Warm Heart at Work

Greetings from the Clinic in the Clouds!

I know blogs are supposed to be spontaneous, near stream of consciousness, daily diaries, but we’ve been on top of a mountain for the past week and the mountain featured neither internet cafes nor wired connectivity. Sorry about that!

Silence should not be construed evidence of Christmas break sloth. The Warm Heart team has been hard at work, and I do mean hard at work, since December 22nd. In a week we built a “clinic in the clouds” that swirl around the small Akha village of Ban Arya (population 207 without us).

You can see lots of photos of the project - what Ban Arya looks like, kids, people, construction, the Warm Heart staff at work and at rest - if you go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/WarmHeartWorldwide.

Actually, it wasn’t just us. On any given day ten Akha women with their dangling beads and high silver headdresses (wrapped in colorful dish towels whether as a fashion statement or protection from the sun, I have no idea) hoed up a storm, five men cemented the foundation or a dozen kids just buzzed around.

The project really started on the 19th when a couple dozen of our friends from a Chiang Mai 4-wheel off-road club showed up to help carry our supplies up to Ban Arya. These guys have to be seen to be believed. In Texas or Oklahoma, you wouldn’t bat an eye – big, diesel Ford 250s and Toyotas with huge tires, jacked suspensions, chrome roll-bars, macho grills and winches, and, yes, snorkels. All that’s missing is the gun racks. In Thailand, however, these dudes are totally over the top and we love them. They’re all in construction and didn’t think anything to throwing twenty-five bags of cement, twenty-five bags of sand, lumber, tools, food for a small army and beer for a bigger one into the back and heading off up the mountain. The tougher the better. Good thing, too, because it was 9:00 PM, bitter cold, and pitch dark by the time they had off-loaded!

On the 22nd half the Warm Heart team bounced up the dirt path that passes as a road, dumped tools and supplies at the site and then settled in at the Queen’s cabins. The entire top of one mountain in the range is a Royal Project devoted to organic farming and the preservation of endangered flora. At the highest point are a fantastic lookout and a clutch of A-frame bungalows. The area is exquisitely landscaped with local flowers, shrubs and trees, and the views are breathtaking. We made a big fire, grilled strips of beef and sang a lot (something that Warm Heart does whenever there’s food and fun). Looking up through the tall pines, every star was in focus and the moon was brilliant. The air was clear and cold. It was perfect – and it stayed perfect for a week!

On the 23rd almost a third of the village met us at the to-be clinic – the women in full Akha dress (which they wear all day every day) and the men in a motley of shorts, tee shirts, army uniform parts, blue jeans and traditional Akha pants. Everyone fell upon the sorry old structure that was to become the clinic and in a matter of hours stripped the frame clean. Gone were the old vertical bamboo slat walls, the sagging paneling, the piles of junk, the filth in the privy. A dozen hoes attacked the rock hard red clay around the slab to carve out drainage ditches and repair erosion runnels. By noon “Grandpa” (as the merciless Warm Heart staff dubbed our 55 year old carpenter) was hard at work framing up new walls and by evening the first of the new clapboard was going on.

This stage of the Clinic in the Clouds project – preparing the clinic building itself – involved a gut job renovation of an existing structure. By the time the gutting was finished, all that was left was slab, knee wall, ten tree log posts, a roof, and a separate out house. In five days, the combined Warm Heart and Ban Arya teams squared the posts, put in wall studs, clapboarded the entire building and added the interior dividing wall, put in four big double windows and three solid core door, added solar power and wired the building for three compact florescent ceiling lights, a hanging work light where the examination bed will be and wall plugs, plumbed the out house and the examination room adding a sink and wall faucet, built a new, bamboo fence and dug drainage ditches around the building, laid concrete aprons around the building to prevent future erosion under the slab, skim coated the cinder block knee wall with concrete inside and out, stained all of the wood with anti-termite stain, and painted the knee wall around the building inside and out. It was a huge amount of fun.

The renovation project was funded by Hannah Reynolds (who also came to Thailand to help with construction) and contributions from her friends at Bryn Athyn College. (http://www.brynathyn.edu) The GlobalMed Chapter of Northeastern University is also a prospective donor. (globemed.nu@gmail.com )

Even renovated, the clinic is a simple building that will serve many purposes. It sits on a concrete slab some 20 ft by 35 ft and stands 15 ft to a single peak. The roof is supported by 10” square posts. A cinder block knee wall runs around the outside above which rise walls of 2×3 stud covered by clapboard. The interior is split into a large room and a small room. The large room will serve as a classroom for the health volunteers and for Impact, an NGO run by a son of the village and his wife. They will use the space to teach villagers to read Romanized Akha and preserve traditional culture. The small room will be the clinic itself with an examining table, metal medicine cabinet, stainless steel instruments table, sink, and so on. Lighting is supplied by translucent roof tiles and florescent bulbs powered by a solar panel, inverter and deep-cycle battery set.

Our hosts are a collection of remarkable people. Leading the work team is our Warm Heart daughter Nung Sudah’s father, P’AhUe. He is short, stocky, deeply tanned and weathered with broad, calloused hands. Looking into his strong, craggy face, there is no question that Sudah is his daughter; the resemblance is uncanny. Leading the project – and it seems the village, too – is NaaLay, the senior health volunteer. NaaLay is tireless. She can out hoe, out lift and out carry any person in the village, to say nothing of Warm Heart. She is everywhere giving directions or giving a hand; everyone listens to her. It’s hard not to. NaaLay has a smile that gives off light, but eyes that never leave yours during a conversation. At thirty-four she may still be working for her sixth grade certificate through Thailand’s informal education program, but this is a woman to be reckoned with.

We have made lots of valuable contacts up on the mountain. We have become very friendly with the director of the Royal Project, who is delighted that Warm Heart is providing the first ever medical facility for the people in this area. He has promised to include us in his dispatches to the palace. We have also had the opportunity to talk at length with the director of the Phrao Hospital who was touring a water project with his staff and stopped to spend the night at the bungalows. He is excited about the prospect of hosting a first class emergency medicine training program at his hospital and about the possibility of partnering with an American hospital.

Ban Arya is a pretty normal mountain village in most ways. What sets it apart is the nearby Royal Project which provides year around employment at 100 baht (about $3) a day. Very few mountain villages have a local source of cash income and must depend on remittances from village members working in distant cities. In other ways, however, Ban Arya is typical. Houses are built up the sides of two connecting, steep sided small valleys so that most look out over the one below. Two packed clay tracks run through town and a web of foot paths connect the homes. There are three churches, but no school, no store, no clinic (yet), no extension service, no post office or other official building, nothing but bamboo homes. There is an herbal doctor, a basket weaver, a musician. Every woman in the village is a master cross-stitcher and every man can build a house without using nails.

Like all mountain villages, Ban Arya is a village of kids. They are everywhere. Ban Arya is a village that sends all of its school age children to the valley at age six so that they can attend school – and still it is crawling with kids. The minute we roll in in the morning, there they are, big eyed, serious, shy. It takes a bit for them to approach, but the hair on my arms is totally irresistible and once they’ve dared touch that, there’s no stopping them. And no matter how many of them infest the work site, there are always more elsewhere in the village. Raise your eyes from work and you see them climbing up the posts of porches or running down steep paths, swinging in the big Akha swing or chasing dogs down the road. You can hear them, too, yelling, laughing, talking, but interestingly never crying and never being yelled at by adults. Kids manage their own lives here. The bigs take care of the littles, and fighting, crying and running to momma are just not part of the repertoire.

Speaking of kids, one Warm Heart project wouldn’t be complete without spawning at least one and preferably two more projects, and by this measure Clinic in the Clouds is now complete. We have been talking among ourselves for several months about what to do to help a ten year old autistic boy in Ban Arya. On the 21st his mother died leaving his father to cope with him and several other children. Almost the first thing I was asked when we arrived in the village on the 22nd was could Warm Heart find a Warm Heart for him as we had found Warm Heart for Sudah. If only it were so easy.

This little boy is just the tip of the iceberg; every village I know in Phrao has an autistic person in it. Helping this little guy has to be part of finding a sustainable solution to the much bigger problem of how to deal with the large number of children with developmental disabilities who are a huge burden on extremely poor families with no place to turn. The government provides a subsidy of 500 baht per child, but this is nothing and does nothing to improve the quality of life of the child either.

What to do? Stay tuned; there will be a lot on this subject in the next few months. Honest, we don’t go looking for problems; they find us. But when something needs doing, it needs doing.

On a more amusing note, the second project that the clinic has spawned is all about bacon. Really. You may take bacon for granted, but here in Thailand bacon as scarce as teats on a bull, to change species. All of those many, many falang (as we’re called) who want bacon with their eggs in the morning have to buy it imported at the most astronomical prices. So? you are asking.

Well, here in Ban Arya the market for fresh pork is just too far away and there’s no money in selling pigs to each other. Solution? Don’t sell fresh pork; sell a higher value-added product such as bacon or smoked ham. They’ve got lot’s to feed pigs and lots of different, interesting woods for smoking; smokers can be made out of simple, local materials; smoked meat is much lighter that fresh and so costs less to transport; and no question their product will fetch a much better price!

Question: Do you know a meat smoking aficionado? One who would like to volunteer to spend a couple of months here in heaven teaching the first Thais in history the ancient art of smoking?

Christmas. Yes, we spent Christmas in heaven. That in itself was pretty special, but it gets better. Ban Arya speaks of itself as three villages. This puzzled us no end until we finally figured out that what they mean is that the village of Ban Arya is divided (in an amicable fashion) into three confessional villages, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical. So what about Christmas? On the 25th everyone goes to their own church for a quiet service. Then on the 27th the whole village assembles for a day long Christmas celebration that includes no small Buddhist and animist representation, too. It is a do!

But before enjoying the grand Christmas festivities cum thank you and farewell party, we still had to finish the clinic. We got an early start, which proved to be a mistake. The hitherto trusty diesel generator wouldn’t start. All the Warm Heart and village tough guys took turns trying to crank it over, but no go. Too cold. So we resorted to pouring tea pots of boiling water over it until after almost 45 minutes, lo, with a chuff and a puff or two of black and then white smoke, it roared to life. Action.

In a couple of hours the final two walls went up, the foundation got painted, the final wiring went in, the floor got washed and after five frantic days, the first ever Clinic in the Clouds was done!

OK, so it isn’t done. The building is ready to be a clinic and all of the equipment and medical supplies are promised. What remains, however, is the main course – the training, without which the building is just a building and the equipment is just stuff.

Luckily for Warm Heart and Phrao, my little sister Dr. Tenagne Haile Mariam, Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Ronald Regan School of Medicine at George Washington University, will be here in a couple of months. Tenagne will work with the local hospital to develop a training program appropriate for the requirements of the Hill Tribe villages – and for health volunteers with limited literacy and Thai language skills. Once perfected, the training will provided to health volunteers, ambulance drivers, and public health clinic staff throughout the district.

Stay tuned. This should be quite a story. Thailand has no residency program in emergency medicine and currently graduates 60 EMTs annually. In a country that suffers 530,000 serious automobile and motorbike accidents per year, we have big hopes for Tenagne’s training program!

And now for that Christmas party. The moment we arrived on the final morning the backs of both pickups were converted into impromptu kitchens. An entire 50 kg rice bag full of cabbages had to be chopped, huge bundles of cilantro minced, dozens of blocks of pig blood cubed, big bunches of morning glory picked over and cut up. Two ten gallon pots of broth were put to boil on big charcoal burners. Over at the village “community center” (a covered sitting area where everyone hangs out), chickens were being plucked and pigs butchered.

Finally it was time to put it all together. A parade of women let by our own P’SiPan arrived at the work site bearing big metal bowls of meat – chickens to be cut up and all the parts of a pig. More chopping. Everything was assembled in two ten gallon pots set to boil on smoky charcoal burners (where they were stirred like MacBeth’s witches kettle with yard long ladles). While the pots bubbled, the chopping and mincing continued as bowls and bowls of condiments were prepared – chopped Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, pickled cabbage, parsley, garlic, chilies, and I am honestly not sure what else.

At the stroke of noon – lunch is the only thing to which “Thai time” does not apply – the word went out by crier (yes, by crier). From every direction kids, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers descended upon us. People lined up by the tailgate of P’Pleu’s big pickup. They got a bowl, spoon and fork, and served themselves noodles from our 60 kilogram store – that is more than 120 pounds! With heaping bowls they shuffled past P’Oy, Mae Joom and P’Pleu’s wife who ladled out pint servings of the hot, steaming broth and meat. As soon as they had a spare hand, people returned to the old Warm Heart truck for a drink – Coke, “orange water”, “green water”, “red water”, or beer.

People trooped off to find comfortable places to eat anywhere they could. The kids climbed the hill and perched on rocks. Lots of the guys just stood around and shoveled it in. The women sat in big circles; others clustered with little ones and traded bites with their kids. Our girls set up their own mat for “girls’ lunch” in peace.

We ran out of food. I kid you not. Twenty gallons of soup. Sixty kg of noodles. Cases of soda. All gone. Everything. “Sorry, Ms., there’s no more.”

No one seemed to mind. Everyone just sat around and talked and talked and talked – and repeated shook the hand of any and every Warm Heart staff member encountered.

I didn’t see an end to this and the sun was getting a bit low in the sky – it is, after all, an almost four hour drive back down off the mountain – when the village headman showed up in ceremonial garb. He was truly impressive in a truly wonderful way. Over his regular black trousers and yellow golf shirt he had donned an Akha man’s smoke – imagine a long vest – made of black cotton and cross-stitched with fantastic designs, symbols and figures. On his head, he wore a brown boater with a bright pink chiffon scarf tied around it with a big bow. Wow!

We all gathered around the headman and the local Army boss – the true commander of the mountain – for farewell ceremonies. First, the presents. I got a beautiful Akha bag that Evelind is not going to get off me. Then presents for the kids – kanom (snacks). From the true toddlers to the six year olds they lined up and Evelind and I were firmly requested to do the duties. It was huge fun since none of the kids had any hope of hanging onto the amount of stuff they got. (They did manage to eat most of it, however.) Finally, the speeches. Mercifully, it was now getting cold, so things stayed brief. Long and short of it? Warm Heart is invited back anytime.

Stay posted. We will be going to Ban Arya a lot in the five months before the rains start.

กิจกรรมพาน้องเยี่ยมบ้านเป็นกิจกรรมหนึ่งที่โครงการการศึกษาและบ้านพักเด็กของมูลนิธิอุ่นใจ ได้ดำเนินอยู่เป็นประจำทุกเดือนโดยทำเป็นเดือนละครั้ง โดยกิจกรรมนี้มีตจุดมุ่งหมายเพื่อให้เด็กในบ้านพักรู้สึกไม่ห่างจากครอบครัว และเป็นการเชื่อมความสัมพันธ์ที่ดีระหว่างเจ้าหน้าที่มูลนิธิกับผู้กครองเด็ก รวมถึงใช้โอกาสในการแจ้งข้อมูลเด็กระหว่างที่พำนักอยู่ในบ้านพัก
ด้วยระยะทางจากบ้านพักเด็กถึงหมู่บ้านขุนปั๋งระยะทาง 16 กิโลเมตร แต่เราใช้เวลาถึงชั่วโมงครึ่ง เนื่องจากถนนที่เดินทางเป็นถนนลูกรังที่ตัดผ่านสันเขาอันสลับซับซ้อนซึ่งต้องขับขึ้นไปอย่างระมัดระวังดดยเฉพาะฤดูฝนเพราะถ้าพลาดพลั้งอาจตกลงไปในห้วยลึก ทั้งสองข้างทางเต็มไปด้วยดงไผ่ และความชุ่มชื้นและอุดมสมบูรณ์ของพันธุ์ไม้นานาพันธุ์ ทำให้เรามีทั้งสองอารมณ์ในการเดินทางบางครั้งหวาดเสียวกับการเดินทาง บางครั้งก็รู้สึกดื่มด่ำไปกับธรรมชาติสองข้างทาง เมื่อไปถึงที่หมายเราก็ได้พบกับไมตรีจิตรและมิตรภาพ ของชาวบ้านแม่สูนซึ่งเชาวบ้านส่วนใหญ่เป็นชนเผ่ากะเหรี่ยงป็นและเป็นเป้าหมายของการเดินทาง เด็กๆตื่นเต้นที่ได้กลับบ้านไปพบครอบครัว ผู้ปกครองต้อนรับเราด้วยรอยยิ้มทีจริงใจพร้อมกับน้ำชารสดีจากยอดดอย ถือว่าเป็นสัมพันธภาพที่ดีต่อเราเป็นอย่างมาก

Hey Everyone, Josh here, today I will be finishing up my first full week of teaching. I began teaching English to the children at the Children’s Home, and others from the villages of Huay Sai and Baan Dong, two Fridays ago. The class size is a little over twenty and most of the students are between the ages of 10-15.

I came to Warm Heart to develop a solar water heater made from recyclable materials. When I found out I also had the opportunity to teach English, something I have never done before, I couldn’t wait to take on the challenge.

So far the class has a lot of energy, and things have been going really well. I look forward to teaching later today, what is already going to be my fifth class.

The Warm Heart office porch now has a new name – the Mae Wan Microenterprise Knowledge Center – and a small (well, tiny) budget (10,000 baht, about $300).

It did not take long for the word to get out, either. Within days the “old ladies’ group” of our local temple had moved in and now our porch is humming with activity. The ladies are nominally learning to weave (better) but really they are just having a fine old time hanging our with each other and being doted upon by the entire staff.

The Microenterprise and Microfinance Project has spent the past two weeks transforming the front “porch” of the Mae Wan offices into a training space. Mae Joom has set up her big loom for weaving trainings. We have two – and will soon have ten more – spinning wheels, a large collection of very, very large pots for boiling roots, leaves and whatnot to make dye, and a triple decker “table” made of slats and mosquito netting for silk worms. (We are currently nurturing about 20,000 very small worms, which will take about two and a half more weeks before they spin their cocoons.) Rough wood shelving along two walls hold a strange collection of machetes, mesh dippers, big balls of string and bamboo baskets. Two huge green plastic tubs hold industrial strength rubber gloves, aprons made of old outdoor advertising banners, tools, box cutters and nails. Tall, black plastic tubes of the kind that architects use to carry blueprints around in stand in corners full of large teaching posters with garish pictures of silk worms in every stage of growth.

The MMP is ready for Monday August 17, date of the first scheduled, soup-to-nuts, combined microfinance and microenterprise training. Tan Nai’Ok, our Sub-District head, was so impressed by our sweaty preparations, however, that he named us the “Mae Wan Microenterprise Knowledge Center” and gave us a budget without waiting!

มาเรียนภาษาอังกฤษ กันเถอะ นี่เป็นคำเชิญชวนของน้องๆจากบ้านพักเด็กของมูลนิธิอุ่นใจ ที่ชวนเพื่อนๆจากโรงเรียนบ้านแม่ปั๋งมาเรียนภาษาอังกฤษกับครูJOSH หลังเลิกเรียนตั้งแต่เวลา สี่โมงสีสิบห้าถึงห้าโมงสี่สิบห้า ทุกวันจันทร์ พุธ ศุกร์ และเรียนกิจกรรมพิเศษทุกวันเสาร์ ไม่ว่าจะเรียนเกษตรกับพี่ปลิว เรียนภูมิปัญญาการทอผ้าแบบกะเหรี่ยงกับพี่ศรีพรรณ เรียนงานช่างกับพี่เพิก เรียนคุณธรรมและจริยธรรมกับครูตี๋ รวมไปถึงกิจกรรมต่างๆ ไม่ว่าฟ้อนรำ กีฬา การปฐมพยาบาลเบื้องต้น
จากกิจกรรมดังกล่าวตอนนี้แหล่งเรียนรู้มูลนิธิอุ่นใจ มีเด็กสนใจร่วมกิจกรรมนี้ กว่าสามสิบคน นับเป็นจุดเริ่มต้นที่น่ายินดีสำหรับการพัฒนาที่ให้เด็กรอบชุมชนมีความสนใจด้านการศึกษา และพัฒนาตนเอง

USC Medical School student intern Aisha writes: John and I have done quite a bit of research in the past few weeks on HIV/AIDS prevention/education—not to mention hours of brainstorming about how to best serve the HIV positive women and children in Phrao. We have participated in two radio shows with DJ Naan-Oun (Pi John)—one where John and I were crushed in a game of paytong after the show, and the other where I told all of Phrao that the world wouldn’t be the same after Michael Jackson’s death. This week, John and I have two meetings in Chiang Mai with NGOs focused on HIV/AIDS work, and are hoping to visit the wat to speak with the HIV positive women there as well. We are excited to here what everyone has to say, and are hoping to get some useful materials from the NGOs we are meeting with!

Warm Heart is bursting with new life. Six new interns have added almost more energy than we can stand and have reinvigorated everyone. They are very task oriented and we are already seeing results. I have set impossible goals for the summer – and have every intention of seeing them accomplished!

Aisha and John are working with HIV+ mothers and their HIV+ kids to develop a support program. What they have learned through interviews so far is that Phrao has some 15 HIV+ kids 12 and under (kids born before access to anti-retrovirals all died). The kids are shunned in the their villages and at school. Their mothers receive medical advice when they or their kids are sick, but no help to be better mothers, to deal with their kids’ questions or their own social isolation. We hope that together with a group of mothers and older children Aisha and John can develop a program that Warm Heart will be able to operate for the – unfortunately – growing population of HIV+ parents and children.

Aisha Scherr-Williams is a 2009 grad from University of Puget Sound and will be attending USC Medical School in the fall; John Arnold is UVA grad who is completing a Masters in Pacific International Affairs at the UCSD School of International and Pacific Studies.

Josh is laboring alone in back of the office to build a prototype solar hot water heater. Hot water is an unknown luxury here – but much appreciated by everyone who has ever tried it! (You need only take an ice cold bucket bath in December when the temperature is 40◦ to appreciate why.) But available heaters are electric, expensive, expensive to operate, and environmentally unfriendly (a large portion of Thailand’s electricity is produced with coal). Josh’s challenge is to harness the sun using recycled materials – old 55 gallon drums and insulation made from flattened Styrofoam food containers (themselves a ubiquitous, non-biodegradable environmental disaster here). If he succeeds soon enough, his next project is to make the Warm Heart Children’s Homes an industrial strength solar rice and soup boiler using an abandoned TV dish.

Josh /Wiener completed the Global PACT Thailand training at Rajabhat University in Chiang Mai in June and will return to Rutgers University in the fall where he is a double major in Political Science and Environmental Policy planning to graduate in 2011.

David, Sylvia and Zack have joined the Microenterprise and Microfinance Project. David and Zack have already assembled a library of microfinance training manuals and teaching materials. We will begin putting together the Warm Heart program next week. (Our clients are way behind the assumed clients of the normal training programs. We will have to back into things a bit more slowly starting with the basics of a family budget and building from there.) Meanwhile Sylvia is designing a microfinance market survey that she and Mae Joom will take into the rice paddies and lamyai orchards next week.

David Rose is a researcher on loan from Prof. Somboon, a senior leader of the Karen people in Thailand. David, an ex-lawyer now engaged full-time in NGO work, is working with Warm Heart in preparation for his work with the Karen. Sylvia and Zack Wagner-Rubin are both MPIA candidates at UCSD IR/PS.

It is July 4th weekend and while Americans celebrate the launch of the boldest political experiment of its day, Warm Heart is celebrating surviving its first year. Perhaps we, too, will go on to great things, but I suspect that the founding fathers would empathize with Carole, Evelind, P’Tie and me and our experience of the day-to-day reality of leading a start-up! Every day is a surprise, a party, a scary roller coaster ride, a frustration, a fantasy, a moment of terror and a flash of inspiration.

At our first 4th of July BBQ we released a traditional Thai hot air balloon lantern. As it rose into the light rain, P’Tie turned to me and said: “The farther it goes, the better our luck.” I watched it as it rose higher and higher in the dark sky until it was the only glowing speck in the sky. It went longer and farther than any of the others in the Phrao sky that night. So far our luck is holding.

Here’s to our second year.

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy Birthday, Warm Heart!

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.

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.

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 first group of kids is settling in. For the moment we have just five, two boys and three girls. Nung Min is expected any day (in fact we may take a field trip to Kung Pan to get her) and others are in process.
Move-in day was perfectly orderly from an adult, logistical point of view, but the kids were just overwhelmed. On Sunday P’Oy, Nung Oy and P’Pleu played get-to-know you games with the kids (who also didn’t know each other). The two highlights of the day were writing and illustrating autobiographies and planting flowers. You can get a feel for each of our kids by looking at their autobiographies, which I’ve posted below (and of course if you read nine year old Thai, you can read all about them). As for the flowers, the Thai staff members donated potted plants from their own homes so that the kids would have the beginnings of a garden. Later this week, P’Pleu and the kids will go to a nursery to chose seedling.

Meet Nung Ful

Meet Nung Max

Meet Nung New

Meet Nung Suda

Meet Nung Oam