Showing 1 - 10 of 15
School of redemption
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 22/10/2018
» Long ago, on their way home from the slum slaughterhouse, a half-dozen Klong Toey lads stopped in at a new neighbourhood "beer hall" to enjoy a pint. It was three in the morning and they had just finished butchering their night's quota of pork.
From low to high
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 12/11/2018
» Seventeen years ago, Mum gave birth to a healthy son in a provincial prison hospital two hours outside of Bangkok. She named her son Ake. To avoid the nightmare of trying to remember who might have been the actual father of her child, she had blessed him with her own last name.
A Christmas story
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 25/12/2018
» A Klong Toey miss. Smartest in her senior class, captain of her Bangkok league-winning volleyball team. Beautiful long black hair coming down to her shoulders -- tall like her dad. Born to a devout Buddhist family on Christmas Day. But on her 18th birthday and Christmas, she is fighting back tears, as she vows to do this impossible thing for her dying mum.
Hope and sorrow
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 04/03/2019
» For several years a five-year-old girl we call Miss Ice lived in a shack with her 25-year-old HIV-infected, tuberculosis-sick mum and three stray dogs no one ever bothered to name.
Keeping the dream alive
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 22/04/2019
» When Granny ordered her daughter and her daughter's "live-in" to move out of their Klong Toey shack, there was no wiggle room for argument and debate. To emphasise this point, Granny had a long pistol, the trigger of which she had never in her life pulled, but a gun, nevertheless.
Klong Toey's own worker of magic
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 02/07/2019
» Jae Muey usually dressed in a secondhand slightly frayed wedding dress, looking very much like a fairy godmother. But she didn't do any whambo-bambo Harry Potter stuff. None of her magic shot out of a fancy wand. Rather, her special powers came from a beautiful soul and a faded three-wheel rickety push cart with a squeaky side wheel.
Slum justice
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 12/08/2019
» Her screams saved her life. Lordy Lord that girl could scream. Never heard such screaming.
Magic in the name game
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 21/10/2019
» Most folk around here believe in the power and sacredness of a given name. And maybe that's how Master Ohm survived on pilfered leftover noodles -- by the sacred power of the sacred name pounded into him by the nasty but pious noodle lady who works from a stall parked next to the sacred shrine.
Moonshine Mum
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 04/11/2019
» It wasn't a big jump off Three Soldiers Bridge, maybe 3m, but no matter. She couldn't swim. When you can't swim, any jump into a canal is dangerous.
Christmas Letter 2019
Life, Father Joe Maier, Published on 25/12/2019
» Along with revered legends like the Archangel Gabriel, who appeared to the Virgin Mary to ask if she would be the Mother of Jesus, we hold dearly to the Star in the East.