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| I found him lying prone in this soi, down by the second power line |
I will return the interest he has shown in me over the last few days as I myself suffered with this bug.
He has not asked me once how I am feeling, and only mentioned the subject twice.
It is no fun being ill, as we all know. But if a loved one asks after our health, it can make us feel so much better.
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I was about to step over what I took to be a pile of household or shop waste when I heard it moan.
Thais leave their waste on the sidewalk for rubbish men to remove. It was late at night, and visibility in the deserted street was poor.
I looked down and found I was actually stepping over a thin, bare-chested man.
He was lying face down on the road, making hoarse, gasping sounds.
This was not the groaning of a drunk, sleeping off a hard night on the footpath, but a hair-raising, deep in the soul noise which sounded almost inhuman.
As he exhaled, his spindly chest heaved. ‘Hooooaaaarrr...’
I have never heard anything like it, except in dogs.
Occasionally I come across lame street dogs so racked with disease they can no longer move.
They look beyond help, though probably not beyond sympathy.
The man looked in his 60s and wore a loincloth, but nothing on his feet.
He was lying outside a dilapidated shop, about 50m down the road from a 7-11 store I had come to visit in urgent need of grocery items.
A woman in her 50s sat inside her aged shop, watching him sucking dust.
Perhaps she knew the man, or perhaps he had crawled down the street and ended up there.
'Leave him alone, dear,' she advised. She watched him intently, but showed no other interest.
Where in some circumstances I might stop and offer help, this was just too far gone.
Before sunrise, someone will have packed him up and taken him away, just like those mounds of rubbish on the street.
Back at home, I told Maiyuu about my slum-side encounter.
‘He’s mad...there’s plenty of them around here. Don’t go messing with him,’ he said.
teacherbob228 December 2009 at 15:55
ReplyDeletehorrifying story but very real. shows some of the dark side of life here. there really wasnt much you could do other than what you did. your bf warned you well. life is tough here for many. including us as farangs. we struggle to work and live here and have our bfs. so like me i wish to spend the rest of my life here. how to do that. how to afford to do that. how to dance to the tune of the government to do that is not easy at all..... again life is tough. ok the guy you talked about is truly sad but as we deal with the picture of living here...... we deal with all the shades of white and grey to black. lets hope, try, work for and wish for a good new year coming up for all of us. I do for you and your bf and I do for myself and my bf....
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Bkkdreamer28 December 2009 at 18:12
I agree, I couldn't do much more than I did, which was to run away...okay, walk speedily past the scene.
I had told my Thai friend R the carer, who has sells fragrant home-made booze nearby, that I would visit him at his stall last night, but that scene of the man in the dust put me off from going. I stayed at home instead.
I'll interrogate my shattered senses again tonight to see what they say. If I have forgotten enough of what I saw, perhaps I will venture actoss the slum to drink with R tonight.
I will try to forget that we are having fun just 50m away from where a mad man is lying face down on the road, forsaken by everyone who sees him, including me.
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Lino back home in Manhattan29 December 2009 at 03:50
Take a look at what a portion of my city looked like in the years of the 60's thru early 1990's.
www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=402544
A lot of the pathologies depicted here are the result of people who were/are ill suited for a Western society and many came to this city with little more than a desire to flop on our massive social programs.
The bottom line though is that it was a disgrace to have allowed fellow citizens to exist in this condition...ever.
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Anonymous29 December 2009 at 22:46
Thank you Lino. That was a very powerful statement of the mess Americans made of their society in that period. I hope it's better now but I fear it's not a whole lot better and won't be until you can disarm the civilians and offer a decent public health system plus a whole lot more changes. It astounds me that many people bemoan the danger they face in the streets of Bangkok or Manilla or wherever when they blithely ignore the dangers in their own home countries. And please bkkdreamer this is not aimed at you personally; I am just speaking generally.
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lyn30 December 2009 at 21:42
your story reminds me of Philly. Center City is beautiful, tall buildings, people in business suits walking around looking professional- a block away, complete chaos, broken down houses, drug addicts, homelessness, it's a complete 180, quite disturbing.
Even in my nearest city, there is no freaking way I'm going there late at night. Fudge that.
You did the right thing, some times you need to worry about your own skin.
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Bkkdreamer31 December 2009 at 00:45
Lyn,
He was only barely alive, I suspect, and certainly beyond communicating. If I had given him B100, he might have eaten it.
Those people who think they would offer help to someone in need no matter what the circumstances are deluding themselves. Self-preservation always kicks in when the situation looks really dire; it's just human nature.
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