some Thai dancing.

On Friday we will spend time in the village schools near Chiang Dao, then back to Chiang Mai.

More later.

M