My time here has gone so quickly! I only have a few days left now. I will be leaving here on Thursday and will spend a few days in Khao Lak before flying to Sydney on the 18th. I have been enjoying my time here. I have had to get used to rural life again though. As Sam who owns the orphanage says, we are in the jungle! So I have had to get used to cold showers again, being eaten by mosquitoes constantly, and the lizards that live in our house. I have resolved to start embracing them a little as they keep the insects away, although seeing one jump out of my bag of cookies earlier was a little much for me! Similarly, the other volunteer opened the kettle a few days ago, and a lizard jumped out of it! It Aside from this though, it is great being here. It feels a bit like a retreat, it is very peaceful. Here are a few pictures:
Below is a picture of the children here entertaining themselves with a game which involved flicking a marble!
In terms of the work I am doing here, we do jobs around the orphanage, helping with the washing up which is a bigger task than I am used to with all the children here, helping around the garden, sweeping up leaves etc, and helping with the packaging of the products they sell. We recently had an order for 200 mini soaps, so it was all hands on deck to prepare the order. We had a little production line going with wrapping the soap with film, then with paper which had to be perfectly folded, then sticking the labels onto the paper. Most of what I have been doing though has been trying to increase the awareness of the orphanage and help to find ways for them to raise funds. I have been working on producing Christmas cards which they can sell, which hopefully should be available in the next day or 2. And then I have been contacting local businesses to ask if they are interested in selling the products made here. I am also working on improving the donation options they offer by promoting monthly giving instead of one-off donations to give them more regular income. Fundraising is very important for them here due to their lack of outside support. The land which the orphanage is built on was purchased by a Swiss doctor and missionary. However, he was unable to provide financial support for more than a few years, and for the last 7 years, they have had no outside support. Gai told me about how for the next 2 years, she cried constantly and prayed asking how she would be able to take care of the children here with no money. Slowly, they started getting ideas of ways to make some money from their farm here by selling some of the organic produce that they were making. Gai told me that since then, a lot of the orphanages in the area also lost their outside supporters and were forced to close down. She told me that the Thai government like to paint a rosy picture and say that Thailand is a great country and there are no problems so supporters move on to support poorer countries like Laos and Myanmar, but so much help is still needed here.
Sam and Gai try to take us for trips to the local sights when they get time. We recently went on a trip to the Tsunami memorial park. The orphanage is in an area called Phang-Nga which was devastated by the Tsunami with the death toll here crossing 4,000 people.
Other outings have included a trip to the waterfall:
And then a stop at the beach to watch the sunset:
