The Children

The School for Life provides for children in difficult circumstances. 140 such children had found a new home here by May 2006.

In the beginning it was mainly AIDS-orphans, but then increasing numbers of Akha, Lisu, Lahu, and Karen children arrive from Myanmar; children whose parents have been killed by Myanmar military or Thai police or who have gone into hiding and left their children behind. The children are accustomed to the soldiers along the border and the ‘teachers’ of the schools there, most of whom hardly deserve that title. What many of the children want to be when they grow up? Mainly what they have seen; but still we are sure that all those small ‘soldiers’ will learn to develop new perspectives with time; perspectives that don’t involve driving around with rifles shouldered in armored trucks.

The School for Life focuses on the education and support of

• AIDS orphans without relatives or with relatives below the poverty line;
• Tsunami orphans and survivors;
• Orphans whose parents died, e.g. as victims in the “drug-war”;
• Children without access to their parents, e.g. parents sentenced to life imprisonment;
• Children who were forced into child-labour;
• Children from mountain tribes without access to formal education.

With the children religions and religious trails move into the School for Life: Buddhist Thais, Christian children of the hill tribes, the belief in ancestors and ghosts of the Thai people as well as other peoples. Religious splinters overlap and create new combinations or become shadowy. An ecumenical community develops that includes the small church in the village – that actually is not a church but an apartment – as well as the surrounding temples and the monks who visit the farm and meditate with the children.

The religious diversity is accompanied by a linguistic diversity. Lahu children speak Lahu. Just like the Akha, Lisu, and Karen also have their own languages. Some speak Burmese or Northern Thai, which is about as close to Bangkok-Thai as Swiss German is to Dutch. But first of all, there are mixtures of all kinds: one child for instance, combines Burmese parts with Lisu and Northern Thai and also some unique children’s language. And thus it happens that an older Akha child with Thai-school experience takes care of a younger Akha child of Burmese descent who speaks a mixture of languages already. The older child would then translate for the younger child and against all odds, it would be clear enough for the Thai adults to understand and translate into English so that the volunteer workers can understand, as well.

With the children from the Tsunami stricken coastal area north of Phuket and Khao Lak new vocational, religious and cultural accents were added: now we also have children with dialects from south Thailand, Moslems have joined the School for Life and children from a particular ethnic minority, the Mokan, the sea gypsies.