Panda Friends

I have a shadow named Panda. Panda is a nine-year-old girl not an actual panda. Panda was born with HIV and has been raised by her elderly paternal grandparents in Nong Khai City. I visited Panda’s home two weeks ago with the Village Health Outreach Team I work with twice a week. Her father is deceased and her mother left her at a very young age. Her grandfather drives a tuk-tuk (motor-bike taxi) as well as makes and sells fishing nets as a source of income for their family. Their home consists of a single open room supported by wooden beams and cement block walls. Beneath an exposed window in the far right corner lies a tattered queen size bed shared by the family of three. On our visit, the Outreach Team and I helped Panda label her daily HIV antiretroviral medicine box in Thai after realizing that she has been taking medicines on the wrong days and times because she cannot read the English printed on the multi-colored box.

The next day, a pharmacist, a doctor, and one Outreach staff member visited Panda’s home once more. After looking more into Panda’s history of taking her medicine inaccurately, they decided it was crucial that her daily medicine be highly regimented. Unfortunately, this was not happening in her home. The medical staff, along with her grandparents, decided that it would be best for Panda to live in the Garden where she would be given her medicine every single day at the appropriate times. That afternoon, Panda, with a single backpack and a sleeping mat, moved into one of the homes in the Garden – away from her grandparents, away from the life she has known for nine years.

The Garden is the gated community I live in that houses the HIV/AIDS Nursing/ Assisted Living Center where I work as well as 9 family homes, including the volunteer home. On the night that Panda got to the Garden, I had my weekly night duty where I sleep at the Care Center and work a 32-hour shift. Panda held my hand and cuddled next to me as we watched a Thai soap opera with the patients before I brought her home for her first sleep in the Garden. The next evening I helped her to shampoo her hair because even cute little panda friends can get lice. The next afternoon I helped her to wash her dirty clothes and sort some of the new clothes that had been purchased for her. When she twisted her ankle the next day, I helped to wrap and ice it. When she could not walk to her house that night, I gave her a piggy back ride home, tucked her into bed, and gave her a kiss on the forehead before telling her the Thai version of sleep tight - “Nawn lap fun dee” (fall asleep well, dream well).

I knew coming to Thailand that my job was to be a patient care worker in a health facility but I did not know the extent to which I would also be a caretaker, a mom, and a big sister. Caring comes naturally to me so I am glad that I can use my gifts and talents to make Panda’s as well as the seven other kids and teens that live in the Garden’s lives a little bit easier and more comfortable. They bring so much light to my life that I am glad I can spread a little bit of light on their lives as well, because just like Panda, their lives have not been easy. Unfortunately, her story is not unique.

Bon, who lives in the same home as Panda, is a 13-year-old boy living with HIV who has been living in the Garden for a few years now. Both Bon’s mother and grandmother froze to death about a year a part from each other in their exposed front home, leaving his aunt as his primary caretaker. Bon came to live at the Garden after he begged one of the Sisters to let him live there because his aunt wanted him to stop going to school so that she could use him to watch her three little children all day but he wanted to continue to go to school.

Belle, who used to live in the same home as Bon but now lives in a house directly across from the Care Center, is a 15-year-old girl with HIV who lost both of her parents to HIV at a young age and was raised by her elderly grandparents. Belle stopped going to school a few years ago so that she could work to provide an income for her grandparents and younger brother who still live in the village. Belle works at Hands of Hope and visits her grandparents, both of whom are going blind, every weekend, to bring them money she earned that week.

Of the eight children that live in the Garden, 6 have HIV and 5, including Panda, Bon, and Belle, do not have parents. However, the Garden is such a large, loving family and the children that live here live such a unique life living amongst patients and foreign volunteers and other individuals living with or affected by HIV/AIDs who know what they are going through.

Over the past two months they have become my little (and not so little) brothers and sisters. Every evening I can often be found playing with the younger girls outside our home, listening to music with the older kids in a backyard, or having a dance party with everyone outside the patient sala. On Sunday nights, Tamarah and I have the five teens (Wansai – 11, Bon – 13, Belle – 15, Bee – 17, Prio – 19) over our house for snacks and some sort of special activity like playing cards or watching a movie. The little kids that live in the Garden demand so much attention all the time, especially from us volunteers, so it has been really cool for the five teens to have a set time in the week that they get to come over and hang out at our house – a place that is technically supposed to be off limits for the Garden kids (we got special permission for this exception).

Last Saturday, Tamarah and I got to go to a waterfall with the kids as well as the patients and this Saturday we got to go to the zoo with the kids as well as 30 other kids who had been at the Center for a camp hosted for children affected and infected by HIV/AIDs. Both experiences were so amazing and full of so much joy and laughter. These adventures really solidified how close I have already become with those I have met here in Nong Khai, especially the children. It is amazing to think how that is even possible when not one of them speaks any English. I probably understand them 60% of the time when they are asking questions directly to me but only about 15% when listening to conversations around me. But for some reason, language does not seem to be all as important as it seems.

I don’t need words to go on 6 a.m. runs through the rice fields with Bee. I don’t need communication to throw Nong Naam in the air as she laughs uncontrollably. I don’t need to make small talk as Wansai braids my hair or I help her make sticky rice kanom (snacks). I don’t need to practice my Thai when I sneakily try and hug Bon. I don’t need language to smile at Nonnie as she runs at me open armed as I return from a day in the villages. I don’t need to talk as Panda follows behind me holding on to my shirt as I hand out medicines to the patients. I guess that’s the thing when hearts are talking not mouths, it’s a language even shadows and cute little panda friends can understand.