The choices we face

[reader]

I don't think that Moses will mind if I reference a thread from Sawatdee Network where one of my favorite Pattaya posters hangs out.

Dodger has written well over many years in his tenure as both a tourist and now an expat. There's something authentic about his earthy style of describing his travels and relationships that sets him apart. In a recent post (Pattaya Update: From the Trenches) he talks again about riding his motorbike around Pattaya and reporting on what and who he sees, and how the boys still in town are getting by--some with no place to sleep but the street.

One of the homeless guys he's followed in his weekly forays he locates near Dong Tan Beach, asleep in a makeshift hammock suspended between two trees. The young man awakes with a smile. Dodger banters for a while, gives him some money for food and wishes him well.

What stayed with me about the brief encounter is the both the resiliency of the boy in dire circumstances and Dodger's easy way of offering hope and comfort.

Dodger is very lucky. He finds himself in a position to bring a little light into the lives of the guys that posters on all the forums comment on from time to time--most of them good times. He doesn't seclude himself in the grip of the pandemic but searches out the down and out. And it's his banter as much as his baht that gives them some respite. That there's at least one foreigner who remembers who you are can makes a big difference when you live hand to mouth.

Most of us, of course, can't be there to imitate his way of caring.  But perhaps all of us know at least one boy in not dissimilar circumstances.

These are among the choices we face in this time of covid.