HUAY KA LOKE, THAILAND
April from Detroit is teaching English to a bunch of refugee kids in the middle of nowhere. They’re not all orphans, but those that aren’t left their parents across the border when they fled into Thailand. The school – which is really just three rattan walls and a corrugated metal roof – has about two hundred and fifty kids of all ages who live in a set of buildings just down the road. The camp it’s attached to has been burned down twice by Karen splinter groups allied with the Burmese government, and in 1999 a storm brought down a school building and killed a fourteen year old (I don’t think it was this one).

It depends on volunteers for English lessons, but volunteers tend to vanish with little notice. I didn’t plan on doing anything more than walking around, but the sixth grade teacher didn’t show up and they asked James and I to teach it. That’s not really the sort of thing you can say no to.