Thailand Tales….

After what seemed like endless hours, days of travel we finally landed in Bangkok. I felt like l had returned to visit an old friend.The site of her brings a smile to my face and the smell of her brings a flood of memories. I really do love it here!My name is Erica, and I am from Newmarket, Ontario. I am volunteer with LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute), and I am really excited to be back in Thailand with such amazing people once again. I have been able to see some of the children that I met last year and see that they are thriving under the care of an incredible woman who gives of herself in a manner that I, in my North American attitude, can not grasp. As I catch up with old and new friends, I inquire about children that I can remember and have been concerned about, and I am especially relieved to learn of the safety of a little boy I met and shared lunch with at KFC. (yes they like their KFC here!)Although this has only been my second time here, I feel I have a slight advantage to a few of the team members yet miles and miles to go before I have any understanding of the culture here. The people here are kind, gentle and soft spoken (certainly a contrast to me!), yet what happens here to people in Northern Thailand is almost unbelievable.For me the hardest thing to grasp is statelessness. It incredible to believe that as you play with a group of children, as you hug them and hold them, as they sing to you and give you a necklace made of flowers, that according to the government and the international community, these children don’t exist. Legally they cannot attend school, they cannot get medical care, they cannot work. It’s unimaginable to my Canadian sensibilities that someone doesn’t exist.I hope that I will never understand how statelessness happens and maybe that will remind me to keep telling you about these children. As I tell you and you tell others maybe then they will exist, maybe not as a citizen, but maybe as a encouragement, maybe as a reminder of the courageous, as a reminder of a survivor.Now YOU know of a group of children in Northern Thailand that don’t “exist” yet they do!, You know that they sing songs, that they are courageous, they are survivors. Will you let someone else know that they exist?–