Thicker than Blood

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The handsome campus buildings, built with local labor, include the original hospice, which is now a temporary dormitory for the growing population of children, a three-room schoolhouse, an agricultural center with a ponderously pregnant sow, a weaving center where skilled silk weavers can earn a living selling their wares in the nearby market, and a circular dining room and kitchen with a soaring pointed roof that houses a small stage where the kids perform karaoke.

Everywhere there are bright flowers, mango trees, chickens, ducks, and haughty guinea hens. There are small ponds for the children to fish in, more for fun than for food, and to comfort the soul with the sight of water during the relentless dry season. Funding comes mostly from small foundations and private donors. Money is scarce, but it comes together: always enough, never more than is needed, and often at the last minute.

All of these children have watched friends and parents die of AIDS. Still, they are beginning to understand that, with care, they have an excellent chance of living near-normal lives. The future comes alive in making plans, getting an education, learning a trade that can help them make the transition into the outside world. There are plans for a vocational school, computers, and a language lab. The children of Wat Opot have experienced death with an immediacy—and have learned a kind of compassion—that few adults can comprehend. I long to see how these 64 powerful personalities will reshape their communities when they grow up.

But there is something more here, an alchemy through which children orphaned by AIDS become part of their new family. As the months went by, I observed the variations of human experience that refashion connections and build belonging. I met Baby Mai, a six-month-old whose HIV-positive mother could not care for her. An infected couple at Wat Opot who have no children agreed to look after her. The joy of a little girl transformed the new parents, and the baby’s mother visits when she can.

Chandara, whose mother has AIDS, is an older boy who came to Wat Opot to go to school. He was caught trying to fence a stolen bicycle at the bike store in the next village. Theft in this community is a serious betrayal. Before a meeting of the other boys his age, Chandara promised to do better. The boys listened gravely, eyes discretely averted, weighing Wat Opot’s reputation against the repercussions of expulsion on their friend’s future. Finally, they agreed to give him another chance, each boy stepping into the role of father and older brother, family members assuming responsibility for one another.

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