One Life at a Time A Volunteer Aid Organization Dedicated to making a Difference! |
Susan Aldous-Hattan "Dusty" |
ONE LIFE AT A TIME Mission Statement "One Life at a Time" is a creation of compassion and of caring designed and administered by full-time volunteer members who deem it a labor of love to comfort and help those in need. We are motivated by the belief that a sincere, out-going love and genuine concern openly shared with the less fortunate is a spirited step in the right direction in lending a ray of hope in response to our burgeoning contemporary civil and social maladies. Our desire to help others is more than an ideal: We actively try to work with those in need. Compassion goes far beyond mere sympathy: When it sees a needy situation it does something about it. Compassion puts love into action. Therefore we make regular visits to encourage and assist the elderly, the sick and the disadvantaged as well as implementing projects in schools, hospitals and orphanages. We also work to help towards the rehabilitation of drug addicts and offer personal counseling in prisons and juvenile centers. We endeavor to cooperate with people and organizations from all cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds in hope of making society a better place. Our efforts to distribute basic necessities to those in need are supported by the charitable contributions of like-minded individuals, businesses and organizations. Although we do minister to people on a material level, we believe our primary purpose is to help others emotionally and mentally. We live in a fast-paced world where the great values of love, friendship and concern for one another are often neglected. People simply need a sympathetic person to share their troubles with, so we endeavor to be compassionate listeners. We sincerely believe that each life is precious, and if treated as such we will have "made a difference!" |
News Articles on One Life... The Angel of Bangkwang The Sun/Herald Australia By Karl Malakunas Aug 1999 INMATES in Thailand's infamous Bangkwang jail call her their Angel. Mental patients in some of Bangkok's most run-down psychiatric hospitals call her the White Doctor and thousands of others from the South-East Asian city's filthiest slums simply call her their friend. Her name is Susan Aldous, a 38-year-old single mother from affluent Brighton who has spent the past 14 years caring for thousands of people unfortunate enough to be snared by the poverty, evil and darkness which lurks under Thailand's Land of Smiles. Ms Aldous works six days a week helping anyone she can and has revealed to the Herald Sun in her first interview with Australian media that her charity organization One Life at a Time and family survive on less than $13 AUS a day. In any one month, she will visit foreign prisoners in Thailand's notorious prisons, plunge into police holding cells to counsel bewildered local criminals charged with rape and murder and hug otherwise forgotten psychiatric patients at under funded Bangkok hospitals. Ms Aldous will also work with slum dwellers, help people overcome their drug addictions at rehabilitation centers, deliver cakes to anonymous children at a Chinese orphanage and hold free English language classes for street kids and lawyers. Just as importantly, she makes time to care for the most precious person in her life, her eight-year-old daughter, Talya. Ms Aldous' life in Bangkok is as extraordinary as it is unlikely. The self-confessed teenage rebel who did not finish high school traveled to Asia when she was 20 with virtually no money and just the faith that the desire to help people would ensure her survival. "You never lose by giving. You can bank on it," she said during an interview in a restaurant just 500 meters from Bangkwang prison, the jail which holds criminals serving sentences of 50 years to life whom she visits three times a week. And her repayments from giving come in the most amazing forms, with prisoners sometimes donating her money. Last year, a group of foreign drug traffickers in Bangkwang discovered that she was moving house and had virtually no household appliances and little money to buy any. "Sometimes some of them get a little bit of money from their families, so they all chipped in and helped get me a video player, a television and a washing machine," she recalled. Ms Aldous visits many foreign prisoners in Thai jails, and one American drug trafficker who is five years into an 80-year sentence wrote a short piece in honor of her, calling her his Angel of Bangkwang. "Initially I was amazed at the ease with which she just sat down a beautiful youngish blonde turning heads from all sides in the middle of this intimidating maximum security environment and so comfortably flowed with this otherwise considerably ugly situation," the prisoner,Todd Hattan wrote." One simply can not remain unhappy in Susan's presence for very long; it simply does not happen and this is a considerably large claim when you envision that even in a place like Bangkwang, she continually has the guards in stitches with her quick wit. "For me, her visits are simply the most poignant aspect of my current existence... her laughter is a perennial reminder that even in my deepest bouts of depression things could me much worse." Ms Aldous said many of the prisoners she has counseled have become her friends, and dismissed the notion that her work there was dangerous. She has even brought her daughter, Talya, in to meet some of them. "Sure, you imagine hard core criminals. Your first thought when you're sitting in front of the television watching the Sunday footy is; ' I would never do that in one of those Third World prisons'," she said. "(But) it's very safe. You are sitting behind four and a half feet of bars and you meet these supposed dangerous criminals and they are some of the politest, most respectful, very intelligent, very nice people. And I learn a lot from them. "I know and I realize that a lot of them are going to come out and spin the subtle subterfuge and lay it on really thick and you have to show a certain amount of discernment, but at the same time there a lot of very nice people who have just made a stupid mistake." Ms Aldous acknowledged that the people she helped were criminals and many deserved to be in jail, but she said these people needed help as much as anybody else. "I do have a real sense of what is right and wrong but it's being able to look beyond that," she said. "It's not that I feel that what they have done is right or that they should be forgiven, I think we need discipline and love and they go hand in hand. "No matter what they have done, they are still somebody's son or somebody's mother or husband or wife and their families would want them to be treated well." But Ms Aldous's work with criminals has not all been mutual encounters of love and affection. She said some of her most frightening moments have come trying to counsel people inside city police holding centers, where heroin addicts going through withdrawals are known to gnaw on their own tongues. "Going in and being locked in with 60 men criminals who have been rapists, robbers and murderers all in one go, that's scary," she said. "I don't take unnecessary risks but there's a certain point when I know it is the right time to go in and I am just moved to do that. "Often they think I have been arrested and thrown in the cell with them." Ms Aldous said she went into the holding cells because nobody else would and the people inside them needed to be told that someone cared for them. "I tell them: 'I bet you think you are forgotten. You think no one cares. I just want to tell you that there's only one reason I have come down here and that is to tell you that you are not forgotten. Somebody cares for you and your life is special'," she said. "And I've had these men crying and holding my hands, breaking down and weeping in my arms." Her work in psychiatric hospitals has also been frightening, where she hugs and kisses drugged up patients who are considered untouchable by the rest of society. "They call me their White Doctor," she said. Christianity is a driving force behind Ms Aldous's work and Mother Theresa is her inspiration, but she is not a stereotyped missionary who has gone to a developing county to convert non-believers. Ms Aldous rarely goes to church and confesses to have been inside more Buddhist temples, because of her work in Thailand, than churches. "Sharing love, kindness, caring, concern, that's religion to me," she said. "It's not a thing you do on Sundays. It's something you live all day every day. I work with Buddhists, I work with Muslims, and I work with Jews. I work with everything and anyone. It doesn't matter because I think with love we can all work together and I believe God is love." Her unorthodox approach to religion won an unlikely friend in Bangkwang when a volunteer colleague warned her not to talk with an infamous tattooed European prisoner who had been jailed for drug trafficking. Yet to be one over, the inmate, who had a reputation for "eating missionaries for breakfast", reacted to their first conversation by describing Ms Aldous as "virginal". "So that was it. I came back the next time and I burst out laughing and I said to him: "Virginal, do you think so?' I was roaring my head off and he was so embarrassed." But she wasn't finished. To the fear of onlookers wary of the inmate's reaction to anything religious, Ms Aldous asked him if he knew why Jesus was not born in Australia. "Everybody held their breath thinking: Oh my, she's going to preach to him. That's the end. He'll blow the roof," she recalled. "I said because they couldn't find a virgin or three wise men. And that was it. It broke the ice and he has become such a nice friend." Ms Aldous's goals in Bangkok are simple. She wants to ensure Talya grows up safely and well, buy a computer so she can stay in contact with people and to continue to motivate people to help others. "I don't want to get big or famous or set up in a big foundation. I want to keep it simple and small. I would love to motivate people so they can go out and change their little world, their little life, their little kindergarten, their little school or little workplace." She would also like to set up a program where people come to Thailand and spend half their time traveling around the country and the other half volunteering their help to One Life at a Time. Anyone, from millionaires to backpackers, could do the charity work, then they could take the experience back to their country and help others, she said. "You don't have to wait until you have a degree to give. You don't have to wait until you have a million dollars to give. Give a smile, give a kind word, help somebody, pick up the phone and just appreciate somebody." |
RAY OF LIGHT FOR NO-HOPERS The Western Australian Torrance Mendez 3-10-200 Eye-openers: Aid worker Susan Aldous with prison executioner Chaowaras Jaruboon, who helped distribute glasses to inmates. Ms Aldous provided spectacles for about 60 elderly prisoners. Susan Aldous, the Angel of Bangkwang, has brightened the lives of many prisoners in Bangkok's notorious jail, reports TORRANCE MENDEZ. AN AUSTRALIAN woman has provided an eye-opening experience in one of Thailand's most brutal prison regimes that houses thousands of inmates on no-hope sentences. Volunteer prison worker Susan Aldous has brought spectacles for nearly 60 elderly prisoners at Bangkwang Central Prison, often sarcastically referred to as the Bangkok Hilton. Conditions at the overcrowded men's jail are so harsh that Thai locals respectfully refer to it as Big Tiger in fear of its capacity to devour inmates. Those who survive decades of enforced physical abuse - malnutrition, violence and lack of health care - often succumb to failing eyesight in their twilight years. That compounds their punishment by rendering them unable to read, filling their fields of vision with blobs of indistinct shapes in preparation for blindness. Ms Aldous identified the old men's plight as a worthy one which she addressed when a philanthropist in Europe gave her some money to put to a good cause. "I arranged for the old men's eyes to be tested," she said. "Often they are the forgotten people in the prison system, getting hardly any visitors and even less mail." Ms Aldous, deploying an inimitable Australian sense of humor, has prodded, cajoled and charmed humorless prison authorities into letting her help the inmates. She arranged for a team of optometrists and eye-testing machines to enter the maximum-security prison weeks ago - and for the prisoners, it was an experience beyond their wildest dreams. One by one they were tested and one by one a prescription was diagnosed before specialists were instructed to grind lenses, many of them like proverbial Coke bottles. Finally, glasses were made for under $16 a pair, which Ms Aldous formally dispensed in the prison on September 22, hugging, kissing and crying with the prisoners. Discipline was so ingrained in some recipients aged 58 to 82 that they waited to be given permission to wear their new glasses. And when they did, the inscrutable countenance of a long-distance prisoner gave way to ribald laughter and snorting chuckles that echoed throughout the cavernous surrounds. Ms Aldous warned those with high prescriptions to expect headaches or nausea for the first few days. And she reminded them to put their names on the spectacle cases. The opticians said the men's eyes were far worse than normal. Some prisoners had lost sight in one eye or developed cataracts and other eye growths which obscured what vision remained. The West Australian saw prison executioner Chaowaras Jaruboon help give out the glasses to the inmates, smiling like a man who never thought he would see such a day. "Even though his job is quite bad, he does try to help people," Ms Aldous said. Bangkwang inmates face the longest sentences of all those incarcerated under Thailand's notorious penal code. Minimum entry requirement is 30 years jail and the maximum is execution. Currently, 200 of the 6700 prisoners are on death row awaiting termination by machine-gun. And 715 of them are foreigners from 69 countries. Born in Melbourne, Ms Aldous has lived in Thailand for several years and has toiled to improve the social fabric of her host country, including prison work. She said cash for the glasses came from an Australian housewife living in Holland who had been recommended to her One Life at a Time charity. Her money funded several projects. In one, Ms Aldous bought bags of toiletries and food for 53 inmates, another project supplied pens, paper, sarongs and pillowcases for 100 inmates, and a third was a slap-up home-cooked meal for elderly inmates at the prison, which she helped serve. Ms Aldous is planning a second glasses project for the prison as well as dentistry and a water purifier, the latter to improve bathing water which currently comes from a polluted river. Those interested in contacting Susan Aldous can write to her at onelifesusan@hotmail.com |
Susan Aldous ... the Angel of Bangkwang The Nation Thailand Laurena Cahill Sunday, January 7, 2001 The ANGEL OF BANGKWANG FOR the inmates of Bangkwang prison in Bangkok, life in the crowded cells leave them nothing to look forward to. Except when their angel comes calling. Laurena Cahill profiles an extraordinary woman who has made her life a mission to comfort those in need. They call her the "Angel of Bangkwang", but Susan Aldous is no angel. A single mother with a sketchy education, few visible funds, a hopeless idealist is nearer the mark. In short, Susan Aldous is like the rest of us - trying to make the best of the best of all possible worlds. Yet she stands out. Because Susan - unlike the rest of us - has embraced her own humanity, understood it, and made it work for others. She has opened doors in Thailand, previously considered firmly closed to so-called soft-hearted farangs. Susan's devotes her life to looking after her fellow human beings. Another laudatory introduction to yet another idealist trying to change the world, you might think. But hang on. Susan's achievements are not easily matched. Let's start with an introduction. Enter: Susan. She's a diminutive, 39 year-old blond. She chatters incessantly in a scatty manner. Her stories obfuscate chronology. She answers a direct question with an unrelated story. She is not being evasive. Her mind is in overdrive. It takes an age to pinpoint that she was born to upper middle class parents in Melbourne, Australia. She rebelled, dropped out of school, went wild. She slipped into petty crime, never got caught. Somewhere in the morass she began helping the sick, and neglected. Druggies, drop-outs, and the socially dispossessed dominated her world. She moved to Penang and then Singapore - always working with the underdog. She came to Thailand to work on a nine day project - that was 15 years ago. Enter: One of her many clients - Garth Todd Hattan, a prisoner in Cell B-9 at Thailand's top security prison - Bangkwang, otherwise known as the Bangkok Hilton. This 38-year-old former musician has already served six and half years for heroin trafficking. Separated by a double screen of iron bars and mesh wiring, this is as close as visitors get. Hattan is a tall, gaunt, articulate American. He fidgets nervously with his hands. He is unused to newcomers. It takes at least 15 minutes before Hattan settles and talks of the full horror of prison overcrowding. There are 20 inmates in his cell. He cannot turn over in his sleep. He lives in fear of further over-crowding. Friends are very few. Trusting others - guards or inmates - never pays off. The privations of an inadequate diet pale in comparison to the mental strain. The boredom is supreme, the constant noise and proximity of fellow prisoners unbearable. Hattan craves for time on his own. He talks of the beach in his native California. He fights backs the tears at the mention of his mother and her recent death. In the all darkness there is one only exception. " I trust her implicitly," he says as he nods to Susan. Her visits and support over the past five years have helped him cope. Hattan freely admits to doing wrong. He tried to sneak six kilograms of heroin out of Thailand in July 1994 but was caught at the airport. Up to the last moment he was convinced that he would escape his crime. "Even when I was arrested I was arrogant enough to think I could buy my way out." Hattan's tone softens when he refers to Susan. Her visits and support have changed him, he says. The prison system has failed dismally to provide rehabilitation. But the deprived conditions have tested him to the limit psychologically. Susan's influence has made him come to terms with his lot and himself. "She has been my rehabilitation. I found myself locked in this hell-hole and this lady has been generous enough to give part of herself to me and others here. "Because of this, I am starting to like myself a lot better than I did before," he adds. Hattan hopes to be repatriated to the US next year. With most of his sentence served thanks to various pardons, he is pinning his hopes on being released within 18 months. Then he will devote his time to helping others. Re-enter Susan. "Some people think that I am soft on the system but I have never suggested that prisoners shouldn't serve their sentences. Many of them have committed very serious crimes - murder, rape and drug smuggling. Yes, they should be in prison but they should not be completely abandoned. Many have not had visits in over 10 or 15 years. "In many countries if you treated a dog like these prisoners are treated you would be in trouble with law". Much of her incessant energy has been recently directed at helping the older inmates at Bangkwang. Many are half blind, and in desperate need of corrective eye glasses. Susan has come to the rescue with donations of unwanted glasses from Australia with the help of Optometry Aid Overseas. She has cajoled a local optical shop - Top Charoen - into providing the first eye-testing session within the prison walls. She is starting a similar programme with dental care - another first for the country's largest prison. She is also bent on installing ceiling fans within the cells to combat the unbearable heat. She is helping to lay on luxuries for inmates such as pillows and mattresses. At this prison, there are no frills. The Aldous home - a flat just down the road from "the Hilton" is also relatively stark but respectable by local standards. "If I can't fit things into a suitcase - then I don't really need them," she explains. She gets a steady but pitifully small donation from a Dutch housewife - who she has never met. She laughs at the idea of having a mortgage, credit cards and a salaried job. "They just tie you down." Enter Sura Puntusakorn, the prison's director. Despite the difficulties of his job, Sura is affable and reasonable. He freely admits that the detention centre is creaking at the seams coping with just under 7,000 inmates - twice the level it was originally built to hold. He lays the blame on the judiciary. Too many people are getting over-long sentences out of all proportion to their crime, he says. Sura says over-crowding at the Hilton has reached impossible proportions. He warns that the stiff sentence policy in Thailand is no cure for criminal activities - chronic criminals would do anything to escape jail - of course, more crime. "The sentence imposed on a prisoner should not only fit the crime but look beyond it to the man who has committed the crime. It should take into account his personal circumstances, his family and his ability to rehabilitate. "None of this is being addressed. All the relevant departments are doing their own thing. "Drug offences continue to be the main reason why criminals wind up in Bangkwang. The recession has pushed more and more people into drug trafficking. It is seen as an easy means of making money and people are lured in." A long-term inmate, who did not want his name revealed, said drugs were freely available within the system - provided you had the money to pay for them. Everything else is also available good food, special privileges. In an environment which is ostensibly sealed off the outside world and the economy - you pay, you get. Every commodity from soap to sex has a price. God help you if you can't get the money - and he does provide in the form of food handouts from Christian groups. The catch is you have to mug up on the Bible. But there is money in that as well. To help you bone up on your religious education easy cheat sheets are available to get you through any heavy questioning by the Bible-thumpers. These cost Bt2 per sheet - worth it for a food hand out by anyone's standards. "Life centres round raising a few baht. You have no idea of the value of a few baht in here." Susan Aldous may be contacted by e-mail at: onelifesusan@hotmail.com BY LAURENA CAHILL |
A Sister of Mercy Farang Magazine Jim Algie March 2003 An 82-year-old Australian woman was visiting a prisoner at Bang Kwang Central Prison on the outskirts of Bangkok, when he introduced her to Susan Aldous. She told Susan that she'd been writing to different convicts for many years, but had never thought of visiting one until she saw a show on TV about an Australian lady. "She'd been a horrible person a drug addict and a Playboy bunny, and there she was hugging all these prisoners and AIDS patients. And I thought that if she could do it, so could I." "I told her that was me," says Susan, laughing. "And she said, 'That programme changed my life. You have no idea how much of an inspiration you've been to me.'" For the last 26 years, the nomadic philanthropist has been an inspiration to many: Cambodian refugees and terminally ill prostitutes; Thai cops, drug addicts and mental patients; disabled children in Laos; and senior citizens rotting away in old folks' homes in Malaysia. A mighty impressive CV of achievements for a high-school dropout and teenaged troublemaker who rebelled against her suburban upbringing in Melbourne, because, "I wanted my life to have meaning. I didn't want it be just three meals a day, getting married, having kids, and dying," she says. Driven to the brink of suicide and drug addiction while only 16, Susan found in social work a kind of spiritual calling. "Some people challenged me, and that's what I needed. They said if you're going to throw your life away you might as well give it away." Though she concedes that her grandmother, who received a medal from Queen Victoria for charity work, was an early influence. "She told me about Joan of Arc, and angels, and she was a very down-to-earth Christian who loved to have a drink and watch the horse races." Because of her blond hair, blue eyes, petite figure, and extroverted nature, Susan was recruited to work at a high-class Playboy bunny club in Melbourne, after the manager saw her handing out religious pamphlets on a street corner. "I just thought, where do people go when they're lonely and have problems? They don't go to church. They go to a bar. So I thought this was the perfect place to reach people." Working the quiet nights, Susan proved herself to be honest and reliable enough for the club to offer her a position as the manageress. "But Asia was already calling me, and when they said they didn't want me to talk about God with the customers anymore, I thought, you've just given me my answer I'm off to Asia." By the mid-80s, she was doing fund-raising for different NGOs in Southeast Asia and helping out in a refugee camp along the Thai-Cambodian border. A virtual no man's land for Khmers who couldn't return home for fear of political persecution, and couldn't be sent to a third country, the camp (known as Site #2; pop. 150,000) held the largest concentration of Cambodians outside of Phnom Penh. Stripped of their political might, but not their firepower, the Khmer Rouge launched mortar shells and sneak attacks on a regular basis. "You'd be standing there talking to a family one week, and come back the next week to see that their hut had been shelled and the whole family had been killed." Another time, the NGO Susan worked for had 2,000 pairs of shoes to give out. Once they announced the news on the loudspeaker, refugees gathered for miles around while guards with M-16s stood by to keep the peace. "It was the most horrendous thing I've ever been through it was bedlam, it was madness. How do you say no to someone? How do you choose? So we had to throw them into the crowd. Finally, after I don't know how many hours I stood there with one shoe in my hand, and I was an emotional wreck." Then she looked down to see a woman who'd lost her leg to a landmine and didn't have a shoe on her other foot. As it turned out, the shoe in Susan's hand was a perfect fit. "I just burst out crying. It was too much." Based in Bangkok for the past 16 years, Susan's work in jails and police stations has often aroused the suspicions of the authorities. For instance, the Thai secret police kept her under surveillance - 24/7 - for three months. When an undercover agent finally showed up at her front door, he admitted that, not only had they been unable to dig up any dirt on her, she moved around the capital at such a frenetic pace, that they couldn't even keep up with her. Succumbing to her bubbly charm, the secret police hired the chatterbox to teach them English. Some 'spooks', from another cloak-and-dagger organisation that kept tabs on her, followed Susan and her daughter into an ice-skating rink in a Bangkok shopping mall several years ago. They had walkie-talkies hidden in their shirts. "When cops go undercover they either look like journalists or drug addicts" Susan smiles at me and laughs. "Oh, I'm sorry. "Don't worry, we're used to the abuse," I say, and she laughs again. "But when I have a fear I have to confront it. So they were all sitting there with no skates on in a skating rink, and I went over and said in Thai, 'Where are you from?' And then I listed all these different branches of the Thai police and the army 'and they make you work on Sundays, you poor things.' They couldn't speak. They were just flabbergasted. I wasn't sure what I'd done, or if they'd kill me. But one of them spoke into his walkie-talkie and they all just dispersed." True to the spirit of her late grandmother, Susan's liberal convictions about Christianity have also landed her in trouble with some of the fundamentalists who work for other NGOs. "God had a penis because he made us in his exact image, and told us to be fruitful and multiply. One theologian told me that there are no sexual desires in heaven. Excuse me, but I don't want to go to heaven if there's no sexual desires." Susan is known best for her work in Bang Kwang Central Prison a squalid, maximum-security jail on the outskirts of Bangkok, where death-row prisoners must wear leg irons 24 hours a day, and which has a medical budget of Bt80,000 per year for 7,000 inmates. Working with a group of Singaporean dentists, Susan saw that the prison's rundown hospital was outfitted with proper mattresses, and in conjunction with the Causarina Prison in Perth, Australia, where inmates fix around 20,000 pairs of broken glasses each year and distribute them to Third World countries, Susan helped dozens of elderly convicts the majority of whom had never been to an optometrist before to sharpen their vision. In Bang Kwang, she struck up an acquaintanceship with an American inmate named Garth Hattan, who was serving a lengthy sentence for drug trafficking. "It took a long time to convince him that I wasn't out to do a good deed at his expense and then, he opened up and said, 'I'm very vulnerable now, don't hurt me.' It just came out of my mouth, 'I'm gonna love you in ways that you've never been loved before.' I blew myself away with the depth of conviction, because I wasn't really in love with him, but I made a commitment to myself and to his mother to see him home." Impressed by the eloquence of his letters, Susan told him that he was going to become a writer, and that his experiences behind bars would touch the lives of countless others. Garth laughed at her. But once again, Susan's intuition was bang on, because he eventually began contributing a monthly column to this magazine For the first three years of their relationship, they didn't have a "contact visit" because Garth thought he wouldn't be able to control his longings, or act like himself in what amounts to a "monkey cage" with some 60 prisoners and their kin sitting around at tables. Eventually, he agreed, and they'd sit in the corner, discretely hugging and kissing. During one hands-on visit the prison guards would tease her mercilessly on these days Garth asked her to marry him and gave her a ring that had belonged to his grandfather. She said yes. After serving eight years of his sentence, Garth was sent back to the States, where he is now awaiting his parole hearing. Within a matter of weeks, the couple could be reunited, and finally married, in California. Susan is certain that she, and Garth, and her 14-year-old daughter will be embarking on more missions of mercy, hopefully in Central America. In trying to sum up the philosophy that has driven her for the past few decades, she mentions a Jewish rabbi who works with the terminally ill in America. "He said that most people can get used to the idea of dying, but what they can't die with are all the regrets. And I'm one of those people who can't stand living with regrets, and I really want to live my life as if I could die every day. That's not a morbid thing. It just means doing your best, and it doesn't have to be great big things, but just passing those little tests every day, like not losing it with the taxi driver, making the right choices, or giving that extra tip. I think those things prepare you for a good death." And there's that laugh again. "I think you die as you live." |
A Poignant Moment Farang Magazine News from the Inside January 2004 Ill never forget late one morning several years back when I was hurling down Sunset Boulevard in a Porsche 911 SC Targa, top stowed securely in the trunk, and just a bit too insouciant to be overly concerned about what the whipping wind was doing to my $60 haircut. I'd just left my partner and friends poolside at the world famous Beverly Hills Hotel, flanked by seven or eight hi-ball glasses dripping with the residue of frosty Meyers Rum Pina Coladas designated to counter the certain-to-be adverse effects from the previous night's infectious raging. Though the seasoned glamour pros were long since conditioned to party like professionals, even we would tend to overdo it on occasion. Downshifting out of a corner, I'd quickly come upon crosswalk at which, by California State law, one must stop if there's someone waiting to cross the street. Between the high velocity in which I'd been traveling and the fact that I'd been dancing on the car phone unsuccessfully explaining off reasons why I was two hours late for what I'd thought to be a significant (and totally hip) drug transaction, I was upon the crossing and her crucial milliseconds before I could even hope for the car to respond. She was an angelic vision of sun-lightened chestnut hair and a copper silk single piece blouse/skirt that was considerably tight enough and certainly short enough to explain her lack of superfluous accessories. There simply were not any flaws to be hidden or disguised. Her playful pout as I passed her by without even slowing told me that although I was technically breaking the law not only against the state, but her as well, I was to be forgiven the infraction because the car, the attitude, the look of the unknown drug dealings instantly escalated me into the upper echelon of the ultra cool. That pout also told me that I'd never know entirely for sure who would've enjoyed it more if I'd been able to stop: she and her obvious dancer's body in lascivious, fluid motion crossing the street, exaggerating undulating inches from the nose of the car; or myself, the behind-the-wheel voyeur to this provocative event. That incident is what I used to refer to as a poignant moment; a brief segment in time that really tends to matter and have a measurable effect life. At the time, that was it: the car, money, the attitude and then the conspicuous blend of all three to perhaps catch the eye of some random exotic dancer on the street. I still experience poignant moments, though from my new home as of late, Bangkok's notorious Bangkwang Prison, I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to seek more depth as these momentous occasions arise. A few years ago, a compassionate young lady came to visit me. Not having the luxury of a personal visit for quite some time I was initially reluctant to open up to her, as so many of my incarcerated associates had spoken of visiting journalists posing as travelers to obtain a story, or other people who'd come to simply gawk at the drug offenders with the ridiculously exaggerated sentences. It didn't take long though to sense something uniquely different about her. She was virtually dripping with happiness. It was like a perennial celebration of being loved and then the effortless ritual of returning that love back to its source and to those around them. There'd been one visit in particular that I'm certain I'll cherish for the rest of my life, and which has confirmed that she is indeed tapping the source of living a life of the truly spiritually fortunate. This young lady was visiting one morning and virtually fainting from exhaustion, which I have to conclude stemmed from her insatiable zeal to constantly reach out and help others, a characteristic which seems to be an enthusiastic prerequisite of her unique calling. Sitting down abruptly to regain her composure, she'd invited a teenage girl friend to help pray with her for strength. Now, generally, not having an avid religious background, I'd have perhaps become uncomfortable in such a situation. Yet suddenly this seemed to be one of the most beautiful and touching events in the world. These two angels who'd come to me, obviously Heaven-sent, taking a little time out from their selfless endeavors to seek a guiding light (and perhaps a bit of ethereal energy?) from the Source. The first of these young ladies has evolved into the Angel of Bangkwang. Her inexorable and at times tumultuous path toward achieving such a unique title is a whole nother story in itself. When one considers the frightening stigma of a maximum security prison, it's difficult not to conjure up dark visions of a dank environment surrounded by high, impenetrable walls, the wasted and forgotten lives of its oppressed inhabitants, and the negative, hateful disposition of the guards who keep them in line. For most would-be criminals, it's merely their fear of the unknown terror which exists in such institutions that serves as the very deterrent which keeps them out of such horrid places. But try to picture such a facility where the walls don't seem quite so high and domineering, where its inmates can be viewed flashing smiles of hope, and the guards are actually sociable and helpful. It's an incredible juxtaposition, I know. Having been an inmate in Bangkwang Prison for eight years, I've witnessed such an unbelievable transition from the wholly unbearable to the bearably tolerable and hopeful. For me, this radical change was brought about by an amazing and spirited young lady an Australian newspaper has dubbed The Angel of Bangkwang. Her real name is Susan Aldous, and she is the founder of One Life at a Time, a charity organization whose compassionate objective is to touch the lives of the less fortunate, and to instill hope and change in those who, for numerous reasons, are unable to do so for themselves. The change Susan created here had been at first quite subtle, though surprisingly effective. For two years I'd lived in the dank oppression of this place. However, since she's been visiting I've noticed an uplifting turnaround that has resulted in the tolerable environment in which I've resided for the last six years. These days, rarely does a guard pass by without a kind greeting complimented with a smile that was uncharacteristic in those years prior to Susan's lively presence. Though I must admit such a notable change was far from immediate. Aside her bubbly, infectious personality, it has taken donations of food, clothing, over head fans, typewriters, money for inmates' Daily necessities, pamphlets for spiritual enhancement, shampoos and various toiletries-not to mention donating her personal time in so many ways. From teaching English to the authorities at the prison, the department of corrections, to doing D.O.C related translations, and mailing, writing, telephone and faxing countless families of inmates here to assist, enhance and ensure proper correspondence. Also assisting family members in every conceivable way when they travel to Thailand to visit their sons, brothers, husbands, fathers and uncles detained here. From making hotel reservations, to helping travel to and from the prison, to ensuring that items brought or sent to the inmates are properly delivered and received, and helping with verbal translations between nervous wreck family members and non English speaking guards ( she has a firm command of the Thai language, having lived in Bangkok for some sixteen years.) Recently Susan and a friend volunteered their time to prepare care packages of fish and daily necessities for 60 of the elderly and infirmed inmates few if any had had a visit in the last ten years- and were given special permission to by the prison director to come inside the prison and hand them out personally. Even having gone a year without a visit following my arrest, it's impossible to conceive of just how deeply those aging, deprived men have been touched by such a compassionate gesture from two lovely, kindhearted women they'd never known. Amazingly enough, Susan also performs similar duties for the Bangkok women's prison, The Bumbat drug remand prison, Ladyao prison, Bangkok special prison, visits police holding cells and the immigration detention center. Not to mention her contributions of personal computers, fans, clothing, food, bakery items, pizzas and daily necessities, her time spent teaching, counseling, caring for HIV- infected infants, marriage advice, and generally showing love and caring to the needy, the rehabilitating addicted, the physically and mentally challenged, the abandoned, and the impoverished at places which range from an inner-Bangkok slum school, Nonthaburi provincial hospital, a Bangkok drug rehab clinic, a mental ward, a Bangkok orphanage, and countless sites where she volunteers her English teaching talent. And amid all of this she somehow finds the time to home school her truly special 11-year old daughter, Talya, who has to be a very giving young lady herself, joining her mom on many of her selfless venture. The most amazing aspect of all Susan accomplishes through "One Life" is that she lives entirely by faith. She is a non-salaried volunteer who gives of herself with the belief and knowledge that the pureness of her of her efforts shall be recognized by like-minded folk who share in the spirit of lending themselves for the sake of others in need. Through the unspeakable adversity of my own situation I've witnessed the magical beauty of Susan's selfless endeavors and I know the best waythe only wayshe can continue along her path of gracious giving and unconditional love is through the heart-felt contributions and donations from the kindness of people like yourselves, who are moved by the natural desire to help others and are uncertain of how to do so. My only fear now is that she very well may be truly one of a kind. Upon completing their prayer these girls were back to emoting a love which later had me wondering, is God love, or is love God? Having since had plenty of time to contemplate that question, I've invariably concluded this: They're definitely both one and the same. And, reflecting back on that morning mesmerized by these angels at work (or perhaps they were at play?) I've stumbled across one other staggering realization. The relentless pursuit of materialistic ideals has culminated in my less-than-pleasurable stay in Bangkwang. Forget the Porsche, forget the narcotic-influenced attitude, forget the shallow practice of striving to impress others with useless material possessions. All that stuff is totally unimportant and certainly doesn't make for those life-altering brief segments in time as I'd thought they had. Those angels? Now that was truly a poignant moment. Words by Garth Hattan #673-37 Building 10 Bangkwang Prison |
