Reaching out

So I’ve been working as a consultant for 8 months now. During this long Labor Day weekend, I took my daddy up north with me to Mae Sai in Chiang Rai for one day, and then Chiang Mai for one day. I took him to both DEPDC and Baan Doi while we were in Mae Sai.

Eight months of working hard at a high pressure environment, staying at 5 star hotels all the time, eating expensive food at the expense of clients, flying in and out of Bangkok every week had made it hard for me to remember what life is like in a place like Mae Sai. It was so good to be back there again. Although it felt like some things have changed since I’ve left, mostly, things seemed to be the same still. My friends at both DEPDC and Baan Doi, Jessica, Sarah, Jamie and Barbara, continue to work hard and fight for better opportunities for the children in their care. They are still the same, nice, hard-working, inspiring people, working through problems that are vicious and hard to solve.

I don’t think that people who live in big cities such as Bangkok like my family are in any way bad people. But I do think it is very easy for us to be sheltered and be ignorant of the issues such as the ones we see in Mae Sai, including human trafficking, statelessness and abandoned sick children with AIDS. I think we’ve achieved my original goal of introducing my dad to really inspiring people at these NGOs and showing him what they do. I remember that when I was younger, my mother was in an event where a group of people from an NGO held a violet protest against the energy development work that she was working for – a protest that seemed to have been based on a biased view and conducted by ill-informed group of people. Ever since then, I don’t think my parents took much of a liking to “NGO” of any kind, and I think it’s quite understandable. However, I was so glad that when my dad spent some time with my friends, listening to their stories, and about what they do, he seemed to be very receptive of their work, and applauded them as “very decent, good hearted people”. I hope and pray that it softened his heart, inspired him, and that we’ve reached out to him.

What I didn’t realize until I got there was that how much I needed to be reached out to myself. Only eight months had gone by, and I’ve already became accustomed to being spoiled, and probably became very arrogant to many people outside of this industry. I find it harder to be motivated and find time to even pray, and I spend my free time hanging out with family and friends and shopping and that's about it. This weekend had reminded me that my goal in life should always be about serving – both God and his people. I still have to remember that being a consultant is part of God’s plan to equip me. And although I’m probably doing it for myself for the most parts too, I must always remember that I have to give it up and use all the skills and blessings that I’ve been given to serve when He calls. But now I’m scared of what years of working “for me” will do to turn my heart away from where I want to be, now that I see what only eight months had already done.



But for now, I think I’ll continue to pray for, and support where I can, for the children at DEPDC and Baan Doi. Over the weekend, I met the girl that I sponsor for the first time. Her name is Oy, and she’s the little one in the picture. She’s been nothing short of inspirational. She was orphaned by HIV, had lived with relatives, then somehow got kicked out of their homes, lived on the street for a while, and was very sick when she was found and sent to Baan Doi for help. She had came a long way to recovery, and her will to live is just amazing.

Seeing the kids at Baan Doi being so happy, having them come to hug us and play with us and being able to see them live in such a loving home had been the most inspirational thing that had happened to me in a long time. Hopefully, next time I visit, I will get the chance to see the kids at DEDPC as well. It was school holiday when we were there so the school was very quiet. Nonetheless, I was so happy to see my volunteer friends again.

Reflection

So now that it is the day before I officially enter the profit-driven world of business and start my job as a consultant, I wanted to write a post about my thoughts on things. For two weeks in Mae Sai, I taught English, played with the kids, and I translated things for other staff and volunteers. On the surface, I don’t think I have accomplished much at all – in fact I probably made very little difference doing those things. However, I still hope this trip made a lasting impact and difference – because it taught me so much and changed my way of thinking. I have learned so much about the way of life of people in the area. It surprised me how much excess consumerism and greed had seeped into such seemingly serene and peaceful place, enabling industries like human trafficking to prosper. But what I found even more astonishing is how with diligence, hope and love from others, people who have nothing, not even citizenship to any country, can have an opportunity to obtain excellent education at a college in the U.S., and became a leader that would bring about changes for their communities. I learned that we can do something and make a difference.

The main goal for me entering the business world is to develop myself and my skills. I believe that this might be what I can get really good at, and I want to do what I do best. There will be times that I get carried away with the luxuries and the money that comes with it. But now that I don’t really have it yet, I want to make a promise to myself – I do not want to lose all of my youthful optimism and idealistic view down the line. I’m sure I’ll lose some, but I don’t want to lose all of it. I don’t believe I alone can make an impact on a large scale, but I believe that I can make a significant impact for some people.

I don’t believe that it is the best strategy for me to do non-profit work right now. There is a lot that I can learn from the business world, like how to think, plan and execute things effectively and efficiently. Besides, I have too much debt to pay back to my parents for the 11 years of excellent and expensive education. I have yet to exercise the benefit of that education to its potential. By allowing me to have this sort of qualifications, my parents had given me an opportunity for my career to be accelerated, which makes my learning curve currently steep. Until that learning curve begins to level off, I will continue to be in the business world and hopefully make some helpful connections along the way. But the ultimate goal is to one day, apply all the skills and resources that I have been blessed with to bless others who aren’t as fortunate as I am.

The reason I want to share this is that I know it will be hard to not get carried away with the luxuries that will come with being in this business. I want my loved ones to keep me accountable. Now that I have put all my thoughts into writing and shared it with my family and friends, I have left myself no choice but to stick with it.

DEPDC

So I thought I should talk a little bit about the organization now that I have been here fore a week and know more about it. It's called DEPDC which stands for Development and Education Program for Daughters and Communities. So a bit of history, it started 21 years ago by Khun Sompop Jantraka. He was hired by a Japanese journalist to do some research about the sex trade industry in Thailand. He felt compelled to do something about human trafficking after the research. He then went on to establish an educational fund project and one year later, he had 19 girls in his project. He selected girls that he thought were most vulnerable - stateless, orphans etc. The program that was started was like a kind of a free boarding school with primary and secondary school available.

The organization grew bigger and had a much more significant impact over the years. Currently, DEPDC has two sites. One site is where I am right now in Mae Sai, and the other site is in Chiang Khong. I visited the Chiang Khong site yesterday and talked to the director and she told me a little more about the sex industry. She said that people who are most vulnerable to trafficking are people of ethnic minorities (like tribes up in the mountains on the border of Northern Thailand, Myanmar and Laos), uneducated girls, orphans, or abandoned or abused children. These kids are most gullible. She told me the story of what one of the girls who had been rescued from the industry had told her. She said that one way that human trafficking works is that there would be "agents" that would hang out in the weekend market and ask these vulnerable, gullible girls about whether they'd like to go to Bangkok to work as a waitress or what not. They'd tell them how exciting the city life is and often times, the girls would be convinced. They would then be brought out in a van and eventually trafficked. The girls at Chiang Khong site are either in the at risk group, or have been trafficked, rescued, and are rehabilitating. These girls live and board at the site, go to school, and are taught many useful life skills such as cooking and weaving.

DEPDC also has many other excellent programs (I'm not going to list them all, because they have many. But I will list the ones that I have directly seen, or been involved with so far). They have a Half-Day School, which is a school that is absolutely free to children. The curriculum was developed by Khun Sompop. They also have an evening school that is open to the public. They teach things like computer skills, English, and Thai. They have a 24-hour Child Help Line call center. They have a radio station which transmits ~40km radius that plays a lot of popular music and holds talk programs that interest the people in the region. Instead of having ads on air, they spread out the words about the human trafficking industry and what DEPDC does about it. Another program that they have is Mekong Youth Net, which is a program that trains young people aged 15-25 to be leaders. All of these kids come from the Greater Mekong Sub-region, most of them belong to an ethic minority group. They go through an intense training course which educates them about issues such as HIV, drug abuse and human rights. They are also given training in leadership skills and other useful skills. After they finish, they return to their community and work for a cause, usually for a GO, or an NGO. In the past 3 days, I've had the opportunity to work with the kids that have graduated from the program, who have returned to work for DEPDC. Matt (another volunteer) and I held a workshop for them about how to make the Child Voice Newspaper, which is a project that they are trying to launch. The newspaper would be for the community which will contain many things of interest to the locals here, and in place of advertisement on the newspaper, it would educate readers about DEPDC and the issues of human trafficking that is present in the region.

I am beyond impressed with how the programs here at DEPDC is so empowering for the people in this community here. It seems to me that they are giving these kids something that will last forever - a cycle of education that hopefully is passed on to the younger generations to come. It is estimated that 96% of the 4000 children that have gone through any of the various programs at DEPDC since its inception is kept out of the whole human trafficking industry. It is not uncommon to find almost the reverse statistics in other schools in the region. Khun Sompop and DEPDC had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 4 times already, including this up coming one!

I feel so blessed to be part of such an empowering organization; to work with a team of people with hearts of gold who never cease to inspire and dazzle me with their love and determination; and to learn from the people who have so little but give so much. I am absolutely thrilled and grateful to be here.

The long weekend

So for the past 4 days, it had been a long weekend which means that I haven't gone into the office since the last time I wrote. However, this weekend, I met all of the other foreigner volunteers. I haven't met them, except Sarah, until now because 2 of them had been away on a hiking trip, one was away visiting another city with a friend, and another new volunteer also just arrived this weekend.

So let's list them all so that I can refer them by name from now on. Matt: a guy from Germany. Jamie: the English guy who's my age. Tera: an American girl who had been working as an IBM consultant for 3 years after graduation (I need to get lots of advices from her in the next 2 weeks about how to be a successful consultant!) And lastly Jessica: a Hong Kongnese American girl who had just finished her courses in medicine at Cornell and is taking one year leave before she starts interning.

Every volunteer except Jessica and Sarah is currently living in the same apartment building as I do! So there are 4 of us on on the same floor, and it's kind of like a dorm setting where people pop in for a chat. It's been really fun (and Jamie is so talkative that he can fill up anyone's afternoon with a conversation. Finally I found someone who's more talkative than me!) And the past few days I've visiting a lot of really cool places in this area, and it was nice to have these guys as company. Everyone are genuinely nice and fun people, and I am grateful to have met them.

On Saturday, I went to the border of Burma and Thailand. It was a nice market, with lots of cheap, made in China stuff. I also climbed up to a temple on the mountain and saw Mae Sai from a nice view up top and it was quite an interesting walk. To get there, I had to take the stairs with about a 70m elevation and I went up there as fast as I could and it was pretty tiring. On Sunday, I went to a cave temple. It was really interesting because it is so serene and quiet and I can see why it is the perfect place to meditate infront of the Buddha statue. Then yesterday I hung out near the lake side (nowhere near as nice as Lake Michigan but still...) with Sarah, Jess and Jamie. We had a couple of beers and it was good fun.

Lastly, today I had a really fun adventure with Jess. I was in 3 countries today within a span of about 15 minutes! That's the record of my life time! I was in Thailand, Laos and Burma and I traveled by boat in the Mekong river! The place is called "the Golden Triangle". It was just a cool thing to do, even though there wasn't much to literally see or do. The boat ride was just blissful with the strong wind on my face that I really needed because it was sunny and humid, the soothing sound of water rushing by (I love water :) ), and the right balance of speed and sun. We got off the boat in Laos at this special economic zone market, and the one thing that impressed me most is that they sold whisky with a HUGE dead snake in the jar.

So all in all, I had a really fun weekend. I'm looking forward to start working again tomorrow!


The long stairs I took to go see Mae Sai from the top of the hill


Jess, Jamie and Sarah - the other volunteers


At the Golden Triangle!


Snake whisky in Laos!

Teaching English

First thing, I just wanted to thank everyone who reads my blog. At first, I thought it was just going to be my father and may be one or two of my friends who read it, but I was overwhelmed to find that a lot of you have commented, both on here and on facebook, or liked my status. It means a lot to me that you care to read my rambling blog. Thanks for the love, and the prayers. I do love you too, and I will also pray for you.

I should probably tell you what I actually do in DEPDC. Well, my main job is teaching English. I initially thought that it would be easy because afterall, I am bilingual. But it turns out to be a lot harder than I thought. Each class presents its own challenges. This morning, I taught a class of first graders. They were quite smart, and learned fast, and the content that I was teaching them were not very hard. I just taught them colors and objects. But they were just so energetic and loud, that it takes a lot of effort to get them to do anything, and by the end of the hour, I was actually tired from shouting (and this is ME tired from shouting!!!) But that was also the really fun part - they were soooo cute. They loved the vocab game I played with them. Several kids also gave me hugs and clinged onto my arm at the end of class. On the other hand, a few kids would also choose to not participate. Others would tease their classmate and sometimes, they would cry. I don’t know if I have a lot of skills of mediating this kind of problem, but I’m trying my best to be really nice and fun to the kids, and get them to be nice to each other too.

In the evening, I also taught some older students who were monks and monk novices. They were 18-22. I was teaching them stuff that was a lot harder. I taught them a conversation, and I went over the harder vocab, grammar and idioms. It was tough in a different way with them because contrary to the little kids class which is filled with the most outgoing and extroverted kids, these monks are so shy that it’s hard to get them to practice saying sentences. Also, the content is harder and that’s just harder to try to explain and teach in and of itself. Grammar is the hardest thing to teach, and the most boring thing. One of our activities was that they have to tell everyone what were the best and worst things of their day. One monk said that “the worst thing of my day was I did not smoke”. So I asked him if he likes to smoke before he became a monk, and he said no, never, and he never would as well. He said in Thai that he doesn’t like smoking in general. So I explained to him that what he was saying was incorrect, and actually he should say “the worst thing of my day was when people smoke” or “the worst thing of my day was people smoking”. He repeated after me and said “the worst thing of my day was when people smoking.”…..

I guess English grammar is hard….

Humility

So, I wanted to learn about humility, and I got my wish. Today, I worked like a farmer. I planted rice (ดำนา). A couple of other teachers and volunteers and I brought the children to the field so that they can learn about the most common occupation in Thailand - rice farming. We all planted 3 fields and it was actually hard work! Your back gets really sore because you have to bend down all the time. And everywhere is mud in the form of wet clay so that it is extremely slippery. There were also leaches that can suck your blood. The whole time I was there I was thinking "why doesn't rice cost more?"

I had a chance to talk to the teacher who owns the land. He said that he had worked in Bangkok, and then came back because he missed home. He said he likes being with nature, hated the rush and the competition in the city. He said that a place like that is heaven for the rich, and hell for the poor. Here in Mae Sai, he grows his food, and have no rent to pay. Everyone is nice and helpful. He's not looking to make a lot of money from farming rice, which is unprofitable at times, and always doesn't pay very much. But as long as he has enough, he's okay and content.

I find people here to be surprisingly kind. Today, as I walked out of my hotel room, it was raining lightly. I didn't mind it that much, and I was going to walk to the center. But as soon as I reached the entrance of the hotel, a lady who is a total stranger passed by in a pick-up truck with a baby inside and offered me a ride. I agreed. Later on today, another teacher helped me move into my apartment and took me shopping today and the process took around 2 hours. Near the end of it, she still said, "no hurry, just take your time to eat". Here, people seem to look after one another. No one is rushing. No one is competing.

I guess kindness is humility.

First day in Mae Sai

Entering the “other real world”, before going into the “usual real world”

So I decided that I want to start writing a blog, not because I think I’m a good writer, nor because I think I have great insight to anything, but because I want people that I love to witness the journey that I am taking that I think is essential for my personal growth –as a person, and as a child of God.

I am eternally grateful for what I have been blessed with. Everyday, I would give thanks for all the privileges that I have – more than a comfortable living, education, health, a loving family, a promising career. My mind tells that that I should be happy, and that survival in this world for me should be easy; but my heart longs for something more than consumerism, for an answer to the question “what is my calling”; while my soul searches for God and the way to peace. These are the things that I still struggle with.

So I have just over 2 weeks to be in Mae Sai, which is an area on the boarder of Thailand adjacent to Myanmar. I am volunteering at DEPDC, which is an organization that aims to prevent human trafficking, and today was my first day. I had a pleasure to spend it with Sarah, who is another volunteer from the States that has been with the organization for over a year. She started the day of by giving me a little presentation about the background of the organization and the human trafficking industry.

The first thing that I found astounding is that contrary to popular belief, poverty is not the most major factor of why people sell themselves or their children for sex or labor. A lot of people who are trafficked are people who don’t belong to the nation that they’re in. Many people who were born in Thailand whose parents are not Thai often get stuck in a situation where their ability to be granted Thai citizenship was left to the whim of the local government that is infamous for their bureaucracy. A lot of them end up being “stateless”. Legally, they can’t even travel outside of their district without a permit, or else they’ll be arrested. Most permits will grant them the ability to go somewhere nearby for a couple of weeks, but that’s as much as they would get. Imagine being born in Thailand, and the government will not allow you to legally go and work in Chiang Mai, which is the next to your home town. These people are extremely prone to trafficking, as the trafficker can have them be stuck in a situation where they know nobody, and that they cannot get help from the authorities. I was amazed by how the people that we call “authorities” can deny fellow humans basic human rights such as citizenship in the country that they were born in.

Sarah then told me about why people have the incentive to sell themselves or their children. It’s not always that they don’t have enough to eat. Sometimes, it’s because they don’t have a TV, or jewelry that they see that their neighbors have. These people also know that their neighbors have acquired these luxuries through selling their daughters, and it’s natural for them to think that they should do the same. Sarah told me that she knows a family in Chiang Rai, with a big house equipped with air conditioning, that have sent their daughters to “work” in Bangkok. Consumerism is like a viral disease. Prior, I assumed that it only affected people in the cities, and that it dictates us to only wear certain brands of clothes, and live in certain type of houses. Today, I found out that I was majorly wrong.

Parents and girls hope that through prostitution, there is a possibility that the entire family will become wealthy. Not because prostitution pays a lot, but because the clever ones will deceive men to financially support them on a regular basis. They will say that they’re in love with these men, and that they are ending their prostitution career, but they need more money for this and that. They do quite well financially, but these are the top people. These are the top 1% or less. The rest of them are the ones that are deceived. They are raped, beaten, forced to do all kinds of things they don’t want to do, get sent to all types of places they don’t belong to, have their legs broken, get all front teeth knocked out, get stuck to work on a boat for years with no way out. The list goes on and on.

Our society has gotten to the point where it is okay that parents are willing to put their daughters in this kind of risk for a new set of TV, or may be air conditioning. That it is okay that I have an unused Louis Vuitton bag in my closet that I don’t really need, while there are hungry children who live a few blocks away. That deception, rape, abuse, and denying basic human rights are all fair game when it comes to money. I am not finger pointing, and if I am at all, 3 fingers out of 5 shall be pointed to me. But this is the culture that we live in, a harsh reality recognized by so many, that so few have a solution for.

I don’t know how to make this right, and how to make this world a better place. But later on today, I found joy while teaching the kids English. These are the little kids who would be prone to trafficking when they reach their early teenage years. DEPDC aims to educate them and give them enough skills and self esteem so that when the time comes, they recognize that their human right is worth more than any amount of money can buy. I found these kids to be very pleasurable to teach. They are not naughty, and they don’t seem to be any less intelligent than the kids I know in the city. They remind me of myself and my classmates when we were younger. It made me realized that we were made to be equal in His eyes, and if children are given the opportunity, they can excel. These kids that I was teaching were so cute. They sounded like they actually had fun shouting on the top of their lungs “My favorite animal is lion”, which was the phrase that I was teaching them. They did everything that I had tried to teach them, and they did it well. When one girl showed me that she has written the sentence “My favorite animal is ass”, she seemed so upset and scared when I told her that we don't say that anymore but now we commonly use the word "donkey".  I laughed because it was so funny how upset she was even though I found it to be a cute and funny mistake.

So I am making up the mindset which I hope to last for the rest of the 2 weeks here. I want to learn how to find joy in little things that makes those around me laugh, which are things that money can never buy. I want this journey to continue once I start working in the money driven world of business. I want to learn about humility, and what it means to be a fellow human.