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By Susan S. Sullivan, Special To The Bulletin
ATLANTA—Holy Spirit Church is resplendent with carved wood,
imported crystal, fresh flowers and a towering facade. The neighborhood around
it features some of the most imposing homes in the state, with gated entries,
secluded drives and magnificent interiors to match the picture-perfect
exteriors.
A world away in Thailand, in one of the most notorious slums in
Bangkok, the neighborhood around Immaculate Conception Church is polluted,
crowded and noisy. Food and safety are secured one day at a time. A corrugated
metal shack indicates a substantial dwelling and sleeping on the floor is the
standard. It is not uncommon for adults to consign their offspring to the drug
industry or sex trade and many children are abandoned.
These two worlds would seem to have little in common, but there is
an umbilical cord that stretches between them, fashioned of long friendships
and love of neighbor—even when the neighborhoods are tens of thousands of
miles apart.
Since the early ‘90s, the monthly support of Holy Spirit
Parish has helped empower the people of Klong Toey slum. Several special
mission collections at Holy Spirit have helped as well. More recently, a Holy
Spirit parishioner has made Klong Toey one of his top philanthropic priorities.
On the Far Eastern end of the umbilical cord is Father Joe Maier, a
Redemptorist priest who has been a resident of Klong Toey for more than 30
years. He lives in the Slaughterhouse area of the slum, where the few Catholics
in the area find pariah-level employment slaughtering pigs, a task the Moslems
and Buddhists find objectionable.
The Human Development Foundation works with a dedicated staff of
245 employees, most of whom live where they serve, in “partnership with
the poor.” Father Maier, the director, and a coordinator, Sister Maria,
oversee a varied collection of programs dedicated to education and medical care
and protection of the most vulnerable and exploited residents of Klong Toey,
the children.
The HDF motto is “To help people help themselves.”
The effort is international, with help coming from people and
organizations all over the world. The need, however, is so great that fund
raising is a constant challenge.
“People are literally living in tin shacks, in most cases
with a single electric light bulb hanging by a wire from the roof and water
coming from stand pipes every 100 feet or so,” said Msgr. Edward Dillon,
pastor of Holy Spirit, and two-time visitor to the neighborhood around
Immaculate Conception. “The slum area is filthy and smelly and,
realistically, the people don’t have much hope for anything better.”
A partial description of the maze of buildings and programs that
are part of HDF helps further illumine the challenge.
There are 33 kindergartens averaging 150 pupils each, the largest
school with 300 children. The most talked-about building is the new AlDS
hospice with 140 beds, mainly for mothers and their children. There is the
legal aid clinic for adolescents, the youth soccer league, a building program
that has resulted in the construction of 8,000 shacks over 30 years—many
rebuilt after periodic fires that sweep through Klong Toey. The list also
includes an art program, a medical clinic, prison ministry, women’s
groups, job training and shelter for the 160 street kids currently under
various roofs (of the 455 sent by the court in the last 18 months). Tens of
thousands are served; tens of thousands remain to be served.
“Never turn down a kid,” Father Maier said in an
interview at Holy Spirit Parish, on a recent trip to speak at parish Masses
about the work. “If we don’t have beds they can sleep on the floor.
Take out one bed and three kids can sleep on the floor. I’ve slept on the
floor for 25 years. We can all do that.”
“These kids are abused, used and abandoned. It’s all
about kids. We try to get them off the street, calm them down, help them stop
screaming in the night, teach them non-violence—violence is all they
know—they’ve been beat on and screamed at, and that’s all they
know. The greatest problem with street kids is adults. Every time they trust an
adult they get done in.”
“Lots of times priests, nuns, social workers come here and
are totally angry when street kids don’t tell them the truth,” the
60-year-old priest said. “How arrogant. When a street kid tells the truth
they get raped, beat up. They tell their truth. Their 10 commandments include:
run fast, know everything about sex and drugs, be able to lie.”
There is also a special “safe house” with nine children
who are kept in hiding. One of them, Father Maier said, has been dealing drugs
since the age of six. The child has total recall of every face and deal and
place—deadly information. When asked about the extreme poverty of the
area, in a country with a per capita income under $2,000 a year, Father Maier
quipped that these people aren’t poor—poor people don’t even
have clothes, like some of the residents of Bangladesh.
“The real poverty here is of the spirit,” he said.
“Poverty of religion and culture, of mothers and fathers making money off
their kids.”
“They are great kids,” he said with a huge smile.
“It’s a lot of fun. I try to see the AIDS kids everyday. One of the
last times I was there we were playing horsey. They were falling off and it was
great fun. That’s probably the most important thing I’ve done in 10
years.”
Father Maier, who described himself as “an idea man, a point
man,” said he does this work because he “doesn’t know what else
to do.”
“The kids are great,” he repeated. “The only people
I can’t handle are the bureaucrats and technocrats.”
Yet handle them he must. Unwritten codes and influence are the
wheels that keep Klong Toey moving.
“I haven’t done anything legal since I’ve been
there,” the priest explained, detailing building projects and land use.
“There’s a gap in Thai society where I don’t fit in, maybe even
in the church. With a little bit of bravado, I’ve been able to do things
other people have wanted to do. Everybody wins, nobody loses, everybody gets a
prize.”
“Last year we spent just over a million U.S. dollars,”
he continued. “The Thai government gave us a third of that. We’re the
only folks the Thai government gives money to. We hustle the rest. The Lord
takes care of us.”
How does it feel to influence so many lives and deal
internationally in such large sums? Or to receive international and national
awards and to be featured in articles by The National Catholic Reporter,
Reader’s Digest, USA Today, Reuters, Time Asia and others, and to have
your own articles published in the Bangkok Post?
“It’s the Lord’s work, not mine,” Father Maier
said with sudden seriousness. “Any ideas I’ve had here have been a
total failure. Anything I’ve been dragged into by my ear—those are
the ones that have been really successful.”
Success in Klong Toey is measured with a different yardstick. It
can include rescuing a drug dealer from impromptu community justice, prompted
by his spiking of the girls’ soccer team’s water cooler with drugs.
It can include filling the police station with non-housebroken puppies and
sticky, wet, friendly toddlers until a vulnerable adolescent is released. It
may mean showing British or Thai royalty through the newest building. It may
mean tears from a tortured child who has never cried.
Success may mean sleeping in front of the main door to calm the
fears of a youngster whisked away from an abusive family situation under cover
of night. Most of all it can mean the beginning of an education that transports
a future adult out of a life of poverty and desperation.
An umbilical cord that nourishes such hopes is anchored on the
Georgia end by several people. The first of them is Jane Bourdier, operations
manager at Holy Spirit. Bourdier met Father Maier in 1984 through her late
husband, Jim, when the couple lived in Bangkok. The friendship continued after
the Bourdiers returned to Atlanta, shortly before Jim’s death. Bourdier
said she “shared” Father Maier with her pastor, Msgr. Dillon, and
another friendship was born. More recently, philanthropist parishioner John
Cook joined the team. All share an admiration for the Redemptorist priest.
“Father Joe is quite a character—using the term in
multiple senses,” Msgr. Dillon said. “The fact that he’s been
doing this for over 30 years is awesome, especially when you see the conditions
under which he lives and works.”
“He touches people,” said a friend of the fast-talking,
story-telling, mission priest. “If there’s a male Mother Teresa,
he’s it. He’s a unique man of the cloth.” As for the connections
that have stretched a cord of life around the world, this friend agreed with
Father Maier’s perspective. “God’s in charge. God has made this
happen.”
No one may be more surprised and delighted with God’s
arrangements than Cook. Cook’s generosity has funded the building of a
large school, the AIDS hospice, and, by March of 2001, the completion of a
major building which will shelter street kids and orphans. Other projects are
on the drawing board.
Cook, founder and CEO of Profit Recovery Group, first heard Father
Maier speak of the mission at Holy Spirit. When Cook subsequently visited the
Bangkok offices of his corporation, which does business in 43 countries, he
asked the concierge at one of the city’s nicest hotels to secure a cab for
a trip to Klong Toey.
“The concierge said, ‘You don’t want to go
there,’” Cook recalled. “I was told they are the worst slums in
the world, comparable to Calcutta.”
Once he arrived, Cook said politely, he noticed the facilities
Father Maier’s foundation used at the time were in keeping with the
environment. Cook noticed bite marks on school children from “monsoon
creepy crawlies.” Known for decisiveness, Cook inquired about the cost of
a new school. The completion of that project whet his appetite for more; now he
visits Klong Toey several times a year and e-mails Father Maier a couple of
times a week to share information and ideas.
The three buildings will not end his involvement. An office
building is next. “It’s been an extremely worthwhile project,”
Cook said.
“I’ve been very fortunate in life,” Cook said.
“I’ve made money around the world. It’s important to spread your
philanthropic activities around the world. It’s not wise to have
philanthropic interests only in the U.S.”
Cook is thrilled with the idea of millions of dollars being used
directly for those in need. “I can’t imagine dollars being stretched
further or a higher percentage going to the purpose—to feed, clothe,
house, educate, provide dignity in final days—it’s extraordinary. You
can throw up your hands or you can see what Father Joe is doing as planting
seeds.”
“Some day what we’re doing could make a significant
difference,” Cook continued, describing the societal effect, decades from
now, of 75,000 to 100,000 people who got a start on an education in Klong Toey
and who can become a resource in their part of the world—and ours.
“The kindergarten programs Father Joe runs are literally the
best hope most of the kids have because it gives them a basic education,”
Msgr. Dillon said. “For some families, that child will be the first
literate person they will have had. Keep in mind, though, that literacy is
about the third grade level, unlike what we’re used to.”
Cook said this mission has become part of his life and that of his
family. The funds come from the family’s foundation. Father Maier recently
went with the family to the dedication of the Cook School of Business at St.
Louis University. The Cooks’ son Tom is involved with Father Maier’s
work. Their daughter Christy will spend six weeks volunteering at Klong Toey in
the near future.
It is an experience that leaves visitors with indelible memories,
whatever their background.
“If you don’t laugh at the slums, you’ll cry,”
Father Maier said with a weariness that gave way to a brilliant smile.
“Matthew 25 says it all,” he continued. “It’s
not about your clothes or your degree. It’s about noticing whether people
are hungry, lonely, naked or sick and trying to do something about it. You
start by saying, ‘How are you? Have you got something to eat?’”
“I look at myself as ordinary,” he added. “This is
what we are about as church. We teach peace and love, not hatred. We bless
anybody. We bless with oil. We bless with words. We bless with water. We teach
religion to all our kids—you have to have something when things go bump in
the night.” |
