blind, deaf, and bedraggled

One thing you don't see everyday in Seattle are children sleeping in the filthy gutter, wearing nothing but rags. As you walk down the Sukhumvit, through the long row of merchants on either side of you, you will come across a person crawling on the ground, in the middle of it all. I've encountered this several times. They're missing legs or arms. Or they have strange deformed bodies. Such is the context that you walk through. The person in this next image (ignore its misleading address, it's definitely Thailand), just might be the same one that I'm referring too, whom I've seen so many times on Sukhumvit...


On our first day in Thailand, our tour guide Moo (who happens to be fervently patriotic towards his country and king) insisted "there are no Thai homeless people". As if such a thing couldn't exist in a country like Thailand. (That attitude towards the homeless is more characteristic of Japan, where they are so ashamed of their homeless population that they refuse to even acknowledge the problem exists. Reminiscent of India, these Japanese are called the "invisibles".) So who are all these people begging on the streets of Thailand?

We asked this question to each NGO that we visited. Each gave a different answer, so I don't have a great idea. Notice that Moo specified that there aren't Thai homeless people. He suggested that these were people from Burma or Cambodia. The people from the International Rescue Committee weren't sure who the beggars were, except that they definitely weren't Burmese - most likely Thai.

The staff people from the UNFPA (an archaic achronym, which now means: United Nations Population Fund), said that the street people missing arms and legs were most likely victoms of land mines in Cambodia. Gangs traffic these vulnerable people to Thailand to beg on the street. Thus by giving money to these very desperate people, you are in fact funding a mophia of some sort. Many of the children begging on the street also victims of human trafficking. Taken from Cambodia, and held under virtual slavery.


It's actually quite a problem on Sukhumvit. The Royal Benja Hotel, where we were staying at mostly, accomodates a large Middle Eastern population. Just down Soi 5 and to the right is "Middle East Street", where they tend to hang out. One of the Pillars of Islam is charity. Now, you would really have to talk to a Muslim, but it is my interpretation that these alms are meant to be very directly given to the poor. It was hard enough for me to walk by women, children, amputees, and a particularly emaciated man on Soi 5 (he probably has HIV). Indeed I saw many a Muslim give money to these destitute human beings. It's just depressing whatever way you look at it.

A frequent sight is a woman holding a baby in their arms. What often goes on is a mother will rent out their baby to such a begger. The begger looks like they have a starving baby, and it generates more sympathy. It's extremely heartbreaking, because these babies are being taken out on the sidewalk, in the heat of day, dehydrated and malnurished, all for what most people would call a scam.


More unfortunateness: A little more encouraging are the deaf merchants. There seems to be a strange many deaf people in Thailand. They are set up with a table on the sidewalk or in a market just like any other merchant. But they're deaf. Everyone has calculators here so they can show you a price and you can reply with a lower price, in the case that they don't know Enlgish very well. The deaf people will flip over their calculators with a little message on the back reading something like, "Sorry I'm deaf. Please show your price". Thus you haggle with a deaf person. I was very sceptical at first. It seeme like just more deception aimed at swaying your sympathy. But over the weeks, I would see these deaf people communicate with each other via sign language, when they didn't have any customers.

Kaily happens to know ASL fairly well, and told me that she was communicating with these people. It completely surprised me, so I tried it out. Thanks to my friend Marlenette, I know a few things in ASL. I called upon this knowledge, burried somewhere deep inside. They were as surprised as I was! To be able to communicate with a deaf Thai person more effectively and genuinely than a Thai who speaks broken English! Who would have known. Apparently we America brought over our sign language and it caught on.

I'm curious how the grammar works, but at least the signs for individual words are universally understood. I could say hello, my name is blank, these are very pretty, I know a little sign language, let me think some more, please, thanks! No! Stop! Go away! ...That's way better than my current stage at speaking the Thai language! I can also say that I'm rather clever. As well as, sorry I'm rather slow, I don't understand, could you repeat? But the situation did not arise that I had to employ either of those later phrases. And then there's the necessary phrase: emergency fish bathroom. That one's very useful...

Oh but by far my favorite: