A Saturday in Fang

Ben on our new bike struggling to get trough the mud. Its raining in the afternoons with lots of wind gushes, thunder and lightning. It is hard to reach to schools because the dirt roads turn in clay surfaces! So slippery.... Ps: what you see before the bike is a huge mud/ clay clump just dropped of in front of the bike caused by the wheels of a truck!

Our friend Aa who we know trough Som Diau. They are helping us this Saturday with finding a cheap car. We just can not do the rounds on the bikes when the weather turns so nasty. It is way too dangerous! We were on the rounds this week and we had trees and electricity lines fallen over the roads. The steep roads in the villages turn into mud streams, so even walking is tricky. Quite scary and very challenging...

Ben and Som Diau in the garden of Aa's parents place. It is a lovely spot with a large lot full of fruit trees. We just enjoyed a fresh coconut!

Jildou and Ben with in the background Aa's garden. We had a lovely late afternoon with the four of us.

Monthly report - April

Free Schools World Literacy-Thailand
Monthly Report - April.

April has been a relatively quite month being as it is in the middle of the years-end vacation period. We have still had all the evening and weekend schools operating albeit on a smaller scale, while some of the government classes have been closed for holidays. The official school year begins again in earnest around the 16th/17th May.

From the 12th -17th April the locals celebrate the Songkran Festival. This is the biggest festival on the Thai calendar and is somewhat analogous to our Christmas and New Year period. The school year ends about 3 weeks before Songkran and starts up again about one month later. During this period, particularly in rural area’s, children are expected to work, to significant contribute to the physical needs of the family or village. This is the major reason why some of the evening Free Schools have temporarily had some lower attendances.

Despite that, the schools have continued to run smoothly and effectively through April. Most schools still boasted above 20 students each day we visited them and each day these children are receiving a good, basic education in Thai language and mathematics. It is most encouraging when you look at the work of the students; while we don’t know what they are writing in Thai, we can see they are learning to write the language and the Mathematics that they are doing is often of an impressive level.

One thing that we would like to develop further is to facilitate more teacher-training. These ladies all have differing levels of experience and it is important to remember that they do not have the advantages of operating under the larger framework of an actual school. Apart from the financial support of FSWL and regular visits from us, they are completely on their own and left to their own devices. Considering this makes the job they do all the more remarkable!

In the first half of April we observed one of the teachers, Dee, having a bit of a rough time of it. She was no longer allowed to use the school room in the village and had to relocate to a barren, empty shed. On top of this Dee is one of the ladies with no real teacher experience and it seemed like she was not coping well with the transition. We then arranged, through Som Diau, to send Dee up to observe Aer teaching for an evening. Aer, like Dee, works in a Lahu village which is one of the oldest schools that Mark set up. As well as being a great teacher she is also a lovely person and we thought that she could be able to help Dee. As far as we know this was the first time that Free School teachers have met each other in this capacity. Since this evening of observation and training it seems like Dee has more confidence in her teaching and beter structure to her classes which is a really good outcome.

So we look forward to May and the resumption of all schools and a return to the new school year!

Warm Regards,

Ben & Jildou

Guests in Fang

Tet and Jan came to see the shools early this month. We had a great time driving from school to school on our motorbikes! These are the people who are supporting us financially, we are very greatfull. On the photo: Mark, Tet, Ben and Jan.

Janna and Joost and Emmie (not on picture) came to see the project. Janna is the daughter of Jan en Tet. Joost is my old neighbour friend from the village I come from.

My parents stayed with us for a while. We saw the schools many times, visited Chiang Mai and Mae Salong during Sonkran (last time ever! we will flee the country next year for the water!) I am very happy with the motorbike my parents bought me! Thank you so much....

My brother and Ben. We want to thank Janna, Joost, Emmie, AJ, Fokke and Corry for their donation so we can buy some extra things for the children! Thank you guys!
We are still looking how to get an extra tabel and chairs to the school of Poi. Hopefully we sort that out soon!

English camp

Ben and I helped out at the English Camp from the local government school where Som Diau works. The student came from all different schools around Fang. It was a lot of fun to try to get these teenagers to talk english! They are very shy to make mistakes so they prefer to stick to Thai. One day of that week we went all together on a day trip by bus. It was a great day where we went to a very special white temple near Chiang Rai, to the Golden Triangle, the opium museum (world class!) and Mae Sai and then shopping in Myanmar. That shopping part must be seen as serious business because the female teachers came back with enormous bags! Shop 'till you drop!

A few teachers from the camp. Som Diau is the man in the blue shirt sitting down.

Novice procession Fang temple

Our friend Som Diau took us to the inauguration from some of his student to become monk for a while. The boys would become a novice for 2 weeks or even for the whole summer holiday. In the morning we went to the procession where the boys are carried around on the shoulders of their male family members. They can't touch the ground because the boys are now Gods or angels, like Budah before he came on earth. They wear the most beautiful costumes and glitter and make up on the faces. Just like an amazing carnival creation. After the joyful procession with laughter, dance and music the boys transform in white robes and get blessed by the monks. Now it is time to begin their new sober life with no longer the treatment of an angel. This is the serious part and we saw that many family members were very moved and emotional. It is an enormous honour that their son becomes a novice for a while, also it will help the family in the life after death. It was amazing to see that the monks got lots of presents like food packets, radios and money trees. Not too bad their sober life!

These Palong girls looking absolutely stunning in their traditional clothes.

A day of joy and happines for the parents. They are so proud of their son and the fathers and uncle will swap the boy around and dance in the hot sun like they are in trance.

Photo's schools april

The school from Aer in Nong Tao. Here we brought water pistols (a present from guests) for the kids so they could have fun during Sonkran. This is the most important time of the year (for us like Christmas) when people spend time back home with their family and pay visits to the temple. For nearly 2 weeks everyone was trowing water at people passing by on the streets. I can see the fun of for a few days,,, but being soaking wet during our daily visits to the schools was a bit much...

Yorn is our most lively and enthusiastic teacher! She starts her class singing and dancing which is so much fun for the kids. During the song she will stop suddenly and ask a school related question so the kids always need to pay attention. We would love to see her develop her teaching skills and maybe continue her own education.

Dee's new building! Unfortunately Dee had to move but the new building is even better! Bigger and cleaner and after we brought a new whiteboard, maths and learning posters it looked great! Also Dee went for a evening on a kind of work experience to teacher Aer so she could learn more teaching skills. A great success.

Aer and a few students. Amazing how serious those little ones are!

Monthly report for Free Schools World Literacy

Free Schools World Literacy (Thailand)

Monthly Report March 2007

After arriving on the 7th of March, we quickly set about sorting out the practical necessities required to service the project here. With great help from Mark and Wilbert after a few days we had acquired a scooter and after several more days we had found a comfortable place to live.

As soon as the scooter was arranged we immediate began visiting all the schools with Mark. Apart from learning the teacher’s names and village names it was the most important thing that we were able to learn the locations of the schools plus the evening teachers homes and to become familiar with all the best routes from one to another. Mark was great in guiding and helping us to get to know all this vital information and after two weeks we were set.

Towards the end of the month the Songkran vacation period began. This is the end of year holiday which also includes many of the important religious celebrations. For the government schools this means a 6-8 week break. All our evening schools are staying open and operating as normal during this time. As for the government schools we have encouraged each of the teachers to keep their classes running but we have respected the choices of those who opted to take a well earned break.

Nui from Huay Nam Yen is working through the break as are Pratoon and Chantana from Huay Pu. Pikun from Huay Luwang is taking one month off in April but will return at the start of May. Similarly Kung will be taking a month off from her day classes.

Kung has also decided to cease her evening school duties as of the end of March. With young children it has proved very demanding to teach during the day at the government school and run an evening class in her village at Huay Chonu. Fortunately this will not adversely affect the students too greatly as Poy also has a Free School in Huay Chonu and all of Kung’s students are welcome there.

One of the things about this holiday period is that at the government schools which are remaining open, attendances may be down somewhat as compared to usual. With this in mind it was great to see two of the teachers, Pratoon and Chantana, taking the initiative of setting up a morning Free School in the local Lahu village. This is the village where many of their students are coming from but during the holidays they noticed many were not travelling to the government school. This may be because the canteen is not open and the government is not providing lunches.

On top of this we heard from Wanida the principle at the Huay Pu that there is another Lahu village near Thaton where there are some fifty students who are not going to school and a potential lady teacher as well. We have asked Som Diaw, our contact in the local education department to talk to the lady and we are very excited about the prospect of having a new school opening soon.

All in all it has been a great month and a wonderful start. Mark has done his utmost to ensure that we were comfortable with the job and also that we are capable to do it after he leaves next Monday, so a big thank you Mark and all the very best for your onward journey.

Warm Regards,
Ben and Jildou