January volunteering part 1

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I've spent about 2 weeks here at Baan Dada now, and having a great time! Nothing here is very organised, and nothing is ever on time, so we're having to be pretty flexible. For New Year's Day we all, even the kids!, had a lie in, being tired from walking in circles all evening. Then we spent the day playing with the kids, and in the afternoon we headed over to Songkhalia Guest House to perform. For once, everything went to plan, nothing was forgotten and we were only half an hour late. Afterwards we headed into Sangkhla so the kids could spend their money, and me, Emily and V got the nicest banana pancakes. They were basically some form of doughy stuff, fried with an egg, then cut up and drenched in condensed milk and chocolate sauce - makes a change from rice! The next couple of days were occupied by painting the volunteer house, and re-doing the Baan Dada noticeboard. Emily and V left on Monday, so it's just me, Gaelen and Nory here now. On Tuesday, the kids went back to school, and me, Gaelen and Dada2 took the 3-wheel motorbike into Huay Ma Lai to get stuff to fix our shower. We ran out of petrol about 10m before the start of the village, and had to push it to the stall, where the woman filled it up with petrol from old glass coke and fanta bottles. Then we had rice and a smoothie for lunch and chatted to some Singapore-ians who had brought about 80,000B of donations. That evening I tried to teach Walhuwatt some English, but ended up doing drawing with about 8 of the kids, then we had dinner, I helped cut the girls' hair, which didn't turn out too badly, but they kept moving to scratch their lice so some bits ended up a bit shorter than perhaps they should've been. Then we did some yoga and headed off to bed.

With the kids at school, the days here have settled into a sort of routine. They are generally made up of getting up about 6am to do Yoga, making sure all the kids are awake and dressed for school, packing them all into the truck with the aim of being less than half an hour late, and then having a breakfast of rice and Thai food. Following this there tends to be office work to do - typing up posters, creating powerpoints, and this, alongside gardening, painting, cooking, trips into Sangkhla or Huay Ma Lai to get things for the work, and lunch (more rice) takes up most of the day until 4pm when the kids get back. Then we persuade them to do homework, and help them if it's English, play games, and kick them off the computer and TV at regular intervals. A dinner of rice is generally served around 7ish, and me, Dada2 and the yoga team do more yoga at about 8. I help Dada2 get the kids to stop doing the splits or handstands, and do what they're meant to do, and he is trying to teach me enough asanas that I can help him teach the mothers here. Then us volunteers tend to head off to bed or card games at about 9pm, and get ready to start all over again.

Several evenings I have done craft activities with the kids, during which I have discovered I am still terrible at origami, and I now have several pictures of random things, and a few badly made origami animals. I am also in the (hopefully unique) position of having about 5 pictures of Justin Beiber staring down from my wall, having taught some of the girls how to improve pop magasines by destroying them for collages. I generally end up playing catch with Ehdudu and anyone else who wants to join for about an hour every day - one evening several of the kids climbed up the basketball net, and, as far as I could work out, the game of catch turned into trying to hit the kids on top of the net of the head with a football! That same evening I ended up riding a bike around with up to 3 kids hanging onto various parts - was a bit wobbly, but kindof fun, until I discovered a definite lack of any form of brakes, at which point it became slightly more scary!

By Friday we had decided the shower was beyond repair, and Dada2's attempts at fixing it were actually making it worse, so we have only cold showers now.

Saturday the 8th of Jan is Children's Day in Thailand, and we took the kids up to Songkhalia to play again. Everything went really well, we were there early, nothing was forgotten. All performances went to plan, apart from the girls' dancing where the microphones didn't work too well, but the audience seemed to think it funny. By the end all the kids were hyped to discover we had raised 8340B, quadruple what they normally get, and they headed into Sangkhla to spend their share on sweets, which made them even more hyper for the truck ride back. On the way home, Saitan set up the drums in the back of the truck, and was playing all the way back, accopmanied by loud singing, Ongsonai doing breakdancing behind him, and scowls from people we passed.

The next day was taken up by gardening with the kids, and cooking - Dada bought 3kg of Soya beans for 90B, which we used to make enough Soy milk for 50 odd kids, some tofu, raw yoghurt, and "burgers" (crushed soy bean remnants boiled and deepfried coated in flour and stuff) In the evening we did Yoga and meditation with the kids - which was made a little bit harder by Prikadee snoring on my lap! Afterwards, the Yoga team decided to practise afterschool - don't have to get up so early 😊.

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Comments

[gdm]

Ah! - sounds just like any life with kids. Watch out for the lice! xx gdm ps. Who's Justin Beiber?

[KatieHedgecock]

Haha thanks :) I've tried to call you a few times - you're always out! x A singer who all the 12-13yr old girls love. Probably because he looks about 12 and has the voice of an 8 year old girl.