Mangos and Mountains

As I looked for somewhere to tuck into the juicy looking fruit I happened on one of those small blue boneshaker buses which ply distances of anything from thirty to a couple of hundred kilometers in two to eight hours, time being unrelated to distance. I asked a middle aged woman sitting close by on the rain gutter wall, where the bus went to. Surprisingly she was able to tell me Omkoi, up in the mountains 190 kilometers south west of Chiang Mai.

I paid my 116 baht and four-and-a-half hours later was unceremoniously dumped outside a small restaurant. I was in Omkoi, sticky from mango juice, in the late afternoon and it was cold. As I entered the restaurant I was met by a totally gorgeous looking girl with strong Chinese features in a very short skirt and low cut blouse which left little to be imagined. Memories of my ex wife on a good day.

"Could I have a Coke please?" She answered in a language I had never heard but after the usual loud and slow conversation with much finger pointing, I was sitting at a table with a 1.25 liter bottle of Coke, a small glass and a huge bucket of ice looking at a calculator which said 35 baht. "That’s cheap" I thought but had learned years ago to keep comments like that to myself.

"Me Oi"

It took another half-an-hour to go through the signing to ask if there was somewhere I could stay during which, "Me married" featured several times. Oi handed me her phone and I was talking to The Omkoi Resort asking how much for a room.

"250, 500, 600, 4,500. Come and look," said Gong, the grumpy sounding resort owner. "Come and look. You can decide."

"Where are you?"

"At my resort!"

"Where is that?"

"One and a half kilometers up the road. Oi will tell you."

"Can you pick me up please?"

"How many nights?"

"Maybe two"

"No, give the phone to Oi"

As I headed off up the hill which looked as if it was direct to the top of a high mountain a pickup stopped by my side. Slowly the totally blackened window dropped and it was Oi offering a lift. I politely declined because she was married and continued up the hill. At the top I saw two small kids kicking a football. As I passed I asked, "Manchester United?" and got a totally blank look. "Liverpool?" and the same. "Arsenal?" and again the same. That to me was really odd.

"Hello. I Victor. I have 32 kids. They mine. Come my house." Suspicious that I might be tagged as a guy looking for young boys I warily climbed the bank towards Victor to be greeted with a warm handshake and a whole pile of happy smiling kids. I had happened upon The Coffee Hostel which was to become a major part of my personal recovery from disaster.

Omkoi is a small village and the center of government of a District which stretches through the mountains to the Burmese border and is inhabited by about 80,000 mostly Karen Hilltribe people living off subsistence farming. Omkoi town is odd because it’s Primary and Secondary schools are huge for the size of the village. The Secondary school is only one of two in the District serving 80,000 people. I quickly learned, in the most enthusiastic of ways, from Victor and his wife Eta, that The Coffee Hostel exists to provide a place for mostly young girls to come to town and have a chance to get a secondary education.

As you walk through Omkoi you see many young girls with babies slung over their backs. It’s easy to think they are siblings looking after siblings but not so easy to accept they are married 15 and 16 year old girls with their own kids. That’s the norm if they can’t go to school. The Coffee Hostel does way more than provide educational opportunity through the system. The children learn about Christ, to play keyboard, sing and to have strong family values which, once they graduate High School, they can take back to the mountains.

Of course the whole operation is underfunded and every day is a struggle to keep the kids fed and uniformed. But somehow they manage through regular small or larger donations from good hearted people. Some are Christians and others admire Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Some are Buddhists but all have one thing in common; they have good hearts and feel like helping. If you want to help them or simply want to know more check out www.trupco.co.uk/cs or email me at chris@trupco.co.uk.

By the way, I did eventually get to the Omkoi Resort on foot and was welcomed by Gong and his wife Poli. They too are an important part of my recovery and are now good friends offering a warm Karen welcome to anyone coming to Omkoi but remember, if you only want a couple of nights you may have to walk!