Take Care Kids

Merry Christmas and Happy 2012 to everyone, and to all of us.....our Take Care Kids Onlus Thailand Foundation family. We will celebrate Christmas in our Shelter with the mothers and children we are hosting, along with other children who come visit almost every day to play and to keep away from trouble. It will be a simple but warm Christmas. A Thai Restaurant will donate the whole dinner for the 25th, and of course we will have a dish of spaghetti for our Italian volunteers and guests. I am filled with joy to tell you about our first Christmas in our HOME.

A happiness which mixes up with daily problems. We now have three mothers with three children in our shelter. One is Maria (Muslim) and her son Jaman, Maria is also Tanakorn's mother, he passed away almost a month ago at the Chonburi Hospital. After the funer I had wondered if there was something we could do for her since she was living by selling drinks on the streets. So I asked her if she wanted to be a cook in our shelter, and offered her a small salary. She smiled broadly and accepted. She has been smiling ever since. And then we have Jaman 7 years old on December 21st....we have become great friends. Each day he comes back from school he jumps into my arms and hugs me. So basically I'm always walking around with two kids hanging on me, Jaman and little Ann. As a matter of fact, she's gets really jealous if I don't pick her up as soon as I see her! Ann's mother works 16 hour days, she's a hairdresser and the more she works, the more she earns. She earns one Euro per client, and that's how she pays off her debts. In the meantime her little girls grows up in our shelter and spends time with all the little friends who live there as well, and she also takes care of our little Queen, Faa our two month old girl. Another life we saved thanks to the hospital who called is in time. Let me tell you what happened: ten days ago we took her to the hospital after she came up with a reaction to her first vaccination, thank goodness everything worked out in the end. Her mother is still a child herself, she's 16 years old and her name is Teng. She found a Guardian Angel, our volunteer Frida, who helps her with English as well. Teng's boyfriend is in jail and we went to visit him together a few days ago. Because we are like a big family now, we do everything together. For example, there's a party every time we go grocery shopping. Right now the three mothers and their kids are our only guests, but we have six empty rooms. We don't want to rush things, even though we have many situations that call for our attention. We want these mothers to feel comfortable and adjust to all the rules of the Shelter before we bring in any others, because they will be the ones teaching the rules to the newcomers once we are ready to host them. We do have our little problems of course, almost one every 12 hours, but we were ready for this when we started so we were not caught off guard. If there were no problems to solve, we would not be operating as a Foundation and we would not have a reason to exist. And we tend to solve our problems one at a time, but in the end, we always prevail. During the afternoons we often have many other children visiting our Shelter, they want to play, spend time in our family home and stay away from the streets. Alex, Nadia and the kids from the slums will be with us for Christmas and each child will receive a little present. We will however visit the little kids in the Hospital first, and on this occasion, Take Care Kids' personal Santa will bring more than 40 presents.....want to guess where all the presents came from? They are of course all the toys and things you gathered from Italy. And we will celebrate our Christmas with all the postcards which have arrived from all over the World and were put on the Christmas tree as decorations. Please, keep sending them even after so we can fill our walls with them. I'd like to end this journal the way I started it, by wishing all friends, supporters, associates and sponsors the best of Holidays. If we are here today in our home it's only thanks to all of you. Thanks to the Italian heart, a heart like no other in the World, believe me.

TCK