If you’ve looked at all at my photos on this site, you’ve seen pictures of the destruction of Permsup, the slum I lived in for my first year and a half.  A massive freeway is being built, with poor areas in the pathway being demolished.  At the same time, shiny new commercial areas are going up, in anticipation of the new traffic that will be coming.  Here’s one example, between Permsup and my current slum Phothong:

Yes, that is a Starbucks, and a Mercedes.

Phothong, which is not under threat of eviction, is still experiencing effects from this new development.  In front of the tightly-packed community is a large vacant lot.  This has served as the slum’s collective backyard, play area, market, community meeting space, and celebration area.

This picture is from a kids’ program we did a couple years ago.

Ever since I moved in, there has been a sign in front of this community advertising the availability of this lot for rent or sale.  I guess vacant land adjacent to a slum community isn’t in high demand.

Until a new freeway and shopping center begin construction around the corner.  Then it begins to look more appealing.  A gasoline company decided this would be an ideal spot for a new, massive filling station.  They began construction about a month ago, leveling the ground and pouring down gravel.  Below is a picture of the sign that has been up in front of the slum (can you tell how my neighbors feel about it?) and the beginning of construction.

One of the first things that will go up is a three-story wall to “protect” the gas station from my neighbors.  This may have one benefit for the slum– should a house fire start, it will be less likely to ignite the gasoline and cause a major catastrophe.  On the other hand, the wall will now make the slum walled in on all four sides, causing less air flow and limit the evacuation route to a single narrow path (shown on the left hand side of the photo below).

Below is a photo taken from inside Phothong.  You can see how close the construction will be to our community.  My neighbors have already had to tear down platforms they used for sitting and selling food, which were just on the other side of our walking path.  You can also see in the photo the makeshift shack that has gone up, where workers will live during the construction.

My neighbors are pretty anxious about this.  They fear what would happen in the case of a fire, they are worried that the already hot slum will become even more sweltering without the breeze they currently get, and they worry for the children, breathing in gasoline fumes all day.

“It isn’t right,” one of my neighbors said, when I asked how she felt about the construction.  “They should find somewhere else to build.  It’s not right to build something dangerous so close to our homes.”

“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives–the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections–that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.

Let us not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.”

Henri Nouwen

photo credit: mekong_virus

Her name is Mae. She’s maybe 20 years old and lives in a one-room shack with her husband and her six-month old daughter (nick-named “Je t’aime”). They are assuming the little girl is his but they really don’t know given how she spends her evenings. But he is fine with that, and even the neighbors keep quiet when they see her leave in the evenings, powdered white with painted-on lips, because she’s bringing home money. At least she’s found a way, they think. At least her doll-like face and porcelain skin have granted her a little bit of power. Maybe it’s a sacrifice, but it puts food on the plate. And she shares with us, so who are we to judge?

There are only a few whispers now, as neighbors feel her absence. She has been in Singapore for a few days so far. A hefty profit to be had in the red-light districts there, they say. Oh, no, she could never afford to travel there on her own. Her co-workers and boss all pitched in. It’s like a business investment. And they’re expecting huge returns– a plane ticket and enough cash for two weeks, and she’ll bring back over $10,000. Then it will be divided between the shareholders, see? And of course she’ll see some of that profit as well.

Neighbors say she doesn’t feel ashamed. That she’s proud, even. But I have a feeling that under the painted-on exterior and the armor around her heart, there are wounds nobody sees. Or maybe they just don’t want to see. But there is still someone who knows.

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.” –Isaiah 55:1-3

A while ago Christy and I spent the day with neighbors at Pattaya, a nearby beach. It is a favorite Thai hangout, as well as heavily frequented by Western tourists. It was a bit surreal to see foreigners who look like me staring at the white girl hanging out with a group of lower class Thais. And to hear my Thai friends make comments about the farangs walking by and then turn to me and say “oh yeah– I forgot you’re one of them!”

I was having a bit of an identity crisis. While I look and talk like the Westerners with their sunscreen and guidebooks and cameras, in some ways I am more like my slum-dwelling, Thai-speaking, sticky rice eating neighbors. When I’m in Thailand there are things about the States that I long for, but when I’m in the States I feel a little out of place and confused by the culture. In Bangkok I long for the quiet countryside of my hometown, a good deli sandwich, and the ability to blend into the crowd; in the States I’m always craving rice, shocked by prices, and sometimes translating my thoughts from Thai into English.

It’s amazing how much this place, language and culture has become a second home. And how much my neighbors have accepted me as one of them. This tension between identities is one I kind of enjoy.

Here is my newsletter I put out this month, in pdf format.

Reflections from Bangkok, April 2008

Enjoy!

It’s so hot that even my Thai neighbors are complaining.

It’s so hot that the slum dogs are too tired to get up to scratch their mange.

It’s so hot that I routinely have sweat running down my legs and pooling at my ankles.

It’s so hot that I actually appreciated the cowboy hat my music teacher made me wear home.

It’s so hot that people in my slum are eating ice cream at 10 a.m.

It’s so hot that my refrigerator is hot to the touch from the strain of keeping the inside cool.

It’s so hot that two showers a day is a minimum.

It’s so hot that a cold drink can soak your clothes with its condensation.

It’s so hot that the pages of all my books at home are curling.

It’s so hot that when I’m in the sun I expect to hear my skin sizzling.

Last night my roommate Christy and I woke up because rats had waged war on us.  They had chewed through the string holding up our mosquito net in two places, causing half of it to fall on us while we were sleeping.  We then attempted to scare it out of the house, only to have it peek out from the wall, run across the wall and outside, and then run back in, over and over, as if saying “I’m not afraid of you.”

Also, the glue trap we had placed out was not only unsuccessful in trapping any of our unwanted house guests, but was covered with plastic bags, which rats must have dropped on it from our collection of them hanging on the wall a little ways away.  And my washcloth had been pulled off its hook and dragged to the corner of the bathroom.

Needless to say, it was difficult to go back to sleep with the sounds of squeaking from inside our wall and the fear of a toe getting eaten off during the night.  I would be thoroughly annoyed if it wasn’t so hilarious– I think our laughter and attempts to scare away the rat probably woke up most of our neighbors.

I wonder who is really trying to evict who from our house, and which side will be successful. 

A few days ago I went to a nearby mall and saw, I am not kidding you, a woman feeding her dog an ice cream cone.  It was sitting in her lap on a mall bench, was immaculately groomed and I’m  pretty sure it was wearing clothes.  And lapping at a McDonald’s ice cream come.

In my slum, the dogs are malnourished and nasty.  Even their owners (if they have one) won’t touch them.  They are skin and bones, often missing an eye, limb, or part of their tail.  And they are constantly trying to scratch their skin off (and sometimes succeeding) because of their mange and fleas.

Yet in nearby neighborhoods women are dressing and feeding their animals better than the children around me are dressed and fed.

Also, within a 5-minute walk from my slum a new Walmart-like store is being built.  In the complex will be a Starbucks.  I will now live closer to a Starbucks than I ever did in the States.  I could leave my mosquito-infested shack over a garbage-slash-sewage swamp, walk a few blocks and be inside the air-conditioned, coffee-scented, sterilized comfort of Starbucks.

This is the world of contrasts my neighbors live in.  Their slums are neatly hidden away from the middle and upper class eyes, but the wealth of their fellow city-dwellers is right in front of their faces.  They leave their slum and wait for their bus to arrive, amidst shiny new luxury cars and motorcycles.  They might spend 75 cents for a street-stall meal while across the street others are paying $10 for practically the same food.

And now there will be a coffee shop they’ll pass by, selling a drink for an amount that could feed their whole family. 

I, too, feel this contrast.  I sometimes think it would be easier to be a missionary to the poor somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where just about everyone is poor and there is not the temptation of upper class comfort in my backyard.  Not that these things are evil (I’m sure I’ll visit the Starbucks once in a while), but they do make it more of a challenge to choose the world of my slum-dwelling friends over the one I left behind.  Like Jesus refusing those who would make him an earthly king, I have to refuse some of these things for the sake of identifying with those I am called to, those who Jesus says are blessed, those who receive the Kingdom in ways that I need to learn from.

And I want to partner with Jesus in sharing good news to the poor, news that makes the most impoverished believer richer than the wealthiest in this city.  And I believe that as God’s kingdom comes he will heal this gap between the rich and poor, a product of the fall.  This is what I want to spend my life on, and it feels well worth the things I leave behind.

Once in a while I notice themes in my life, like reading a good novel that has an emerging message through its story line.  It’s kind of cool when God does that.

Lately he has been reminding me of how good it is to be safe in Christ.  And how many people, especially in Thailand, really do live in fear: of death, of bad luck, of the ghosts of their deceased loved ones.  This is one way the Gospel is truly good news to the Thais.  God is offering them an escape from fear, a promise of everlasting safety.

A couple scenes that have illustrated this lately:

One afternoon I came home and saw three of my young neighbors, 7 or 8 years old, splashing water on the outside of my house with long leaves.  They appeared to be imitating the way monks will often bless a house with “holy water” as part of a house-warming ceremony.  The kids were chanting “No ghosts in this house, no ghosts in this house.”  I asked them what they were doing, and one of the little girls said she was protecting me from ghosts.  She turned to me and whispered “I know the family who lived here and the father died in this house.”  I told her she doesn’t need to be afraid– Jesus protects us.  I was struck by just how real ghosts are to these kids.  And to the adults in the community, too, as I’ve seen repeatedly.

A few weeks later I was invited to a Thai funeral by neighbors.  People are somber but not emotional at these events, and they pay their respects to the deceased quietly, through lighting incense and bowing down before the coffin (as well as often paying their respects to the Buddha images and other idols in the room).  Then the monks chant for a good 30 minutes, in order to help the soul of the deceased leave the body and to make its way to a “heaven” while it awaits reincarnation.

The monk chanting is always a creepy experience for me.  Other Thais I have talked to have also said they feel funerals are scary.  I usually just sit quietly, without kneeling before the idols or taking the mediative posture while the monks chant.  I take the time to pray and just observe.

This time I was sitting close enough to the monks to read the fans that they hold in front of their faces while they chant.  Each one has a different phrase on it.  They read “Bpai mai glap, lap mai dteun, feun mai mii, nii mai pon” or “Go without returning, Sleep without waking, Let their be no rising from the dead, Escape without being caught” (roughly).  Not only are the relatives and friends making merit so the deceased can have a better next life, but also so the ghost of their loved one doesn’t stay around and haunt them.

There was one day when I asked some of the youth in our church how their lives have changed after becoming believers.  The first thing they told me was that they feel so much freedom and joy knowing their eternal destiny is secure, and they do not need to be afraid that they have not made enough merit before they die.  This is what I love about the Gospel right now.

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death– that is, the devil– and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)

Would many more Thais be set free from this slavery!