Country cousins (part 2)

Jap the schoolboy

Oiy and Sin met as youngsters in the provinces, drifted away, then reunited many years later after Sin ended a lengthy spell in the monkhood. Oiy has a layabout son by another relationship, Benz, who has been to jail once and appears to have no steady work but, like Jap's Dad himself, enters the monkhood every so often when he is sick of bumming around at home. 

At the outset of our friendship in June 2014, Jap told me he visited his father's place in Bangkok just twice a year, which I thought was unfortunate, but better than the prospect of not seeing him at all. Yet after our first meeting in those May school holidays it would be more than three years before we saw each other again.

When Jap turned up at his Dad's place again in September 2017 he had finished school and started work as a security guard in outer Bangkok. I had missed the school boy phase of his life, but for our regular conversations over the phone. 

That was one of a series of disappointments where Jap was concerned. His father told me Jap was studying at a private fee-paying school in Esan which, as a bonus, sent kids to Chon Buri at the end of their Matthayom 6 year to gain work experience at a factory - one of those Japanese-owned mega-plants which employ thousands and provide an entry into the full-time workforce for many.

I would tell myself that investing in his well-being was a good thing, as he was bound to get a good education at a private school; I was helping mold a star. 

In fact, Jap's grades were average, as was the school;. It was indeed privately owned, but brand new; its executives embarked on recruiting drive among local parents as it had no academic reputation to call on or help the kids secure jobs when they left school.  And while the other kids in Jap's year did get to spend part of their last term in Chon Buri, Jap himself missed out as his grades weren't good enough.

I started to grow suspicious that his school was less than claimed when he sent me a photograph of his schoolbooks; they were the same scrappy soft-cover, mass produced textbooks which students can buy from local malls all over the country.

But our relationship, conducted almost entirely by telephone, persisted until he left school and returned to Bangkok. Jap spoke little, and showed little feeling. I recall him getting emotional only once when he pleaded with me to fund his entry to a direct sales company selling collagen. 

While he had many friends, I doubt teens were the ideal market for skin whitening products such as collagen, especially in a place like Esan where folk farm the land and are naturally tanned.

While hanging with that crowd, he wagged school to attend their seminars, and even took a furtive overnight trip to Bangkok without telling his aunt. I figured out what he was doing, thanks to a cryptic Facebook message posted from a bus stop, but I was the only one in his family who knew.

now, see part 3