where cider meets condensed milk: Trip to Dada's Home

where cider meets condensed milk

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Trip to Dada's Home

About 11 years ago, the Baan Unrak home splintered to form a boys' home farther out in the jungle. Most of our group hopped in a truck one afternoon to visit the home, meet the Dada who runs it, and participate in their local village day. We sang karaoke on the bumpy ride over, and were thrilled when "our" 85-year-old Dada joined in with a vibrating baritone for "Yesterday". (He didn't seem to know the theme song to Armegeddon, though. Must not be required singing in Little Dada School.)

Elisabeth, me, Emily, and April all piled into the truck bed.

Our Dada, Eric, and Emma (who may have gone sailing straight out the back of the truck if we'd hit a curve too fast).

See that picture on the control panel? It must be his mother or grandmother, but you will often walk into a shop, hostel, or restaurant and have a huge picture of a terrifying old woman glaring back at you. This woman looks more pleasant than many, some of which are still giving me chills. Respect your elders, yo!

Our school and area of town seemed bit urban compared to Dada's home, which was just an area of jungly trees and rocks along a dirt road that had been cleared aside to make room for the main buildings. There are 28 boys at the home, ranging from 3-18, though lots of little girls and boys from the local village were there with their parents. The villagers do not speak Thai-- they speak Mon, which is a hill tribe language, so our beginning Thai phrases such as "What's your name?" and "How old are you?" were made irrelevant. However, all the orphanage boys could speak English to some degree, and the older ones were fantastic.

This women was so gorgeous, and her husband and baby were equally cute to match.

The boys lived in open-air bamboo huts behind the main building. There are a few women who work at the home to cook, clean, and take care of the boys. There were some long-term volunteers and a handful of JETs staying for the week, and they lived in huts way back behind the boys' huts. There was a new concrete kindergarten classroom building, but all the other children go to school in town.

Because everything always comes back to goats... this looks a bit like Pele, I think. If the fence hadn't been there, I could have reached through, grabbed its horns, and revved them like motorcycle handles. Vrroom vroom!

(Don't worry, I didn't actually get that close, in case of Goat Influenza.) These are part of a goat-loan project Dada started, where they loan out breeding goats to a village for a year, let the village keep the babies, and then give the parents to another village. Too bad Emmaline and Lily can't participate, but I'm sure they're happy at Goathaven in California.

We arrived during games time-- boys trying to climb a greased bamboo pole, jumping for treats, eating apples on a string, tug-of-war, and such. It felt a lot like elementary sports day, since all the parents were participating as well!

Little kids jumping for treats tied to a bamboo lattice.

Apples on a string.

The guy on the right (in the Poetry Police shirt) was a dead ringer for a young Patrick Swayze, and all of us girls thought he was beautiful (albeit 17 years old). The boys disagreed or accused us of impurity, but I think they were all just jealous that they would never be a Thai Patrick Swayze. (Cue "Unchained Melody"...)

A little boy showing off his new sunglasses.

Tug-of-war!! (Dada is the tall man in the orange T-shirt.)

Madness after the clay-pot pinata split open.

One man finally getting the treats from the top of the greased bamboo pole!

After games times, the JET volunteers began sorting bags and bags of clothes to distribute to the families. Some of the mothers were very aggressive trying to get clothing for their children, and some would sneak back into line to get extra pieces. There were also some toys and gifts that the Dada's Home JETs had brought from Japan, which were hot items.

After the day was done and the families had headed out on foot, bicycle, or with an entire family on one motorbike, the playarea was completely trashed. Candy wrappers, balloon remnants,bottles, all sorts of rubbish you can imagine, just thrown onto the ground. The boys helped us pick some of it up, but no one thought it was that out of the ordinary except those of us from pristine Japan. They served us a nice dinner-- no fake meat, but an overload of tofu in every single dish. It was delicious, but a different style on the same dietary restrictions. We had dragonfruit, which looks like a purple and green grenade that has sprouted little fins, but inside it's the texture of kiwifruit, except all white with little black seeds. We asked Dada to tell us more about the home, and it sounds like the support he's been receiving from go-MAD (Go Make a Difference, the service group through National AJET) has made a huge impact over the past few years, since he now has volunteers every winter and support for projects throughout the year. It would have been an even more interesting talk if one of the volunteers didn't keep commandeering the speech by talking about his personal accomplishments at the home this year and last. This Dada is also from the Philipines, and used to be an engineer before devoting his life to this home as part of Ananda Marga. He looked very young, but perhaps was in his early 40s. Dada has been sending the oldest boys to technical college in Kanchanaburi or Bangkok so that they can have a career and a future, but it's very expensive, and he doesn't have enough sponsors to cover the costs.

posted by Raychaa @ 12:01 PM

1 comments:

At 2:12 PM, Anonymous said…

the kids are soooo cute. please bring one or two back to english hill as omiyagi (sp??--it's been a while) with you when you come home... ;)