Giveaways
FROM Northern Thailand, I caught a bus to the city of Kanchanaburi, west of Bangkok. This was a long journey, and I would have caught a plane if I had been a bit more organised.
I was planning to spend a week at a place called the Bamboo School, near the village of Ban Bong Ti, close to the border with Myanmar (Burma). A more detailed map of the area is shown just below.
The Bamboo School is on a small river called the Bong Ti, which originates near the top of a range of hills and mountains that also serves as the Myanmar-Thai border in these parts. The river gives its name to Ban Bong Ti, several kilometres upstream of the Bamboo School: a name that means Bong Ti Village. Although the area is mountainous, it seems that Bong Ti village, which has a population of a few thousand today, is only about 300 m above sea level.
There are quite a few places that call themselves ‘bamboo school’ in Southeast Asia: it must be a common expression. This particular bamboo school is also known as the Bamboo Care Foundation, and it is, actually, an orphanage as well as a school. Its website is bambooschoolthailand.com.
The Bamboo Care Foundation, which I will just call the Bamboo School from now on on the understanding that it is this one, was founded in the year 2000 by a woman, originally from New Zealand, named Catherine Ruth Riley-Bryan.
Before setting up the Bamboo School, Catherine lived in Tasmania where she was active in helping redundant pulp and paper workers.
Catherine came to Ban Bong Ti on September 18, 2000. When she came here it was largely a border area of displaced people with no houses or agriculture. She has since fostered 700 kids and the place has really developed.
But first, a bit more about the Kanchanaburi region. This part of Thailand is famous or, if you like, notorious for being the province through which the Burma Railway, built by slave-driven prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army, was built during World War II.
The river shown on the map as Kwai Noi, also known as the Khwae, is of course the one in the famous British 1950s movie Bridge on the River Kwai, about the construction of a bridge by prisoners of the Japanese, which a force of Thai guerillas under the direction of one of the escaped prisoners eventually decides to blow up in a dramatic climax to the movie (spoiler ahead).
In reality, the bridge in question was destroyed from the air and the rather bizarre plot of the film seems to bear little resemblance to anything that ever really happened, apart from the actual construction of the railway itself. But that’s Hollywood, or rather Pinewood, for you.
Another bridge over the River Kwai built by World War II prisoners, called structure 277, still stands in stands in the city of Kanchanaburi, though it was also bombed and rebuilt after the war. The city houses a museum about the railway, which the prisoners called the Death Railway because of the high mortality rate from mistreatment and unhealthy jungle conditions. This museum is called the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre.
Here are some photos I took of a section of the railway which is still in use near the city, as well as of the Krasae Cave where the prisoners used to rest, and which now contains a Buddhist shrine.
And here is a video I made at that site:
Another place I visited in Kanchanaburi was the ElephantsWorld elephant park.
We also saw some monkeys on the road to the Bamboo School: you can see them in the second part of the video that follows.
The Bamboo School, itself, is set in some lovely countryside close to the Myanmar border and two nearby Thai national parks.
These two national parks are, first, Sai Yok National Park, where there are attractive waterfalls and where the remains of a destroyed bridge on the River Kwai, possibly the one the movie was about, are to be found, and where scenes from The Deer Hunter were also filmed.
And second, Erawan National Park, which I visited to explore its even more famed waterfalls and their turquoise pools, which you can see in the link just above and in my photos below (the pools seem to be bluer on some days than on others).
When Catherine started out, the site of the orphanage was largely uninhabited and had to be developed from scratch.
The orphanage has been developed in three parts and is mainly funded by international donations.
Some of the orphans are now nurses, staffing the hospital in Kanachaburi.
The Bamboo School has also developed a large medical clinic of its own, of which I took photos with the ambulances it operates outside. 20% of that operation is funded by the Thai Government, but not much else.
The Bamboo School does a lot of medical work with sick and deformed children who might not otherwise get much treatment, especially among the Myanmar refugee community. There was one baby who was rescued from a latrine and who ended up blind in one eye from infection (he may get a corneal graft for it), and another child she told me about who was being treated for a harelip and an imperforate anus. There is also a lot of thalassemia among the local people, a genetic blood disorder similar to sickle cell anaemia.
There is another small medical clinic staffed by another graduate nurse. About twenty of the pupils of the Bamboo School have become nurses.
One of Catherine’s students has graduated from a chef’s school, and she wants to start a bakery.
Some of her students are in the army. And she also wants an engineering graduate and to start an engineering workshop.
Catherine reckons that she feeds each child on 100 Baht a week. She shops at the local markets which are a lot cheaper than in Kanchanaburi.
And they grow their own food as well. This video shows people in the gardens in the first scene, which pans to the lyrics to Kapa o Pango, a 21st century All Blacks haka. I taught the kids haka as well as the song Pokarekare Ana, and the next scene shows the kids giving a lively performance of the better-known and more traditional haka, Ka Mate.
They have also come up with herbal remedies at the school. According to Catherine,
We have developed use of nature medicines….
1. Use of papaya leaf juice with honey to bring up platelets in patients with dengue fever
2. Use of bamboo charcoal with added vitamin c to remove poisonous killing power from grass killer, usually suicide victims
3. Use of high concentration of turmeric (curcuma) to relieve joint and muscle pain in arthritis patients
4. Use of succulent leaves as local pain reduction after bee stings, vaccine etc
5. Charcoal eye patches to remove conjunctivitis
Catherine also converts leftover peelings and other plant waste to alcohol, to use as a cleaning agent and disinfectant. Some religious visitors came across this process one time, and got quite the wrong impression!
And Catherine has also had agricultural advisors. Several of them advised local farmers on how to diversify. They went from growing opium or cannabis to pineapples, mangoes, sweetcorn, tomatoes, garlic, and what we call kūmara in New Zealand (i.e., sweet potatoes). They grow everything: tamarind, bananas, you name it. As a result, more people have gradually come to populate the district.
So, the whole area has been transformed thanks to Catherine’s activities here.
Part 2 of this post will follow next week.
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