HOLY FAMILY CHILDREN’S HOME

Teacher Fan is a very mellow and low profile person, but with strong faith in God’s providence for the children and people she works with. She was grateful for my help but gave me little direction, so I had to create my own position helping with these 22 children aged 4 to 15. They yell out ‘Grandma, I am home’ to Teacher Fan everyday before they enter the front gate. As long as ‘grandma’ is not busy at her desk, they either climb up and down on her lap to tell her how funny new Teacher Wu treats them or work with ‘grandma’ on her school projects all over the floor or write letters to their adopting parents and siblings or draw pictures for them. They all know they have been loved so much, so they in turn remember those flooded in the Tsunami, benefactors, and souls in purgatory in their daily morning and night prayers. Two older girls even told grandma that they would like to follow grandma’s footstep to serve the poor when they grow up.
If they are sick with small causes, there is an acupuncturist, Doctor Wu (no relation to me), who is given room and board on the premises to watch over them. He is a retired army pilot from Taiwan and devotes himself to the people in northern Thailand for free acupunctures and herb medications, even giving bus fare to those who must travel from the mountain area to see him. Some weekday mornings, Dr. Wu will meet the 22 children half way to Thai school, handing them each a cooked egg that he just bought from the swap meet type market, in case they didn’t get enough nutrition in the breakfast.
When I kissed a five-year old girl named Holy Joy good night, she held my face and asked, “Teacher Wu, do you have a mother?” I paused and did not know what to reply to her because she reminded me of my elderly mother back home. When she saw tears coming down from my eyes, she held me tightly and drew a small cross on my forehead. Some 15 years old kids are only at 2nd grade level because education wasn’t available until Teacher Fan accepted them into Holy Family. They know they are way behind so they are very studious and want extra homework.
HUEY-LONG VILLAGE CHINESE ELEMENTARY AFTER SCHOOL
(Monday thru Friday from 4:30 – 7 pm and Saturday 8 am – 4 pm).
The main reason so many Chinese schools are needed in northern Thailand is to prolong Chinese culture and language. Plus Thai schools (Monday thru Friday from 8 am to 3:30 pm) in mountains are very slack in teaching. Two years ago, Huey-Long Village Chinese Elementary After School was poised to shut down due to financial difficulties. The villagers asked Teacher Fan to take over as principle. Knowing education can provide alternatives and save those students from being sold as prostitutes and drug dealers, Teacher Fan will not let the school close even though she has to beg for donations. I acted as substitute teacher for 2nd and 3rd grade, teaching Chinese, English and Math and I also organized a Christmas play of the Epiphany: Three Kings, with all 100 students on the stage. Most precious were the cute toddlers acting as lambs but walking like frogs.
In order to introduce daily sanitation customs to the students, we put on a little play for the kids. I acted the homeless lady, spitting, tossing garbage out the window, wiping my runny nose with my sleeves, dragging my shoes, and rubbing my eyes. I got the local hospital to provide toothbrushes and pastes for all the children, using a model of the teeth they loaned me to teach kids how to brush from the bottom of the gums all the way to the end of the teeth, and tongue, and why. On Christmas day, we climbed up to near-by Lahu mountain village to distribute some old clothes, dried food and daily items to the less fortunate. They offered us sticky rice patty in return. In the afternoon, I took some of the older kids hiking to Bat Cave and swimming in the creek. They taught me how to start a campfire to dry their clothes so Teacher Fan would not know and scold them for swimming on a cold day. Later I had to confess to Teacher Fan that I violated her rules, but luckily no kids got sick from swimming because they always take cold showers even in the chilly winter.
40% of the students are non-Chinese speaking ethnic students. One day in my English class, after I taught them ‘you are a bad girl and you are a bad boy’, they asked me how to say teacher in English. They turned around and told me ‘you are a bad teacher’. Later, their home class teacher came in to pick up something and they repeated ‘you are a bad teacher’. Songs were my primary mode of teaching English, so they all enjoyed ‘Edelweiss’ and ‘Do-Re-Mi’ from “the Sound of Music’. One day in our assembly, I put them up on the stage but they did not cooperate and would not sing those songs at all and it made me very upset. Later they told me that they could not grasp English lyrics comfortably. It made me realize that I had ignored their absorbing ability and overestimated my teaching ability. After I apologized to them, they asked my forgiveness for not trying 100%.
On my last day, I asked how they would remember me the most. One boy said ‘your big butt’ (for my Jazzercise friends, you all remember how I stick my bootie out exaggeratedly when dancing and that was how I taught them to dance in their PE class). Another boy told me ‘you fart so much’ (I guess he is absolutely right on this, because I was fed potatoes, yams and beans most of the time. I just got my blood work report with perfect cholesterol and glucose. If this kind of diet triggers my normal cholesterol and glucose, I would go for farting anytime). In return, I told them I would remember them the most from the smell of their feet at nighttime prayers before they take a shower. (It smelled so bad). They asked me “When shall I see you again?” and I told them I could not promise them anything because if I cannot keep my promise, I would be a cheater and would disappoint them.
In the early morning of the day I came home, I left my slides with one boy whose slides had just broken. I left my aerobic shoes with another boy who is going to middle school in April and this will be his first pair of sports shoes. Without further thinking, I wore a pair of very thin slippers provided by China Airline on my way to Taiwan. Teacher Fan commented that "Now you are really, truly a refugee from northern Thailand and I am accepting you as one of us." Later as I was walking back and forth between duty free shops of the Bangkok airport, my feet and knees hurt and I had to sit down and raise my feet up. It reminded me of what Mother Teresa had said: To give until it hurts.