Life in this neighborhood is a rollercoaster.
Summertime here is from mid-March to the first of June, and it is chaotic to say the least. The kids are absolutely crazy: climbing fences and gates and trees before 7am, with so much energy and so little structure. We have kids napping on our porch; there are so many I fear aren’t fed regular meals. They’ll easily spend all day in our yard and on our porch and in our house.
Hence, the summer program. We still do Breakfast Club every weekday morning; we have two days a week of summer school classes, and two more days of play and games. We do mid-day fruit at least twice a week, plus other days of milk and packaged snacks.
Then it gets even more complicated. Many of the kids in the community live with grandparents or aunts or uncles through the school year, and their parents “call” for them over the summer. They will be sent off to Bangkok or places in Burma to stay with their parents for a few months before they return for school.
It’s also common for kids to live in Burma with grandparents while the parents work in Mae Sot. The parents, likewise, “call” for their kids over the holidays, so we have a whole new slew of kids in our neighborhood that we don’t know, but their parents know us, and they are here just for a few months.
And there is yet another group that lives here with their immediate family, but goes off to visit aunts, uncles, and cousins in Burma for the holiday.
It’s a very big, very convoluted switcheroo.
So while we still have The Breakfast Club, we added about fifteen kids and lost about twenty, presumably both temporarily. And while we have the summer program, some of the kids don’t know the routines: what our rules are, the fact that we speak Burmese (but not perfectly; no, I didn’t get that spiel…). It’s a big learning curve for all of us.
And it’s messy.
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This little boy, he left us in early December, just a few days before his birthday. We had a cake early and said our goodbyes as he moved back to Burma with his dad. Then he came back, just two weeks later. He didn’t like it, and came back to live with his mom, older sister, and younger brother.
He and his sister left again at the end of March, to leave over the summer. They said they’d be back for school in June. We gave them hugs and said goodbyes; just a few months, right?
The little brother followed just a few weeks after. I asked Thida last week, and she’s talking now about how they might stay. It is going well with their dad and grandmother–maybe the mother was the problem, and she’s still here in Mae Sot. Now they might start school in Burma this year.
That might be the last of their living in our community; I don’t even know yet. And I won’t even pretend I can swallow that. We’ve been snapping photos together for over seven years. To say we love them is the understatement of our lives here.
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This little boy: he left us last year.
His parents got in a fight and split; he was left with a grandfather and an aunt. He was then called to Bangkok by his grandmother and yet another aunt; we said our goodbyes and hoped it might be better for his messy little life.
Then he came back, a few months later. His parents are back under the same roof. They are expecting again, and I’m just not even sure what to think.
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This is a family of first-borns, amazingly enough.
Three are first-borns in their individual families, but all sent to live with their grandparents here in Mae Sot. The littlest is a youngest child in every way you could imagine! They are two more cousins & brothers that have joined at different times and then been sent back, just to really confuse it all. But these four have stayed, and made a second little family of over-achievers.
Over the summer, the oldest got a job, which we hope is just for the summer. Reality? With her switch to Thai school last year she was put back into first grade. And money in the pocket is more generally more tempting than the promise of money through education. I’m nervous she might be a nanny forever.
The older boy was called by his parents to go to Bangkok, as was the littlest little guy.
This leaves one. Left behind, not called by his parents; and now having a few breakdowns as of late.
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This girl is one of Thida’s, and we love her!
She left to go to visit an aunt for the summer, and I was so sad to not have her in the summer program. Her smile can light up a place, and a she’s a natural leader.
Thida casually mentioned she called to ask after her daughter, and they said she was in Yangon. Thida laughed about all the fun she was going to have.
I have been praying all week for her. It terrifies me to have her traveling on her own, generally a paperless young teenage girl, in a world and region where human trafficking is rampant.
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One of our Breakfast Club families is in a hard season: in the past six months they have moved into a field, living in a shanty hut with no water or electricity. They are unable to afford the insurance program we are offering and supplementing; and it’s putting us in a challenging position.
Her baby was due for vaccinations last week, and while we are no longer driving out to the clinic, I did agree to drive her to a free vaccination clinic in the market. As she got in the car, Thida asked her if her husband was working that day. She said no, as her husband was hungover from yesterday and unable to work.
Thida later told me this is her second husband, and shared their sad story. Apparently their are two more kids in Burma, and it’s just messy. We talked about how we just aren’t sure how to help, because if we help with one thing, it will just be another.
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This little boy moved to Bangkok to join his mom and dad, aunts, uncles, and cousins in Bangkok last year.
We have visited him there, and while we missed him terribly, we were hopeful.
But his grandmother & primary caregiver didn’t like Bangkok–not enough people to talk to during the day–and wanted to move back to Mae Sot with him. This week, we helped move them in a shanty room off the main road, amidst a rough crowd.
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One of the bread ladies is unexpectedly pregnant again, struggling with morning sickness with a toddler and unsure about the coming season. This week she said her husband’s boss left town–he had a great job installing windows, and the boss owed him a month’s salary when he left.
This happened last month to another bread ladies’ husband. A month’s salary owed, and the boss skips town.
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The Breakfast Club is no easy task. Creating a summer curriculum for forty kids in your house in 100 degree weather sans air con is not to be taken lightly. Sharing your kitchen with a breakfast service and bread business is challenging.
The hard part, though: It isn’t serving breakfast to 50 kids before 8am. It isn’t even the hot, sweaty kids shouting out their ABCs.
It is opening up your door to fifty kids with broken families, painful stories, instability; and saying,
Yeah, COME ON IN, with all that baggage.
Every day before 8am.
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