This morning I looked out my window to see two of the boys on the volleyball team hanging out next to the girls' bathrooms, which are a mere 50 feet from my house. This isn't that unusual, as the girls' bathrooms are a hangout for many students before, during, and after class. However, the boys that hang out in this area are generally the ladyboys who say 'ka' (for women) instead of 'krap (for men) and identify more as a girl. After I notice the kids, Kara comes to my door asking if I've got any food, as the boys are hungry....
This year, our school has decided to have a first class volleyball team, which means we had to recruit students from other schools. Since we weren't here this time last year, I'm not sure if the volleyball team is a new thing, or if we are just improving upon the old one. In any case, there are about 20 boys who have been recruited for this team who live on campus in a classroom - with no adult supervision. I believe the coach is supposed to be around, but even so, he is only one guy for 20 students, aged 13 - 18. Some weekends he is away for one reason or another, sometimes traveling to Bangkok and getting back mid-week. While this seems utterly unthinkable in the USA, it's fairly common here. So much of the time you see small children taking care of even smaller children. If they 5 year old is the oldest of a family of three, that 5 year old will be taking care of their younger siblings while the parents work, eat, or even nap. They will watch out for the kids, get them ready for dinner, feed them, and even go as far as going out to buy food. A lot of young kids here are already selling food on the side of the road at their families establishment. There is a food stand near my house that I go to fairly often and the 8 or 9 year old is always counting out the money and getting me what I need. As far as I have seen, it seems to work out well enough. Adult supervision just isn't something that is a priority here, but the kids don't know any different so they all work together to make sure everyone is okay.
Usually, this lack of supervision works, and it works well here in Thailand. However the two boys this morning demonstrated how hard it can be sometimes. They are the youngest of the group of boys living on campus and were either left behind or didn't want to hang out with the older boys, who left campus for most of the day. I guess their old coach has come to campus and is trying to recruit the boys to go back home. In theory, this sounds okay. In reality, the boys are pretty scared of this coach and spent most of the morning hiding from his as they were afraid he would hit them. They wandered over to our place at around 1:00, driven by hunger since they had no money and no way to get any food. I had tutoring, but Kara and I were able to scrap together enough food to give them a decent lunch. She stayed with them until she had to head out later, and they told her that it was okay, they would just hide somewhere else on campus.
What's sad about this situation is that it's unlikely to change. The kids are away from home for the first time, living in a classroom, and being sort of stalked by their old coach. Of course, all of this has been spoken in thai and then translated into English so I'm sure there are some things that are lost in translation. I was under the impression that the school was trying to find an actual house for the kids, but that could take any amount of time. In the meantime, I suppose our house (kara's and mine) will be a sort of safe place for them, assuming we are home. It's these kinds of things that are so different from life back home and we get used to because they seem to work okay, until they don't.
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