For 3 weeks I stayed at TCDF, The Child Development Foundation. Founded by Rose and now run by Rose and Ingrid. I admire them a lot for what they've created and how they care for others. TCDF is a beautiful foundation that helps children from the village Paksong and surroundings. There is a special school for handicapped children. And a weekend school for the children from the village. They have projects to support villagers in medical care, nutrition, scholarships and foster care. And they only work with Thai professionals. The terrain of TCDF is big and beautiful! It's surrounded by nature, plantations and a river. There are 3 bungalows and 4 rooms for guests to stay in and there is a restaurant with a lot of delicious Thai food from the lovely staff Pi Nang, Pi Air and Pi Moon. Everything, including the school, is on the terrain of TCDF. For the volunteers they have two dorms, a ‘normal’ building and a clay house. I stayed in the normal one for 3 weeks and started my stay there with the lovely and crazy Dutchie Elena, always laughing Dea from Indonesia, writing Yeling from China, lovely sweet Miriam from Germany, my new Irish bussiness partner Brian, my brasilian clay buddy Renata and later we shared the dorm with many others. I loved working and living with people from so many different countries. We were like a big family. And Paksong feels a little bit like my home in Thailand. I think there are some people back home who recognize this feeling ;)
Website: The Child Development Foundation
I did all kinds of work. The first days we did a lot weeding in the vegetables gardens. TCDF wants to become self-sufficient so we created some new gardens.
After a few days of weeding I was ready to do something else. Can't say that weeding is the most challenging and nice job to do for a few days in a row, especially not when you have to wear long football socks to protect yourself from the big red ants that attack you constantly. There was a lot of jumping and dancing involved to get them off. Of course the Thai people did not seem bothered by them at all, we're such wimps...
What turned out to be quite a challenging weeding day was the day we were weeding while balancing on a steep hill on top of loose rocks. The staff didn't know there were rocks underneath the thick layer of weed. We couldn't remove the rocks, so most of it will be used to plant pumpkins, because they can grow on stones and bamboo sticks. Some of us made a nice sliding downhill that morning...
After a few days Danielle was asked to paint the play equipment on the playground and I proposed to help. When I was weeding I turned into a waterfall of sweat within about 5 minutes while painting was very relaxed, sitting and just colorize.
After pimping the play equipment we couldn't leave the volleyball playground black and dirty as it was. So we scrubbed it on hands and feet with a steel brush, realizing how different things can be in this country and trying to forget the existence of a thing called the high pressure hose...
What turned out to be quite a challenging weeding day was the day we were weeding while balancing on a steep hill on top of loose rocks. The staff didn't know there were rocks underneath the thick layer of weed. We couldn't remove the rocks, so most of it will be used to plant pumpkins, because they can grow on stones and bamboo sticks. Some of us made a nice sliding downhill that morning...
After a few days Danielle was asked to paint the play equipment on the playground and I proposed to help. When I was weeding I turned into a waterfall of sweat within about 5 minutes while painting was very relaxed, sitting and just colorize.
After pimping the play equipment we couldn't leave the volleyball playground black and dirty as it was. So we scrubbed it on hands and feet with a steel brush, realizing how different things can be in this country and trying to forget the existence of a thing called the high pressure hose...
In the weekends we were nannies at the school, helping the teacher Pi Pa, who I adore! Since 3 years Pi Pa is the teacher from the special and weekend school. He lives in a beautiful little clayhouse on the terrain of TCDF. He plays a lot of instruments and has the most adorable round and friendly face. A lot of Thai people speak about themselves in the third person when they want to explain something. And of course you don't respond in perfect English but you adjust your level. So the few nights Elena and I spend with Pi Pa getting to know each other or practicing harmonica (someone gave me an harmonica on the start of my trip, but i still don't know how to play, just don't have the patience for instruments...) our conversations existed only of sentences in the third person. Anne drink beer now. Elena beer? Pi Pa beer? Elena work special school Holland. Anne work shop. Anne play harmonica. Pi Pa teach Anne? Etcetera. And then mixed it with a few Thai words. Loved those conversations! After a long night I still have the tendency of talking this way...
But back to the school again. The children have a lot of free time and we, the nannies, tried our best to communicate with the few words of Thai we know and the few words of English they know. But it was mainly a lot of hands and feet swinging in the air trying to explain things. On Sunday we taught English and did sporting activities. After that we were left soaking wet and exhausted. Maybe also because Brian and I were a little too enthusiastic to win.
Little detail on this picture, running with flipflops is not possible... This is when I lost my lead, but that didn't really matter because they made us do it again 3 times. I think they wanted to see us sweat just a little bit more.
At the start of the day the boys and girls stand in seperate rows while they sing the anthem and raise the flag. Then they do exercise together, what is always very cute because the little ones can choose a movement and the others imitate them. So they choose something, move with those uncontrolled movements kids have, stop, think, and continue doing the same thing again.
Pi Pa plays guitar a lot while doing exercises what makes it a lot of fun. And at the start of exercises they always say 'Are you reaaaaaddyyyyy? Yeeeeeeeesss!'.
All ages are mixed together, from 4 until 14. Brothers and sisters take care of each other. They eat in the school and on Sunday they go to the shop just across the street to get an ice scream.
They are used to the volunteers so from day one the small ones get your hand and drag you from one corner to another to show you things. At the end of the day they thank the volunteers by bowing with folded hands and shaking your hand.
People who are younger always have to bow first when greeting someone older than them. If you bow first they will feel uncomfortable. There are different ways of bowing. They move their heads to different fingers of their folded hands depending if they're greeting a friend, an eldery person, a parent or, this must be done with most respect, a monk or the buddha. We learned these cultural things in the Thai lessons we got. And now that i'm practising 'in the wild' I really notice that small things in gestures and language can make the difference in contact.
But back to the school again. The children have a lot of free time and we, the nannies, tried our best to communicate with the few words of Thai we know and the few words of English they know. But it was mainly a lot of hands and feet swinging in the air trying to explain things. On Sunday we taught English and did sporting activities. After that we were left soaking wet and exhausted. Maybe also because Brian and I were a little too enthusiastic to win.
Little detail on this picture, running with flipflops is not possible... This is when I lost my lead, but that didn't really matter because they made us do it again 3 times. I think they wanted to see us sweat just a little bit more.
At the start of the day the boys and girls stand in seperate rows while they sing the anthem and raise the flag. Then they do exercise together, what is always very cute because the little ones can choose a movement and the others imitate them. So they choose something, move with those uncontrolled movements kids have, stop, think, and continue doing the same thing again.
Pi Pa plays guitar a lot while doing exercises what makes it a lot of fun. And at the start of exercises they always say 'Are you reaaaaaddyyyyy? Yeeeeeeeesss!'.
All ages are mixed together, from 4 until 14. Brothers and sisters take care of each other. They eat in the school and on Sunday they go to the shop just across the street to get an ice scream.
They are used to the volunteers so from day one the small ones get your hand and drag you from one corner to another to show you things. At the end of the day they thank the volunteers by bowing with folded hands and shaking your hand.
People who are younger always have to bow first when greeting someone older than them. If you bow first they will feel uncomfortable. There are different ways of bowing. They move their heads to different fingers of their folded hands depending if they're greeting a friend, an eldery person, a parent or, this must be done with most respect, a monk or the buddha. We learned these cultural things in the Thai lessons we got. And now that i'm practising 'in the wild' I really notice that small things in gestures and language can make the difference in contact.
A day at TCDF...
At 7.30am I walked from the dorm to the restaurant climbing the 54 steps of the stairs
connecting the lower part of the terrain with the restaurant on the hill. And that's just not healthy at that time of the day... I ate my breakfast while the morning mist would slowly disappear and the jungle around me became more and more visible. Every morning again I realized how beautiful this place is and how good it feels to live somewhere being surrounded by nature. It made me so happy. The breakfast we got was a little bit too small for my 1.80 meters tall body, but I usually survived
until lunch. Otherwise i got one of TCDF's famous yoghurts with cruesli (although after a while we weren't sure if they changed the yoghurt for very weird mayonaise). At 8.30 am we had a meeting with the host and all the volunteers
(that usually varies between a number of 4 and 15 people) about what the tasks of the day were and
at 9 am we started working. At 12 pm the break started, there was lunch in the
restaurant and at 2 pm we started again. We worked until 5 pm. And that’s not always
easy in the sun and humidity. But after that I took my sweaty body to the river while seeing a big green snake climb a tree, showered, had dinner and hung out in the restaurant talking, drinking and singing, with Chabba the ugly toad sitting in front of the fridge or in the library. And at the end of the evening bravely confronted the challenge of walking down the 54 steps in the dark with my flashlight that hardly worked. I'm still surprised that I never made my way rolling down the stairs...
DinDang Project
After 3
weeks I decided to go to DinDang, the project of Bow.
He works on the terrain of TCDF, building houses of natural material like clay, bamboo and leaves. DinDang is Thai for ‘red clay’. It’s an educational project teaching people about ecological living and building. He turned a dirty part of the terrain into a little village with 5 little clayhouses where people can sleep, a kitchen where you cook on fire and a learning centre.
While for TCDF I was working to support the foundation, DinDang was a project I did for myself. I have been learning how to work with clay, wood and bamboo. Loved working with bamboo! The first few days I made a door with Brian. It was a wooden frame covered with bamboo slats. My first door! It's a little bit skewed, but we made it fit and it was strong. After that 'enormous success' we decided it was a good idea to start our own company.
Dodgy Doors, for all your skewed doors and windows!
On saturdays Bow gave us workshops. We learned about making clay bricks and to make a roof of leaves. The first workshop we started with a documentary called ‘Home’. Incredible images and a strong message.
He works on the terrain of TCDF, building houses of natural material like clay, bamboo and leaves. DinDang is Thai for ‘red clay’. It’s an educational project teaching people about ecological living and building. He turned a dirty part of the terrain into a little village with 5 little clayhouses where people can sleep, a kitchen where you cook on fire and a learning centre.
While for TCDF I was working to support the foundation, DinDang was a project I did for myself. I have been learning how to work with clay, wood and bamboo. Loved working with bamboo! The first few days I made a door with Brian. It was a wooden frame covered with bamboo slats. My first door! It's a little bit skewed, but we made it fit and it was strong. After that 'enormous success' we decided it was a good idea to start our own company.
Dodgy Doors, for all your skewed doors and windows!
On saturdays Bow gave us workshops. We learned about making clay bricks and to make a roof of leaves. The first workshop we started with a documentary called ‘Home’. Incredible images and a strong message.
You can
watch it online: HOME
Working in Bow’s project made me look again at my own values and way of living. And it made me realize that I can create more with my own hands in a natural way than I thought I could. And it showed me that I don't need so much te be happy.
Website: DinDang
And now my red head Sjansie is here for already almost 2 weeks! Tomorrow we're off to Laos!!!
Great blog Anna! And thank you again for your time to volunteered learning, sharing and helping with us^^ Have a safe trip to Laos.
ReplyDeleteBow