Mushroom houses...

For those of you who may not know what an Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus Ostreatus) house in Thailand looks like, here's a photo of the inside of one. This particular mushroom hut has 1,000 spore bags and the mushrooms grown help to feed nearly 300 children and teachers at Hsa Thoo Lei Boarding House in Mae Sot. Thai Children's Trust have sponsored this house with great results. Twelve students from grade 9 to 11 and a teacher are involved in the cultivation and today's conversations with them confirm for us that they are very happy to have a change from their regular diet! They're able to harvest enough mushrooms for one meal every two days. Once the project has been established a little longer the idea is to sell the extra produce in the local market with proceeds being used to purchase more spore bags (the bags generally produce for between 4 and 6 months), make repairs to the mushroom house when needed and buy other food, for example, meat, fish paste and rice. The cost of a mushroom house this size is B40,000 or AUD1,500 (approx) or USD1,200 (approx). We've been looking at other migrant schools today - looking for motivated school directors and interested teachers that will be happy to take on a mushroom house. And we think we found a few. :)

Catching up on our blog...

On Sunday we had a catch up day and a visit to the border market on the Moei River which forms the border between Thailand and Burma, where many young Burmese children live in the area and survive the best they know how with little support. On our way back from the market we visited a Wat where Burmese migrants are living. After hearing their tragic stories, we gave a small donation and handed out balloons to the children - which meant we rode off (yes, we're on bicycles!) to the sounds of 'squeaking' balloons and giant smiles. :)

On Monday we rode our bikes to Hsa Thoo Lei Learning Centre, dodging rainstorms and pot holes, disposable raincoats flapping. The route, which normally takes 15 minutes to drive took 3/4 hour, so slightly damp, and very windswept we arrived. Hsa Thoo Lei is one of the migrant learning centres in Mae Sot, educating over 700 children, nearly 300 of these living in the boarding house attached to the centre. Our focus was to meet with some of the administrative staff to talk about the projects WWM are currently running, and possible new ones, and to be updated on the current situation. All discussions here now are focused on how the fighting inside Burma is causing hundreds of children to flee across the border, accompanied only by their teachers. While it has been reported in the newspapers here that thousands are fleeing into Thailand, the plight of the children is not mentioned. Everyone who works with children here are scrambling to find money for food, blankets, water, clothing and medicines. Small school boarding houses along the border are finding their numbers are rapidly increasing since the fighting along the border has increased in intensitity. We've made plans to visit some of these schools on Wednesday. We finished our meeting having established a plan to increase Hsa Thoo Lei's library with English language books, visited the new mushroom house, and discussed the possibility of the girls crocheting christmas stars, and making bracelets which will be used to fund raise by EMPOWA back in Australia.

Our blogging irregularities....

We've been experiencing great difficulties in accessing the internet for three days now and want to let the few readers we have know that we're thinking of you and have been writing our blog but just not being able to post. So anyhow, now that it appears to be up and running we'll give it another go. :)

Grace Boarding House & Orphanage

OK, so the hard way to find out for sure what time the border opens to foreigners is to wake up at 5:30am, scoff breakfast and race to the border to be there at 6:30am (previously believed opening time) only to find out it's not open until 8:00am! Hmmm... After skulking around the streets for an hour or so, making friends with the locals and a word or two with the motorcycle taxi guys, Immigration opened and we were the first across the border. The early bird catches the worm. :)

We were a bit worried that we'd not be able to see the children before they left for school now that we were later than planned, but waiting to meet us on the other side was the boarding house mother for Grace Boarding School & Orphanage who had arranged to hold the kids back for as long as she could until we arrived. Avoiding the touts whilst appearing to be the regular type of tourist, we piled into the back of a songteaw (pick-up) and made a dash to the boarding house before the kids left. Arriving in time, we met all the 57 children before the first group left for school and shared some time with the rest of them until they went off to school. They sang for us some Christian songs in English and we treated them to our renditions of Baa Baa Black Sheep and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Both of which we struggled with the words. Bron finished off with a moving performance of All Things Bright and Beautiful.

We took some quick group photos and more of the kids crammed into a songteaw heading to school. They're in need of a lot of things at Grace Boarding House & Orphanage - food, (their main meal of the day is at lunch time, the other two meals are rice and fish sauce - seriously), salaries for carers, (currently they earn B1,500 per month - approximately USD34), toys, library books, (they have a book case but no books) and they'd love a truck so that they can transport the kids to school and no longer pay the B8,000 per month that would be better off spent on food for the children.

Grace Boarding House & Orphanage do currently receive some sponsorship from Singapore and parents contribute a bag of rice whenever they can (no rice during June to October, it's planting time), however it's impossible to feed, house, clothe, educate and provide medical treatment to 57 kids with funds received for 30. What Grace Boarding House & Orphanage needs immediately is funds. For just over B18,000 a year per child, all these needs can be met. That's the equivalent of approximately AUD60 per month, or USD45.

If you'd like to help let us know. We are happy to work with you to ensure your interests are met and your contribution is a best fit.

Quick Update...

After two very big days and 10 hours on the road, we arrived in Mae Sot late this afternoon. We're weary so will keep this post short. We have a free day tomorrow where we'll aim to update you all with news from the past two days. In the meantime, here's a picture we took while waiting for the border to open for foreigners. Before this, we'd had lengthy discussions between ourselves about sitting directly on the pavement, bought disposable raincoats to sit on and then promptly sat in the gutter with our friends without a second thought.