Saw John has been in American for four years, his favorite activity here is the soccer team. He is from Thailand, and spent several years in a refugee camp. Nothing has diminished a ready and heartfelt smile.
He wears his hair in a pony tail and misses the freedom he had to walk to see his parents where they worked and to visit his friends. Here, they can’t walk much in their neighborhoods. He is an honor student heading for high school in September.
Next week, we are getting him some new clothes and shoes. If you wish to help Saw John, you can contribute to the Gus Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. And thanks.
When the soccer team went to Ramblewild for their forest and tree climbing adventure yesterday, I joined them at lunch. I wanted to talk with them and take some portraits, so you generous people might have a sense of who you are helping.
I often see these young people but rarely get to sit down and talk with them, In the coming weeks and months I hope to visit them at home and meet with their mothers or fathers. They need help too.
I am especially fond of these young men (and two women, who do not wish to be photographed or written about), they are gracious and warm and honest about their often very difficult lives.
Many lost everything, as their families did when they came here, and they are struggling to adjust to a very different life in America. They must now worry about being in fashion with clothes, they are experiencing the challenges of urban life, often amidst great poverty.
Back home, they played soccer in their backyards barefoot, not there are leagues and teams and uniforms and fancy and expensive teams. Back home, they had freedom to go and walk everywhere they pleased.
Here, they must be driven everywhere, and their streets are often too dangerous to walk about freely. At home, they lived a peaceful and rural life, amid animals and trees and water. Until it wasn’t peaceful any longer.
Back home, their families were intact, they were comfortable, now they mostly live with single parents working long hours at minimum wage. They have all lost someone dear to them. They have all spent years in refugee camps.
Ali is their pipeline to the outside world, the soccer team their support and community. The Army Of Good makes this possible.
Klue says he misses home, he says the soccer team is the thing in life he most enjoys.
I am happy to know him and support him. We help him with clothes, necessary tablets and digital equipment and with tutoring if he needs it. He has the most genuine and radiant smile, and treats everyone with kindness and courtesy.
He appreciates the trips and journeys he is now able to go on, he is seeing a wider world.
If you wish, you can support Klue and the soccer team and their families and the refugees living in New York State by sending a donation to the Gus Fund, c/o Jon Katz. P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected].
Maria finished stack the last half/cord or so piled up in the yard. Our two wood stoves are ready for the winter, we have about eight cords of wood stacked up in the shed behind the farmhouse. Our barn is full of fresh hay.
All we need is to put some tarps over the wood and tie them down to keep the rain off the wood.
It is awfully hot in many parts of the country, but winter can come early and hard here, even with global warming. Thanks so much to Greg Burch (and his pug JD), their wood is good and seasoned and they always come when they say they will.
The soccer team players said it was the best trip they had ever gone on, they all went, thanks to you, to the Ramblewild Forest Adventure Park in Massachusetts where they spent four hours way up in the trees, walking on rope bridges, mastering obstacle courses, hanging over a 100 foot high walkway, with helmets, special gloves and and zip wires.
I met them at the park for lunch afterwards, and i took some portraits, which I’ll put up in the morning. Ramblewild has five or six different adventures, and I hope to get the team back there again in the Fall. It was special to them.
I had and important time talking with them about their lives back in Asia, their struggles to adapt in America, and their love of Ali and the soccer team. I’ll write about that in the morning.
Special thanks to Derek and Ramblewild for donating climbing gloves to the team, they can use them in soccer practice.
These trips and activities for the refugee soccer players are made possible by your contributions. I’d like to send them to the New England Aquarium and we have to pay for some soccer time and equipment. Your help is invaluable.
If you can contribute, please send a donation to The Gus Fund, c/o Jon Katz. P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. And thanks so much.
The readers of the blog just adopted their second dog this week, Albert, a handsome three-year-old chihuahua was adopted late this afternoon, according to Carol Johnson of Friends Of Homeless Animals. FOHA gets all kinds of dogs from different parts of the country, they specialize in heartworm and some hopeless dogs in great trouble.
These dogs all come with horror stories, most dogs in America are treated very well, but it is disheartening to hear the things some people will do to animals.
FOHA does the hard and dirty work most of us don’t like to think about.
I hope to highlight a different dog each week in need of a home, it’s a wonderful use of the blog and the many animal lovers who read it. I avoided doing this for years because I don’t want the blog to be limited to dog issues.
I hope we can keep our streak going.
I’m getting Bud from FOHA and I appreciate the group, their sensitivity and thoroughness.
I want my writing to range widely, but dogs are a central element of my life and writing and blog and it is foolish to help people but not vulnerable dogs. So I’ll be doing this regularly, and this week we are off to a great start.
They tell me Albert is a great dog, and I know that Jen, who a blog reader adopted earlier in the week, is also going to a great home.
This is shaping up as a great week of triumphs for the blog.
Tomorrow, I’m going to take a photo of Kelly Patrick, a certified nurse’s aide from the Mansion Assisted Care Facility. With the help of the Army Of Good, she is moving out of the tent she was living in all summer and into her double-wide trailer with her daughter and grandson.
More later.
Today, the refugees soccer team went to Ramblewild, a forest adventure park to walk among the trees. They loved it, I met them for lunch. Photos coming tonight. Tomorrow, a different group from the team is going to the Great Adventure Entertainment Park at Lake George.
Later on during summer break, they will spend time at the Powell House Youth Retreat, go bowling a couple of times, and swim and play video games at Lake George.
The Army of Good made all of these triumphs possible. To help continue all of this work, please consider making a contribution to the Gus Fund, c/o Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. And thanks.
