by Lilburne,Guy
“Dad was secretly drinking? Who was he having trouble with at home? I thought he lived alone.”
“The bus driver was drinking. Oh Steven! I remember when your mother, God rest her soul, found out that she was pregnant with you. She cried for weeks. They wanted to get you terminated, but it was too late. So they had to keep you. They were too old to have a baby. That’s why you were born stupid. I think you killed your mother.”
“She died of cancer when I was ten years old.”
“I know. Brought on by the stress of having you. You were a big letdown to both your parents. Well, to the whole street really. Anyway, I’m sorry about your dad Steven. He was a good man, but at least he will be with your mother again now.”
“Thank you Mrs. Thompson.”
When I closed the phone I thought about everything she had told me. I didn’t know that I had caused my mum’s cancer and I didn’t know that I was such a disappointment to the whole street. No wonder mum and dad kept me locked up inside the house. They were just protecting me.
One of the hardest workers in those early days was Porn, the old lady who was bent over double and needed two walking sticks to stop her toppling over. She had a leather saddle which she would strap onto her back when she was working and I always felt sad as we loaded it up with bricks and timber and it would break my heart as I sat under the shade of a Banyan tree and watched her climb up the rickety bamboo ladder to the top of the temple, fully laden with building materials. Every time she did it I was surprised that she had managed it without falling and killing herself. She was also an excellent cook. At 5 am each morning she would come to the temple to cook and prepare food for me and the rest of the villagers. She worked tirelessly and always with her toothless grin. Well actually, she did have just one brown tooth, but it was a lovely smile anyway. It was a smile from the heart. She was always the first person to arrive at the temple and always the last person to leave after dark. I really couldn’t have rebuilt the place without her. She had become a very good friend and always had advice and wisdom to share with me. If I had ever made a difference to anyone as a monk, it was because of Porn. She had a very special wisdom and she always knew what to do.
I still made mistakes; Big ones. But, for some reason, they seemed to work in my favour. The reason my mistakes worked in my favour was because of my friend Porn. She was always around to explain to everyone that my mistakes were actually miracles! I was actually trying really hard to be a good monk. I’d never been good at anything in my whole life, but I thought that being a monk would work for me, because I could help people. Well, at least I could try. With my share of the royalties from the sales from the book ‘The Flower Girl’, I tried to make the lives of the people who lived in my parish a little better. This included me buying a second hand medical book from a second hand book shop in Khanchanaburi and buying medicines, plasters, bandages, anti-biotics and pain killers from the pharmacy to treat people with minor ailments and injuries. It wasn’t much, but it was the only health care available to them. I was still being plagued by mosquito bites, but being a monk I wasn’t supposed to kill anything. One day when I was in the pharmacy I picked up a can of mosquito and fly killer spray. I read the instructions and I was delighted to read that, if you sprayed it onto a surface, it would stay on that surface and deter insects from landing there for up to 4 hours. This was fantastic news for me and the answer to my prayers, because living in a wooden hut in the jungle, believe me, there were a lot of insects and mosquitoes who wanted to eat me. I bought a can and decided to spray myself all over with it. I thought that if I sprayed myself four or five times a day then I would be bite free and I wouldn’t have to kill anything. They would just be deterred like it said on the can! I walked the several miles back to the temple and showered with buckets of cold water before spraying the can all over me. I dressed in my robes again and within a few minutes my skin started to irritate me. Then it really started to hurt and burn me and I was covered in a horrible rash that was stinging beyond belief. I’m not a chemical engineer, but I guessed that the fly killer must have contained some toxic chemicals. I read the instructions again. It said ‘Not to be taken internally’, but it didn’t say don’t spray yourself with it. It did say avoid contact with eyes, but I didn’t spray it into my eyes, I had closed them,…thank Buddha! I undressed and showered again, but I had a terrible rash and a lot of discomfort for three days. I looked awful. I looked as if I had some terrible tropical disease. When Porn saw me I told her what had happened. She didn’t say anything to me but, after she had stopped laughing, she told all the villagers that, because I had cured all their sickness and taken away all their pain, I had suffered their illnesses. The whole village turned up at the temple with offerings of flowers, incense and candles. Food was cooked and a festival just sort of happened. Everyone prayed and thanked Buddha for sending such a gifted monk to help them. They all suddenly felt happier and safer, fitter and healthier, because they believed that I was taking on their illnesses. Porn stayed behind for a while after the rest of the villages had left and, after she had cleaned up, she sat with me.
“Porn, you know this isn’t really a miracle?”
“Yes! Of course I know. You are just a crazy farang who sprayed himself with fly killer. But it is important for the villagers to believe in you. I don’t know why you wanted to be a monk and I don’t know how you ended up here, but we need you. I don’t know why Buddha sent you to us, because you only speak Thai and you not understand the Asia way. But you have a good heart and you try to do good.”
“I am a real monk.”
“I know.”
“But you don’t think I am a very good one?”
“Yes, you very good, but not in the way you think. I think you not understand what you do or why you do it. But you are very good for us and that is why I help you. You give every people hope and they think Buddha send you because he care about them. You do many good things, but you are a crazy man. But don’t worry, everyone love you and very proud about you.”
“But you know the truth!”
She smiled one of her one tooth grins and nodded.
“We need each other” she smiled.
She didn’t say anything else but her words were very profound. She was the oldest and wisest person I had ever met. Porn and her family were going to have a big impact on my life.
Chapter 4
Miracles really can happen!
Life in the temple in Khanchanaburi was happy. It was a simple life governed by the hours just before daylight until the hours just after dark. There was a daily routine. The people worked hard for not very much, but they were happy. The day usually ended around a fire - the men drinking beer and the women eating food. I had become aware of the seasons because of the fruiting trees and I found myself looking forward to the ripening fruits. I watched generations of families helping each other and their neighbours to harvest each other’s trees. Children ran around and played as the older children and grownups climbed trees and picked fruit. The older people sat around in the shade and watched, probably remembering when they were the climbers and pickers. Now they cooked food, chewed betel nuts, which made their teeth and gums red, and drank cheap whisky and beer. There was always a festival atmosphere and everyone was welcome. It was a circle of life.
Village life seemed to revolve around families and friends, deaths and births, festivals and blessings and the occasional wedding. I was happy and proud to be a part of it. I had bought some computers for the school after we had electricity cables laid to the temple and the children learnt how to use them very quickly. They were learning English and maths as well and they all seemed to like coming to school. The outstanding student was Pom. She was either the granddaughter or great granddaughter of Porn. She might have even been the great, great granddaughter. I could never quite work it out. But she lived with Porn along with several other members of the same
family, although different generations. Pom was a lovely child. She was only 14 years old, but the prettiest thing I had ever seen. She always smiled and liked to stay around the temple helping her grandmother Porn. I know that Pom had a school girl crush on me and she smiled and blushed a lot when I spoke to her. She was very gifted and she soon spoke excellent English. She was the top student in maths and computer studies. Porn told me one day that she would be married soon.
“Why? She is just a child!” I protested.
“We are a poor family. We will get some money from the husband’s family and it will be one less mouth to feed” shouted Porn, from the top of the temple roof, where she was carrying out some repairs to stop a leak.
“She needs to finish her education. She has a lot of talent. She can be anything she wants to be.”
“She wants to be a fashion designer.”
“Well, she can’t just get married as a convenience and throw her life away.” I couldn’t help thinking that she was far too beautiful to marry anyone in the village. It would be such a waste.
“We have some family in Bangkok” shouted Porn.
“What?”
“We have family in Bangkok. If we had money we could send her there to live with them and go to a proper school and maybe onto university. But we haven’t got the money. So she will have to get married to someone soon.”
“I will pay for her education.”
“We will have to pay something to the family for take care about her.”
“I can pay. I think she should go. Can you arrange this Porn? Can you phone them or something?”
“I phone already. They say yes, they can take care everything and they can put her in good school, if you pay. She is leaving on Monday, if you can pay.” Porn grinned her one tooth smile at me. She knew all along that I would pay. She knew that I was very fond of Pom.
Later that evening Porn brought Pom to see me. Pom wai’d very respectfully to me and she had tears in her eyes as she thanked me for paying for her future.
“I will make you very proud and I will work very hard” she promised.
If I wasn’t a monk I would have hugged her. When she walked away Porn stopped. She looked at me and smiled.
“She loves you very much” she said. “If you were not a monk she would marry you.”
I was a bit shocked, but I composed myself.
“If I wasn’t a monk I would marry Pom. Well, if she was ten years older I mean.”
“She will be one day.” Porn smiled to herself and offered a prayer up to Buddha.
I happily paid the money for Pom’s future. The village had a party for her on the Sunday and on Monday morning she was packed onto an old bus with a wooden floor. It spewed out diesel fumes in a big black cloud and, as the gears crunched, it trundled off at about 10 miles per hour. I told Porn that I doubted the bus would ever reach Bangkok.
“It won’t” said Porn. “This bus just take her down mountain into Khanchanaburi city. There she take big bus to Bangkok.”
“Oh!” I said. I was sad to see her leave, but happy that she had a real chance to make something of herself. She had a future and I was proud that I was the one who had given it to her. The village just wasn’t the same without her beautiful smile and I missed hearing her laughter around the temple - but life went on. Looking back now I realize that I thought about Pom every single day. Not all day long or anything like that, but at some point each and every day she would come into my thoughts.
Besides the fruit trees, the main income for the villages was small scale farming and fishing the lakes. Oh! And illegal logging of course. In the July of that year we had a catastrophe in the lake in front of the temple. The lake was huge and stretched all the way across to Myanmar. Something was poisoning the fish and it devastated the lives of the villagers. There was a lot of rumour, but it seemed that a factory in Myanmar had accidentally emptied toxic waste into the lake. Some said that it was no accident and that it was just a cheap way to dispose of the waste. But I can’t believe that any company in the world would do such a terrible thing on purpose. Anyway, it killed the fish and the fishermen had nothing to catch and nothing to sell or feed their families with. They all came to the temple to pray and ask for a miracle. They were confident that I could help. I wasn’t so confident. It troubled me a lot. I was used to doing miracles by accident. When people came asking me for one it just put a lot more pressure on me. I wrote to the Thai government and the Myanmar government, but I didn’t get any reply.
It was in August that I went on a walk towards the lake. It always looked so beautiful; surrounded by majestic blue mountains, it really was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. How could anyone spoil it!
I saw a hole in the ground. It looked like a rabbit hole, but bigger. I had never seen any rabbits there before. I don’t even know if there are any in Thailand. Maybe it was just a natural hole. It looked deep. I lay on the ground and put my arm down it but I couldn’t feel the bottom. It twisted around a couple of feet down from the surface. I took my sandal off and put my leg down the hole. I could bend my leg around the twist, but I still couldn’t feel the bottom. The problem was that I couldn’t pull my leg back out either. I was stuck. Well and truly stuck, as if my leg had been set in cement. How can that happen? It went in OK, but now it wasn’t going to come out. I sat on the ground and made myself as comfortable as I could. I kept trying to pull my leg out, but it wouldn’t budge. It was only after a few hours that I started to worry that some creature might live down there and decide to make a meal of my foot. I wish I had thought about that before I had embedded my leg in the ground. I prayed to Buddha and tried to stay calm, but that got harder as the day turned into night and it got darker. I spent the entire day and night looking out over the lake and hoping that nothing was going to eat me.
I didn’t know at the time, but back at the temple the villagers were getting very concerned about their missing monk and sent out search parties looking for me. Some found me at the break of light the next morning. They thought I was making some kind of vigil over the dead lake. They brought food and flowers to me and started to sit with me. Porn turned up. It took her a lot longer to come because her mobility wasn’t so good. She sat next to me in silence along with the others.
After a while she picked her moment and whispered to me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m stuck.”
“Why are you stuck?”
“Because I put my leg down a hole and now it’s stuck. I can’t move it.”
“Why did you put your leg down a hole?”
“I don’t know. Why does a mountaineer climb a mountain? Because it’s just there.”
She shook her head and then sat in silence again. Villagers came and went all day long. At night some lit a fire and lit candles and burned incense. Some stayed with me all night long. Porn was one of them. I was stuck there for another two days. That is when the miracle happened. What we didn’t know at the time is that the Thai government had been in diplomatic talks with Myanmar and they had carried out a joint operation to treat the lake and restock it with fish from the Myanmar side of the vast lake. They had done it a few days previously but now the fish had arrived back on our shore and fishermen were catching again. Word spread and everyone was convinced that I had done it. A pig was slaughtered and cooked over the fire in celebration. Porn told everyone that I had sat there so long that I was growing into a tree and my leg had turned into a root. It was another miracle because the farang monk was once again prepared to sacrifice himself for the good of the people. Luckily for me the people decided that they didn’t want their monk to become a tree and it was decided to pull me out and plant a tree to keep the jungle spirits happy. They used the cooled pork fat from the cooked pig to pour down the hole and eventually managed to pull me out. The next day they planted a tree
and I had to bless it. It became a sacred tree and to this day people go there to burn candles and incense and pray and make offerings of rice and fish. Ribbons are tied around the tree on special festival days. Maybe I was a good monk after all! The first thing I did when I got back to the temple was go to the toilet. I certainly tested the plumbing, I can tell you that.
Chapter 5
Pom came Home!
The years passed peacefully and slowly. It was a relaxed way of life. I had made many more miracles happen without even meaning too. If I was a Catholic instead of a Buddhist I’m sure that I would have been made a Saint already.
I was getting older, but somehow Porn didn’t seem to age at all - she was already ancient! She was a reassuring sight for me whenever I saw her. She was always shuffling around the village, stooped forward at 90 degrees from the waist and using her two sticks to stop herself toppling over. She always had a grin on her tanned face. Her white hair was always pulled back and tied into a tight bun. She always had time to sit and talk to me and she always gave me news about Pom and how she was doing at school in Bangkok. Sometimes she would read me letters that she had received from Pom and I always got a mention in them.
The best letter that she read to me was the one telling Porn that she had finished school and was coming home for a holiday before she started at University. She would be arriving the following week and would be staying for six weeks before returning to Bangkok for the start of her university term. Everyone in the village was excited about Pom’s return and I was too. It had been four years since I had seen her, but I had always kept her in my thoughts and prayers. For the next week I couldn’t think of anything else other than Pom. She would be 18 years old now and no longer the young schoolgirl who had left our little village four years earlier. I just wanted to see her face, see her smile and hear her laughter, which had always filled my heart with so much happiness.
