Lost on Earth

This is a long post, and it is a rant.

Yesterday I distributed the gifts that my aunty Cheryl and cousins Michelle and Justin sent for the OPC children. I felt like Santa Claus. The kids were screaming with delight, squabbling, playing with such vigor that you would think someone was paying them. I walked away feeling warm and fuzzy, thinking that from now on I just want to be the person who gives handouts. Yeah, everyone wants to be that person. I am just glad I got to be it for one hour.
As I slipped and slopped through the orangy mud back to my apartment I saw the poor, pathetic shack that is the neighbor’s house. Inside two small boys were sitting quietly. In the dark room next door a man dozed, probably drunk, I thought, and in the “kitchen” an extremely pregnant young woman was putting away dishes in the dark. I made a quick decision and changed my direction.

“Sawatdee ka!” I called out.

“Ka…” the pregnant woman said nervously, and then gave a very low, very respectful wai. “Herro” she said shyly. I saw that she was indeed VERY pregnant.

I grinned and handed her a bag of cookies. “Kup koon ka, er…tank you” she said, still smiling and looking down. Although it is difficult to tell, she looked only about 23 years old. I gave a bag of cookies to each of the small boys as well. Their eyes were wide and their mouths hung open. A foreigner was talking to them! The sleeping man sat up and demanded some cookies, so I acquiesced, although I thought about saying no. I knew that this man was one of the people throwing firecrackers on my balcony a few nights earlier, and that he was usually intoxicated in the evenings. I turned to the woman again, “only four? Um…See…pu chai, pu ying?” I asked, butchering her language, holding up four fingers. “Mai chai, haa” she said, holding up five fingers. I handed her another bag of cookies. I had a garbage sack full of them. She gave another low wai, the man grinned, the two boys peeked with massive brown eyes, from around the corner.

When I got back to my apartment I got directly on my motorbike and went to the supermarket. I bought Ovaltine for the little boys, and found some special pregnant mother formula. This evening I will deliver it along with the baby clothes that I found for cheap in the market.
Pregnant.

Young. Living in a tin shack, in the middle of a muddy construction site, and the whole time I had no idea. This woman will have her baby in the shack because there will be no money to have the child in a hospital. Her husband will deliver it, and if he doesn’t know what he is doing, she or the child could die of infection or hemorrhaging, or any number of complications.

I hate myself right now. I walk past them every single day on the path to the OPC shelter. I see the little boys playing in the street, but always assumed that they living in a house somewhere. There is so little that I can do because I am leaving soon, and they need long-term care. I will never forget her standing in the mud with no shoes, in a nightgown, round belly, and yet even in the dark, and through the mud, I could see the late term glow of motherhood on her face; the indescribable, intangible secret smile that is always underlying every facial expression on a woman who is a mother, because she chose to be.

Oh we have been given such a gift, to live in America, where our quality of life is the highest in the world. Oh I wish that every spoiled, SUV driving, Abercrombie wearing teen in America, that wonderful, awful country, could come here and see my neighbors, in their corrugated tin shack.

I couldnt sleep last night for thinking about it.

Ten Mexicans sleeping in a room the size of a walk in closet, a single, druggie mother and her fetal alcohol syndrome child living in a squalid apartment somewhere…all of this happens in America, and like the Thai people living in Mae Hong Son, in my apartment building, we chose to ignore it. The Mexican situation in America is identical to the Burmese situation in Thailand.

This morning I saw her as I walked out my front door to go to the office. She was wearing a wide brimmed straw hat, Wellington boots, and a flannel shirt buttoned over her belly. She was using a shovel to dig in the ground at the construction site where she and her husband work. Next to her another worker, a young man, lay on the grass talking to her, but she ignored him, raised her hoe high above her head, and continued to chop at the rocky ground.