Sunday, 10 April 2011

Hilltribe visit

All the children at our center come from the hilltribes in the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. 

Most of our kids are from the Lahu tribe. The Lahu were originally hunters but now live an a mainly agricultural lifestyle - a mixture of cash crop and susbsistence. They clear forested areas of the hills and then plant them for crops.

Previously, they would then move on to another area after a while to allow the ground to recover, but movement such as this is now restricted by the Thai government so many areas are suffering from deforestation. About a third of Lahu are Christian from missionary activity and educational programs in the area. Lahu have their own language and culture - totally distinct from the Thai language and culture. This means for our kids Thai is their second language, English their third. It makes school for them pretty challenging - and communicating for us pretty entertaining!

A real problem for some of our children, is that because they were born in the borders, some of them can't prove which country they are from. Their families don't always have the necessary papers for them and can't exactly say where they were living at the time. Many of our children have their birthday on January 1st because they don't know when exactly they were born. Without this information they are not recognised as Thai citizens, which means that later in life they can't open bank accounts, buy houses, obtain passports...

Some of our children so have family members - maybe one parents is alive, or they have aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters who they go and stay with in the school holidays. The hill tribe people and children are particularly vulnerable to the problems of sex trafficking and prostitution and so one or two of our children are staying at the center because their parents felt it safer for them to be here than to be exposed to those dangers in their village.



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