Volunteers

For a week now I've been constantly impressed by volunteers.

It takes a lot to give up two years of your life. I suppose it is not so much home comforts, but missing out in vital points in the lives of friends and family.

This becomees a lot easier when you know that the work you are doing is counting for something - and changing lives.

I feel really lucky to have been able to see first hand how lives are improving by fantastic individuals back by an insightful organisation

Over the past week what I've found is that it is not always 'big things' that evoke change.

Many of the volunteers I have spoken to have reported a series of baby steps, slow and sure movements in the right direction.

These can be really little things, like in the case of student farmers who at the end of a project wrote a newsletter about their experience.

Big deal you might normally say at home.

But when you are not used to a tradition of freedom of expression, it is a big thing. Writing something down passes on learnt skills to others too.

A simple newsletter still makes Canadian volunteer Sam smiles as he talked to me on a model farm in Chiang Mai.

More about him and an amazing day harvesting rice and the kindness of strangers later

Burma

This is the Thai border looking into Burma. In seeing some of the conditions people would rather live in, than live in Burma, I can't imagine it to be the best of places.

So when given the opportunity to go and have a look at the border, I leapt at it.

I knew that Thailand has limited free press and that the border is a sensitive issue so I was expected a brief visit, perhaps peering out through the window of a car.

What I found was almost a tourist attraction. Putting Lands End to shame, there's a massive sign to have your photograph taken, pointing to the last bit of Thailand. Ice cream and stands galore, there is a market community thriving on day trippers. In fact the whole area is dominated by the border.

I still don't fully understand why it is exists? Of course I understand why there is a border, just why is isn't fully implemented?

There are regular boats that cross over to Thailand without the battering of an eyelid. We watched as men and a bike poured into a rubber ring and made the journey across, for around 20p.

No sign of the border control. Yet in my journey from Mae Sot to Chaing Mai, we were stopped six times and the coach searched three times (even my bag, perhaps incase I had smuggled Along out) .

Many live here in No Mans Land. It's rent free, and that's about all it has going for it. For its lodgers, this is better than what came before.

I don't feel I know enough to debate the hows or why this is happening. As a journalist I was amazed to see it unfold.

From an outsiders point of view it's intriguing, the border seems to be a bit like the roadside cardboard policemen I have encountered.

Following the hand gensture, I persume they are telling motorists to stop for the police. In Thailand's bonkers traffic system, no-one takes the slightest bit of notice and carries on regardless.

There was no real chance this would work, yet it was introduced and financed, and remains in place all the same.

Lost in Translation

Sometimes Money Isn't Enough

I forgot to take my shoes off at the first school I visited in Mae Sot. It is something I have had the misfortune of forgetting all week.
I had arrived at one of the projects helped by VSO volunteer Simon. It is a migrant school, that by definition, throws up a host of problems. And me walking in with my shoes done up was probably the least of the concerns but I felt a right idot.

Burmese in Thailand have various status.
Being a refugee means you live in a refugee compound.
If you are a migrant you are general  illegal, although there are lots of loopholes in the system.

So at a migrant school you find nearly all of the children and teachers are both illegal. And these are the children that turn up and don't have to work. This week is harvest time and in some of the schools all of the children are out working in the fields. They could be arrested at any time and deported. It is one of the reasons that the streets of Mae Sot are like a ghost town after dark, because the majority of people shouldn't be there.



Entire schools often find that they are moved on, such is their illegal status.

Even if you manage to get children and teachers into one place, what do you teach? Thai has an 'education for all' policy that in reality doesn't mean all. Some of the illegal children would be welcome to join Thai schools, but they speak Burmese.

And if migrant school qualifications aren't realised, then what is the point?

Up until now, there was no curriculum to follow. VSO has been working hard in this area, both with the curriculum itself, negotiations between departments and  the practical implication.

Simon's job isn't sexy one in media terms. But more and more often it is the things that are going on behind the scenes that are so important. That's where his management skills come in. Working between a heap of schools, NGOs, government departments and police, he is helping untangle the mess that is as politically charged as it is complicated.

This is one of the children at one of the schools. For me it brings very unquantifyable and dry matters such as migration and infrastructure into a real context. If the eyes are the window to the soul then Burmese children have souls that run deep.

It's the same for Simon. If he needs any reminder, the aim in all this is only just a few feet away.

I was surprised at just how complicated the situation is. It's more complicated than I can post here or that I can fully understand from a brief visit. More complicated I fear, than will often make the mainstream media Just throwing resources at a problem can't always fix it. Of course, you need finances to help with these schemes and that is vital. But I think it's why VSO's straplines of Sharing Skills, Changing Lives is right, not sharing cash, changing lives. Sometimes money isn't enough.

Wires

Which one was the power for the TV again?

 

Along

It was the way he was shaken awake that I keep on thinking about.
It is daft really because you prepare yourself to see things in life. This is a story gathering trip after all.
I'm trying to get stories that provoke a reaction. Either by showing people how bad things are, so to get help, or by stories that inspire them to come and volunteer themselves.
VSO volunteer Simon said to me earlier in the week "I tell people I sell children, I get the highest price for them that I possibly can. I think they are worth it". He's right. I too am temporarily in the business but all my journalistic experience and skill went out the window when I saw her shake and shout Along awake.

Without giving too much sensitive detail away in a blog, Along  is five, or there abouts, he doesn't know his birthday as was found abandoned in the street.

He was picked up by a taxi man and taken in by now adoptive mum, a migrant worker living in a slum. Because of her migrant status she is illegal, and thus at the mercy of whoever wants to pay her the lowest. Either that or go back to Burma.

When Along came through the doors of super-VSO project worker Meg, he didn't speak. Just a few months into the project he laughs and dances and is a joy.

Once washed and changed, fed and given vitamins, he bounced around for the entire day. He was allowed to be a child.

At the end of the day, as we dropped the children off from the back of a truck, (that would have health and safety bods on their knees), he was so tired and fell asleep standing up.

I knew that he was poor, and I knew that he was really poorly, and I had braced myself for what I was going to see. I've worked in journalism for seven years and worked in poor conditions in Russia and have grown accustomed to my thicker skin.

What I didn't expect was the way he was shaken awake from his slumber, brought around at a rate of knots into a hell hole. I forgot what I was meant to me doing, I forgot I was meant to be interviewing and had to be prompted my Meg. I forgot I had flown half way around the world to report on situations exactly like this.

VSO and the likes of World Educations and dozens of NGOs are working so well in this part of the world. Thank God, because there is no alternative help. They are transforming lives and creating futures where there was little or very little hope. Along will be at the centre again with Meg in the coming days and if anyone can transform his life, then she can. On a more immediate level it doesn't stop him from living where he does and for me, rather selfishly, doesn't stop me from thinking about the the rather trivial matter of the way he was woken up.

Bangkok to Mae Sot

Together with Fhon, VSO Thailand country manager, we caught one of the bright pink taxis to the airport for our short flight out of Bangkok towards Mae Sot. I say 'bright pink taxi' like it is nothing out of the ordinary, that's what a few days in Thailand will do for you.

 

As well as the amazing colours on the inside there are a host of charms and flora on the dash board or strung from the rear view mirror. It's done as a kind of car insurance. Pok Pong iprotects against road type perils while Pok Gun is taking measures to avoid death such as wearing a helmet, seatbelt or not weaving in and out of traffic within yards of death. Unsurprisingly the Thais tend to choose Pok Gun.

When I landed at Bangkok and grabbed a cab I tried to put the seat belt on. The taxi driver muffled 'not needed not needed' and waved me to put the seat belt down. On closer inspection on this and every cab  I've been in, the buckle of the seat belt has been removed, making the 'belt' aspect rather redundant.

 For my flight with Fhon she showed me to the rather swish airport lounge we were entitled to sit in. A break away from the hustle and bustle of a day in Bangkok it served that well known combination of popcorn amd dired fish sugar on rice, wrapped in a square leaf. I caused much amusement on trying to eat the leaf, only to find it was stapled together.

The juice they served and in fact any drink or food item served in simply drenched in sugar. Healthy stir fry, add some sugar. Plain rice dish, add a super sweet sticky sauce. Coffee without sugar is almost unheard of and Diet Coke a myth long forgotten.

As the founders of Red Bull and other energy drinks the Thais seem to have more than a fondness for the sweet stuff - it is a way of life. The Red Bull sold here comes in 100ml bottles, a concentrate of its weaker Western sister.

The juice at the airport is what is served up as concentrated squash. It's amazing how quickly you get a taste for it though.

When in the air we flew above this

.....before landing at possibly the best airport in the world.

 

 

 

The First Leg

The problem with setting goals is that you often unexpectedly achieve them.
I had emailed VSO in a bid to help out a great organisation that I knew from previous experience really could change lives for the good. Happy with my job in Devon but searching for something I used to have in way of trying to do a spot of good, getting back to my roots that had inspired by a decade ago. I Googled the communications unit and offered my services in any way that might help.

And here I am, less than 6 months later, in 35c Thailand!

The idea behind the trip was to try and somehow quantify some of the good things done volunteers in their Thai projects. Find a paper trail between a volunteer, giving up two years of their lives, family and friends, the huge resources and commitment poured in by VSO, and an outcome.
Nothing so far has been as previously imagined in meetings in Putney or from the safety of a British winter in Putney.