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Global Urban Trek 2008
As MyselfJune 27, 2008
By Monday afternoon, our “America” was reduced to five people.
The rest of our Bangkok team went to their sites while Zach, Ben, Koritha, Leitia, and I left for Klong Toei, the biggest slum in Bangkok, to begin our work at Baan Chivit Mai. The ministry’s building is a bright green amongst what seems like hundreds of apartment buildings and street vendors. This is our new home. We work with children at their daycare in the mornings and with mentally and physically disabled teens and adults in the afternoons. As time goes by here at Baan Chivit Mai, we’re beginning to understand why we were told to just “be” and not “do” a lot this summer.
Leitia and I live in a five-story apartment building comparable to something you could find in the worst of the projects in America. The stairwells smell of garbage and urine and there isn’t a wall free of graffiti. Once we entered our host mother’s apartment though, we realized that she took a lot of pride in her home and was happy to give us a tour. 
One thing that has really struck me in being here is that no one seems unhappy with their situation. The people we work with don’t seem to have any desire to leave the slums; I don’t even know if they know it’s a slum. I’ve noticed in the women we work with – and specifically, in my host mother – a joy that I have to work to find. They have happiness in their simple life that enables them to smile, walking home through crazy traffic and to be grateful, climbing filthy apartment stairs after a long day’s work. I’m learning that kind of joy is something to be thankful for, a joy that God will hopefully bless me with by the end of this experience.
The language barrier has made it hard for my team to fully understand the injustices these people face. We can’t ask our host families how they feel about the poverty they’re in, nor can we talk to the children about their conditions at home or school.
But every day I see disabled sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds beading for hours – teens who, in the U.S., would have had the luxury of special education. I met a 21-year-old girl who said she worked at a bar from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. with only one day off. Her employment was seven years of prostitution.
No government entity cares about these young at-risk people here, which makes places like Baan Chivit Mai so necessary. Today during our Bible study, we read in James 2 about loving our neighbors as ourselves. In God’s Kingdom, the people I know here are just as much my neighbors as my roommates back at school. As the weeks go on, knowing what I know and taking in as much as I can without being able to say much, I believe God will show me what loving my Thai neighbors as myself really means.
- Jessica
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