Of the mercy to live another day...
The Kid's Camp
Saisunee is 8 years old, suffering from Aids. Starting from birth, she has been HIV positive and by now the progress of her illness has already gone far. Last month she lost her hair and often enough she feels too weak to even play with her girlfriends in the garden.
Her parents passed away more than one year ago and since that time the Dramaraksa Foundation took over the responsibility for her. In answer to my question what she likes most, she tells me drawing. Squatting on the warm concrete floor she is absolutely oblivious to the world around, not allowing other children to disturb her.
The piece of paper she is just painting on is a preprint of the animation movie Cars. A look into her huge innocent eyes shows me how proud she is of her creation – sparkling with joy.
Farangs – the name for white foreigners in Thailand – do not often visit the place here. As soon as I stepped into this complex I was marveled at as the “big, grimly looking bear” – the name the kids gave me. Trying to smile, I abandoned the urge to put on my safety mask just to make sure that the children would not be frightened additionally.
It was bad enough to enter their room without prior notice, armed with a camera, expecting to put a smile on their faces while also hoping not to be confronted too much with their abused little bodies. We had bought various pets made of cloth in the local supermarket which we now gave to the children. Saisunee decides on the tiny white lamb and holds it lovingly in her hands.
She calls it Mäh, folds her little hands gracefully in front of her face for the Thai Wai and says “khob khun ka” which means “thank you”. Lying in front of her on the floor, I have tears in my eyes – unable to hide my emotions due to her gesture and the affectionate look she gave me. All the fear I felt before was gone; just swept away and I knew instantly that nothing gruesome was awaiting me here. Yes, of course, all the children here are infected with the HIV-virus, but they are still normal kids. As all kids, they just want to play, need love and care.
When asking Saisunee if she knows why she is here, she answers very self-confident that it is because she has Aids and will probably die soon. Looking at me, she sees tears running down my cheeks and immediately wants to know why the big bear is so sad. But I simply have no answer to her question, at least not any one she understands because she already knows what will happen to her in the near future. I can’t resist asking her if she has something like a greatest wish. And she tells me straightway without having to think hard about what it could be: “I would like to see my parents once again so that I can tell them how much I love them.”
That was it!
It was now impossible for me to continue taking pictures. The “big bear” was whacked out and had lost his strength. My eyeglasses clouded up and my feelings radiated into an almost unbearable upside down and roundabout. Everything moved spastically around me and the picture of this little girl was not only burnt into the sensor of my camera but it will also be engraved into my memory forever and ever.
Hastily I say goodbye to the children and first thing outside I have to sit down on the lawn in the garden. My sole thought was to take a deep breath and get my act together again. I had prepared myself so well for this visit, this moment, for a very long time, had gone through all possible scenarios. But right now I was helpless and completely overwhelmed by my feelings. My companions, an advisor to the management of the Dramaraksa Foundation, a translator and the driver were unable to understand my emotions.
For them, this here was nothing special, they already knew the children and were aware of the fact that none of them would leave this place alive. But to me all of this was new – like a battlefield without any winners and where nobody survives. It finally hit me why the monk, with whom I had a long talk before visiting the site itself, advised me not to get too close to any of the kids.
In front of Saisunees room some of the kids were lying on the floor watching TV. I was told that the Kid’s Program on air is a welcomed change in their lives but all I see are sad faces with dull eyes staring at the screen. Some of the older children are already asleep on benches scattered around in the roofed inner yard, others sitting apathetically around just staring moles in the air.
It is early morning but the air already brooding sultry. The blazing sun is omnipresent although the temperature has not yet reached more than tolerable 25 degrees Celsius. It seems as if the happiness and cheerfulness of children all around the world does not exist in this spot at all – on the contrary. There is a brand new playground right in front of the house and on the first floor there are some computers with Internet access but, in fact, you won’t find the kids there – neither in the garden nor at the computers.
The Story of Alongkot Ponlamuk
1985, as Alongkot Ponlamuk, a wandering monk walked the long and dusty way to the Khaosamjod-Mountains he surely didn’t give a thought to what impact this would have in the near future. Like with a lot of other fellow men, there is a story behind when and how he decided to become a monk and since this is connected with my report about the HIV-positives I would like to take the time to tell you all about it:
Once there was a young, ambitioned Thai engineer who left for Australia to study. His beloved girlfriend was left behind in Thailand and was promised the marriage on return after finishing his studies. But as he finally returns home, he has to find out that she has already married his best friend. This breaks his heart and he tries to drown his pain and sadness in alcohol. Almost on a daily basis he ends up in gloomy bars drinking senselessly trying to forget. After his fifth car accident, he ends up in hospital severely injured for several months before he is able to return home to his foster mother – the woman who took care of him since his biological mother died when he was three years old. She asks him to change his life and to look ahead instead of living in the past. Up to this very day, scarves in his face still document this time of self-destruction.
He becomes a monk wandering around for three years and finally reaches the mountain chain of Khaosamjod with its caves where he stays for another six years to meditate. During this period he already begins to teach the locals in religion and meditation. When asked by the supreme monk of this province to become the prior of the monastery located at the foot of the mountains, Alongkot agrees.
1991, Alongkot is invited to Bangkok to introduce doctors and nurses to the influence of meditation in regard to curing and healing diseases because of his good reputation as a meditation teacher. On one occasion, a student surprises the prior with the question “How can we live in peace together with Aids-patients?”
Up to that moment, the young prior Phra Atscharn Alongkot Dikapanyo had never before heard of a disease called Aids and therefore starts to visit various hospitals in Bangkok to find out more. Only to be confronted with such patients isolated in a dirty section of one of the hospitals. He doesn’t know what starts and causes the disease nor if it is contagious, but he immediately realizes the hopelessness of the ill.
No doctor, no nurse takes care of these Aids-victims wasting away on their own. Nobody is prepared to wash them, there is no medical treatment and nobody cares to even talk to them. They are already kicked out of society, awaiting the end of their life. Alongkot says that he was the first and only one to have touched these people due to the fact that the hospital staff was too scared to have done so.
Alongkot understands that Aids is more a social than a physical problem. From this point on he visits Bangkok more frequently and spends a lot of time with washing and feeding the ill as well as with simply spending time and talking to them. When the first Aids patient dies in his arms Alongkot realizes that the loneliness of the isolated people weighs a lot heavier than all their physical problems.
Scarcely one year later he has completed the necessary dispositions and is able to bring the first Aids-patient to the Wat Phrabat Nampu, where 1991 eight monks lived. But all the monks fled from the monastery within the first half of the year being too afraid of the disease itself and Prior Alongkot was left alone once again. Together with his patient he has to deal and fight against the locals of the surrounding villages who want to get rid of the medically weird people. Every morning Alongkot has to cover severe distances to beg for enough food for his patient and himself.
It takes him more than a year to reach an agreement with the leader of the province, containing a clause that no Aids-patient will ever enter the respective villages. From now on and for the first time he actually gets support from the local people and shortly afterwards even a nurse starts to work with him at the monastery on a regular basis.
At this time, only a few hundred cases of Aids had been officially registered in Thailand. A few months later the monastery has seven HIV-Positives living there. In 1993 already over 100 and the Prior has to send patients away due to a lack of almost everything: space, quarters, beds, food, but most of all money – needed to buy drugs / pharmaceuticals. It becomes increasingly apparent that donations are called for on one hand and that the monastery would have to start with building more and new accommodations on the other hand in order to cover the onrush of more and more patients asking for help.
1994 more than 3.000 HIV-Positives seek help at the monastery hoping for housing and cure. But only 600 can stay – to take on more is simply impossible for Alongkot. And even those can only be treated for a few weeks, are given food and have to leave again afterwards. In 1994 136 people passed away in Wat Phrabat Nampu.
Today, in the year 2008, the site of the hospital has not lost a bit of its shocking impact on visitors, meanwhile tragically famous as “Aids-Temple”, located picturesquely at the foot of a densely wooded ridge near the Thai village Lopburi (approx. 160 km north of Bangkok). Between Akasian-trees and Bougainvillea-bushes, houses with green roofs, a few colorful Buddha statues and administrative offices were built connected by concrete paths.
Up to 450 patients at a time can be take care of by a few nurses and volunteers as well as one doctor and 10 monks. Medical treatment as known by us is not really available here. Most of the patients here have been cast out by family or society and are already in a very progressive stadium of the disease.
Additionally, the temple survives on donations, does not reject people looking for help with the result that the caretaking of hundreds of patients and the personal is very cost-intensive. Meanwhile, the Dramaraksa Foundation looks after more than 1.500 HIV-Positives in 4 different camps, costing up to 60 million Baht per year (approx. Euro 1.3 million – status November 2008). Compared to the operational costs of a hospital in Austria or Germany for 1.500 “normal” patients, that really is a small sum. On our side of the world, we could operate a small village care center for the same amount for around one year – but definitely not an Aids center including treatments, doctors and nursing staff for this number of patients.
Unfortunately, since 2004, there is a reduction of donations and the necessary 60 million Baht can’t be raised any more although the number of HIV-Positives is currently rising again. 2005 even the closing of the monastery was discussed because of the financial situation of the site. This leads inevitably to the inconceivably cruel fact that – hardly imaginable for us – a lot of the patients neither receive a HAART therapy against HIV nor whichever painkillers available to make their lives more human in their last weeks and months on earth.
Back in 1990, this would not have been remarkable. In those days, Aids was practically unknown and was mainly related and limited to minority groups such as homosexuals and drug addicts. Nowadays, 2008, this is no longer necessary because of an available combined therapy of multiple anti-retroviral medication, enabling HIV-Positives to live a nearly “normal” life for almost decades.
Unfortunately, a lot of youngsters do not take Aids seriously anymore and Safer Sex is an outdated theme throughout Europe. Some of them even believe a complete cure already exists and therefore show no fear of an infection with the HI-virus.
Wat Phrabat Nampu – Lopburi, Thailand
As our limousines – after a 2-hour drive – finally stopped at the gates of the Temple, we stood in front of closed doors and were rejected to enter on the indication that foreigners were not allowed inside in a very unfriendly manner. Only after a phone call to Mister Charim Konmun which clarified the situation that we were expected, the gates opened up and we were able to park our car on a giant gravel parking lot directly behind the temple wall. My first thought was: what a large parking space for a place of death and was unable to imagine why this site needed so much room to accommodate at least 10 large motor-coaches / busses at the seemingly end of the world.
Wat Phrabat Nampu is – since more than 16 years – the place to go to for HIV-Positives from all over Thailand and it looks as if this will not change in the near future. At the end of a small road beyond the provincial village of Lopburi , idyllically close to the hills and surrounded by fields of sunflowers, a giant white Buddha statue is enthroned right above the Hospice. Hundreds of steps lead uphill, painfully reminding us that all life has a beginning but must have an end as well.
The quarters of the residential monks as well as those of the patients still capable to take care of themselves are situated on the extensive area of the site. Additionally, there is a small super market, a ATM (automatic teller machine), an office for any kind of donations, a crematory with 6 furnaces as well as a so-called “Museum of Life”.
The lesser known Kid’s Camp is 80 km away. Today, this location is an asylum for nearly 1.000 children, most of them born HIV-positive, others given away right after birth by their parents and also orphans because of family tragedies.
In the last years and due to unsuccessful educational Aids-campaigns in Thailand, scholars as well as soldiers are brought to the Temple, giving them all a naturalistic demonstration of the danger of this disease. Whole school classes pass rooms with dozens of patients in their last stage, only having a few more days to live. If the responsible authority can be believed, at least a small contribution to more safety of the next generation is being achieved thereby. The older ones – those over 30 years – still don’t particularly see much sense in using condoms.
In the western world, this display of nearly dead people would not be ethically justifiable, but in the Thai culture people approach each other – even under such extreme circumstances – with more respect and dignity. What would lead to fear and indignation in Europe, is a natural and common thing for Thais. One visits the Temple, brings fruits, vegetables or flowers, talks with the patients and leaves again.
It is a very peaceful place where men and women, lady-boys and even children can find their last retreat. Nobody quarrels with their fate; there is no hate or anger against others. Not one complaint is to be heard in respect to how bad the world is or who should take the responsibility for men having gone astray in brothels and endangering their wives and children.
In this case, Buddhism plays a major role. The reincarnation of every being is a main belief in the Thai culture. Even if it appears strange to us Europeans, it helps these people in the Temple to accept their destiny and to use their remaining time of earth positively. Unlike Christianity, where death is not the absolute end but it finishes off our earthly existence, the Thais believe that they can make everything better in their upcoming next life. Even in their last days the patients try to use a little bit of their remaining time listening to the radio or spending time talking to their friends.
The first human being I meet is Som. Thais simply love nicknames. Mischievously smiling at me, she says: “I am lady-boy!” As if I could ever have missed that fact. A child born as a boy but later lives as a woman either through family background, upbringing or based on his own decision, is called a “lady-boy”. Surprisingly, there are many of them in Thailand. And it immediately comes to mind that there must be more than one reason behind it than just a mere change of sex.
Most of these boys undergo a hormone treatment for a more feminine face and appearance and to grow breasts but refuse to have their phallus removed since this would mean the end of any kind of sexual activities. That these boys present and offer their bodies in bars in Bangkok and Pattaya in exchange for money is widely known and nearly everybody vacationing in Thailand has also seen them in dazzling costumes on stage in the famous cabarets all over the country.
Naturally, these lady-boys belong to the most effected risk group and, as I will find out later through my investigation, many of the patients here belong to this category. Asking Som if I may take a picture of him, he immediately agrees smiling away and even suggests that he poses in front of the big Aids nameplate right behind the parking lot.
A bit confused I just nod and take a few pictures. Obviously, he is happy to show off his body to a Farang again and there is not a sign of bitterness in his words. He seems to be content to live here within the Temple site with friends in the same position.
We then continue walking over to the main building in order to register and to negotiate the contract for the rights on the pictures taken. Nowadays, this is an absolute “must do” in a time where publicity lewd reporters from all over the world even take on the burden of a one-week care attendance of Aids-ill people just to have their lurid, dubious articles printed in the local mud press. Sad but true. And, therefore, as explained by one of the members of the Dramaraksa Foundation, Mister Charim Konmun, photographers are not really welcome here anymore.
A few years ago, a photographer had created a worldwide interest with his pictures of some deadly ill people in Wat Phrabat Nampu which caused a huge loss of reputation for the Temple itself. With his perfectly shot but ethnically questionable pictures, he only worked out the dark side of this place instead of showing the multiplicity of positive aspects as well. The people living in the Temple site are all Buddhists and treasure the peaceful and forgiving association amongst each other. They pray and meditate together every morning. But since the dreadful pictures of said photographer appeared in the news, a lot of reporters visit the location as volunteers just having one thing in mind: to write an article about this place of horror.
To my question why the Foundation agreed to allow me, a photographer, inside to take pictures and to inform the Western World of this place, I got a clear and precise answer: “Contrary to the other photographers before, you are Buddhist , can speak our language and are also married to a Thai woman, which makes you understand our concern and actions at least more than anybody else.”
After being briefed of the habits of the Temple – which took some hours – we were introduced to Pai, our guide, a 35 year old woman with a tiny tattoo on her left wrist and shoulder. Together with her we went over to the first spot of our tour – to a big black Bronze Buddha situated in about 2 m height under a kind of shed roof in the back of the Temple site. Right in front of the statue, more than 12.000 tiny little cotton bags with the ashes of the deceased of the past years were stacked.
Immediately, I get an oppressive feeling and cannot avoid imagining how many people die here on a daily basis. Just 10 years ago, a generous donation made it possible to install the first of meanwhile 6 ovens of the crematorium. And only since then the ashes of the passed away could be placed to the foot of the Bronze Buddha. Before then, the corpses had been placed on banana leaves and then burnt. On bad days, it summed up to 7 bodies per day. Alone the number of ovens is awesome and an unmistakable evidence on how many people die of this horrible disease daily.
Only somebody who can deal with 2 to 3 deaths a day and is resistant to the putrid smell of decay, urine and excrements can stay here longer than a few hours, Pai tells us with a smile. I know at once what she is talking about, can smell the odor of death all around. “Nobody gets out here alive” she adds and shows us the “Center of Hope”, a quarter for patients still capable of taking care of themselves – a pre-stage to the death lane – so to say, which is just a building away. The name of the building sounds like a bad joke to me because without the HAART therapy there is absolutely no hope at all for the patients. That is a fact.
Click here for the second part of the story!