Unconditional trust in Buddha

Unfortunately, there are people who only know setbacks in their lives and carry a kind of magnet with them, with which they only know how to attract misery, loosers and rabble, and those people are of course legion in it. Thailand. However, the Thai is usually very religious and has an unconditional faith in Buddha. A true story of a very good friend of my wife.

Phon, the eldest daughter of a rice farmer, grew up with her two sisters in a small town in Isan. At her 6^e her mother ran off in an American farang and left the care of her three small children to her husband. However, her husband became so drunk as a result of the incident that the care and upbringing of the children was soon left to little Phon. Until her 20^th years of age she took care of her sisters and that with a father who was drunk every day, beat things up, threw up everything and eventually had to be taken care of by her. There were also those moments when Phon didn't feel like it anymore and wanted to kill herself, but her faith in Buddha prevented her from doing so. Every day she went to the temple hand in hand with her two sisters and prayed to Buddha for better times.

Her father had a lot of rice fields, but he gradually sold them to his family for an apple and an egg to buy lao khao (Thai whiskey). It was therefore inevitable that at one point he was found dead like a piece of old rubbish along the side of the road. He had completely drunk himself to death. Something that, incidentally, especially in Isan, is not isolated. It often happens that this or that person drinks himself completely to death and there are also quite young guests.

She heard nothing more about her mother, who was in America. She has no address or phone number for her. In those years she had some support from her grandmother, but she died when she was just 15. Phon, therefore, was completely on his own. The cottage where she lived with her two sisters was little more than a ramshackle hut. It was not in the village, but remote on the edge of a rice field, without light or sanitary facilities, as if they had hidden a bunch of lepers there. The cabin is still there and every time I drive past it, I get an uneasy feeling of the misery that must have gone on inside.

They don't have social services as we know them there. If you have nothing, then you are really at the mercy of the gods. There was therefore hardly any question of a dignified existence. Phon, however, made sure that she and her sisters had food and could go to school, and she even managed to finish high school under those circumstances. You can guess what sacrifices she and her sisters have had to make all these years for a daily bowl of rice. Not long after, her youngest sister died of AIDS. Her mother has no knowledge of the death of her youngest daughter to this day. I ask myself, what kind of mother is that? Yes, she also received some help from the family who had stolen her father's land, but it consisted of loans, which Phon had to pay back to the penny.

In that respect they can be tough as nails there and that is something I cannot grasp. It seems to me as if a human life more or less doesn't matter that much and that of course always affects the poorest people who already have nothing. It was important that Phon was put to work as soon as possible and to speed up the repayment she was matched by the family with the first best farang, from which she received more beatings than eating. Phon, who had meanwhile grown into a beautiful young intelligent woman, but had been quite hardened by life, of course did not accept that and, together with her remaining sister, fled to Bangkok. At one of the many markets they sold self-made jewelry for years. Not a fat pot, but they could live on it.

However, with love it just didn't want to work, she wore out one farang after the other. Not for the money, because they were all guests taking advantage of her. Her remaining sister was more fortunate, she hooked a farang and has been staying in Europe for several years.

During my vacation I met her again after 3 years. Of course we had brought something for her from the Netherlands, but she also for us and that really touched me. A self-knitted scarf and a hat for me and my wife and of course also a Buddha statue, because she has remained faithful to Buddha all these years. As long as I've been coming to Thailand, I've never gotten anything from a Thai. Not that I'm waiting for that, but the idea that such a poor girl (woman) has not forgotten you, that touches me. Call me an emotional softball, but that's just how I am.

She told us that she had a new boyfriend (again), but he was still married to a farang woman. Her previous boyfriend had taken her to the hospital and this friend had taken her in, because she has no one else to fall back on in Thailand. I see her as a sister of mine and I freaked out a bit when I heard that her current boyfriend was still married: damn Phon, where are you starting again. A few days later I was introduced to him and he turned out to be a nice guy, with whom she had been living for some time. A German software engineer, who makes software applications for European organizations. Despite all the misery, she has returned to her native region (Isan), where she recently started running an office with him. I really hope for her, that she will be happy now, because if anyone deserves to be happy, it's her. Buddha bless you Phon.

This is of course a story out of thousands, but when you know someone well, it really affects you.

Submitted by Fred

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