“Bus #48” they say, catch that and you can see half of Bangkok for 8 Baht. So I decide to take advantage of the cheap public transit and settle in for a good view of the city. Having been on the skytrain primarily to this point it is certainly a change in pace. I step on as the bus pulls away from the stop and climb up to my seat. I slide the window up and settle in for a long ride.
I’m the only ‘farang’(foreigner) on this bus, and after several trips around the city I wonder whether I am the only farang who rides busses. No, I know other foreigners ride busses. I see them sometimes as they pull aside the curtain for a peek out from their air-conditioned haven.
A girl stands beside me on the crowded bus. Her uniform suggests she is some kind of factory worker, and she looks completely exhausted. Her eyes look hollow, yet I can imagine a fierce determination in those eyes on better days. She gets off at the next stop and I watch as she turns to walk down a long narrow road. Labourers fill the cracks of this city, Bangkok. Labourers are the mortar.
I travel to the tourist road to meet a friend, and down embassy road. I go many places, and between them all as I make my way through this beast of a city I find myself surrounded by workers, beat up by their efforts to provide and protect and survive. They build and run this city, and yet are so unrecognized and unvalued. Migrant workers many of them, from Myanmar or Cambodia or Laos. I see the ones who build the highways, cook the meals and work in the factories. I do not see the ones ‘employed’ (read ‘exploited’) by the enormous sex-tourism industry.
Kleung Toei is the name of Bangkok’s largest squatter community. I pay a visit to this stretch of road which covers roughly two square miles and is home to 80,000 individuals. It is home to these people, many of whom have never lived outside of it and rarely venture out even for work, but it is not secure by any means. In fact it is affected regularly by floods, fires, and the bulldozing of land by the port authority of Thailand to make new room for development. It’s the same story for the roughly 1 million slum dwellers in Bangkok. It’s the same story for the roughly 1 billion slum dwellers world wide (statistics that the UN predicts will continue to rise in the foreseeable future in spite of it’s millennium development goals).
I applied for a visa at an embassy in bangkok this week. I showed up early on the day I was to pick-up my completed visa and decided to go for a walk through the neighbourhood to continue my search for an office to rent there. In the morning before going out I read I John 3:17-18 which says:
“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
As I walked past the embassy with these words floating somewhere in the back of my mind I found a woman seeking shelter from the noon sun in the shade of the embassy, and with her a little boy wearing only a worn sweater and with dirt painted around his face. I walked past as I pondered my response, and glanced back to realize the woman was quite pregnant. So I stop and walk back and crouch down to ask if there is any way I can be helpful. She speaks no english, I speak no Thai. I go off and bring back a friend to translate and find that the woman is 8 months pregnant. I ask if I can take the two of them for some food, and the woman explains she is too tired to walk to any place that serves food, so I offer to bring a meal to her…”and a pepsi” she insists. I grab a few bananas as well and return with my bag of goods. I offer them to the woman and she gives a half smile but seems rather un-enthused. My pride says within me “She should be grateful.” But I realize she is tired and weak, and I check myself.
I sit down on the pavement.
The woman looks at me a bit confused. I take out one of the bananas I bought for myself and begin to eat it and share bits with the boy. He smiles. With my broken and limited Thai I ask their names and what a few things around us are called in Thai. I bring out my camera and ask as best I can if I can take some pictures. So I take a picture of my new little friend Pa-yoon, and then hand him the camera to look at it. His mother warns me with hand-gestures that he may break it, but I allow him to hold it and soon a big grin spreads across his little face. As we play together with the camera, and Pa-yoon and I sit laughing at this strange device, Pa-yoon’s mother watches on and gradually a grin comes to her face. I see a joy come into her eyes at watching her child’s amusement. When it is time I pack up my things and say good bye. I give Pa-yoon a quick spin around by his arms, and head back down the road towards the task I thought I came to the embassy to perform.
And as I sit back in my room looking through the pictures, I realize the strange juxtaposition of all these air-conditioned glass high-rises filled with business executives surrounding this pregnant woman and her child.
I ask myself, “Where is the love of God in our world for Pa-Yoon and his mother?”
May it live in you and in me.
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