Warm Heart at Work

Looking down on the kitchen (left) and boy's house (right)

Wandering around at ground level, I am amazed by what we have created in the past few months, but a couple of days ago I got a whole new perspective on our realm. P’Win and his crew hauled the tower for the water tanks erect and when it was secure, I climbed to the top. Here’s what Warm Heart looks like “from the air.”

Looking east across the dam to girls' house

Looking northeast across the slowly filling large fishpond, dam on right

Shafer, Tara DeWorsop (Warm Heart Microenterprise and Microfinance) and Mike Horst, leader of the TCNJ team, inspecting the tower

It is really hot and dry in Phrao right now, especially at our land! Everything is covered with a fine red dust. But there is hope. The TCNJ Engineers Without Borders team arrives in just a couple of days to bring us water. Praise the Lord. We cannot wait.

The TCNJ team surveyed our land last summer and spent the academic year developing the plans for a site-wide water management system. Their plan calls for a deep well (more than 80 meters) with a solar pump, a huge underground storage tank, a water tower crowned by two shiny stainless steel tanks and then a web of 4″ pipes that run across the entire property.

Well head in foreground with tower pad and tank excavation in background

The ten member team will (somehow) be bringing the donated solar pump with them when they fly in on May 20th. In preparation for their arrival, Warm Heart’s contractor has been hard at work building the basics. The slab for the tower is in, the pipes for the tower itself have been delivered and the hole for the underground tank has been excavated.

The pick-up in the background is carrying the pipes to build the tower.

For the time being we are surviving on bottled drinking water and wash water pumped out of the fish pond, so we cannot wait for that solar pump to arrive! But every day with offer thanks to the TCNJ Engineers Without Borders team. Without them we have no idea what we would have done. After all, they not only designed the entire system - they have raised every penny the entire project will cost!

Warm Heart has only the warmest thanks for the TCNJ EWB team - our largest donors to date!

The kids came a day early. We discovered this 12 hours before they were to show up. This created quite a tizz. Dirty and smelly as we all were, we hopped in the truck and rushed to town to buy sleeping mats, sheets, gas cooker, cooler and everything else we needed in the half hour before stores closed. We made it, but just. If nothing else, our outrageous appearance and the volume of our purchases occasioned lots of questions and resulted in great PR!

A picture is worth a 1,000 words - so why try to tell you about move-in day? Here are a few pictures to give you a sense of the scene. For those of you who are students or have college age kids, the whole thing looked and went exactly like move-in day on campus - without the traffic jam.

The house was ready.

The bathrooms were ready.

The chicken house was ready.

The staff was ready - and waiting.

Nung Oam was waiting.

Finally! It took three and a half hours to get down from the mountain. The required circle on the floor.

Not everyone was immediately enthralled.

At times it really did seem a bit over the top.

But teddy bears rule, even in Thailand.

For the past week the Warm Heart staff as worked like stoats under the Thai hot season sun to prepare for the kids’ arrival. The homes are done! But of course the construction crew left a minor disaster behind - cement bags, energy drink bottles, broken bricks and tiles, etc. And no one had pruned our lamyai and banana orchards for years. So guess what we did? That’s right.

We picked up.

Mae Joom and Tara hard at it

We swept.

P'Oy on the long sweep

We took restful breaks.

We had a lot of fun.

Truth...

...and consequences

Mae Joom is camera shy.

No you don't!

Tara is not.

What, me modest?

P’Pieu is philosophical.

Just what is he thinking about?

P’Toon is just crazy.

Hello?

Good friends

Tired little girls

What a sorry crew! Can you help?

Take a minute - literally - to watch Dan Christopher’s great short about the start of construction at the Children’s Homes site. And stay tuned! We will have photos of the nearly completed homes later today or tomorrow! The construction deadline is the 27th and we are on schedule.
Warm Heart Homes Under Construction

The pictures tell the story! I can already imagine the kids digging around the foundations to plant flowers.

Girls' house (top) and bathroom (bottom)

Interior of girls' house

The kitchen/dining room

Porch of the dining room and view toward boys' house (right) and bathroom (left)

We are all feeling very proud of ourselves right now because of how much we have accomplished. The roofs are on the children’s homes and the walls are going up. The fingerlings are going into the fish ponds and we now own chickens. But even we were surprised when Dan Christopher, our film maker in residence, reminded us of the little PSA he made just nine months ago. Check out the virgin fields of waving grass!

“Wanee ronn jang” is the phrase on the tip of every worker’s tongue, and the statement is undoubtedly true - today is hot. Despite the oppressive heat, dozens of Thai’s work tirelessly on the construction of the Children’s Homes, rushing to meet the May 15th deadline - the target date for the move-in of thirty kids from a not-so-nearby Karen (hilltribe) village. In the spirit of true team work, the Warm Heart staff has been laboring alongside the hired workers and sweating, not only from the demanding physical labor required for clearing the area of the future fish pond, but also from the nearby fires used to remove the brush. In short, the “Village in the Valley” project is officially underway. See some of the action in the linked short.

It’s been nine months since I first laid eyes on the Warm Heart Land, and I must say, I am impressed by developments. Upon returning, I didn’t even recognize the area that had previously been full of knee-high, wild grass and mounds of uneven dirt. Now, after two months of bulldozing, terracing, digging, and plowing, so much has been accomplished: the foundations for the main structures have been laid, area has been cleared for a full-size soccer field, and a multitude of agriculture and aquaculture projects are about to begin.

Despite everyone’s hard work, my stay has been so peaceful. Everything at the Aomdoi feels the same as last time - Pah Meh Lah has been cooking up a storm and the mountains to the West are as beautiful as always. The only thing that has changed is the season, and once again I’ve managed to miss the Lychee harvest! Aside from brainstorming with Shafer, Carole, and PiTie, watching Gaudhi box Muay Thai style, adventuring with Tara, and attempting to speak Thai with the Warm Heart staff (still no luck with the tones), I’ve been working on generating video content for Micro Enterprise and the cultural library project, visiting cooperatives around Phrao and Chiang Mai. It’s good to be back, even though I don’t have my favorite fruit handy. Expect another update when I return to Phrao at the end of April!

On Wednesday the Warm Heart staff suffered a collective heart attack of the “help, all our wishes have been granted - now what do we do?” variety. For eight months we have discussed warm and fuzzy abstractions such as “what do you think the kids will…?” and “when the children get here….” Well, a casual glance at the calendar makes it all too clear that when is now. At least eighteen children, four young adults and two house mothers move in on May 15th - just two and a half months from now. So Wednesday we held an all day planning session to ensure that we have at least a list of all the things that must be accomplished by then.

We don’t doubt that P’Win, our contractor, will be done. But when should successive fish ponds be filled and stocked to provide for a steady supply of fish? When should we buy our first chickens? What veggies can be put in now at the height of the dry season? Running through the long list of items we need to outfit the houses - from plastic plates to fans to a rice cooker for 30 and a refrigerator - are there any that we might get donated? How do you organize a donation campaign in Thailand? (A wholly new notion.) How many trips will it take to Khun Pang, our village, to collect all of the necessary information about the kids and permissions from parents or grandparents where parents are missing? Who do we think the perfect “Warm Heart kid” should be - and so how should life in the homes be organized? What should the after school program teach? Who’s going to develop the curriculum - to say nothing of teach it?

And what about fun? Actually, that’s the only thing we have completely covered. Warm Heart Daughter Number One, Nung Sudah (from the Akha village of Ban Arya), has been placed in charge of fun. As the Empress of Fun she is proving to be imaginative and forceful, and will surely get more of her plans implemented than most of the staff. P’Sop has the welcoming ceremony all planned in her head and the list of dignitaries to be invited all ready - but the rest of us are struggling with the details of the orientation for parents and kids that will follow it - and what we are going to do that first evening when all the parents have gone home and it’s just us and the kids.

The entire staff is full of nervous energy but also excited. Everyone has their assignments and the calendar is pockmarked with the Xs marking due dates for projects. The only big question mark hangs over the senior team - will they be able to raise the needed operating funds? Warm Heart took a huge gamble and spent everything - literally everything - in the bank to build the homes because if we aren’t ready for this school year - end May - then we will have to wait another year to act on our most important commitment to our community. But now the pressure is really on. Can we find the donors to support our kids for a year?

Dust is swirling over the Warm Heart land these days coating the broad leaves of the teak and banana trees - the throat, too. But we don’t mind. Our little kingdom is almost unrecognizable. Bulldozer and backhoe, steam shovel and dump truck have labored since February 1st to reshape our landscape. (You can see a full site plan and elevations of the children’s homes in the Photo Gallery.)

The lower section of our land - to the east (right on the plan) - has been graded into a series of sweeping terraces on which we will plant our fruit orchards. At the center of the contoured terraces lies the large fish pond and above it a wide, flat area on which we will build the new Warm Heart offices. It will really be something to work surrounded by fruit trees and looking out over the pond with its water lillies and lotus flowers to the mountains.

On the long, north-south upper section of our land, the changes are even more startling. Where once a narrow trickle ran, we have now excavated a wide, winding stream punctuated by seven check dams. When full, the “stream” will become seven fish ponds, each with a small wetland area spreading beside it. A path runs along the opposite bank for fish harvesting, so that the wetland bank can become a wild nature preserve for our children to observe.

At the top of the stream, the real work started on the 16th - the foundations of the first two children’s homes! Yes, after just seven and a half months, we have begun construction on the first of what we hope will be several Warm Heart “Villages in the Valley.” The boys’ home is going up on the west bank of the stream, the girls’ home on the east bank. Also on the east bank will be the kitchen/dining room. Stay posted!