Jumping slum walls

A large vacant piece of land next to this condo is being prepared for sale. Once, we could cross it to gain access to the closest shops around here, which do not amount to much, but are better than nothing.

They include the local 7-11, a small hairdresser’s where I have my hair cut, and a tiny shop where I buy whisky.

Now, the new owners – a group of local investors who are clearing the land for sale as housing sections – have put up a block wall blocking access closest to the shops.

In the last few days, they have also walled up access ways between my condo and the vacant land lying between us and the shops, which gave us quick short-cut access to the other side.

This threatens to make my forays into the slum area to see Ball and family an infrequent thing at best, as I will now be forced to take the long route...out the front of my condo rather than down the side, and a long hike along Pra Ram III before I can reach his place or the shops.

I stood and watched yesterday as a three-member gang put up a cement block wall across what was once a public road running alongside the side of the condo, which I could once take to give me direct access to the slum.

A man, woman and teenager put up the wall, possibly in contravention of city bylaws.

I can’t imagine it will be there long, as fire engines need this route to gain access to the slum in the event of fires. But it was annoying to watch them brazenly erect the thing nonetheless.

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I jumped the wall, while they were still building it, to pay a quick visit to the slum.

At Ball’s place, I found not the master himself, who was visiting a friend nearby, but his girlfriend Jay instead.

‘Ball was preparing to start work at a company installing air conditioning units this morning, but didn’t go,’ she said.

‘Last night a friend of his mother’s turned up. Mum bought ya dong, and Ball drank it with them. He drank too much, and this morning could not rise in time for work,’ she said.

I listened to Jay unload about her problem boyfriend for 15 minutes. Three months after he left his job as a bank messenger, he has yet to find new employment, because he appears to lack the willpower to work.

Jay is pregnant with their first child. When Jay went for an ultrasound test a few weeks ago, Ball took a blood test.

When the results came in, the doctor asked Jay if Ball worked with alcohol. ‘His blood alcohol level is way too high...if he’s not careful, this will be his first child, and his last, as could end up sterile,’ the doctor told Jay.

I have stopped providing money for him to drink, but he has found other sources, as I knew he would.

Now he drinks lao seua (pictured), a cheap and potent Chinese concoction widely available in the slum for 10 baht a shot.

Ball’s mother is seldom around, as she plays hi-lo during the day to supplement the family’s earnings.

‘Ball has plenty of role models at home...everyone but himself is working, some of them two jobs, but Ball does nothing,’ she said.

‘If I were you, I would consider going back to your own family in the North,' I replied. ‘You do not have much of a future here, as long as Ball is unwilling to work.’

I may have to pay a return visit, to reprimand my young man.

He has a child on the way, and has complained that his family is turning against him as he fritters his days away.

'His sister and her partner work hard, and their room - right next to ours - has a fridge, TV and laptop computer which they have bought with their earnings,' Jay said.

'Our room has nothing. Even the bedspread was bought by someone else.'

I left Jay just in time to jump over the near-completed wall between the slum and my place, which the builders were still assembling. Another five minutes, and I would have been too late.

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A teenager with sagging pants and big arm muscles was building the wall with two other workers.

He is handsome, and could be good company.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the young man who helped put up a wall between my place and the slum, where hapless Ball lives, ended up being my next pet project.