Mon Village and School Visit

Thursday, February 20, our second school visit happened as we visited a Mon village along the banks of the River Kwai.  To get to the village, we had to take a wider long boat (all of us were able to sit in it) and travel 30 minutes upstream.  The Mon people are originally from the Burma area along the Thai-Burma border.

The school is basically a hut.  No walls but large posts holding up the roof and a set of 20 desks, a teacher’s desk, 3 chalk boards and a ping pong table.  They just received a working (as it was) bathroom that kept the children from having to take a long walk to the other bathroom.  On the day we were there, 6 children were in attendance.  There are approximately 20 kids who attend this school but on this day, they were not around.

Compared to the first school we visited, this school would be considered poor.  Only when you look around at the children and their faces, you would never know that.  They were all smiling, taking part in the lesson of learning Thai, English (as they will most likely work with tourist), Burmese and learning to read and write in their native Mon.

The children were extremely willing to show us what they knew as they sang the English alphabet we all know from growing up, the Thai anthem, the Burmese anthem and the Elephant song.  To see these children so willing and ready to learn with what little they had in the classroom is something that all of us should see when we wonder why we can’t have white board markers that work.