Away match: Bryan Robson visits Bangkok shelter

For many people, football is a sport, a passion and a part of their regional identity. For UNICEF, football is a way of keeping children fit and healthy and of teaching them life skills like discipline and teamwork. We also team up with leading football clubs and players to raise awareness and funds for our work on children’s rights.

Manchester United legends Bryan Robson and Andrew Cole were in Bangkok last week as part of a fundraising tour to help the club raise £1 million for UNICEF’s work with children. During their trip, I went with Bryan to visit Baan Phumvej Reception Home for Boys, to learn how UNICEF is supporting children who have been abused or trafficked.

I arrived in Pak Kred an hour ahead of the main group. The boys were practicing for a music class and changing into Man Utd kits, bought specially for the occasion. Bryan arrived later with Alex from UNICEF UK and John Shiels, from the Manchester United Foundation. Also known as ‘Captain Marvel’, Bryan was the longest serving captain in the club’s history and is now manager of the Thailand national team.

We also met Ann and Nang from Peuan Peuan (‘Friends’ in Thai), part of the NGO Friends International, which gets support from UNICEF to work with migrant and trafficked children.

I asked Bryan how the Thailand national team was getting on. “I’m really enjoying the experience and working with the Thai players,” he said. “We’ve done well in one competition, the Asian Games. We didn’t perform as well as I’d hoped in the Suzuki cup but in July we’ve got our first World Cup qualifying game coming up, so for me it’s all about building up for that.”

Pak Kred is a shelter for children who need special protection. Some of the boys are victims of child trafficking or domestic violence, others are former street children. At the shelter, social workers look into each child’s situation. Educational activities prepare them for work or formal school and, where possible, preparations are made to return them to their families or communities.

However, staff at the shelter are not fully equipped to deal with non-Thai children. The shelter is home to 130 boys, around 40 per cent of whom come from the neighbouring countries of Burma, Cambodia and Laos. They arrive with migrant families or through child trafficking. Staff from Friends International visit Pak Kred shelter three times a week to give these children non-formal education in their own language. The organisation also works with NGOs in neighbouring countries to try to trace their families.

Bryan Robson holds a football coaching session at Pak Kred Reception Home for Boys.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Piyanun Kiatnaruyuth

On tour

We took Bryan and John for a tour of the shelter. They saw a hairdressing room with leather chairs lined up before a wall of mirrors, where the trainee barbers practice new haircuts on each other – and on visiting celebrities. Bryan got a quick trim. Next door was a pottery workshop where boys made ceramic animals and flowers from rubber moulds.

In another room a class was performing music with traditional Thai bamboo instruments called angklung. Each instrument produces one note when shaken, so the melody was determined by the teacher, who conducted the class. Bryan and John joined the orchestra, carefully copying the boys on either side of them. “It’s good for the arms,” Bryan joked afterwards, before giving signed photos to the boys.

After the music class we went out to the centre’s football field, where the boys had assembled in their Manchester United kits. Bryan spotted one boy in a number 7 shirt. “That was my number,” he said. Bryan and John ran a coaching session for the children, teaching them how to score goals. They put them in numbered pairs, with one boy as a striker and his partner as a defender. At the end, Bryan took a shot and scored. I felt a bit sorry for the young goalkeeper, who almost certainly had never had to defend against a professional player.

After the training session, I interviewed Bryan for a short video for the UNICEF Thailand website. I asked him about his impressions of the project. “What I’ve seen is a fantastic facility,” he replied. “The children are really well behaved and very concentrated on what they’re doing. I’ve seen musicians playing, I’ve seen them on the sports field. It’s a terrific facility for badly abused and homeless kids. So they do a terrific job here and I’m impressed all round. When you see facilities like this, no wonder Manchester United want to be involved with UNICEF.”

Bryan was particularly impressed by the focus on sport. “What’s great for me is that they’re doing sport as well as education,” he continued. “We all know that education is very important but when kids get onto a playing field, no matter what sport they’re doing, they really enjoy being outside. And it’s good for them, for their health and keeping fit.”

I asked Bryan what he’d learned about UNICEF’s work. “I spoke to the staff here and it’s not just about bringing kids off the street, it’s about educating them how not to end up back on the streets,” he said. “It’s about trying to get the older boys some employment so they can learn a trade. Also trying to get some of the Burmese and Cambodian kids who’ve been trafficked to Thailand back to their own countries.”

Bryan and John join a music class at the shelter, while Alex and I watch from the doorway.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Piyanun Kiatnaruyuth

Child protection

One of the boys on the team Bryan coached was nine-year-old Fahan (not his real name), who had been taken from the Burmese border area and brought to Bangkok with his sister Meliha by a trafficking gang. Fahan is from one of the Muslim minority groups in Burma. His family is very poor. They have four children and live in Myawaddy village on the Moi river, where the father drives a boat.

Recently, a child trafficker went to the family and offered them 3,000 baht [£600] for two of their children. Traffickers often promise to look after children and give them a better life, but the reality is very different. He brought Fahan and Meliha to Bangkok, where they lived with him in a room above a shop. They slept during the day, and he forced them to sell flowers on the street at night. If they disobeyed him, he would beat them. They earned around 1,000 baht a night, but the broker would only give them 10 baht each for a snack.

On a previous visit to the shelter, we talked to Fahan about his situation. “I used to live with my family in Burma on the Mae-Sot border, near the Friendship Bridge,” he told us. “I went to school there. I was in the second grade. There was someone who brought me and my sister here from Burma. I don’t know him. We came in a big bus. When we got here I sold roses with my sister in places where there were lots of tourists. We sold them from 8 p.m. until the morning. After a while we ran away from where we were working and a Burmese guy brought us here.”

Fahan seemed happy at the shelter but was keen to go home. “During the day I sweep the floor, take a shower, work in the kitchen and eat soup,” he said. “I like learning Thai and Burmese, and playing and listening to music. I would like to go back home to my family in Burma.”

Luckily, Friends International were able to trace Fahan’s family in Burma and make sure it was safe for the children to return. As Bryan left the shelter, he walked with Fahan for a while, and I talked to Man Utd’s camera man about the issues facing trafficked children. Solving these kinds of problems can be an uphill struggle involving UNICEF, the government and other partners. Support from football clubs like Manchester United makes our job a lot easier and helps give children like Fahan a chance for a better future.

China: Back in the P.R.C.

The author hiking on the Great Wall of China in 2011
© Andy Brown/2011/China

In 1876, Gore Vidal’s historical novel about the US centenary, narrator Charlie Schuyler returns to New York after decades of self-imposed exile in Europe. He is struck by the transformation of a city he once knew into something brash, modern and unfamiliar, as America rushed to catch up with and surge past the global powers of the Old World. I got a bit of the same feeling returning to Beijing after a ten-year absence (I first visited on a Great Wall hiking trip in 2002).

Driving into town, the horizon was a jumble of skyscrapers and tower blocks, stretching out from East to West with barely a sliver of sky between them. Everything was clean and orderly, with neat rows of silver birch trees lined up behind spotless pavements and well-managed cycle lanes. The tiled ‘hutong’ houses and bicycle-drawn carts I remembered from my last visit were nowhere to be seen. As the light began to fade, we reached the embassy district where Western brand names, neon-lit Chinese characters and a huge Apple logo lit up the sky above a brand new shopping mall. There was even a billboard for a Bob Dylan gig at the Workers’ Gymnasium. It felt more like Geneva than the hectic and historic Asian city I remembered.

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Human traffick: a shelter for abused children

Yarzar talks to Fahan (not his real name) in a classroom
at Pak Kred Reception Home for Boys.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmeth

Poverty is relative. For families living on the bottom rung of the social ladder in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the streets and slums of Bangkok promise a lifestyle worth making a long and sometimes dangerous journey for. In the troubled border regions of Burma, meanwhile, there are people desperate enough to sell their own children into slavery. As shocking as it sounds, this is a common enough practice to generate a thriving trade in child trafficking at Thailand’s border towns.

To find out what happens to the victims of child trafficking, we went to Pak Kred Reception Home for Boys at Amphur Pakkret, about half an hour’s drive north of Bangkok. In fact it’s only north of Bangkok in the sense that Sutton is south of London – the urban sprawl thins out a bit but there’s no greenbelt or real sense of when one place ends and the other begins.

I live on the north side of Bangkok, so I flagged down a taxi and made my own way to the shelter. There, I met up with Ann and Yarzar from Peuan Peuan (‘Friends’ in Thai), part of the NGO Friends International, which gets support from UNICEF to work with migrant and trafficked children. Yarzar was a polite, young Burmese man in glasses and a Friends polo shirt. Like Nan, the street outreacher worker we met before, he used his language skills to communicate with non-Thai children and their families.

Once my colleagues Tum, Cherry and Ytske had arrived from the office with our photographer, Ann and Yarzar took us to look round the shelter. In some classrooms, older boys were doing vocational training. There was a hairdressing room with leather chairs lined up before a wall of mirrors, where the trainee barbers practiced new haircuts on each other. Next door was a pottery workshop where boys made ceramic animals and flowers from rubber moulds. I watched one boy painstakingly painting a mother hen, completely engrossed in his task and ignoring the visiting farang (foreigner).

There were also classrooms for younger boys. In one room, a group of boys played with jigsaws and dominoes, while others took part in an art class. In another room, a class was performing music with traditional Thai bamboo instruments called angklung. Each instrument produced just one note so the melody was determined by the teacher, who conducted the small orchestra. Beyond the classrooms was a kitchen and open air dining area where staff were cooking lunch. The distinctive smell of Thai green curry hung in the humid noontime air as two boys set out places on the long tables, with inverted bowls to protect the food from flies.

There were also several dormitories around a football field, where a game was in progress. I went over with Ytske to take some photos and was soon persuaded to take part. I gave my camera to one of the boys, who seemed to have a natural flair for photography, and took a few penalty shots at the goal. Another boy drew a picture of a stick man holding a camera. He pointed at the figure. “Where you from?” he asked. “The UK,” I replied to a blank look. I tried again: “England?” His face brightened. “Ah, Liverpool!” he exclaimed. “Yes, the Beatles,” I said but I was on the wrong track. “ManUtd, David Beckham!” he continued.

Boys learn hairdressing skills at the vocational training centre.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmetha

Child protection

Pak Kred is a shelter for children who need special protection. Some of the boys are victims of child trafficking or domestic violence, others are former street children or have been in trouble with the law for minor offences. At the shelter, social workers look into each child’s situation. Educational activities prepare them for work or formal school and, where possible, preparations are made to return them to their families or communities.

However, staff at the shelter are not fully equipped to deal with non-Thai children. The shelter is home to 130 boys, around 40 per cent of whom are foreign. They mainly come from the neighbouring countries of Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, either with migrant families or through child trafficking. “These shelters are meant to be temporary but some foreign children end up staying for a long time,” UNICEF child protection officer Sirirath Chunnasart explained afterwards. “If they’re from Burma, it can take years to trace their families. In the meantime they often miss out on their education because they don’t have access to classes in their own language.”

Staff from Friends International visit Pak Kred shelter three times a week to give foreign children non-formal education in their own language. The organisation also works with NGOs in neighbouring countries to try to trace their families.

Yarzar introduced us to nine-year-old Fahan (not his real name), who had been taken from the Burmese border area and brought to Bangkok with his sister Meliha by a trafficking gang. Fahan was a small boy with a dark complexion in a yellow t-shirt. He was relaxed around us and often smiled or joked with the other boys.

“I used to live with my family in Burma on the Mae-Sot border, near the Friendship Bridge,” Fahan told Tum and Cherry. “I went to school there. I was in the second grade. There was someone who brought me and my sister here from Burma. I don’t know him. We came in a big bus.

“When we got here I sold roses with my sister in places where there were lots of tourists. We sold them from 8pm until the morning. After a while we ran away from where we were working and a Burmese guy brought us here.

Fahan seemed happy at the shelter but was keen to go home. “During the day I sweep the floor, take a shower, work in the kitchen and eat meat soup,” he said. “I like learning Thai and Burmese and playing and listening to music. I would like to go back home to my family in Burma.”

Fahan helps set the tables at lunchtime.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmetha

Minority groups

Afterwards, I asked Yarzar to tell me a bit more about Fahan’s situation. “He is from one of the Muslim minority groups in Burma, which face discrimination because of their ethnicity and religion,” he said. “Fahan’s family is very poor. They have four children and live in Myawaddy village on the Moi river, where the father drives a boat.”

The Moi river marks the border between Burma and Thailand. Myawaddy is on the Burmese side opposite Mae-Sot, a Thai border town that has become synonymous with drug smuggling, sex workers and child trafficking. “A broker went to the family and offered them 3,000 baht [£600] for two of their children,” Yarzar continued. That’s a lot of money in Burma. Brokers will promise to look after the children and pay the parents every month, but after a few months they usually stop paying.”

Fahan and Meliha were treated harshly by the trafficker. “He brought them to Bangkok where they lived with him in a room above a shop. They slept during the day and he forced them to sell flowers on the street at night. If they disobeyed him, he would beat them. They earned around 1,000 baht a night but the broker would only give them 10 baht each for a snack.”

Yarzar met Fahan at the shelter after he escaped from the trafficker, but it took a while to win his trust. “Fahan didn’t trust anyone at first because of his experiences. He was very quiet and afraid of everything. I had to play with him and build a relationship step-by-step. But he’s happy now and makes friends with everyone. He’s just like a normal kid now.”

Meliha is now back with her parents in Myawaddy and Fahan will be joining them soon. “We were lucky to be able to trace the family,” Yarzar said. “The Burmese government does not provide social services and we have to rely on local NGOs. Even then, their activities are restricted. It’s much easier to trace the Cambodian children.”

Given everything he’s been through, Fahan did seem like a remarkably normal child and I was struck yet again by children’s resilience and their ability to recover from deeply traumatic experiences. Relatively speaking, Fahan is one of the lucky ones. Across Thailand, there are thousands of children like him working for traffickers. They beg or sell flowers on the streets, they live and work in rubber plantations or sweatshop factories producing goods for Western consumers, or they work on boats in the fishing industry. Some of them spend their whole childhood in virtual slavery and never see the inside of a classroom.

“A few years ago the police raided a big factory in Samut Sakorn where trafficked children were living and working,” Yarzar commented. “The owner was sent to prison. But it still goes on and they don’t always get caught.

Yarzar walks with Fahan back to his dormitory block.
“I would like to go back home to my family in Burma,” Fahan says.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmetha

Friends in need: children living in Bangkok slums

Nuch selling flower garlands on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmetha

Like any large city, Bangkok is multi-faceted and the view you get can be radically different depending on your perspective. Having seen the city from the viewpoint of a tourist and an office worker, my next job was to see the same locations from the perspective of the urban poor: in particular children living in slums and working on the streets.

I went on three project visits around Bangkok with my colleagues from the Thailand office, Tum and Cherry, and a local photographer, Chum. I’m working with Tum and Cherry to create stories for the UNICEF Thailand website on the right to an education, while training them up on producing different types of content, including audio, video and social media.

As well as doing freelance work for UNICEF, Chum is an award winning photo journalist. His pictures from the front line of the Red Shirt riots last year paint a vivid picture of anger, bloodshed and arson among the normally placid Thai people. “It’s hard to get natural shots,” Chum explained. “Even during the violence, people would smile and wave at the camera. These were the best 15 pictures from thousands.” I’d just taken my own photos of Red Shirts on their way to a weekend rally, so it was fascinating to see Chum’s much edgier work.

The projects we visited were run by Peuan Peuan (‘Friends’ in Thai), part of the NGO Friends International, which gets support from UNICEF. For the first visit, we drove a short distance from the UNICEF office to a slum community near the flower market on the opposite bank of Chao Praya, a wide river that flows through the heart of Bangkok.

There we met 12-year-old Nuch (not her real name), a slight, quietly-spoken girl in a red t-shirt with a pigtail in her hair. She was living with her mother Dao, stepfather and five siblings in a single room hut. Nuch used to go out begging in Bangkok’s commercial district, but her mother decided to find another way to earn a living. Now, Dao goes to the market early each morning to buy flowers. She uses these to make garlands, which Nuch and her siblings sell to tourists and worshipers in the temple district of Banglumpu, undercutting the prices in shops.

“I leave the house with my mom, brothers and sisters around 5 or 6pm,” Nuch told us. “We go to Banglumpu area with 400 garlands. My mum sells some on the pavement with my youngest brother, who is two and a half. I walk around the area with my other brothers and sisters to sell the rest. We only return after we sell them all, which can be anytime from 11.30pm to 2am.”

Working late at night on the streets puts children like Nuch at risk of abuse and exploitation. Her brother had already been detained by the police and sent to a shelter, although he was now back with the family. Nuch also frequently misses school because of work. “I don’t usually go to school,” Nuch says. “Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. If mum doesn’t sell anything, she doesn’t have money for us to go. I like going to school but I’m still in Grade One because I flunked my exams so many times.”

Making ends meet is a constant struggle for the family. “We make around 500 baht [£10] a day selling garlands,” Dao explained, while chopping chili peppers and preparing dinner for the children on a small gas burner outside their hut. “The rent is only 1,500 baht [£30] a month, but I have to feed the children and pay for them to go to school. Yesterday Nuch left her earnings in a tuk-tuk, so today we have no money to buy flowers.”

School’s out

Nuch draws a picture of a house by a waterfall at the community classroom.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmetha

The slum where we met Nuch is not the best environment for a child. It is a small settlement of 50 households, squeezed into a small plot of land between a school and main road. Except for the slum owner’s house, the homes were dilapidated wooden shacks, often on the verge of collapse, with electric wires hanging low across the walkways. There were attempts at decoration, with bird cages and pictures of celebrities torn from magazines outside some huts. In the centre of the slum, an old tree had been turned into a shrine with flower garlands, incense sticks and a small Buddha statue. Everywhere we went rubbish littered the ground, which the children ran across with bare feet.

The settlement was much smaller than those in Manila, which are home to around 50 per cent of the population, but it lacked the infrastructure and community of the larger, more established Filipino slums. In Thailand, slums are usually home to marginalised people like foreign migrant workers and street prostitutes, who rent shacks by the day for 50 baht [£1]. Although the settlement where Nuch lives is next to a large, well-equipped school, the families cannot afford to send their children there. Instead, those lucky enough to go to school have to travel to a free temple school some distance away.

Friends International runs a classroom in the slum, where staff provide life skills education, play activities and a place for children to do their homework. In the classroom, Nuch drew a picture of a large house by a waterfall, surrounded by trees, butterflies and heart-shaped balloons. I was struck by the stark contrast with her real home. Her six-year-old brother Tor, meanwhile, played with Lego bricks while a Friends worker cleaned and dressed a cut on his foot. “The staff teach me how to do homework,” Nuch said. “Sometimes they ask me to draw pictures. I like it here because they are kind. It’s good that we have this classroom near our house because I walk there on the afternoons that I’m free. Mom never tells me not to go.”

“About half the children in the community come regularly to our centre,” Ann Charoenpol from Friends explained. “We need to get to know them first, build their trust and find out about their situation.”

As well as the classroom, Friends runs a ‘child safe community’ scheme. They have trained 15 volunteers living in the settlement about child rights. The volunteers keep an eye on the children when their parents are not around and report any instances of abuse or domestic violence. The organisation also provides income generation activities for the families. They offer them funding, supplies and training to set up a small business such as making products from recyclable materials, which are then sold by Friends. In return, the parents sign a contract promising to keep their children in school.

An unaccompanied Cambodian boy waits to cross a busy Bangkok street.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmetha

Soi Cowboy

Our next visit was to a government-run shelter for homeless and trafficked children, where Friends International works with homeless and trafficked children from Laos, Cambodia and Burma to provide them with educational activities in their own language. They also help with family tracing. I’ll come back to this in my next blog.

For our final trip, we went out after work on Friday night to the sex tourism hotspots of central Bangkok, where street children beg or sell trinkets to tourists. We visited the infamous ‘Soi Cowboy’, where scantily-clad Thai women dance for seedy old men in front of bars and ‘massage parlours’ to the competing sounds of rock and dance music. I recognized some of the songs, but not the context. The usual street food stalls had been replaced by street bars, with stalls selling whisky shots to pedestrians. Above us, the sky was lit up by flashing neon lights, with a huge floodlit picture of a cowgirl in leather boots and a whip presiding over the debauchery below. Needless to say, none of this is a good environment for a child.

Compared to the Philippines, the street children here were fewer but more marginalised. The Thai Government has recently proposed a law making it illegal for children to be out on the streets after 10pm. “We find many children from Nuch’s community working here late at night,” Ann said. “We don’t want them to be arrested.”

Ann took us to meet Nang, an outreach worker with Friends International. It was the day of their quarterly street survey and Nang was particularly busy. She had been on the streets since 6am in the morning and was on her second to last shift – she wouldn’t finish until 2am the next day. Together we made our way on foot from Chit Lom to Sukhumvit, looking for street children. For a while we were trailed by two hyperactive Cambodian brothers who ran across the busy roads, careless of their own safety. Another boy, who was begging on the pavement with a puppy, happily posed for several photos for Chum.

We found several young children begging with their mothers or grandmothers on overpasses around the skytrain station. One young girl sat on her own on a staircase. It turned out her mother was just round the corner, but she earned more money if she was on her own. I knew some of these bridges from weekend trips to the malls and cinemas, but walking across them with Friends gave me a very different perspective, as if I were seeing them again for the first time through someone else’s eyes.

Nang comes from the border area between Thailand and Cambodia, which has been in the news recently due to fighting over the disputed sovereignty of a Hindu temple. As a result, she can speak Cambodian and was able to talk to all the mothers and children we met. She handed out information cards in different languages, so that the parents could get in touch with Friends if they had any problems. “Sometimes a mother will phone us up and say: ‘Have you seen my son? He’s been missing for four days’,” Ann commented.

“Most of the children in this area are Cambodian,” Nang told me as we walked to the next Skytrain station. “They cross the border in forest areas and then get a public bus to Bangkok for 250 baht [£5]. Often, the mother or grandmother comes with the youngest children, while the father stays in Cambodia with the older ones. They spend a few months begging, then they go home. When the money runs out, they come back to Bangkok.”

Nang will get to know the mothers and talk to them about children’s right to an education and the dangers they face on the streets. She tries to motivate them to give up begging and join Friends’ home-based production scheme, but it can be a tough sell. “A mother and baby can earn up to 10,000 baht [£200] a month begging on the streets,” Ann explained. “That’s a lot more than they can get doing a low-paid job, even in Thailand, so it can be hard to persuade them to change.” As if to prove her point, a middle-aged American woman stopped and handed 40 baht to a mother. “For the children,” she said.

Nang holds up a selection of information cards in Cambodian and other languages.
© UNICEF Thailand/2011/Athit Perawongmetha

Work, eat, sleep: adjusting to life in Bangkok

A street vendor selling fruit and veg in Ari. © Andy Brown/2011/Thailand

Living in Bangkok is a very different experience to visiting it, and after our first week we started to feel less like tourists and more like inhabitants of the sprawling metropolis. We moved into an apartment in Ari, a residential Thai area. It’s upmarket but still feels more adventurous than living in expat central round Sukhumvit. We’re staying in a small block of 15 apartments around a swimming pool. It’s very homely and ‘traditional Thai style’ with lots of shade and pot plants everywhere. We’re surrounded by quiet leafy lanes, populated with villas and garden restaurants. It feels a bit like a Thai equivalent of the more villagey suburbs of London like Highgate or Hampstead.

The streets near the Skytrain are lined with food stalls, selling fruit or fried noodles. Scattered among them are occasional folding tables covered with lottery tickets. There is also a cobbler and a middle-aged man with an old-fashioned sewing machine, patiently repairing an endless succession of garments. The ready availability of fruit here is a welcome contrast to Manila and, along with my twice-daily swims, allows me to maintain the semblance of a healthy lifestyle while eating spicy soup noodles every night.

Each of the street stalls is in fact a small trailer with gas canisters pulled by bike, moped or sometimes by hand. Owners of the larger stalls set up folding chairs and tables along the roadside to create a makeshift restaurant. Late at night, they take all this down and do their washing up with large plastic bowls and hosepipes, emptying the dirty water out into the gutters. One night, after the stalls had gone, I noticed that the pavement was actually marked out into small areas with painted lines like a car park. Presumably the stall owners pay rent on their space to the local council.

My first few weeks at work have been busy but interesting. I’m helping China write a proposal for a new website, while working on a digital strategy for Thailand and training their team on writing for the web, using images and email broadcast. I’ve also been on two project visits, to a slum community and a shelter for homeless boys, which will be the subject of next week’s blog.

My new colleagues are all very friendly and welcoming. Like Filipinos, Thais have two names – formal and informal. Some nicknames are in English, while others are in Thai. However, where Filipinos favour terms of endearment like ‘Love’ and ‘Baby’, Thais seem to prefer a fruit theme, hence ‘Pear’ and ‘Cherry’. So my Thai colleagues Natnapin, Pimsai and Waraporn are known respectively as ‘Kwan’, ‘Pear’ and ‘Yui’. Waraporn, or Yui, is always laughing at me and the daft things I do, like turning up for a meeting on my first day with a ‘Mission Banana’ notebook I’d bought at 7-Eleven with a cartoon monkey on the front. “I think that’s for school children,” she laughed.

Fantastic voyage

The canal boat – you either love it or you hate it. © Andy Brown/2011/Thailand

In the morning, after waking to the hooting and clattering of tropical birds (‘Baroo, baroo, baroo,’ one bird calls loudly at 6am every morning), I grab a quick swim and get a taxi to work. I’ve been brushing up on my taxi -Thai, such as ‘lieow saai’ (turn left), ‘lieow kwaa’ (turn right), ‘dtrong bpai’ (straight on), ‘hai chah long’ (slow down) and ‘jawt’ (stop).

My journey home is more local-style and provides a fascinating daily glimpse into the changing face of Bangkok. Leaving the office at around 5:30 pm, I hail a tuk-tuk and negotiate a ride to ‘Pan Fa, ta rua’ (the local boat dock) for ‘see sip baht’ (40 baht). Bangkok’s tuk-tuks are similar to the ‘tricyles’ of Manila, but with the passenger seat behind the driver rather than alongside him. The tuk-tuk weaves through the traffic, bypassing the bottleneck around Siam Commercial Bank by driving on the wrong side of the road and dodging back in between cars if something comes the other way. Reaching the intersection at Pan Fa, the tuk-tuk cuts suicidally across six lanes of traffic and drops me at the boat dock. ‘Khob khon kap,’ I say, handing over two 20 baht notes and relieved to be in one piece.

After grabbing a couple of spicy chicken skewers at the street food stalls, I make my way down to the boat dock. The canal boats are basic affairs with wooden benches and tarpaulin sides. They only stop for a brief moment at each dock while passengers scramble on and off. As soon as we’re all on board, the boat sets off and two teenage girls in face masks and pink crash helmets scamper along the outside of the boat, collecting fares from passengers. ‘Ratchathewi,’ I say, holding up three fingers to indicate the number of stops. My fare is nine baht (18 pence).

When the boat comes to a bridge, the roof is winched down and the girls on the sides duck low. I suspect their crash helmets are intended to protect them should they misjudge this and get a face full of fast moving concrete. To start with, the canal is lined with small houses and a tidy path, but this soon deteriorates into a slum, with shanty houses piled on top of each other right up to the edge of the canal. The slum owners have annexed the canalside path and turned it into a back yard. At the weekend, the railing is covered with clothes hanging out to dry on metal hangers, like a downmarket, second-hand fashion stall. The clothes are interspersed with pot plants, the occasional bird cage and even a fish tank, lashed to the railings with a well-tied rope.

Unfortunately, the canal is also clearly used as a rubbish dump and sewer by the slum inhabitants, and as a result the water can get very smelly. Passengers live in constant fear of splashes from boats passing the other way. On her way to a job interview, Joyce was deeply traumatised when she got a generous splash of water full in the face. ‘If I’d had time, I’d have gone home and showered,’ she recalled with a shudder. Despite this, the canal boat is my favourite part of the journey. I feel almost like a local, squeezed cheek-to-cheek between my fellow commuters as the sun sets, creating orange ripples on the water and reflecting off the metal roofs of the shanty houses. The canal boat’s dubious charms are lost on my local colleagues however. ‘I took it once four years ago,’ Cherry told me, adding emphatically, ‘Never again.’

In olden times, the canal was the main transport route through the city – a kind of pre-industrial express way. The few remaining nineteenth century villas have gates opening onto the canal path, which would previously have been their main entrance.

I get off the canal boat at Ratchathewi (prounced like the French vegetable stew ratatouille), walk through an underpass where a drafts board has been set up with bottle tops on an old table, and past the remains of a demolished, graffiti-fringed housing block. Enterprising teenagers have cleared the rubble from one end and turned it into an improvised football pitch where they engage in nightly sporting contests.

Just past the derelict lot, I climb a flight of stairs to the Skytrain and enter a different world, a bit like the moment in a movie when someone discovers a portal to a fantasy world in the back of a wardrobe or some other improbable place. Suddenly, the street stalls are replaced by smart outlets selling iPhone accessories, the pink-helmeted teenagers by an electronic ticket machine and the canal boat itself by a state-of-the-art, air conditioned train with TV screens playing adverts for make-up and motorbikes. I’m used to London’s hundred-year-old underground so the Skytrain feels almost futuristic to me. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the year here is 2554, as Thais count from the year of Buddha’s birth rather than Christ’s.

I sometimes reach the Skytrain station at 6pm, when the national anthem is played in all public places and everyone has to stand still to pay homage to the King. At Ari, I get off the Skytrain and walk for 10 minutes through the hot, humid streets and evening hustle and bustle of the street stalls, to our apartment block where I get out of my sweaty, smelly clothes and go for a refreshing swim in the pool.

Year of the Rabbit

Lizz, Esther and Joyce (left to right) in Chinatown. © Andy Brown/2011/Thailand

Last week was Chinese New Year (I’m told we should call it Lunar New Year out of respect for non-Chinese who mark the occasion), so on Saturday we went to Chinatown with Lizz,who I used to work with at UNICEF UK, and her friend Esther. We missed the dragon show but the streets were still festooned with red lanterns and packed with both locals and tourists. We explored the narrow back streets, which I was excited to discover stood in for 1960s Hong Kong in Wong Kar-wai’s classic movie ‘In the Mood for Love’.

I’m a big Wong Kar-wai fan – his movies were the subject of my MA dissertation and first publication. On my first trip to Hong Kong, I dragged Joyce and her parents around looking for the location of scenes from ‘Chungking Express’, including the titular Chungking Mansions. ‘Why does he want to go there?’ Joyce’s mum asked her, perplexed. ‘It’s just full of gangsters and fake Rolexes. The Big Buddha statue is much nicer.’ Joyce sighed. ‘It’s a movie thing,’ she explained.

In Bangkok’s Chinatown we stumbled upon a traditional Chinese temple down one of the back streets, where people were burning incense and buying offerings of fresh vegetables, presumably to mark the Year of the Rabbit. ‘Last time they were selling meat and eggs,’ Esther said. ‘That was the Year of the Tiger’.

We ended the weekend at Chatuchak Market, looking for things to buy for our flat. Having spent most of December giving away all our wordly possessions, we’re now having to repurchase many of them, albeit at substantially lower prices. Chatuchak is a bit like Camden Market multiplied a hundredfold. It’s a huge, sprawling behemoth of a place, selling everything from arts and crafts to clothes, pot plants and pets. There’s even a stall somewhere selling baby alligators. With over 5,000 stalls and 200,000 visitors a day, it’s easy to get lost. The stall owners are well aware how bewildering it is, so they all have business cards showing their location in the market, numbered by section and soi (street). In the evening, the character of the market changes and it takes on a party atmosphere. Most of the stalls close and bars open up with live bands or DJs spinning dance tunes late into the night.

A DJ playing funky tunes at Chatuchak market. © Andy Brown/2011/Thailand

First impressions of Bangkok

The author, demonstrating the rolling ball action in a dragon’s mouth.
© Joyce Lee/2011/Thailand

Like déjà vu or a half remembered dream, Bangkok strikes me as both familiar and unknown. The hustle, bustle and good-natured chaos of Banglumphu (the old town and backpacker district) reminds me of Manila. Among the glitzy, air-conditioned skyscrapers, malls and skytrain of Sukhumvit, meanwhile, we could easily be in Hong Kong or Shanghai. In between are the temples, saffron-robed Buddhist monks, monarchy and Sanskrit writing that are inimitably Thai. The city is in a mid-point of development. It has left behind the huge, sprawling slums of Manila but the streets are still gridlocked, lined with hawker stalls, and home to stray dogs in feral packs and street children selling flower garlands. “It’s like Hong Kong fifteen years ago, before they made the street stalls illegal,” Joyce says.

I’m here on a 12 month contract with UNICEF’s East Asia and Pacific Regional Office. My job is to help develop websites and other digital activities like email and social media for UNICEF offices in the region. I’m focusing on the middle-income countries, such as Thailand, China and Malaysia. While UNICEF’s main business in these countries is still delivering programmes in health, education, child protection and the like, they also have an opportunity to fundraise from an emerging middle class that is wealthy, online and looking for projects to support.

I came out a week early with Joyce (my fiancée) to find a flat, sort out practical matters like banking, and get a feel for our new home. For the first week, we stayed in a guest house in Banglumphu. The district is full of foreigners (called ‘farang’ in Thai), bars and restaurants with shisha pipes, and travel agencies offering cheap rides down to the islands or to the hills up north. Images of the King are everywhere, from calendars in shops and cafes to giant portraits at road intersections and on government buildings. While staying here, we went out for cocktails on Ko San Road, the famous hippy mecca. It reminded me of the dance village at Glastonbury festival, with pumping trance music, t-shirt stalls and glow-in-the-dark gadgets. Unlike Glastonbury, however, it also features beggars displaying their missing or broken limbs, in an uncomfortable reminder of the darker side of tourism in a poor country.

It’s now the middle of winter, which in Thailand terms means it’s cool for a few hours in the morning before the mercury rises to 30 degrees at midday, after which Bangkok swelters through the afternoon. I quickly learned to walk on the shady side of the street with the locals, rather than on the opposite side with the sun-starved European tourists. On a hot day, the smells of the street intensify, alternating between sweet and foul. One minute it’s all incense and green curry, the next you’re caught off-guard by the stench of drains and pollution from vehicle exhaust pipes.

Thai people are charming – full of smiles and polite bows, their hands clasped in a prayer-like symbol of greeting. At first they can come across as a bit shy or deferential but once you get to know them they’re full of warmth and humour. We made friends with a woman called Joy in our local travel agency who decided that Joyce was her idol. “I want to be more like you,” she declared. “I am always shouting and arguing with my husband but you two are so soft with each other.” On another occasion we came in to find her on her break, watching a YouTube video of a fat man in a bikini doing a belly dance. She collapsed into giggles and turned it off. “It’s OK, I’ve seen it many times before,” she said.

Keith, Carlene and Joyce share a joke at the river boat pier.
© Andy Brown/2011/Thailand

We’ve been brushing up on our Thai etiquette. The Lonely Planet, my indispensable travel bible, warned us that Thais are very foot-phobic. So it’s important to take your shoes off before going indoors, to always walk around things rather than stepping over them and never, ever to point your feet at people, Buddha statues or the King’s portrait. When sitting down, you need to tuck the offending appendages behind you, pointing harmlessly away from everyone.

We’ve also learned to eat with a spoon and fork. Unlike the UK, where a fork is for shoveling food into your mouth, here you eat with the spoon after pushing food onto it with the back of the fork. Thai people used to eat with their hands, like the Malays across the southern border, but in the 1880s King Rama V visited Europe and came back inspired by ideas of western architecture and cutlery.

As well as the ethnic Thais, there are lots of Chinese here and a few Indians. The Chinese are typically rich businessmen. Very few speak Cantonese or Mandarin but they have kept other traditions like eating with chopsticks. Our guesthouse owner in Banglumphu was old Chinese man who got very excited when he met Joyce (who is from Hong Kong) and proceeded to say hello and count to ten in Cantonese. Beyond that, however, his Cantonese was about as good as mine.

Food is central to Thai culture and it is truly fantastic. My early favourite was steamed sea bass in lime and chilli sauce. You can eat out for as little as 40 Baht (80 pence) so it’s very tempting to do so every lunchtime and evening. You do need to develop a strong stomach, however, and even the ‘special chilli-con-carne’ I developed as a student had not prepared me for a twice-daily intake of jalapeño peppers. There are some local delicacies I have yet to try. While eating at a riverside restaurant one evening, we saw an old couple in a wooden canoe paddling along the riverside selling dried squid to diners. The woman smoked the squid over hot coals, while her husband rolled them through an iron press to flatten them out.

The reclining Buddha – happy but not for the reasons you might expect.
© Andy Brown/2011/Thailand

By coincidence, our friends Carlene and Keith were in Bangkok for the weekend, on holiday from the US, so on Sunday we went out with them for a day of sightseeing. We got the riverboat downstream from Phra Athit pier. Unlike the Thames, the river at the heart of Bangkok (Chao Phraya) still has shoals of large fish in it that come up to the surface at dusk to catch flies. There are also clumps of reeds that drift down from rural areas upstream. The west shore of the river is less developed, with old wooden houses, temples and open land.

We got off at Tha Tien, a crowded pier with noodle stalls and souvenir shops pressed up against the river’s edge. From there, it was a short walk to Wat Phra Kaew, home of the famous ‘Reclining Buddha’. The temple was very Chinese-influenced, with sloping, tiled roves and statues of Guan Yu, the Chinese patron saint of honour and justice who is revered in Hong Kong by police officers and triads alike. There were also stone dragon statues, but with an interesting innovation compared to their counterparts in the Middle Kingdom – the stone balls in their mouths had been carved to come loose and move around their mouths. Both the balls and the inside of the dragons’ mouths had been worn smooth by being rolled around by generations of curious visitors.

Inside the temple was a giant, gold statue of the ‘Reclining Buddha’. The temple must have been built around the statue, which is so massive that you can’t see the whole thing at once. The Buddha lies on his side, his head resting on his hand, with a languorous, almost sensual smile on his golden face. In fact, he is depicted at the moment of death and his pleasure is the anticipation of imminent nirvana. At the other end of the statue, the Buddha’s massive feet are covered with intricate patterns and pictures of horses and elephants in mother-of-pearl – which seems a bit odd given Thai people’s aversion to all things foot-related.

The temple walls are covered with murals in which scenes of everyday life are intermingled with epic battles and scenes of calm contemplation. Buddha figures painted with gold leaf appear throughout, in sometimes improbable places. On one wall, an army is storming a fortress with elephants, while on the back of one great beast a Buddha figure sits smiling and calming playing a sitar.

The air was full of the smell of burning incense and the sounds of the temple were almost musical. A deep booming gong was accompanied by a higher tinkling sound which turned out to be caused by a constant stream of worshippers filing past a line of metal pots and dropping a coin into each one in turn. Around the temple, people prayed, burned incense, pasted small squares of gold leaf onto Buddha statues, or dipped a lotus flower into a bowl of water and touched it to their foreheads. It occurred to me that although the religion and philosophy of Buddhism is very different to the Catholicism of the Philippines, somehow the ritual and ceremony ends up being remarkably similar.

As we left, I noticed hundreds of coloured roof tiles piled up outside the temple for restoration work. The underside of each tile carried a message, presumably from a donor. Most were in Thai but occasionally there was one from a tourist such as ‘Wat’s up?’ from Bruno in Australia, who was clearly a bit of a joker – ‘wat’ is the Thai word for temple.

After lunch we caught a boat to Wat Arun, another temple on the other side of the river but hundreds of miles away in terms of its influences, which were much more Indian. It comprised several tall tapering towers with rounded tops, guarded by demons with green faces and tusks in full battle armour. The temple was covered in multicoloured ceramics, including flowers made from broken plates. Its spires rose vertiginously, with staircases that climbed to the third level, getting progressively narrower and steeper at each level. “Please don’t make me go up there,” implored Carlene, who doesn’t have the best head for heights. In the end she came with us, white knuckles on the railings, and was rewarded with stunning views across the river with tiny boats plying the piers far below and skyscrapers rising over the Central district to the east.

On the way out, we passed a series of statues of farm animals. Someone had left a coffee cup on the plinth of a pig statue and the stone animal had his head turned towards it, looking for all the world as if he was contemplating whether or not to take a sip of the steaming liquid.

The stone pig considering his options. © Andy Brown/2011/Thailand

A Day in the Life: Mary's story

Thirteen-year-old Mary (not her real name) lives and works with her family on the streets of Manila, capital of the Philippines. The family occupy a corner of the pavement outside Starbucks in Binondo Square, where they sell cigarettes and newspapers, cook and eat, and sleep outside at night. Mary works with her mother on the family stall and looks after her younger sisters. She’s been out of school for three years.

The family have been forced onto the streets because of poverty. “We have a house in Cavite, south of Manila, but there aren’t enough opportunities there to earn a living,” Mary explains. “That’s why we live on the streets in Binondo. We’ve been here for three years now. My mother works as a street vendor, selling cigarettes, snacks and newspapers. My stepfather is a community guard and my older brother drives a pedicab. My younger brother Jun-jun is a jeepney barker – he hails buses and taxis for passengers”

Although they no longer live there, the family still pays 500 peso (£7.30) a month in rent on their house. “Sometimes we don’t have enough money to pay the rent, which is why we don’t have anything to sell,” Mary says. “Whatever we earn is just enough to buy my stepfather’s medicine. He needs a lot of medicine because he has diabetes and a heart condition.”

Working life

Mary has a busy daily schedule. “In the mornings I help my mother out,” she says. “After waking we tidy up, then I boil some water. After that I go with Mama to buy her wares. Then I take care of my younger sister. My friends are Love, Cecile and Mariel. They cheer me up when I’m sad. They make me laugh or they say: ‘Forget your problems for a while, let’s go and swim in the river’.”

Children from the Binondo area often swim in the Pasig River, which runs through the centre of Manila. They challenge each other to jump off a road bridge above the river. After a typhoon, they come to the river to catch fish that have escaped from damaged fish pens further upstream.

“When evening comes I hang out with my friends but they sometimes do rugby,” [a Filipino term for sniffing glue], Mary continues. “Now I spend more evenings helping Mama and sleeping with her. We have to wait for Starbucks to close so we don’t get to sleep until after midnight.”

Life on the streets presents many challenges for children like Mary. “The main problems for me are not having a place to stay and not being able to go to school,” she says. “I used to go to school even when we lived on the streets, but one day when I was in the third grade, I asked Mama to go with me to school to claim my report card. It’s a requirement that the parent be there.

“I had no idea that my little sister would go missing that day. When we returned home, she was gone. She was missing for four days until she was found by a social worker. It turns out that two kids took her while we were away. They even put her in a sack. After that, my stepfather wouldn’t let me go school anymore. He said many hurtful things to me and I ran away because I was so upset.”

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Given a chance

Mary attends street education sessions run by Childhope Asia Philippines, with support from UNICEF. “I like all of the sessions, particularly the life skills education and the choir practice,” she says. “Its fun to be in the choir because you learn to sing and you get to express the problems you carry in your heart. Sometimes, I wish they would teach choir every day instead of just Wednesdays. The life skills sessions have taught me how to plan for my future to achieve my ambitions and dreams. Everyone has a dream and street children are no different. Even animals dream of eating good food.”

Mary is now a Junior Advocate for children’s rights. “We teach other children about gender sensitivity, life skills and substance abuse,” she explains. “I used to sniff glue because I thought it would help me forget my problems. But I was wrong, it added to my problems. It stopped me from studying. If I can go back to school and finish my studies, I’d like to be a reporter. I’ll be able to solve problems and help support my family. And I can tell other people what’s going on. I’ll be able to offer assistance when a child goes missing.”

Despite her problems, Mary is positive about life. “I’m happy here, in a way, because we have enough to eat and I have lots of friends,” she says. “But we’re dependent on my stepfather and he often gets ill. What would happen to us if he’s no longer around? Sometimes I think about going to a shelter because I know that it would be better for me there. But I don’t want to leave Mama. I have a responsibility to her and to my brothers and sisters.”

Mary is thankful for the chance she’s been given to continue her studies. “I’m grateful to Childhope because they are able to help children finish their education,” she says. “They teach us and show concern for us. They treat us like family, not like strangers. I’m also grateful to Butch, our street educator, because he patiently guides us no matter what the time. Even if it means he goes to sleep late and has to wake up early for work the next morning, he still comes and finds us.”

Upholding child rights

UNICEF is helping children like Mary get a basic education, talk about their problems and, ultimately, get off the streets and back into school. The programme works on three levels: on the streets, where outreach workers get to know the children and win their trust; in shelters, where children can stay and attend school; and in the community, where local ‘barangay’ councils respond to issues affecting children.

We’re supporting Childhope Asia Philippines, which employs street educators like Butch. They go out onto the streets of Manila and make contact with the children. They provide counselling and basic education through alternative learning sessions, help the children access information and services, and ultimately motivate them to give up life on the streets. UNICEF provides training and materials for the street educators and food for children who attend the sessions.

For children like Mary, life is an ongoing battle where their rights are denied on a daily basis. However, through the work of UNICEF, Childhope Asia Philippines and street educators like Butch, there is hope that at least some children will escape this vicious circle and start enjoying their right to a full and happy childhood.

A Day in the Life: Crisanto's story

Fifteen-year-old Crisanto (not his real name) lives at Pangarap Shelter for Street Children in Manila, capital of the Philippines. He ran away from home when he was nine because his father was an alcoholic and would beat him when he got drunk. Crisanto lived on the streets for two years. During the day he would earn money by snatching bags and phones or scavenging rubbish for recycling. At night, he slept in a cemetery with a gang of other boys.

“We were very poor and my parents were always fighting,” Crisanto remembers. “When my father got drunk he would hit me. It started when I was six years old. He did it just because he felt like it – he wasn’t himself when he was drunk. That’s when I began thinking I was nothing more than a burden. A few years later I decided to run away.

“After that I lived in Sangandaan Cementery. It was very dangerous. I was in a gang and the other boys made me do rugby [a Filipino term for sniffing glue]. The gang would steal things like mobile phones and we would scavenge for plastic bottles and electric wire. We would sell recyclable materials to junk shops to get money for food or drugs. You could buy a cup of rugby for 5 pesos. I didn’t get hungry when I sniffed rugby.”

There were lots of problems on the streets for children like Crisanto. “I got into a lot of fights back then and I would get chased by policemen,” he says. “I would get dizzy from hunger and sick with eye infections. I couldn’t afford to buy any medicine when I was sick. I would beg for drinks from canteens and wash in the public toilets. Studying didn’t even cross my mind. I didn’t know I could go to school.”

Movin’ on up

Things started to get better for Crisanto when he met Elvie, a street educator from Childhope Asia Philippines. “Elvie came to the cemetery where I lived and we’d go to a quiet place to talk,” Crisanto says. “We talked about my life on the streets and about children’s rights. That’s when I became interested in pursuing my education.”

Elvie brough Crisanto to Pangarap Shelter, which is run by Pangarap Foundation with support from UNICEF. The shelter offers a homelike atmosphere for boys who are unable to return to their family homes and gives them the opportunity to go back to school. “I first came to Pangarap Shelter in 2006 but I ran away because some kids were being mean and bullying me,” Crisanto says. “I went to another shelter, Kuya Centre, where I stayed for three years and went to school. Then I came back here to Pangarap.”

At first, Crisanto had trouble fitting in at the shelter. He would get into fights with the other children. He felt he had to be tough, like when he was on the streets. But he’s calmed down since then. Now, he likes to study and help other boys with their homework. He’s more playful and smiles more often. “I feel happy here because I can study again,” Crisanto says. “I have a new life and can be like a normal child. I like the activities here and the resilience sessions. This is a program to keep us from going astray. It gives us greater strength and guidance as we grow older.”

The shelter also has a workshop where the boys can earn money by making candles for sale. “For every candle you sell, you get 20 per cent of the price,” Crisanto explains. “I use the money if I need to buy something or I give it to my mother when I go home. I visit my family every three months. I’m happy when I’m at home because I’m with my Mama again and she knows that I’m back in school.”

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Time for class

Crisanto leaves the shelter every morning and goes to a local school, Pasay West, with other boys from the shelter. “I’ve been coming here for one year,” he says at the school. “I’m happy here. My friend Arvin from the shelter is in the same class as me. I like learning about the history of the Philippines and finding out how things came about. My favourite sport is badminton because it’s fun to play and I often win.”

“I’m happy because I’m studying again after staying on the streets for so long. I’ll get my high school certificate in two years. When I’ve finish studying I can get a job and help my Mama. I’ve met a lot of people here and I’ve gained new inspiration.”

When classes finish, Crisanto comes back to the shelter for lunch. Afterwards, he does his homework and daily chores, then he has free time to play. “I practice dance moves every evening with my friend Arvin,” he says. “We watch videos on MTV and make up our own moves. Even though we’ve got exams, we still want to have a quick practice before revision.”

Crisanto’s parents are now separated and his father has left home. His mother works at a denim factory but is still very poor. Recently, Crisanto went with his mother to see his father. He was surprised because his father was not as big as he remembered and he wasn’t afraid of him anymore. “My father apologised for all the things he did to us, like hitting me,” he says. “I’ve forgiven him and I feel much better now. My family is my motivation to have a better life. I want to lift them out of poverty.

“I’ll leave Pangarap Shelter when I have a good job,” Crisanto continues. “I’ll only go when they know I’m okay and I can really fend for myself. I’m contemplating two choices: going to college to study accounting or becoming a sailor and travelling the world. I’d like to go to Beijing and see the Great Wall of China. Then I’d like to come to the UK and see what it looks like, the way of life, and if there are any street children there.”

Gimme shelter

UNICEF is helping children like Crisanto get an education and reintegrate into their families and communities. We’re supporting Pangarap Shelter with clothes and bedding for the children, as well as training and education materials for the social workers, teachers and psychologists who staff the centre. We also support Childhope Asia Philippines, which employs street educators like Elvie. They do outreach work with children who are still living and working on the streets.

Ultimately, the aim is to return children to their families or to a foster home. The family receives livelihood assistance, counselling services and parenting skills training. Social workers work with the parents to make sure they’re prepared to assume parental responsibilities, particularly if the child has had negative experiences in the past.

For children living and working on the streets of Manila, life is an ongoing battle in which their rights are denied on a daily basis. However, through the work of UNICEF and Pangarap Foundation, children like Crisanto have been able to escape this environment and start enjoying their right to a full and happy childhood.

Movin' on up: Typhoon Ketsana one year on

I visited the town of San Pedro in Laguna, the Philippines, in December 2009 following Typhoon Ketsana. I went back in August 2010 to see how the situation of children had improved.

Ten-year-old Danilo Morales lives with his parents and eight brothers and sisters in a single room concrete house in South Ville resettlement community, San Pedro, Laguna. The family don’t have much but they’re grateful for it nonetheless. This time last year, the Morales family was among the 400,000 people forced to abandon their homes and seek shelter in evacuation centres as Typhoon Ketsana (known locally as Tropical Storm Ondoy) raged across the Laguna area. The storm pummelled the Morales’s shanty home in Landayan to pieces and the rising floodwaters swept away their possessions. They were lucky to escape with their lives.

“We were very afraid when the storm arrived,” Danilo’s mother Lusminda said. “It was raining hard and the flood waters were moving fast. My husband and I managed to get all the children safely to Landayan covered court, where we sheltered for the first few days.” The family were transferred to three different evacuation centres, before finally moving to their new home in South Ville. “It was a difficult time for us,” Lusminda recalled. “We had problems getting food, water, clothing and medicines when the children got sick.”

Things are much better now for the Morales. “We’re very happy to have our own home. It’s safe here and we don’t have to worry when it rains. The school is close by and we can go into town on the jeepney to buy food. My husband and I make a bit of money selling ‘taho’ but we’re looking for a better livelihood. I hope there are no more floods and we can live happily ever after”

Looking back

This was my second visit to the San Pedro area. The first time was in December 2009. Back then, Laguna lake was still overflowing and hundreds of families from the Landayan area were packed into a crowded covered court at San Pedro Elementary School. The situation was difficult, both for the evacuees who struggled to make ends meet and for the teachers and students who had to share their school with them.

I started off by revisiting the school and met up with Emily Ebreo, the teacher who showed me round last time. The school was at once familiar and utterly transformed. As we walked around the covered court, I could still picture the evacuation centre in my mind. “This is where people cooked and this is where they hung their clothes out to dry,” I said to Emily, pointing here and there. Now, the court was full of excited children running around and, once I’d got out my camera, posing for photos in ever growing crowds.

The covered court was still chaotic but in a very different way. The chaos of a normal schoolyard with children running around and shouting happily had replaced the desperate chaos of the evacuation centre. The classrooms that had formerly housed evacuees, forcing the school to cut lessons, were now refurbished, brightly decorated and full of young students. I’d visited on the day of a ‘readathon’ and children were engrossed in books of Filipino myths and legends. Later, they would be asked to explain the stories in their own words.

There had been some more recent storm damage to the school. In July, Typhoon Bashang had brought down a large tree in the schoolyard, damaging the roofs of two classrooms. “We were closed for a few days but it was nowhere near as bad as Ondoy,” Emily said.

Settling down

I wanted to find out what had happened to the evacuees so we went to the local council office, where we met Marilou Balba in the urban development and housing department. “We moved the families out of the schools earlier this year so as not to disrupt the children’s education,” she explained. “Some went back to their provinces and others moved back to their old homes when the water level in the lake went back down.

“We’ve built new homes for the rest at South Ville resettlement community. This was originally intended for informal settlers living along the railway line but we’ve allocated one area for Ondoy evacuees. We’re planning an extension so that we can rehouse the people who went back to homes alongside the lake. They’re still at risk if there’s another flood.”

Marilou agreed to take us to South Ville to meet the families who had been rehoused there. We drove out along a rough road, past factories and an old dump site. The resettlement community itself was built along a regular grid, with blocks of small concrete houses laid out in meticulously straight lines, in marked contrast to the organic sprawl of urban slums. An elementary school was already up and running and a clinic was under construction. At the local office I was shown a map of the site, with the areas set aside for railway families highlighted in pink and those for the Ondoy evacuees in yellow.

We walked down to the Ondoy block. Most children were in school but a few were still at home. Outside one house, a group of boys played a game of pool using counters on an ingenious homemade table that they swivelled round to line up the best shot. Next to them, a group of girls was at work making flower garlands for sale. Stalls and shops had sprung up on street corners selling food, water and household supplies.

After meeting the Morales family, we went to see the new school and speak to some of the students and teachers. Here, I met 11-year-old Marilou Paderez, also from Landayan. She was living in South Ville with her parents and four siblings. Her father had got a job as a construction work. “Our house was destroyed by the storm and we were evacuated to a covered court,” Marilou remembered. “Life was hard. We lived in a very small space and I couldn’t go to school for several months. I’m happy to be living here in South Ville. We have our own house and we don’t have to worry. I like the school and my teacher is very good.”

I asked Marilou what her favourite subject was. “I like Maths because you can divide, subtract, multiply and add up,” she replied. “When I grow up I want to be an accountant so I can help support my family.”

Prepare for the worst

Now that life has returned to normal in San Pedro, the priority is preparing for future disasters. The local council has set up a disaster coordinating council and, when I visited, the provincial government was holding a summit on disaster preparedness. One of the reasons the council is resettling people from Landayan in South Ville is so that they’re on higher ground if there’s another flood.

UNICEF is also working with schools and local communities on disaster preparedness. “One thing we’ve been working on in the last few years is a building back better programme,” UNICEF Philippines Communication Chief Angela Travis explained. “So we’re building stronger schools that should withstand typhoons much better than the original buildings.

“We’re also educating children and communities about what to do in a disaster. For example, many of the books and schools supplies were swept away when the water rose. So we’re encouraging people to put these things on higher shelves in schools and homes. The children also learn an emergency drill in the event of a disaster, to make sure everyone is accounted for.”

Philippines diary: Home for Christmas

In my last week working for UNICEF Philippines, I returned to the evacuation centres to see how children and their families were coping in the run up to Christmas. In the two months since Tropical Storm Ondoy, many of the 400,000 displaced people had returned to their homes or to resettlement communities. However, around 70,000 were still living in evacuation centres, primarily in the Laguna region.

The focus of the trip was on schools being used as evacuation centres. I was travelling with Martijn, who was looking at the impact on children’s education, and Hirut, who was testing a new needs assessment form.

The first evacuation centre, in San Pedro Elementary School, was quite chaotic. The 200 families living there had been told that the military would be arriving the next day to transfer them to a ceramics warehouse. While the education team met local officials, I went with a teacher to interview evacuees. I was quickly surrounded by a large crowd of people demanding food, money and supplies. They were clearly desperate and I knew from my security training how these situations can turn ugly. With the teacher’s help, I explained that my job was to report on their situation, in order to try and raise more money, but that I couldn’t personally promise them anything. Eventually they calmed down but it was an unnerving experience.

The second school, Dela Paz Main Elementary, was much more organised and peaceful. We were shown round by Mrs Bennett Layngan, the teacher in charge of evacuees, who also teaches a Grade Four class in the afternoons. She was managing the situation as best she could. “The evacuees are in a separate extension wing, separated from the rest of the school,” she explained. “They have a water pump and cooking and cleaning areas. There are also education sessions for the children, run by Save the Children. To make room for the evacuees, some of our students have been transferred to another school nearby.”

Close family

We also met the Cervito family, who were living in the evacuation centre. The family of six were living in a two-metre square corner of a former classroom. Their tiny living area was marked by bedsheets hung from a clothes line, with their few remaining possessions neatly arranged on a small wooden table.

I spoke to Mariel Cervito, 9, who is in Grade One. She told me that she enjoys maths, reading and writing and wants to be doctor when she grows up. “I like having lots of play mates here but I miss my home,” she said of living in the evacuation centre. “I like helping my mum wash the dishes.”

After the storm struck, Mariel and her four siblings were carried to safety by their parents. “We just took the children and left all our possessions,” her mother Marlene recalled. “My husband and I waded here through the flood waters carrying the children.”

The Cervitos’ home is near Laguna lake and has been flooded since September. The waters are slowly subsiding but with no drainage channel from the lake, it will take until the end of January before it’s safe for families to move back in. As a result, they will have to spend Christmas in the evacuation centre. “I’ve been back to the house to clean it but the water’s still knee deep outside,” Marlene said. “When I open the doors, it just floods back in.”

There are nearly 150 families still living at Dela Paz Main Elementary School and life isn’t easy for them. “It’s uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous,” Marlene commented. “My one year old fell down the stairs and cracked her head open. She’s OK now but we had to rush her to hospital.” The family had no money so Bennett paid the hospital fees out of her own pocket.

The school was only a couple of blocks from the flooded area, so afterwards we drove down to take a look. The streets were still flooded and we had to be careful where we drove. We saw women and children wading to those houses that were still habitable and a few other vehicles driving slowly through the water. On one street, we unexpectedly saw three men carrying a fridge through the flood waters and into a house.

Training days

I spent the rest of the week training Marge, Pam and Gina in a range of web activities including audio and video editing, designing mass emails and producing ‘splash’ webpages. I also wrote a report for UNICEF’s regional headquarters in Bangkok about what we’d achieved over the two months, with recommendations for other offices in the region.

On the social side, I organised a trip to climb Taal Volcano with Martijn, Silje, Harout and others. A few hour’s drive south of Manila, Taal is an impressive sight, with a (geologically speaking) young volcano rising out of a lake inside the vast crater of an ancient volcano. On the way up, we passed hot vents exhaling sulphurous steam into the atmosphere. Back in Manila, I went to a gig with Marge to see my favourite Filipino band, Sinosikat?, at a small venue in a converted Spanish villa.

Martijn and I both finished work on 18 December, so we had a joint leaving party. Rather than going straight back to the UK, I’d taken the opportunity to spend my Christmas and New Year holiday in the Philippines. My girlfriend, Joyce, flew out to join me and together we travelled south to the Bacuit Archipelago, in Palawan, then north to Banaue rice terraces, in Luzon.

The Bacuit Archipelago is how I imagine Thailand must have been like before mass tourism arrived there. We stayed in a beachside cottage in a rural village on the mainland and took snorkelling trips out with local fisherman to the islands, where vertical limestone cliffs rose directly out of a still sea. On Christmas Day, we watched the sun set behind the islands from a boat in the bay, as giant turtles swam past.

Me and Joyce at the rice terraces in Banaue

The rice terraces at Banaue gave us a glimpse into Filipino life in past centuries. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the mountain sides were first sculpted into stone walls terraces somewhere between two and four thousand years ago. Local farmers still maintain the terraces and elaborate irrigation system. They live in traditional wood and bamboo houses, although in many places the thatched roofs have been replaced by corrugated iron. At Batad, a vast amphitheatre-shaped terrace dominates a small village in the basin below. When we visited, farmers were just starting to plant the rice for next year and a few vivid patches of bright green stood out amongst the fallow fields.

In Manila I’d met Jacque, a friend of Angela’s, who works at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. She told us about a project she was managing in the area. Many of the rice terraces are declining in productivity and can no longer support the area’s growing population. They are also under attack from worms, accidently imported in pig feed, which eat the rice roots and weaken the terrace walls. “We’re working with local farmers to eradicate the worms and diversify their rice crops, enabling two harvests a year instead of just one,” Jacque said.

Eventually, my time in the Philippines drew to a close and I packed my bags with some reluctance. I’m looking forward to going home and returning to work at UNICEF UK but there are many things I’ll miss. It’s been an amazing experience to live and work in another country and I’ve gained a much deeper understanding of UNICEF’s work after seeing so many projects and meeting the children who are our ultimate beneficiaries. I’ve also been working with a great team of enthusiastic people, who have in many cases become good friends and introduced me to Filipino culture. Finally, I’ll miss the tropical weather and lush scenery as I head back to a country in the icy grip of its worst winter for thirty years.