Getting to graduation with leaps, rebounds
Fresh out of Kindergarten, Miss Pu Glin gets a whiff of success after getting roughed up
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. Six-year-old Miss Pu Glin had just received a diploma in recognition of successfully completing the third and final year of her Klong Toey Slum Kindergarten. Now prepared to enter first grade of primary school, she could start to dream of more diplomas, more successes — more, overall, than what slum poverty typically offers.
It’s why we make a super duper big deal about these diplomas. This first taste of success is cause for an elaborate and annual celebration for the 448 children served by our 24 Klong Toey Slum Kindergartens. On this one special day, our newly anointed graduates are feted like rock stars. During our most recent graduation, a few weeks ago, slum schoolyards and schoolhouses teemed with celebrants — students, parents, grannies, aunties, uncles, cousins and siblings.
As Miss Pu Glin walked barefoot that morning — skipped and hopscotched, really — from her shack to the school, Granny told her, “Don’t step in any ‘puppy perfume.’ Arriving at the gate, she washed the dust and crud off her feet and put on stockings and shoes.
Even inside the gate, parents were telling children to be very careful not to scuff up the almostnew shoes. They are usually handed down or borrowed from primary school first-graders, the neighbourhood children who graduated from kindergarten the previous year.
And, yes, it’s truer than true that it is a monumental feat to graduate from Kindergarten Three. Think about it — you enter Kindergarten at age three or four totally illiterate, but street savvy enough to know how much the betel nut costs when granny sends you to the fresh market. Also, smart enough to know what numbers belong on the bills that should be given back to you and bold enough that you don’t dare let the old guy at the market short-change you.
When Miss Pu Glin entered first-year kindergarten, she could not visit the bathroom by herself. Now, just 36 months later, she bursts with selfconfidence. She visits the lavatory solo, recites the alphabet without stutter or stumble, counts way past 100, spells her name correctly, and she reads, writes and colours neatly with crayons within the lines. The list of accomplishments goes on and on.
At graduation, she was so excited when they announced her name, she jumped up too fast and her graduation cap fell off. Her teacher rushed in for the rescue, put the cap back on and used the opportunity to fix Miss Pu Glin’s hair and pink ribbons. Then one of the borrowed shoes fell off because it was too big; she deftly slipped it back on without missing a step.
That’s a lot of poise for a girl hearing her name announced to a crowd for the first time in her life. And such a beautiful name it is. “We may be poor slum folks,” Granny says, “but we have beautiful names and Pu Glin is the prettiest of them all.”
Six years ago, Granny had barely made it in time to the Bangkok hospital charity ward where Miss Pu Glin was born. No one told her the baby was about to be born, especially not Granny’s drugaddicted daughter. But Granny says she somehow knew that her granddaughter was due to arrive: “Whenever I mix up a new chaw of betel nut, my head tells me these things.”
So she borrowed 20 baht for the motorcycle taxi and rushed to the hospital, arriving at the precise right time. The maternity nurse was mid-sentence asking Mum, “What name would you like to give your daughter?” Before Mum could respond, Granny spoke up. She was more loud than polite.
“Her name shall be Pu Glin,” she said directly into the nurse’s ear. “It was my own grandmother’s name, our family’s ancient name, and it shall be the name of this child. It means ‘The sweet aroma of beautiful sacred flowers.’”
And so, at graduation, that was the name announced to the crowd in attendance. The girl with pink ribbons accepted her well-earned diploma with grace and poise. It was a sweet day for the girl named after the sweet aroma of beautiful flowers.
But Miss Pu Glin almost didn’t make it to the graduation — at least not without a bandage on her face. Coming home from school two days earlier, she was walking along the railroad tracks past the lean-to shack of the dirty old man with the fat belly and stinky breath.
Miss Pu Glin knows his breath stinks because he grabbed her and tried to kiss her. He pretended it was just a joke, like ha-ha funny. During this “joke”, he bit her lip, causing her to cry and her lip to bleed. Granny then whacked Stinky Breath with a stick and gave him a glorious nosebleed. This had all the neighbours cheering for Granny and jeering the dirty old man.
Granny didn’t have any money so a neighbour lady, whose daughter works as a nurse’s aide, went with Granny and Miss Pu Glin to the slum clinic. The clinic didn’t charge them, but a nurse gave Miss Pu Glin a shot just in case Stinky Breath was infected with something. The nurse said the needle might hurt and Miss Pu Glin responded confidently: “I’ll be graduating kindergarten in two days. I’m a big girl now. Only little girls cry.”
When Miss Pu Glin’s kindergarten teacher saw the bandaged lip and learned the story, she reported it to her “live-in,” who happens to be a policeman. He strongly suggested to Stinky Breath that he offer Miss Pu Glin a graduation present of 1,000 baht. Stinky Breath didn’t have the cash, but he offered to pawn his watch. Pawn shop guy gave him 600 baht and said he was being generous for the sake of Miss Pu Glin’s graduation. Stinky Breath borrowed the rest.
On graduation morning, Miss Pu Glin still wore a small bandage on her lip. The teacher examined her lip and said it was OK to take off the bandage.
After the ceremony and photos, Granny beamed with pride and seemed to possess her own hint of a swagger. “I rescued Pu Glin from her drug-addict mum, my own daughter. I went to the hospital quick as I could to claim the baby, knowing her mum would sneak out of the hospital and abandon my granddaughter. I gave her a beautiful name and I am raising her proper. I have kept my word.”
Cash is always short with Granny. She didn’t have money to buy a graduation doll for Miss Pu Glin. So, instead, she cut a deal with the local police.
The deal went like this: Even though the local junk dealer won’t purchase the discarded green glue cans that litter the railroad tracks, Granny reasoned with the police chief that she would be helping to fight crime if she took the cans out of circulation. The police chief agreed and offered to buy Miss Pu Glin a graduation doll after Granny collected a dozen cans.
Granny is pushing 70 now and she’s been sick lately. “I am not doctor sick,” she says, “I’m simply slum sick. Each morning, I take two very soft boiled eggs and a shot of local whiskey mixed in my coffee and some boiled rice.”
Until Granny gets better, each morning Miss Pu Glin goes out alone with Granny’s pushcart. On it her graduation picture is posted prominently, placed right next to her graduation doll given by the police chief.
Today, she’s registered for the first grade and Granny has saved the money “offered up” by Stinky Breath to buy Miss Pu Glin a pair of new school shoes that fit and a book bag.
Lastly, if you rise early enough in the morning and stand with Granny and Miss Pu Glin beside that pushcart with graduation photo and graduation doll, you will see something there in the sunrise. It’s a brighter future. Look closer and you’ll see that it stretches forever.
You enter Kindergarten … totally illiterate, but street savvy enough to know how much the betel nut costs when granny sends you to the fresh market.