Country cousins (part 3, final)

Jap in Sept 2017, about to start work

We spoke that night from the outskirts of Bangkok where his bus stopped. They weren't coming any further into town and his parents and I would not get to see him. "Sorry I won't get to meet you this time either," he said. 

When he returned to Nong Kai the next day he had to face the wrath of his aunt. His mother heard about his unauthorised trip to Bangkok and called to pass on her concern. 

I dropped in to Sin's place that night after work at Oiy's invitation, so I could be there as she and his father called to reprimand him. 

As Sin and Oiy spoke to him over the phone, I recall Oiy pleading with Jap: "You don't have long to go now. Just a little more patience and school will be over." 

The product of a broken home, Jap's birth mother turned her back on him when he was still a baby. She now has a new family and has shown no interest in forging a motherhood bond.  When he tried to make contact some years ago, she made him feel so awkward he has not been back. 

While Sin predicts cynically that she might come calling one day whenever Jap starts earning a decent wage, so far he has heard nothing. In the meantime, he calls Oiy his Mum - though confusingly can also refer to his aunt who raised him in Nong Kai as his mother too.

As for Sin himself, he has not raised Jap by his own hand in years. "I asked my sister to take on the job, after helping her raise her own children when they were in a tough financial position years ago," he told me once.

Back to Jap and his life since school. He had spoken of pursuing studies after his secondary education ended, but it was not to be. After leaving school he moved to outer Bangkok. His first job was working as a security guard, in Ratachada, I think...I never went to see him there. 

He abandoned that job, left the lease on his apartment, forfeiting the bond and losing his unpaid wages. That was the last teenage-style drama of Jap's that I was involved in. I had stopped sending him money before then as he had entered the workforce and as far as I was concerned could look after himself. 

He turned up at his father's condo for a brief visit some time later, which is when I finally met him, our first face-to-face encounter since those May holidays three years before. I had told my parents about Jap, and had this to say on the day we reunited:

"Jap, who is now 19 and a big lad, sent me a text last week to say he was at Dad's. Last night we had a beer together at the condo. We just picked up where we left off; it has been so easy getting to know him again. He looked nervous for perhaps the first five seconds, then we just relaxed." (email, Sept 18, 2017)

Later he took a job at a Korean-owned company in outlying Bangkok making home appliances. It was hard, gruelling work on a production line and eventually he quit. In June last year he joined the staff of a Bangkok supermarket popular with foreigners, which his mother helped arrange through a relative who works there.

Jap floats a krathong in Bangkok, Nov 2017

He seldom leaves his rented place in the suburbs to visit his parents' condo. In August last year he visited briefly to give his Mum a wai on Mother's Day. However, I no longer visit when he turns up as I do not want to have to part with money.

I tell him that I can't give him money any more as I am now connected to internet banking. My partner checks the balance, I say, and if he saw any funds missing would object. 

I am sure that in Jap's eyes I am still his "uncle"...but since I passed on that grim news we don't see the need to talk much.

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

Country cousins (part 1)

Jap, Mum on Mother's Day in 2019

"If you want to send money to other people's kids, why not support my son?"

That was my partner's elder sister, caustically remarking on my relationship with a young man whose father lives in the same condo complex as me.

My partner heard it, but didn’t add much. He knew this young man, Jap, had stolen my heart, though hoped it would not last long. 

Unlike Jap, who had no compunction about trying to part me from my money, Maiyuu knew the money was mine and he had no right to demand it, even though by rights he should enjoy a bigger claim on my earnings than a young man whose family is not my own.

I have known the father, Sin, for years as a drinking friend. About six years ago I met his son, Jap, when the lad visited his Dad during the school holidays. Jap was 15 at the time and seemed close to his Dad. I recall one touching scene when he lent into his father's lap while his father squeezed a spot on his face. Well, perhaps not touching...but it showed a bond of sorts.

I was missing my own family and offered to help him financially. Jap was living in Nong Kai in the Northeast with his aunt on his father's side of the family, who gave him just 40 baht to spend at school. He was expected to help on the rice farm at weekends during cropping season but did not get wages or an allowance, he said.

Sin's wife, Oiy, who works as a cleaner in Bangkok, transferred a few hundred baht every week to help with his upkeep but the money went directly to the aunt; he saw none of it himself.

I offered to send a modest amount of 200 baht a month or thereabouts, but before the day was done Jap, out of his father's hearing, had persuaded me to send money every week, and increase the total amount. In return I would get to enter his life as a surrogate dad or uncle, which was rewarding enough though expensive.

Jap was never happy with the money I sent, and bargained with me constantly to transfer more. His father knew I was helping, and urged me to send less, as he was worried my partner would find out. 

At one point I was sending 400 baht a week, which is way more than most school kids in Esan would get from their families, as most are poor and live with their lot. 

I found out later from Oiy, who did not know I was sending Jap money until many months after I started, that he liked boasting to his school friends that he had a farang "uncle" who supported him.

In addition to the regular cash transfers I bought him an acoustic guitar, casual clothes, school books, a phone...I even paid several thousand baht to help him join a direct sales scheme.  

Jap's needs were many and varied. On one occasion, he called desperately needing cash to cut a new key for his friend's motorbike. They were out together and found themselves stranded, having lost the original and unable to get home. He called his mother, but she was too busy to send money, while his father, who had no full-time job and subsisted on a meagre daily allowance from his partner for cigarettes, couldn't help.

When I think back on the 18 months or so that I supported him regularly, I am mystified as to why I bothered. The family was not short of money: They owned a pickup and at least one motorbike. She also had plenty of cash salted away, according to Sin.

Sin assured me he had told his partner, Oiy, that I was supporting the lad, but this turned out not to be true. Nor did Jap's aunt in Nong Kai know. In her case, I was less concerned, as she had two children of her own to bring up so it was inevitable that occasionally Jap would miss out when money ran short - hence my willingness to help.

now, see part 2

From pillar to post (part 3, final)

Wat Dan, where Dew served as a novice

If they wanted to call home, the novices would have to ask the monks, so many decided to go without. When I turned up towards the end, only half a dozen of the original 70 to 80 boys were left. Several rushed to borrow my phone so they could call home. 

One child called his mother, who was clearly taken aback from her holiday reverie to be asked by her neglected son when she intended visiting him at the temple again. The kids cannot leave unless they get the consent of parents or the monks, and there are no outings once the programme ends.

Grandma Eed, a religious figure who wore black for months after the death of King Rama IX, often praises the monks as sources of wisdom and virtue. 

When I saw how quick she was to use the monks as surrogate child minders when it suited, I was struck by how hypocritical her remarks sounded. 

One day, after repeatedly asking Eed when she intended letting Dew come home, I declared I would pick him up myself if she did not act, which prompted her surly response above. 

Of course I couldn't look after Dew at home any more than she wanted him back, but I was missing him and felt sorry for the kids dumped there in such a heartless fashion. She finally brought him home one day before the new term began; his hopes of enjoying his holidays with friends now in tatters.

I emailed my parents in June, 2016, after our first swimming trip together since Dew's return from the temple. I wrote: "The past two months in which I have been battling this woman Eed have felt like a divorce-style tug of wills. I do not like adults holding kids hostage to their own interests; even now I can barely bring myself to talk to her. However, I told Dew I would make an effort to get along, and he wasn't to worry. 

"His behaviour appears to have slipped a bit...he seems naughtier now that he was the last time I saw him regularly."  

My relationship with Eed never really recovered. I took Dew to the local army pool a few more times, but when Grandma Eed's neighbour - Dew's former childhood carer - got out of jail I handed him back and left his life. My days off from work had also changed and I was no longer prepared to give up six hours on my Saturdays taking him swimming.

His carer and her family, who also took over responsibility for looking after Dew from the old women, gave me the icy treatment for weeks afterwards, as they thought I had abandoned the child. I have explained to Dew many times since why I withdrew from his life, and that I wasn't just some other adult shoving him from pillar to post. 

I enjoyed our time together as we visited local swimming pools, eateries, and temples. Thais we met on our travels often mistook me for his real father, as we both have Caucasian blood (his birth father has no knowledge of the lad, and was visiting as a tourist when he happened to meet Noi, Dew's Mum). 

Dew, now 13, and a keen football player, later returned to his mother's care when Noi herself was freed from jail. She still rents a place in the soi. 

She told me soon after her release that she is working in "jewellery" in Silom, though that sounds unlikely, given her prison record.

From pillar to post (part 2)

Dew washed Granny Eed's feet at the temple

"If you come into our lives you have to change your ways - we don't like slum habits over here," I told Dew. He made an effort to fit in and was considerate when the mood suited. At other moments he could cry and make life awkward when he refused to get his way.

Dew would stay at Grandma Eed's place, or down the lane with the family of his former carer, the one who was now in jail.

I gave Granny Eed and her sister a couple of hundred baht a week to help with Dew's school expenses, and bought items such as clothes and shoes if he was in need.

One of our first tasks was to go and see Dew's form teacher at school, as exams were approaching and the school had threatened to make him repeat the year, he had been absent from class so often. 

His mother's nocturnal habits (druggies turn up at all hours of the night for their fix) and irregular finances played havoc with his schooling. Rather than let him go to school every day as the law demanded, she would often have him call in sick. She would put Dew to work as an errand boy, delivering drugs to customers in the soi. 

His grades slipped horribly as a result. Eed and I, on our visit to his school nearby, persuaded his teacher to give him another chance. Eed and her sister injected some discipline in his life, ensured he went to school daily, and helped with his studies.

As a result of their help, he passed the exams which enabled him to graduate to his next year at school.

However, my relationship with the old women suffered after they decided to have Dew join a school holiday programme in which youngsters serve the local temple as novices. Temples all over the country host the kids every May in a scheme which usually lasts a couple of weeks. 

Eed and I took him to the local temple, Wat Dan, to be ordained along with 70-80 other children, including some of his friends from the soi. About 40 invited guests, including teachers from the school, moved from child to child as they sat in a row in the temple yard, cutting a lock of hair from the head of each, in one of the first charming rituals to open the event.

In another ceremony the kids wash the feet of their parents and custodians. Granny Eed wept (see picture above), as she recalled her own son, many years before, performing the ritual for her when he too entered the temple as a novice.

The first couple of days were full of moving occasions, in fact, including another where the kids have the rest of their hair shaved off by the monks, and yet another where their carers sit in front of them and spoon-feed them as if they were still little. They also get a back rub at night before bed.

After learning about life in the temple, most kids go back home to enjoy the rest of their holidays. However, Eed and a handful of parents who decided they didn't want their children back during the rest of the break decided to leave the kids in the care of the monks, even after the programme had ended. The temple performs the service without charge, though help from donors is appreciated. 

Dew and half a dozen other kids ended up spending six weeks at the temple, missing out on the Songkran water throwing festival and the chance to join their friends. I took the bus out to see him several times. By the end of the period the novelty of temple life had started to wane and the kids just wanted to go home.

now, see part 3