Helping is just child's play

By WILL KERN

My guest house has a sign on the bulletin board from the local orphanage. Handwritten, the sign is obviously made by a woman. You can tell because the letters are all round and fat and there are little flowers drawn here and there. There's a colour photo of a wide-eyed kid, about 2 years old, at the top.

The sign is asking for volunteers.

I'm an American, middle-aged, a little closer to the grave than the cradle, divorced, no kids. It's not that I don't like kids, because I do, so why don't I have any? It just didn't work out that way. Truth be told, I don't think I'm very good with children.

I check out the website. The Viengping Children's Home takes in the orphaned and the abandoned, children from broken homes or from families who can no longer support them. Also, children who are HIV positive from birth and those who have lost their parents to Aids.

I decide to volunteer, even though I know I can't do much for them. It's not like I'm going to change anybody's life, but it's not like I'm going anywhere.

I've been in Singapore the past two months looking for a job, staying with an old friend and his wife. I came up here to Northern Thailand to give them a break from me, and it's too soon to go back. I can impose on them, but only in spurts.

And I've done all the touristy stuff - temples and markets and jungle treks. I've got lots of time.

The sign says they want somebody to "play with the babies". That isn't going to be me, obviously, because that's something I could never do, but maybe I can help out with painting or whatever needs to be done around the place.

The orphanage is at the back of a large, walled complex which includes a boys' home, an office and a hospice for infants with HIV. I go into the office and say I want to volunteer.

No one understands me. They don't speak English.

I try explaining that I am here to paint or whatever they need me to do. I even swipe phantom strokes with an imaginary brush but I'm not getting my point across.

Finally a woman picks out the words "volunteer" and "orphanage" and she says: "Mayuree speak English. She teacher." So Mayuree is who I need to talk to. They point the way.

I step into the orphanage, see a woman, and ask for Mayuree. "She no here. She Bangkok."

"When will she be back? I'm here to volunteer."

She says: "Oh. You volunteer. Come."

I'm led upstairs. The woman opens a door, I follow, and suddenly I'm standing at the threshold of a nursery. "You play with baby."

I look in at the kids. "Um, um!"

The woman puts her hand on my back and gives me a gentle push, I trip two steps in.

I look back at the closing door and I'm left in the room with three Thai women and 13 Thai toddlers. "But but but ... "

The kids see me and stumble over, arms outstretched. And so it's me and the babies for an hour and a half.

Here's the deal about playing with babies, at least at the Viengping Orphanage. You don't need to keep them entertained. They just want to touch you.

I'm not here 30 seconds and I have three kids hanging off my neck and one planting himself in my lap. And he's settling in, he's not going anywhere.

Six girls, seven boys, 1- and 2-year-olds, looking well-fed, but all starved for attention.

They are all snot-nosed and they wear dirty baby clothes with smiling cartoon characters peeking out from under unidentifiable splotches.

The nursery is painted off-white, the paint slopped on, and the Heroes Of Youth (Mickey, Pluto, et al) are on the walls in jagged strokes, put there by an artist whose crude handiwork pegs him as a former prison tattooist.

The characters are half-finished and uncoloured - I can only guess the artist ran out of time or paint or inclination, or all three.

But these kids are a colourful cast of characters themselves, with very different personalities.

Happy is a 2-year-old, and nothing bothers him. He grins from the time I walk in to the time I leave.

Big Ears, also 2, is a smart boy but a little mean, into the rough house even with the little girls.

Saucer Eyes is about a year old, fragile and a little lost, but she has the biggest eyes you've seen in your life, eyes like an adult's.

Monkey Head is somewhere between an infant and a toddler.

She has a big tuft of hair shooting out of her forehead like some weird ape and I feel sorry for her because she cries and cries and she wanders around the room and neither I nor the three Thai women can fix what is wrong with her.

None of the women speaks English, so they can't tell me what to do, and whatever it is I'm doing I must be doing it wrong. Why can't I make Monkey Head stop crying?

Fifteen minutes after I get here, another American comes in. Dale Douglas, 57, is a former Los Angeles policeman and private detective. Retired now, he has come to live in Chiang Mai with his Thai girlfriend. He and I get along famously. This guy has grown children. I'm confident now.

He has "good cop" written all over him. This is his first time here, too, and already he's saying he wants to help out a few hours a week. And of course he takes Monkey Head and she stops crying.

Feeding time comes at 11am, and one of the Thai women gives me a bowl of porridge with a little bit of meat in it, points to a kid and now he's my charge.

I'll call him Hungry though he doesn't seem like it at first.

He doesn't want to eat at all, but he does eat a little, then after he gets about a quarter of the way through he loses interest.

I press him, putting the spoon up to his mouth and doing the humming and cajoling like I've seen parents do in the movies.

My hands are shaking the whole time. What a lame volunteer.

Finally he starts eating, then suddenly he's devouring the stuff and I can't believe all this food is going into this little lad.

He keeps pressing his hands together as the Thais do when they say "thank you" but I'm thinking this can't be possible. The boy's 2 years old - how can he know how to do that? The cop is feeding Saucer Eyes, and she's doing the same thing.

Hungry finishes the porridge but not before some other boys come up and dig their hands in what's left of it and jump off my crossed legs like a springboard. The floor is hard, and the springboarding leads to head-conking and wailing. The cop notices there's a huge wet spot on his jeans where Saucer Eyes is sitting. The orphanage can't afford nappies.

Nap time next, which means we're almost through, but first a shower for the children.

The women march the kids into a shower room. When they emerge, they are all clean, wearing clean clothes and smelling like soap.

Then a 2-year-old poops on the floor. Another kid walks over and sticks his hand in it. I lead the second child to the women and both kids are led back to the shower.

Nap time, 11.30am. Thirteen cots are dragged out, 13 pillows. The kids lie on the cots, some gurgling, some sniffling, some sleeping.

A boy and a girl are crying. I don't recognise them. They have been here the whole time, obviously, but they have stayed clear of us and just blended in with the others.

The cop looks down at the criers, and says: "I know what this one needs."

He kneels down and puts his hand on the boy's shoulder and he stops crying immediately.

I put my hand on the little girl's back and she stops crying and falls asleep.

I step outside, get on my motorcycle and head back to town. I was right about the kids. I didn't do much for them. I didn't change their lives. But I wasn't asked to.

Until the time I volunteered, I didn't know I had it in me to give them anything.

I was always afraid of doing more harm than good, thinking that whatever I did would somehow be wrong, but there is no wrong way. The kids don't ask for much. All they ask you to do is be there. All the children want is affection but the orphanage needs everything, from donations of food, to clothes, to furniture. Money is always nice, but bureaucracy gets in the way.

There is a boys' home on the property too, as well as a hospice for children with HIV.

* Donations can be mailed to: The Viengping Children's Home, 63/3 M004 Tambon Donkaew, Amphoe Mae Rim, Chiang Mai 50180, Thailand. Ph 011 66 53 211877.

Viengping Children's Home

Email: vpch@cmnet.co.th

Will Kern