Helping HIV/AIDS victims in Thailand

By Natalie Lefevre

In the summer of 2006, I started a degree in international studies. I had a great time exchanging ideas with like-minded people. I was learning a lot of theories on how to change the world, but I was missing the practical side.

I wanted contact with the people I was aiming to help. To not become a bureaucrat who writes policies while never actually talking to the people involved, I decided to do grassroots volunteering over the winter break.

Online, I found the Camillian Social Center in Rayong, Thailand. Before I left, all I knew was what was written on the website: “The Camillian Social Center in Rayong is confronting AIDS in the 21st century through prevention, treatment, and care.

We believe that prevention, treatment, and care go together to reduce the potential for the transmission of the virus.”

I had done some traveling by myself before, but never in a country like Thailand. That’s why, after trying in vain to explain where I wanted to go to the doorman of my hotel in Bangkok, I chickened out and rented a taxi to go straight to my destination. I planned to start my adventure once I got there.

And so the AIDS adventure begins…

I was both excited and nervous when we arrived at the center. We passed through a gate and entered a big courtyard with some trees and a pond in the middle. In front of the buildings, several people were enjoying the shade in silence. Some were in wheelchairs, others in hospital beds. Here and there a person was sweeping the courtyard. As soon as I got out of the car, the taxi driver took off. He obviously did not feel at ease around sick people.

A really tall woman named Cindy came my way to welcome me. When she came closer, I realized she hadn’t always been a woman.

Cindy directed me to a building on the far end of the courtyard. Inside a big dining room, about twelve children of different ages and a few European-looking men were having lunch. Cindy introduced me to Father Giovanni, the founder of the center.

Father Giovanni and his children

Father Giovanni established the Camillian Social Center for the rejected, homeless people living with HIV/AIDS in 1995. Although he had been living in Thailand for a long time, he was still a typical Italian: talking loud, using lots of gestures, and not really a champion in subtleness.

Father Giovanni is a rebel priest. Against the strict Catholic principles, he does not preach abstinence as the only way to prevent HIV. On the other hand, he kept joking about the homosexual orientation of some of the residents.

The children had just finished their lunch and were anxiously waiting to introduce themselves. Father Giovanni explained that these children could not go to school, because they had visual signs of their HIV-positive status.

He called one of the girls over to him. “How old do you think she is?” I guessed around four years old. “She is turning nine this year”. Pim was brought to the center by social workers after her grandfather had died. She had been taking care of him for years. The only food she had during those years was instant noodles once a day. She had only arrived in the center quite recently and the medication made her sick.

Over the weeks, Father Giovanni told me all the children’s stories and most of them were as sad as Pim’s story. Kaimuk was 15 but looked like a 7-year-old. Chom was blind and the result of a visit by a Dutch tourist to a ‘massage saloon.’ Because she was blind, Ed was kept the whole day in bed before she came to the center. At the age of 4, she had never learned to walk. AIDS had made all of them orphans and most of them HIV positive.

Ants and Dogs

Father Giovanni suggested I’d go rest and settle in. The volunteer house I was staying in was about one kilometer walk from the center. I didn’t spend a lot of time there but two things I won’t forget: The ants in my room and the dogs outside.

Every day I fought my own war against both species. It was part of my morning ritual to kill the ants with a bucket of water. Of course, they kept on coming back; they’re ants.

But the dogs were worse. They guarded a parking lot further down the street and they were running free. Every morning when I left and every evening when I returned, they were barking and running towards me. One of my housemates gave me an umbrella in case I had to defend myself against these monsters.

My first Thai friend

In the mornings, I worked at the PCU (Palliative Care Unit) from 6 to 12. I was assigned two patients to take care of. One of them was Pung, who was about my age at the time. He was actually quite good-looking, or at least he used to be.

He had these huge brown puppy eyes that spoke more than words ever could. They always looked so sad. His body was pining away and seemed to belong to an 80-year-old instead of a 23-year-old man. It was heartbreaking to look at him in this condition.

It wasn’t easy to understand Pung, obviously because I didn’t speak Thai but also because he couldn’t utter more than a few sounds. You just had to read his eyes to know what he was trying to say. Sometimes that worked out but it wasn’t always easy.

The first time I helped him eat, he kept asking for ‘nam.’ After running back and forth with almost everything I found in the fridge, one of the carers told me he wanted one of the milky drinks.

When I finally gave him one, he smiled for the first time. It seemed as if he was saying: “That was a good one, wasn’t it?” Ever since our milk adventure, he smiled at me every time I passed by.

Even when we had to take him out of bed to change the sheets and he seemed to be in excruciating pain, he tried not to show it. I had just made my first Thai friend.

My first Thai heartbreak

Pung was the first person I checked up on in the morning when I started work and I usually dropped by after lunch when the children were napping. One afternoon, I wanted to cheer up one of the other patients who had been feeling very sick that morning. When I entered the PCU there was a screen hiding Pung’s bed from view.

At first, I didn’t know what was happening. I went to sit with one of the other patients who spoke a little bit of English and then it came to me that Pung was dying. From across the room, I could hear him breathing and one of the carers was holding his hand.

When I’m on my deathbed and someone asks what I regret about my life, I will remember that I didn’t go to Pung to hold his hand while he was dying. I couldn’t do it. It was the first time I witnessed someone dying.

I knew when it was over; the heavy breathing stopped and the caregiver came from behind the screen. In my mind, he looked at me with accusing eyes: “Why didn’t you sit beside him? You were his carer for the last few weeks.”

I was advised not to get too close to critical patients. When someone ended up in the PCU, chances were low that they were leaving it again. I decided not to follow this advice.

They Deserve Better

These people were rejected by their families, their friends, and their communities. No matter what they had done in their past life, they deserved to have someone care for them when they die. During the rest of my time there, I was next to several people when they died.

An 8-year-old woman

Among the children, I also had my favorites and Pim was one of them. She had only arrived recently and was not adjusted to the medication yet. One afternoon, I was playing with the other kids when I noticed Pim in the toilets. Something was clearly wrong. When I went to check up on her, she was cleaning up her vomit. She was embarrassed when she noticed me. I offered to help her clean it up but she didn’t let me. I often had the feeling with her, that I was the kid and she was the grown-up.

After Pung died and I was upset, she comforted me. Now, when I wanted to take care of her, she didn’t let me. Not the fact that she was feeling sick saddened me, but that an 8-year-old girl was cleaning up her own puke. She should have someone to hold her hair while she was puking and tuck her into bed when she was sick. This was typical for all the kids there: although they still played like children, circumstances had forced them to be more mature than others at their age.

Love and hope in the time of AIDS

A lot of heartbreaking things happened at the center, that is for sure, but there was also hope. The oldest child, a girl 18 years old, was one of the best students in her class and just had her first boyfriend. When she finishes school, she wants to go to university and come back to help at the center.

A woman who had been close to dying in the PCU miraculously got better and was working in the center now as a carer. A male carer used to be a violent gang member but was now one of the sweetest men ever, married to an HIV-positive woman who he had a beautiful daughter with.

There was even a love story. Two of the residents had fallen in love and were caught together in bed. The gossip queens among the residents really enjoyed the story the next day.

Most of the residents in the center used to work as go-go dancers, masseuses, strippers, and escorts, which all basically came down to sex for money. They were some of the most fun people I have ever met. A male go-go dancer was constantly talking about his past adventures and liked to dress up extravagantly. A blind masseuse gave me Thai massages every afternoon, which were painful yet relaxing.

Although we couldn’t have a real conversation because of my lack of knowledge of the Thai language, we understood each other’s jokes and stories. These people who were probably going to die soon were making the most of it. This attitude made them more fun to hang out with than most healthy people.

The ‘good-bye, I’ll be back as soon as I can’

I had become fond of all the people there: the dying, the children, the carers, and the other residents. Each one of them was unique. But of course, in the end, I had to get back to my books. I absolutely hate goodbyes so my last day was torture. I had promised to come back in six months, but I knew some of these great people were not going to be there anymore.

It took me another week after I got home to adjust to a ‘normal’ life. It annoyed me that people were complaining about minor problems, while these people who were so much worse off were making the best of each day.

It’s a common problem for people returning from volunteering in developing countries. It takes a while before you can put the experience into perspective and start complaining yourself as well about the amount of work you have to do that week.

Do you want to volunteer?

More information on donating or volunteering for the Camillian Social Centre in Rayong

Volunteering opportunities in new Camillian center for children living with HIV/AIDS or a disability near Bangkok:

Contact: faisal1rcr@hotmail.com visit their website

Volunteer with AIDS patients in Thailand with FFA

Natalie Lefevre has lived in several places around the world but now lives and writes from her home country Belgium.

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