Self-help takes root in the slums

The slum home where I invested thousands of baht in an ill-fated noodle venture has sprung back to life.

Jean, the teenage grand-daughter of its owner Wan, has started selling fried savoury goods. I see her walking up and down the slum alleyway, taking orders from residents, and explaining what her little ‘shop’ offers.

This is an encouraging sign, as I thought Wan had given up trying to help herself.

She asked me for the loan to help her revive a noodle business, but seldom opened her place to sell anything, and ended up spending most of my money paying the rent.

Wan, who is in her 50s, raises three grand-children at her rundown two-storey home: two boys aged under 10, and Jean, aged 16.

I enjoy chatting to them when I pass through the slum, as they are not a bad lot, even though Wan took my money shamelessly, and probably has no intention paying it back.

In their new food venture, Wan buys the ingredients at the market, which Jean then cooks up in the main room facing the slum alleyway.

The place only has just a few rooms, as far as I can tell: the main room, toilet, and small annex which serves as a cooking or storage area on the ground floor; and an upstairs sleeping area.

Jean is mother to a baby daughter, born a few weeks ago. As Jean cooks, her newborn lies in a basket nearby. The other kids are usually watching TV, or out playing football or computer games with friends.

Jean fries the food, but instead of selling it on the counter in front of the house, now takes it on a plate to slum-dwellers direct.

‘How's business?’ I asked the young cook as I passed through the other day.

‘I don’t know yet. This is the first day our shop has opened,’ Jean replied.

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Ball’s daughter is now one month old.

She looks little changed from when she first came out of hospital, I thought, as I inspected her features the other night.

A small welt has grown on her arm where the doctor gave her a vaccine shortly after her birth.

Other than that, I noticed little new in the week since I saw her last. She sleeps, eats, cries.

I asked Jay if she was still trying to feed the baby from her breast, rather than relying on powdered milk as she does now.

‘When I put her on the breast, she cries. She is used to the convenience of the bottle, and can’t be bothered sucking on my breast to draw milk,’ she said.

We blame the hospital where she was born.

Nurses allowed Jay to hold her child only twice in the first three days after her daughter’s birth.

Nurses started feeding the baby from the bottle as soon as she was born, and by keeping Jay away from her daughter, ensured that few of those important early bonding moments between mother and child took place.

‘One woman staying at the hospital snuck into the room where they kept the newborns and tried to suckle the child on her breast while nurses weren’t looking,’ said Jay.

In my day, healthy newborns were put next to the mother as she recovered in hospital. The two were seldom apart.

‘Nurses told me that they wanted me to rest. They wouldn’t allow me to get up, even to go to the toilet,’ said Jay.

Jay gave birth in a small private hospital supposedly renowned for its medical expertise.

The hospital offered no maternity ward as such. Jay recovered in a general ward, sleeping among sick people, which explains why nurses were keen to keep mother and newborn apart.

The unfortunate result appears to be that we cannot persuade the baby to take her mother’s milk, which would be better for building immunity.

It would also be cheaper than powdered milk, which is no small expense for a couple struggling financially such as Ball and Jay.

I gave Ball some money to help them buy a few items for the child. Ball gave me a deep wai, and we carried on chatting.

Jay says she is likely to return to work next month. Ball will care for the child during the day, when he also looks after the two toddlers of the household.

‘I have asked me boss if I can return to work, but he wants me to rest another month or so,’ said Jay.

Ball says his daughter has her father’s hot temper.

‘She grizzles less than she did, but demands immediate attention if she is hungry. She frowns and looks at me angrily if I do not respond,’ he said, laughing.