philsquest

The girl in the village

This month I spent alot of time in different villages. Again I became aware how vunerable hilltribe children are. There is neglect and abuse and an uncertain future for many. Specially when the children grow up in a family dominated by drugs. I heard to many sad stories. When I go up to Hui Kau Laam to visit our center I step into another world. I sometimes doubt the impact we have in those villages, but am reminded that not success in what we do but in faithfullness to what is intrusted to us counts before God. So often My co-workers and I stand in shock as children are left behind by their parents because they  don't care what happens to their child; teenage girls get pregnant, married and then left within a year; fathers get picked up by police to spent years in prison for selling drugs; children who don't go to school, because the parents are not interessted what one day will happen to them. Over the years as I see those children grow up and hope that they will have a future different from their parents. A hope for change.

 

Heavy rain in the mountains

Three days ago I made my way up to the mountains to get some more work done on our center. We prepared the frame the other week to get the cement poured for the foundation. Unfortunately when I drove towards the village I was met with a lot of water. passing the last Thai village I saw many people standing on the bridge discussing about the rising waters. The water level was just under the bridge. More then a meter higher then usual. I am passing the village and going off-road towards Hui Kau Laam. As I come to the log bridge going to Catusi. The bridge is totally submerged under water. I usually don't use the bridge, but just pass through the river, which would be impossible now.

I drive on for a couple of hundred meters and meet a truck that slid into a ditch blocking the way to the village. His axel was sitting on the dirt and it was impossible even with 4x4 to et out. The owner came running with a smile and was happy to see me. I seem to e known for being the guy who pulls others out of the dirt with ease. I mean who else got a winch on their truck around here. 

I drove another couple of hundred meters and meet two electricity poles blocking the road. The heavy rains and the flooding just swept them away with the foundations. There was no way of getting around them, so I needed to drive back a kilometer and make a detour through the jungle over the hill and take a back road into the village. 

So much to get things done easily here. We had to call off the cement trucks that were supposed to come in to pour the foundations. This part of the project has to wait another one to two weeks. There is no way those trucks can come in when the road is half gone and extremely slippery.

Still I was able to do many other things. I never run out of work up here. :-)

Going for the bamboo

Last we went for a days into the forest to get Bambooo for the center. Catri, Mida und a view others came along on a long off-road trip.

Here are more pictures of how a bamboo pole becomes a piece of wall

House in Hui Kau Laam

We are making progress with our building in Hui Kau Laam. Negotiating with the workers about the prize and discussing how to build the house wasn't so easy, but we worked it out in the end. We are excited about the development in Hui Kau Laam.

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Up to Hui Kau Laam

Early tomorrow morning I will be off to Hui Kau Laam and from there off road up into the jungle. Villagers from Baan Pong have cut bamboo for the new house we are building in Hui Kau Laam. It is raining quite a bit so it will be an adventure to drive the dirt road into the back valley. All those who have been with me on the road know what I mean. It will be a long day.
Meanwhile my little toe is healing well. It is still swollen but I think I can get into my shoes. otherwise it will be a Tewa day. I will also make some pictures from the house they are building. It will be the first of two new constructions we will work on. This house will be Cati's and Mida's house and also the house where teams and visitors will stay. We are quite excited that we finally are able to have started this project.

I wish everybody a good start into the new week.

Working in a new village

A view months ago our team got invited by a village that was moved by the Government to a new location. This village came from the Hui Kau Laam valley. One of three Lahu Deng villages that was moved in the last five years. Most of the villages were or are involved in some drug related problems that caused the Government to take action. This new village doesn't seem to have to much to do with the drugs. There are always many problems with a new village. There is not much infrastructure except the houses where they live in. There is no water, toilets, electricity or proper roads to the village.

We started a schooling program for the children and teenagers and basically anybody who wants to come. The team teach them the Lahu language and help also with Thai. We share our faith and the love of God with them and have a meeting on Sundays for those who want to come.

The house of the village head where they were meeting got to small and a new building is needed for all the people who come. The men of the village ventured into the forest to cut the bamboo for the new building and we drove with our truck to haul the new building material to the village.

 

Water project at the Prao Boarding home

There is some storm over southern China. This is why it rained the last two days. Forecasts tell us we will have rain till Saturday. It is not rainy season yet, so the rain is kind of strange. But it is very refreshing after so many very hot days.
This morning Lillian and I were in Prao (about 100km. North of Chiang Mai) to visit the Boarding home we support. The local Government installed a new water system for the nearby Thai village. We got the permission to connect a pipe for the children's-home. This morning we brought a water-tank and money for the project.

Another day in the mountains

I came back this evening from another day in the mountains. I left this morning with the third load of pipes for Hui Ba Rai. Stefan and Anusha from Chiang Mai came along on this trip. With the water project there was one last hill to overcome and I was not sure if we will be able to get over it. After looking for alternative routes. We decided to dig as dip as we had to. Luckily we were able to get right over the hill. Here the view I enjoyed from up in the mountains. It is beautiful up there. The smoke coming from the little tin roof is our lunch being cooked by one of the Lahu women.

While we were digging officials from the Forest department came up. The were armed with automatic rifles to check on what we were doing. I wonder how they knew we were up there at all. It is not the first time meet officials from the Forest department. They are looking for illegal logging and also drug trafficking. I had a good chat with the chief and as they saw that everything was okay they left again.

We  drove back to  Chiang Mai over Prao to visit the boarding home with we support. There are currently 74 children from 11 remote mountain  villages. My heart is always moved with compassion when I'm there and wish we could do more for those children. But there is always so much we can do to help.

Water pipes in the jungle

I have been bringing water pipes up to Hui Ba Rai for the last two days. So far we put in 1 kilometer of pipes. The terrain is rather difficult and steep. There are several hills on the way to the village we have to bypass. Unfortunately there is no direct way. We work with gravity and there is no way that the water would flow up hill. I wish it would  though.
This is our first project  we try with LDPE pipes instead of PVC. The pipe comes in a role of 100 meters. I must say that so far I like this kind of pipe a lot more due to flexibility and only a connection every hundred meters. There is also no messy glue used.
On Monday I will go up again with more pipes. The project is more extensive than I evaluated before and I have to take a little break from Thai studies to finish it.

Surveying a new project

Just came back Yesterday evening from surveying a water project in a Lahu village. The existing piping doesn't produce enough water anymore. In this particular village I did my first project nearly seven years ago. So we ventured into the mountains and worked our way through the jungle. I took the surveying instruments along, but were unable to use it because of the density of the forest. We had to go down into a deep ravine. Also my altitude meter didn't work. I don't know why. I used then my Swiss pocket knife that has an altitude meter. With this I measured the difference in altitude going back all the way back to the village. The distance we counted in paces and later measured the passes with a tape measure and so got the  distance. Once again I wished to have an GPS.
So now back in Chiang Mai I need to calculate the costs and think of how to do the water collection. Then we have to try to get the funds together. My first estimate without the tanks is about 30'000 Thai Baht. What we found is that it is actually possible to put the pipe through the mountains even though the area is very difficult.

Toilette haben oder nicht

Ich bin Gestern Abend von Hui Kau Laam zurückgekommen. Unsere Toilette, die wir vor zwei Jahren gebaut haben ist am zerfallen. Holz hällt nicht ewig! Sie wird auch von sehr vielen Dorfbewohnern benutzt und ist einfach zu klein um auch noch zu duschen und die Wäsche zu machen.
Wir haben nun entschieden das Fundament zu vergrössern und einen Raum anzuschliessen zum Duschen und Kleider waschen. Drei Tage waren Mathias uund ich in den Bergen und soweit haben wir die Betonsäulen gesetzt (die alten aus Holz waren morsch) das Dach installiert und das Fundament gegossen. der Rest muss noch warten. Es ist Wochenende. Montag bis Mittwoch werde ich wieder Englisch unterrichten und Büro machen. Am Freitag nehme ich ein amerikanisches Team von der Vineyard in San Diego für fünf Tage in die Berge. Da gibt es auch noch einiges zum vorbereiten.

The end of poverty

Is it an unreachable dream? To end poverty? Or better say extreme poverty as Jeffrey D. Sachs writes in his book "The end of poverty". I started reading it some weeks ago and try to fight my way through pages of economic change and explanations about the world with its one billion extreme poor people. Thousands of children die every day of malnutrition and sickness. Sachs says it is possible to stop extreme poverty till the year 2025. A very interesting read even for someone who doesn't have much understanding of economics. It seems to be a very practical approach. I haven't finished the book yet, but would really recommend it. It gave me some interesting insight into how countries develop.
In the west we are readily to judge so called "third world countries" and point out that it is their own fault and that they should help themselves. But if poverty is at an extreme end, there is no way to get out of it by one self. Millions of people find themselves on the bottom of a spiral without hope of getting out.

Poverty is the inability to choose.

Working with the poor here in Thailand taught me a lot. Still there are many factors I don't understand. This is a theme that will be researching for months to come. I want to find out what it practically means in our work situation with the Lahu People. One thing that Sachs doesn't address is the spiritual factor. The Christian Lahu villages seem to be doing much better than their non-Christian counter parts. On the other hand I think the villages who had help in starting their development were able than to develop themselves further out of poverty. Like the Thai Royal projects. I will explore this more in a future post.

Broken pipe

Sometimes when I leave the "civilization" as we know it, it can feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. Here we were working on a broken pipe in the Hui Kau Laam valley. The undergrowth  of the jungle is burned down. Ashes and dust hangs in the air. In four months this area will be grown over with green. Bamboo will grow everywhere and animal live will return back. Here are different seasons than in Europe. Hot season is arriving and the temperatures are rising to 40 degrees. There is barely any rain since November. It won't rain till the end of May. This is why a good water system  is necessary for  the development of a village. Most of the villages I come to the system is not in place or inadequate for a healthy live. Sometimes I realy wish would be able to do more.

Into the mountains

Tomorrow morning I will be going to the mountains again. I will take a minivan shuttle. I left my truck with a team last week. They have been up there for a week building water-tanks. So I will be gone for three days again. The tanks are nearly finished. We need to decide where the pipes will go. I will write more on my other blog www.questasia.org later this week. Then I will visit a boarding home with 55 children we have been supporting. They need to move their facilities to another location. I need to see how we could support this. We also have two more water projects we are looking into. So I have been quite busy lately. It is going great.

My wife is not feeling well and my daughter has a fever. This is always hard for me to leave my family. I hope they will get better soon.

On the roof

It has been a long time since I wrote last. A combination of writers block, laziness, a vacation and to much work. Blogging is not on my top priority right now. Enough excuses....
We had to move our office and two weeks later our outreach center. I am not a stranger to moving my or other people furniture. It seems like that I could make a business out of it. "Phils moving company".
We found a new house for the outreach center. In this house we store the tools and building material. Enoch lives there and often people stay there for the night. we built an additional roof at the back of the house for the outdoor kitchen. On Monday I will be up in Fang to do the cement floor.

Difficulties in development work

I have been on a trip to Hui Kau Laam and spent three in Hui Kau Laam. A family from Switzerland came along and we had a good time.
On this trip again I was aware how difficult our work is and the problems we incounter.
It is extremly difficult to implement projects and have the people to take responsibility for it and to own the project as well as to teach them new technologies (the water pipe isn't realy a high technology; at least that's what I thought. The project we made is big (8 km. /5miles of PVC pipes through extremly difficult terrain) The water is going to the village, the maintenance is a nightmare. When pipes have to be fixed, water isn't cut off, but they glue while the pipe is still under pressure. Along the pipeline they made holes in the pipe just to see if water is comming. We teach them how things should be done to have a long term success. They just don't seem to listen or care. we had this problem before. Every village is different, this one is rather a unusual situation. I sometimes wonder how much disapointment I have to endure and what the outcome will be from the project. But the most important is that the nearly two hundred people have clean drinking water. My hope that we can finish the work and then let it go.

Wasserleitung

Wasser ist Leben. Ich habe die Veränderung in den Leben der Menschen mit eigenen Augen gesehen und die Freude wenn das kostbare Nass bis in das Dorf fliesst und nicht mehr von weither geschleppt werden muss. Sauberes Wasser ist für uns im Westen meist eine Selbstverständlichkeit. Ich treffe hier immer wieder Dörfer an, die enorme Schwierigkeiten haben zu sauberem Wasser zu kommen. Oft müssen wir viel Kreativität aufbringen um eine Lösung für ein Dorf zu finden. Wasser hat die Eigenheit den eigenen Weg zu gehen.

Water is life. I saw the change in the lifes of people with my own eyes. The joy that comes when the water flows into the village and does not have to be caried from far anymore. Clean water is for us in the west mostly something we don't think about much. I come to villages, where the people have enormous difficulties to get clean water. Often we have to gather all our creativity to find a solution for a particular village. Water has the perculier habit to go it's own way.