Showing 1 - 10 of 28
The lost scavenger
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 13/05/2018
» From the second floor window of their flat, Pretty Molly sees her slum scavenger husband returning from a day of foraging. Her snippy stray mongrel barks excitedly as Pretty Molly begins shouting out the window to him.
Getting to graduation with leaps, rebounds
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 22/04/2018
» Dressed in graduation cap and gown, pink ribbons in her hair, Miss Pu Glin posed for her first-ever official photo looking regal and confident. She even had a hint of swagger.
Christmas legends of Klong Toey
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 24/12/2017
» Our kids love to tell the story year after year, Christmas after Christmas. Tell their version, the way their grandmothers and great-grandmothers told them. These are the oldest Catholic people still alive in the slums. Way back in the old Catholic slaughterhouse area of Klong Toey, you can hear the living legends told.
Eight cats, 10 dogs and a motley crew
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 26/11/2017
» She's a gentle mum, an Auntie Mum who is now of an auntie age. For 64 years she has lived in our Klong Toey slum. Her name is Pu Glin, a common name from days gone by. It means the fragrant aroma of sweet flowers.
Klong Toey's future finest
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 01/10/2017
» He's 10 months old now, Master Tack. Happy, good-natured, smiles a lot, not afraid of stray cats and scavenger dogs. They like him; he likes them. It all works out. At night he doesn't cry. You'd love him. A great baby. Well, not totally "great" just yet, but give him time. He will grow up to be one of Klong Toey's finest. Just watch.
A slaughterhouse love story
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 02/07/2017
» She's a slaughterhouse kindergarten teacher. Her whole life through and through. And her husband was a boy who grew up just over the footbridge crossing the canal to the other side, next to the temple. And her face becomes more beautiful day by day. Serene might be a better word. Her whole life of 48 years. She has been teaching slaughterhouse kindergarten children since her middle teens.
Money can't buy Miss Tip's love
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 07/05/2017
» We never knew mum when she was young and not yet ravaged by cheap booze and hard hot years under the Southeast Asian sun doing unskilled sweatshop labour, living wherever there was work on the decks and holds of rusty out-of-date cargo ships in the Bay of Bangkok.
Master Gaw finds refuge
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 05/03/2017
» That wasn't like Master Gaw. He was the toughie of the second kindergarten class, as rough and tumble as any four-year-old boy in our Klong Toey slums. Not afraid of ghosts that might lurk in a dark corner or under the bed. The kid feared nothing.
Tragedy of a street kid success
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 29/05/2016
» Why tell this story? Why take the effort to try and remember an 18-year-old street kid who drowned in the Chao Phraya River, half snockered on drugs? So, even though dying and drowning were the last things from his mind, drown he did, die he did. And it was kind of his own fault.
The broken wings of a fallen bird
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 24/04/2016
» Galong, born with Down's syndrome, was of indeterminate age. He lived on the streets and worked as a "doorman" at a low-budget karaoke joint near the Pratunam market. Always a proper gentleman, he greeted us, shook our hands and in his gravelly voice asked, "How are you?"